Fascism, page 18
My native Czech Republic has not been immune to the turbulence. In January 2018, voters narrowly re-elected Milos Zeman to a second term as president. Zeman, who refers to himself as “the Czech Trump,” has echoed Orbán in warning of a Muslim invasion even though the Republic has accepted barely a dozen of the twenty-six hundred asylum seekers required by EU policy. Zeman is also overtly pro-Russia and pro-Putin, which may explain the flood of lies slandering his pro-EU opponent that appeared on social media in the runup to the balloting. In parliamentary elections three months earlier, the big winner was a new party, founded in 2012, called ANO. Its leader, Andrej Babiš, is a billionaire political novice who campaigned on his experience as a businessman and who pledged to fight corruption, though he is under investigation for precisely that. Many voters apparently believe that because the wealthy have no need to steal, they don’t. We’ll see. A couple of years ago, I met Babiš when he was on a visit to the United States. I told friends at the time that I had not encountered any Czech (or Slovak) quite like him—cold, detached, uncommunicative, remote. Zeman and Babiš are allies. I wish my homeland well.
In Hungary, the refugee crisis has given Prime Minister Orbán yet another supposedly existential threat against which to rally his people. Instead of working constructively with regional and global institutions to stabilize the flow of migrants and meet humanitarian needs, Orbán has chosen to foment paranoia. Ignoring the fact that relatively few migrants are clamoring to enter Hungary, the prime minister declared, “The masses arriving from other civilizations endanger our way of life, our culture, our customs and our Christian traditions.” He said the migrants would bring “crime and terror . . . mass disorder . . . riots . . . [and] gangs hunting down our women and daughters.”
Orbán pays little heed to the wrenching humanitarian disaster in the Middle East that launched the exodus, or to the plight of the hundreds of thousands of very young and very old whose lives are in jeopardy through no fault of their own. Instead he describes the crisis as “a preplanned and orchestrated” EU scheme to “transport foreigners here as quickly as possible and settle them among us,” with the goal of reshaping “the religious and cultural landscape of Europe, and to reengineer its ethnic foundations.”
Orbán’s strategy has been to pin responsibility for this imaginary plot on George Soros. Late in 2017, the government sent a questionnaire to every household asking whether it supported the “Soros Plan” to force Hungary to accept migrants, pay them welfare, and assure them lenient sentences for any crimes they might commit. This approach to consulting with the people takes what would ordinarily be considered a democratic tool—the plebiscite—and uses it to spread and validate a falsehood. By asking questions based on a lie, it makes the lie a central part of national conversation. Like other vile tactics, the misuse of plebiscites was perfected by the Third Reich, which employed it often to attach a small thread of legality to Hitler’s rule. “The most effective form of persuasion,” said Goebbels, “is when you are not aware of being persuaded.”
Orbán has added to his demagoguery with a crowd-pleasing project to build border walls and by incarcerating some migrants in shipping containers surrounded by high fences topped by razor wire. Perhaps he should be reminded of his long-ago speech about Imre Nagy and the events of 1956, when tens of thousands of Hungarian freedom fighters were welcomed by the international community as they sought safety from Soviet tanks.
I AM A REFUGEE, BUT A LUCKY ONE. MY FATHER WOULD SURELY have been arrested had we not left Czechoslovakia when we did, but no one threatened to put us in shipping containers, and we arrived in our new homeland on an ocean liner, not an overcrowded raft. When people ask me to sum up my life, I always begin with “gratitude”—to my parents and to the American citizens who allowed my family to make a fresh start. So I find it impossible to be coldly analytical on the subject of migrants and refugees, and I cannot respect politicians who try to win votes by kindling hatred.
The complexity of immigration as an issue begins with a basic human trait: we are reluctant to share. In Rome in 125 B.C., officials debated whether to allow Italians from outside the city gates to enjoy the benefits of Roman citizenship. Arguing against it, a cautious legislator urged his neighbors to consider the implications: “Once you have given citizenship to the Latins, . . . do you think there will be any space for you, like there is now . . . at games or festivals? Don’t you realise they’ll take over everything?”
The world has long since agreed on norms that give states the authority to regulate their borders and yet respect, as well, the right of people to seek a haven from political persecution and war. In normal conditions, this is a workable balance. Men and women who are driven from their homes by repression or strife are entitled to protection, whether temporary or permanent. The broader and less clear-cut question is how to treat people who move from their native countries not because they must, but because they hope to attain a higher standard of living. The right to act on that understandable desire is not absolute; there are legal and illegal ways to go about it.
In general, the movement of people from their homes—the leaving behind of possessions, familiar sights, memories, and ancestral graveyards—does not occur without good cause. Most of us would prefer to remain in places where our names are known, our customs accepted, and our languages spoken. However, hope is another basic human trait, and so millions of people each year do try to migrate illegally, and, once they are on the road or at sea, Europe is for many the destination of choice. Human traffickers aggravate the dilemma by using social media and word of mouth to persuade potential migrants to pay fees they can’t afford so that they can undertake journeys that rarely deliver on the dreams that inspired them.
