Inner Emigration

During the World War a number of German intellectuals, writers, pastors, professors and even army officers practiced what was later described as inner emigration -- an interior withholding of consent to the policies and actions of the regime.

Inner emigration is not the same as underground resistance. The latter is affirmative action against a regime by stealth, surprise or subversion. Inner emigration, by contrast, is simply a private posture, a kind of “I'm here but not here” thing. Resistance presupposes hope; inner emigration, hopelessness.

Inner emigration was not limited to “good Germans.” In the 1960's large portions of American youth emigrated inwardly -- they were known as “Hippies.” Giving the maximum possible credit where credit is due, hippies realized not only that the system was evil and corrupt but, worse yet, impermeable. Confessing their political powerlessness, they tuned in and dropped out.

The occasional justification for this posturing was that by dropping out they were creating an “alternative” culture and society. But this was a mirage. The evil system quickly found ways to commodify and subsume the alternative; so that, in the end, hippies ended up perusing NiftyStuff Catalogues, buying Volvo's and “sensibly” investing in real estate, all the while assuring themselves that, unlike their square parents, they had (somehow) protested the war.

I don't want to come down too hard on the hippies; for, it has to be said in the 1970's a wave of religiosity also swept over the the United States. The two phenomena were related, but the religious one gave up all pretence of being, or forming or leading to an alernative society. It was simply the Big Drop into Self, most perfectly exemplified by the mindless Hare Krishna chanters on Powell and Market or in airports. Be that as it was, from chanting, to Zen, to Pentecostalism, to the New Jesus Movement, to TM and EST and a hundred obscure spiritual sects people gave up on politics and fell to micro managing their inner selves. The war makers, financiers and mass marketters could not have been happier.

“What is that?” my mother asked. “It's a zafu,” I replied. “What's a zaahfoo?” “It's a meditation cushion.” “You don't need a cushion to meditate,” she scathingly replied. But I'm not meditating! I protested; and, in truth I have never been able to meditate for more than 30 seconds. I just wanted to decorate the house a la japonnaise. But no one should doubt the ability of “the system” to merchandize and hence emasculate anything.

Not surprisingly, in the late 1970's various French historians began to wonder if this all had not happened before; and, of course it had, the result being a series of books on the “interiorization” of “political” life, known as the rise of Christianity and the fall of the Ancient world -- one chapter being dedicated in all seriousness, to the “advent” of private toilets in lieu of public ones.

In Europe, the rise of private toilets did actually lead to the evolution of an alternative civitas, known as Visigothic, Ostro- Gallo- or Germano-Roman depending on one's preference of labels. But in the 1970's the American Empire was far from collapsing and, instead, the forces that be found ways to evolve a totally kitsch politics -- an activism based on symptomatic issues (organic food, smoking and smog) and personal entitlements, sub nom “civil rights.” At the same time, the rulers of the country liberalized the market, exempting corporations from all sense of civic responsibility and enacted an all-volunteer military, thereby exempting individuals from the otherwise minimum obligations of citizenship. The result: individuals could pursue their “entitlements;” business could pursue its profits, and the government could pursue its wars without there ever again being any push-back.

At least until this past October. The announced and blatantly executed genocide carried out by the Trio from Hell was so grotesque that it provoked universal condemnation from the ordinary people and lesser states of the world. Unfortunately, the situation has only served to illustrate how actually powerless the people of democratic societies actually are and how completely entrenched the neo-liberal and neo-con rulership is. Over the past 50 years they have so totally atomized the substance of “civic society” and so completely dominated the levers and avenues of political and cultural power that the protests for all their anger and moral force are but a drizzle over the landscape. The impunity with which Western leaders insult the protestors, blatantly lie to the public and, in Israel's case, say things that would make a Nazi blush (oh yes; oh yes) indicate that they are not in the least worried that their nefarious designs will be interrupted. Even the Yellow Vests provoked a more serious response from the state.

So...we are once again faced with the German question: what to do when one is powerless to do anything? It is a moral dilemma to which I do not have an answer.

I trust it will not sound too effete when I say that there can be no doubt that “exposing” one's self to the horrible images of Israel's brutality in Gaza produces a form of PTSD. It is not as acute as the trauma of actually being there, but it is also a trauma that is not compensated for with adrenaline. The result is a kind of masturbatory fetish where one goes back for more thinking that knowing is at least “being responsible” when in fact knowing does nothing but underscore the impossibility of accomplishing anything. On the other hand, “tuning out” and ignoring the inhuman savagery while one goes about one's life unhindered and unimpeded, traipsing through strawberry fields, is form of indifference that is itself inhumane and criminal... all excuses aside.

So ... 1970's redux. I will only say that if anyone thinks private toilets or chanting mantras on street corners will make an “unseen” difference, I can only say that that is an illusion. Whether one is up to it or not, if one is honest, there is no emigrating from this fight.

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