Listening to the exchange with Peter in “Matthaus Passion,” and the exchange with Peter makes me a little weepy.
This is the script (from here)
| Recitative [Tenor. Bass I. Bass II] | |
| Violino I/II, Viola, Continuo Evangelist (T), Peter (B.I), Jesus (B.II) | |
| Evangelist: Petrus aber antwortete und sprach zu ihm: But Peter answered and said to him: |
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| Peter: Wenn sie auch alle sich an dir ärgerten, Even if everybody else is offended because of you,` so will ich doch mich nimmermehr ärgern. yet I shall never be offended. |
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| Evangelist: Jesus sprach zu ihm: Jesus said to him: |
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| Jesus: Wahrlich, ich sage dir: In dieser Nacht, Truly, I say to you: this night, ehe der Hahn krähet, wirst du mich dreimal verleugnen. before the cock crows, you will deny me three times. |
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| Evangelist: Petrus sprach zu ihm: Peter said to him: |
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| Peter: Und wenn ich mit dir sterben müßte, Even if I had to die with you, so will ich dich nicht verleugnen. I shall not deny you. |
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| Evangelist: Desgleichen sagten auch alle Jünger. The same said all his disciples. |
Other translations are here.
As many of you know, I’ve been reading a lot about the Holocaust, and especially the era when Hitler was able to put into place the culture, processes, and propaganda that would enable the Holocaust. Hitler’s serial genocides didn’t begin in 1941, but in 1933, when the people who could have stopped the processes being put in place chose not to because they liked the short-term outcome they were getting (triumphing over socialists, a conservative political agenda, a rhetoric that openly promoted nationalism and ethnocentrism, and rabidly anti-immigration rhetoric, as well as the open equation of the national identity with one ethnic/political group). The military liked the new open militarism, and lots of people liked the rhetoric that said that Germany had never been wrong in its previous invasion that had had disastrous outcomes in terms of economics and prestige.
And I see so many people now condemn Hitler as though they would have resisted. And, of course, I like to think I would have resisted. Timothy Snyder’s powerful Black Earth ends with a moving description of various people who resisted, and we want to see ourselves as someone like that.
And so did Peter.
I think we’re all Peter. Peter did eventually resist, of course—he got a second chance. I think he resisted later because he knew that resistance was hard, because he hadn’t resisted before. Peter’s problem when Jesus first told him that Peter would not resist was that he thought resistance was easy. We underestimate what resistance means, and we overestimate our ability to resist because we forget how oppression happens.
Hitler didn’t start out saying that he intended to expel and/or exterminate all the inferior races/identities (Jews, Romas, Sintis, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, leftists), nor that he intended to restrict the churches, start another world war, and engage in serial genocides, but he did. He claimed he intended the opposite, that he would respect all religions, work for economic stability, and maintain peace. He would, he said, never start a war. (And, as it happens, he continued to insist on that–he never admitted that his aggressions were aggressions, always insisting he was forced into military action by other countries refusing to go along with his plans or that they were about to attack.) Hitler’s rhetoric was one of national entitlement, and he was clear in Mein Kampf what that meant—Germany was entitled to military domination, European hegemony, its own way of narrating history, the expulsion of Judaism and Bolshevism (which he saw as the same) from Europe, and a kind of Aryan colonialism in Europe. When 1933 rolled around, he continued to argue for the same policies, but, through a careful use of dog whistles, made it seem as though he had become more reasonable.
In other words, Hitler said to people, “I am a completely different person from who I have always been,” and people accepted it.
They accepted it because they had a conversion narrative about how a person who has always been and behaved a certain way would suddenly behave a new way. Thus, they said, you can ignore everything he has always been and said. Because they were getting the political agenda they had always wanted.
So, even though they had every reason to think his intentions weren’t good, they didn’t worry about the processes he was putting in place—they liked the short-term outcome. They liked the political agenda. They ignored the process.
People often quote Martin Niemoller.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
When I first came across this quote, I thought it was metaphorical. But it wasn’t. It’s exactly what Niemoller did. Neimoller, a Lutheran pastor, really didn’t object when socialists, unionists, and Jews were arrested. He continued to try to work with the Nazis. The Nazis, whose religious beliefs are complicated (since Hitler lied like a rug, it’s hard to say what his beliefs were, other than that he genuinely believed himself to be chosen by the Almighty to cleanse the world), clearly wanted something along the lines of a state church (in an odd way, they were theocrats), and therefore intended to undermine the power of other sources of power, but they did so slowly. Just as Hitler made a pact with the USSR that he fully intended to abrogate, so he made promises to the Catholic and Lutheran churches he fully intended to violate. And, so, those churches chose to ignore his history of being a liar in favor of believing that he wasn’t lying to them, and they did so because, at first, he came through with his promises to them.
When liars lie in ways that benefit the in-group, we think they are on our side, and can therefore be trusted. That Hitler also delivered a passionate and loyal group of voters, and that his base would enable others to get their policy agenda passed (such as restricting birth control, banning homosexuality, enhancing the military) just simply meant that people were willing to overlook how he was getting those policies through—his demonizing of democracy in favor of some kind of authoritarian understanding of “true” people, his insistence that the judiciary follow his policy agenda (rather than worry about whether judges were fair, deeply knowledgeable, or respected), his equation of dissent with disloyalty, his throttling of the Reichstag.
Niemoller was a conservative anti-Semite who genuinely didn’t care when groups he disliked were silenced and imprisoned. He didn’t mind that they were silenced because he was okay with the outcome, and didn’t pay attention to the process. He only realized he should have cared when the same processes and logic were used to silence and then imprison him.
We are told that Jesus’ disciples wanted to fight when he was arrested, so perhaps, like many people, Peter was willing to engage in a big, public battle. But his courage failed in the little moments—in the moment that would have meant he would have been arrested without drama, without spectacle. No one would have known. Bravery isn’t about the big moments; it’s about the little ones.
Niemoller, a conservative anti-Semite, later realized that he should have been brave on behalf of people he found dangerous and very other. Peter realized he should have been brave in the private moment, when there was danger to him and no public display of his bravery.
When we imagine a movie moment in which we are brave, and there is an audience approving of us, we are not imagining how people enable tragedy.