The scope and pace of migration are a fair topic for debate, and, indeed, an unavoidable one. While it is morally repulsive to vilify newcomers as a group, countries have legitimate grounds to worry about their capacity to absorb large numbers of immigrants. This is particularly the case when most of the visitors are unlikely to return home soon and many already have family members lined up to join them. European leaders have reason to worry about the ability of recent arrivals to integrate themselves successfully into their adopted countries, qualify for jobs, and contribute to their communities. Uncontrolled migration produces social friction not because many refugees are criminals and terrorists (they aren’t), but because living side by side with strangers requires two precious commodities: goodwill and time. Both are necessary to build trust; neither is as widely available as we would like.
Ultimately, illegal immigration is a symptom of failures that extend well beyond Europe and that will not be solved either by welcoming newcomers or by keeping them out. Humanitarian emergencies demand a generous response, but a sound policy will concentrate on preventing crises from arising. Such an approach would separate genuine political refugees from economic migrants, allow high levels of legal migration, share intelligence to prevent infiltration by terrorists, and strive to put human traffickers out of business.
More broadly, it is vital for leaders to work across international boundaries to minimize the number of people who feel the need to leave their home countries in the first place. That requires building healthy democracies, fostering peace, and generating prosperity from the ground up. However, success in that endeavor demands a way of looking at the world that recognizes the humanity we share with one another, and the interests that nations have in common. Those who are content to look inward, and who see no higher purpose than to shield themselves from the different, the new, and the unknown, will be of no help.
Seeking to salve the worries of his constituency, Viktor Orbán assures them: “We are who we were, and we shall be what we are.” That message of exclusivity and changelessness is meant to be a source of comfort, but it is also tinged with prejudice and utterly devoid of ambition. There is no hint of gaining new insights, no hunger for innovation, no curiosity or concern about others, and no desire to look forward to anything except what has already been. Too bad. The history of Europe—and indeed the world—is stained by the blood of nations convinced that the path to glory can be found by disparaging others and going it alone.
Fourteen
“The Leader Will Always Be with Us”
FOR NATIONS, THE REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST IS MEASURED in eras separated, sadly and most often, by war. So it is with Korea. For nearly thirteen hundred years, until the twentieth century, the country was administered from a central capital and its people were held together by shared religious and social customs, a common tongue, a distinctive cuisine, and art. Korea was never an aggressive power, but it had to endure external attacks and periods of occupation, including, most ignominiously, in the sixteenth century, by Japan. After repelling the warriors of the Rising Sun, Korea fortified itself, excluded most foreigners, and became known as the Hermit Kingdom. Then, about 150 years ago, imperial powers cracked open its shell. Deals were made and, in 1905, Japan pushed its way back in. For almost four decades the invaders exploited Korea for their own purposes, exiting only after their empire’s defeat in World War II.
Following the Axis surrender, Korea’s fate, like that of Central Europe, was still to be worked out. Officially, the victorious Allies were committed to a free, united, and independent Korea. Then, in the war’s last week, Stalin’s Red Army penetrated far into the country’s northern half. American diplomats, their inboxes overflowing, shifted their focus from what should be done to what could be achieved most easily. In Washington, late one night, they met with their Soviet counterparts and, tracing lines on a map from National Geographic magazine, consented to the peninsula’s “temporary” division along the 38th parallel. The people who lived there were not consulted.
In 1948, with the Cold War well under way, the U.S.-supported Republic of Korea (ROK) and the USSR-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) officially declared their existence—the former in Seoul, the latter in Pyongyang. North Korea’s head of government, hand-selected by the Soviets, was Kim Il-sung, a thirty-six-year-old military officer who had spent the bulk of his life in exile and possessed little formal education. He did, however, have big ideas. Determined to reunify the Korean Peninsula on his terms, Kim persuaded the Soviets to underwrite an invasion of the South, boasting to Stalin that he would win easily. He almost did prevail, but the United States surprised the DPRK by intervening, under a UN umbrella, prompting China to counter by also entering the fray. In 1953, an armistice was signed to end the fighting, but with no victor, no formal peace, no significant change in borders, and a death toll that included more than a million and a half Koreans, 900,000 Chinese, and 54,000 Americans.
The war was a colossal waste of lives and treasure, so it matters that the DPRK has been built on a lie about who started it. The worldview of any North Korean begins with the conviction that, in 1950, their country was attacked by sadistic murderers from America and the ROK. If not for Kim Il-sung’s brave leadership and the pluck of DPRK fighters, their homeland would have been laid waste and their ancestors enslaved. Worse still, the story continues, Americans are evil and do not learn from their mistakes. Given a chance, the savages will return and wreak more havoc. Out of this sham narrative come the fear, the anger, and the yearning for revenge that Kim Il-sung harnessed to justify the world’s most totalitarian regime.
Kim was above all a military man. Unlike most of the leaders cited in this book, he was neither a writer nor a theorist, nor inclined to read literature or study history. He did, however, possess the ardor of a committed nationalist, knew how to command, kept the Soviets on his side, and had a true Fascist’s appetite for power. He also looked good in a uniform. With Moscow’s backing, he met little resistance imposing a centralized economy and single-party rule on his fledgling country.
