A Chinese scholar sees the bankruptcy of Europe

I had a busy few weeks, so I had not blogged for for some time and this made me review my reasons for blogging and my reasons for doing anything else. The challenge as I grow older is to keep going and to keep my mind alive and this is a good reason for writing my blogs. I had to make the effort to go to the National Library to hear a talk by Dr. Limin Bai of Victoria University, about Liang Qichao, a Chinese politician, scholar, writer and philosopher. Learning can involve digging deeper and deeper into a hole that you already know is there and it is only its size and depth that you need to explore, or scampering across a wide field tripping over things that you don't know and see how these can broaden your understanding of the bits you do know. Liang Qichao is certainly someone I didn't know, but found that he had a uniquely Chinese perspective on the world, on literature, the role of journalism, and on history. He was a democrat, a political reformer, and for this, he was exiled to Japan. After the changes in the political environment he returned to China, influenced Chinese reformist politics and politicians, but the talk by Dr. Bai focused on Liang's attendance at the Versailles Peace Conference at the end of the First World War and his great disappointment that Chinese claims were disregarded. What he saw in Europe was devastation, ruin, and he shared the view of an American journalist that Europe was bankrupt, morally, spiritually, and economically. He went to Europe to learn from Europe, but concluded that China had a lot to teach Europeans. Later generations saw Liang not as a reformer but as a conservative. Having fomented revolution he came to be opposed to revolution. In this generation there are some who believe that he was right, that China would have been better off had it not had a revolution. Liang, about whom I knew nothing, posed many questions.

A brief history of the first half of the twentieth century

I am talking to senior students of Tokoroa High School this week. They are studying the 'Rise of Hitler' in the context of 'An event in history, its causes and consequences' and they are coming to the Holocaust Centre. I have to assume that they are familiar with the key facts. I am not there to teach them the material that is available to them from textbooks and was, presumably taught by their teacher. I have to somehow relate their topic to the Holocaust, to New Zealand, and to my own personal experiences. We keep being told that it is this personal note that makes the visit to the Holocaust Centre something special. So where should I start? Hitler was just one of a number of dictators who came to prominence in the decades after the First World War. They included Mussolini, Salazar, Franco, Antonescu. Metaxas and Horthy, and perhaps also Dollfus. They rose to power, like Hitler, because society was torn apart by conflict between those who tried to maintain traditional order, and those who wanted to overthrow that, inspired by the Russian Revolution and ultimately Communism. Going back further, the war was caused by colonialism, the underlying belief that industrial capitalism needed colonies for both markets and raw materials. Countries that did not have colonies were left behind and would be eclipsed. To survive, advanced industrial states needed colonies, and they carved up the world into spheres of influence. The war left winners and losers, and a huge number of casualties as well as disgruntled soldiers who felt betrayed, cheated, and disillusioned. The forces on the right, the forces in the middle and the many factions on the left were divided and at loggerheads. The countries became ungovernable and the myth of the supreme commander, the superman, who could restore order became accepted by a large section of society. So what was special about Hitler, and why was his impact on history greater? Compared with other dictators, he was uneducated, with no social status. But he had a vision that he described in his book, Mein Kampf. Being a man of limited education, he swallowed simplified notions of social Darwinism. His vision was founded on superior and inferior races and the right of a superior race, his, the Germans, to dominate and eliminate inferior races. The more irrational Hitler's ideas were, the easier it was to put these across, and their consequences were more lethal. Thus his ruthless treatment of Polish, Russian and Ukrainian people, people who he had hoped would side with him against the oppressive Bolshevik power turned against him as the greater of evils. His medieval superstitious hatred of Jews deprived his Germany of talent that his country very much needed, and concentrating on the murder of Jews in the midst of a war when his efforts should have been focused on pursuing his military aims undermined his war effort. The Jews were like the canaries in the mines, an indication of the disastrous problems facing society, German society in particular, and European society in general. A brief history of Europe is a very rich stew to serve to 17 – 18 year old students, but I hope that they will come away with more questions than answers.

ISIS and capitalism

It is always a pleasure to hear Paul Morris, Professor of Religious Studies at Victoria University, Wellington. He ranges across his wide learning and treats his audience with more respect than it often deserves, assuming that they can follow the many references he throws around. Last week he talked about religious fundamentalism in his talk to Kia Ora Torah. He traced the history of the term 'fundamentalism' from its eighteenth century origin to the present day, a term that at times had positive connotation, uncompromising, honest beliefs, at times very negative connotation, chopping people's heads off. It was a clever, academic exercise, amusing if not very helpful for understanding the phenomenon that plagues our contemporary world. It did not address the differences between people with genuinely held personal beliefs and those who would impose narrowly defined strict beliefs and practices on others with no room for toleration for any who do not subscribe to such beliefs. He made no distinction between believing Jews, Muslims or Christians, your average Kosovar or Albanian or Fijian Indian Muslim, and followers of ISIS, or the average worshippers in a synagogue in Wellington, London or New York and those for whom the mass murderer Baruch Goldstein is a hero. He saw the appeal of ISIS, its fundamentalism, to some Western young people as a response to soulless materialism that underlies capitalism. I could identify with this, in my callow youth I believed in socialism as a way to a more just, compassionate, peaceful world, and I, and some of the people I associated with sneered at the young people who studied accountancy, business, as roads to riches. We had enough and wanting more seemed unjust. The question Paul did not address is how religious fundamentalism, and particularly Islamic fundamentalism replaced Communism as the great enemy of the West. George Orwell was the one who foresaw this in 1949, in his novel 1984.