In my first post about Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jersualem, I noted that certain lessons can be learned from events even if they fail to explain the original phenomena. I thought I would wrap up by drawing lessons from her insights into statelessness, a condition that has little direct relationship with Eichmann's guilt yet remains a threat that is as relevant today as it was all those decades ago.
Statelessness was the first weapon the Nazis used against their extermination targets. A stateless person could still flee the regime but safe destinations were all the more difficult to reach for the lack of state affiliation. In the same way that I cannot board an international flight or drive into Canada without my official government documentation, a person fleeing Nazi Germany would have struggled to legally cross borders into safe territory. This fact wouldn’t have prevented escape but the secrecy it demanded of any fleeing refugee undoubtedly increased the danger involved in the journey.
The power of a government to grant statehood to any person is immense almost beyond the point of my comprehension. At the very minimum, my passport introduces the possibility that the USA would consider military action to preserve my safety. The scenes wherever immigrants officially earn their US citizenship are a testament to this power. The official documentation brings so much more than just a new box to check off on the census form. But the government’s power to strip a citizen of this same status goes a step further. It approaches a biblical proportion in the sense that it’s powerful enough to override the basic human desire to protect those in harm’s way. Without this desire – the very instinct that underscores any case of one group intervening on the behalf of another – the likelihood of a political body intervening on the behalf of a stateless person essentially disappears.
Distinctions made among people are never done just for kicks. The lines that separate always delineate a power imbalance. When two groups occupy the same space, the group with local state affiliation always holds the upper hand. Immigrants retain some of their leverage through the knowledge that a foreign government with its own interests considers them part of their citizenry. A stateless person enjoys no such backing. A totalitarian regime such as the Nazis has no rush to attack the stateless because there is no threat of major intervention on the behalf of the victim for whom no state will claim as its own. In fact, totalitarian regimes will play the slowest possible game knowing that allowing victims to disappear into uncertainty ensures their victims do not reach martyrdom.
It is a challenge to draw an applicable lesson from one of humanity’s greatest failures. The reality is that group distinctions and its inherent power imbalances remain ever-present in the state dynamics of the modern age. One possible lesson of statelessness and its considerable role in Nazi atrocities is the importance of fighting the forces that make people disappear. When people go away, the vanishing act remains pending until those left behind forget. Many demonstrate their understanding of this lesson each day through their support of the very people states work tirelessly to put out of sight – the wrongfully incarcerated, the battered protester, the fleeing refugee. Nothing is out of sight until it is out of mind. If we always keep the victims, the marginalized, and the powerless in mind, we’ll always when a so-called leader should be ignored until the world is set back once more on its rightful course.