In the wake of the Korean War, the government set out to manufacture public enthusiasm for itself as the defender of the nation against hated enemies—the South, Japan, and the United States. The DPRK built a million-man army, the world’s fourth largest, and pulled together a formidable arsenal of rocket launchers and missiles. To instill patriotic spirit, national leaders developed a doctrine they called “Juche,” or self-reliance, conveniently ignoring the country’s dependence on aid from other Communist states. To ensure discipline, girls and boys were removed from their families at an early age so their heads could be filled with party dogma and their minds and bodies trained to obey. Every citizen was taught to be civil to neighbors, but also to inform on them should they exhibit any sign of dissent or independent thought. Children, too, were encouraged to tattle, even if that meant signing the equivalent of a death warrant for their parents. Like Fascism in Italy and Germany, the North Korean dictatorship was an outgrowth of war and the quest for order taken too far. But in North Korea, unlike those countries, power came quickly when the conflict concluded because there was no incumbent political establishment to outmaneuver or overthrow.
As years passed, the legends surrounding the life and accomplishments of Kim Il-sung were polished to a fine sheen. Supposedly, he had spent World War II leading a guerrilla band from a clandestine mountain base inside Korea where he struck blow after blow against the Japanese occupiers. In reality, he had watched the war from Russia while under the supervision of the Red Army—but the fictional account was more exciting and North Koreans believed it.
To them, Kim was the embodiment of virtue—daring, kind, wise. It was he who invented the new agricultural methods that they used to grow food, the more comfortable chairs in which they sat while studying, the ingenious machines they operated while at work, and the modern weapons they relied on to defend the motherland. Countless anecdotes were told of his visits to classrooms, factories, barracks, and farms where he dispensed Hallmark-style advice with a gentle touch and a warm smile. North Koreans were told that the outside world was depraved and that they were fortunate to have a protector to set high moral standards and to keep them safe. The cult of Kim’s personality was on display daily in national ceremonies and parades, against the backdrop of an oversize bronze statue, worshipful billboards, monuments, and museums. He never claimed divine status, but to his people he might just as well have slipped into the shoes of God.
And this god had a son. North Korean Fascism is a family enterprise. For all their headaches, Western diplomats have never had to match wits with Benito Mussolini Jr., Adolf Hitler III, or Joseph Stalin IV. But since the DPRK was founded, power in that country has been transferred without interruption from one generation (the Great Leader, Kim Il-sung) to the next (the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il) and the next (the Great Successor, Kim Jong-un).
Mussolini taught Italians to believe again in their identity and destiny. Kim Il-sung urged North Koreans to trust in their ability to reunify their peninsula, vanquish powerful foes, and maintain the unique virtues of their race. Through most of his tenure, the DPRK was more prosperous than the South. Until 1990, the leaders in Pyongyang were confident of their prominent place within the Communist solar system, but then one day the red star set and never came back up, forcing the disciples of Juche to find an orbit all their own.
WITH THE COLD WAR OVER, THE CERTAINTIES OF THE DPRK’S UNIVERSE vanished. China, trusted friend and ideological soul mate, embarked on an ambitious program of economic opening and reform. The disintegrating USSR started to demand full market price for its oil. Eastern European trading partners turned their backs, the better to wrap their arms around the West. Moscow and Beijing normalized diplomatic ties with the enemy, the ROK. And with most of its foreign assistance cut off, Pyongyang lacked funds to import the food it did not have enough fertilizer and arable land to grow on its own.
Seeing all this, much of the world expected North Korea either to collapse in misery or to acknowledge the inevitable, follow China’s lead, and open its economy. Kim, however, was determined to pursue a third option. In 1993, he announced plans to withdraw his country from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, then prepared to extract weapons-grade plutonium from the spent fuel rods in the DPRK’s one operational nuclear reactor. Kim’s intention was clear and ominous: he planned to build nuclear bombs.
This show of aggression heightened tensions throughout East Asia and led to a face-off with the Clinton administration. In Washington, our national security team took seriously the possibility of war. We developed a plan to destroy the nuclear reactor and rushed antimissile systems and attack helicopters to the region. Pentagon officials told the president to expect that thousands of U.S. soldiers and half a million South Koreans would be killed or injured in the first ninety days of fighting. Urgently, we pressed North Korea to think carefully about its options and to give diplomacy a chance. Ultimately, passions were cooled through a deal—the Agreed Framework—under which the DPRK shut down its reactor and sealed its fuel rods in return for the promise of better relations and help in meeting energy needs.
The Agreed Framework was imperfect, and implementation fell short on both sides, but the arrangement ended the immediate crisis and kept the DPRK nuclear program from breaking out. Had the framework not been in place, experts believe North Korea would have had enough fuel for fifty to one hundred nuclear weapons by decade’s end; instead it had none, but North Korea’s isolation continued, and so did its animus toward outsiders.
