May 29, 2017 03:59 AM
The Malmedy trial: how the truth trumped fake torture stories
https://aeon.co/ideas/the-malmedy-trial-...re-stories
EXCERPT: In December 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, members of a Nazi SS combat division executed 84 captured GIs near the Belgian town of Malmedy. [...] Today, this episode remains an example of how competent professionals confronted a blizzard of fake news and faced down one of the era’s most dangerous demagogues.
[...] US Army lawyers were not fooled. The prisoners’ descriptions of brutal beatings, threats and mock executions read like a hack screenwriter’s attempt at dramatising torture. But US and German newspapers, including publications such as Time magazine, reported the torture stories as factual. Editorials demanded that the interrogators be prosecuted. By early 1949, the accusations had generated enough controversy to produce a Congressional investigation. [...] The hearings were chaired by Raymond Baldwin, a conscientious and thoughtful Republican. Baldwin was determined to get to the truth of the matter. He gave the former investigators the chance to explain their methods and, having no intention of whitewashing the Army, ensured that its critics – including some of the chief purveyors of the torture allegations – were given the chance to explain themselves.
[...] Baldwin’s nemesis on the committee was a junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy. Neither conscientious nor thoughtful – though eager to bolster his sagging political fortunes – McCarthy decided that the torture claims were true before the hearings began. For weeks, he berated any witness whose testimony did not confirm his suspicions. Ill-informed and unable to question witnesses coherently, he resorted to threats and insults. [...] Rather than reconsider his position, McCarthy stormed out of the hearings, insulted Baldwin, and accused the Army of a cover up. He had suffered a humiliating – if temporary – defeat. Unable to let the matter go, he was still railing on the floor of the Senate against Baldwin and the Army months later...
How politeness became a tool of radical democratic politics
https://aeon.co/essays/how-politeness-be...c-politics
EXCERPT: Long before current fears about incivility in public life – before anxieties about Twitter-shaming and cable-news name-calling – politeness was very much on the minds of United States leaders. In 1808, the US president Thomas Jefferson ranked the ‘qualities of mind’ he valued. Not surprisingly, he included ‘integrity’, ‘industry’, and ‘science’. These traits were particularly important to American revolutionaries seeking a society based on independent citizens, rather than harsh rulers and inherited privilege. But at the top of his list, Jefferson chose not these familiar Enlightenment values but ‘good humour’ – or what contemporaries usually called ‘politeness’.
Placing politeness first seems surprising. Today, the term often connotes a lesser, private virtue, reminiscent of antiquated childhood rules and required thank-you notes. At worst, politeness keeps people from revealing themselves or speaking out against injustice. One of the longest-running US reality TV shows, The Real World (1992-), suggests in its introduction that the truth about who people are comes out only when they ‘stop being polite – and start getting real’.
However, 18th-century Britons and Americans believed that politeness was essential for a free society. Autocrats shouted, cursed and berated. But they sought only obedience. Leading a more open society required respect for other people, sensitivity to their expectations and concerns. By the time of Jefferson’s ranking, politeness had been part of the project of challenging authoritarian rule for more than a century....
https://aeon.co/ideas/the-malmedy-trial-...re-stories
EXCERPT: In December 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, members of a Nazi SS combat division executed 84 captured GIs near the Belgian town of Malmedy. [...] Today, this episode remains an example of how competent professionals confronted a blizzard of fake news and faced down one of the era’s most dangerous demagogues.
[...] US Army lawyers were not fooled. The prisoners’ descriptions of brutal beatings, threats and mock executions read like a hack screenwriter’s attempt at dramatising torture. But US and German newspapers, including publications such as Time magazine, reported the torture stories as factual. Editorials demanded that the interrogators be prosecuted. By early 1949, the accusations had generated enough controversy to produce a Congressional investigation. [...] The hearings were chaired by Raymond Baldwin, a conscientious and thoughtful Republican. Baldwin was determined to get to the truth of the matter. He gave the former investigators the chance to explain their methods and, having no intention of whitewashing the Army, ensured that its critics – including some of the chief purveyors of the torture allegations – were given the chance to explain themselves.
[...] Baldwin’s nemesis on the committee was a junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy. Neither conscientious nor thoughtful – though eager to bolster his sagging political fortunes – McCarthy decided that the torture claims were true before the hearings began. For weeks, he berated any witness whose testimony did not confirm his suspicions. Ill-informed and unable to question witnesses coherently, he resorted to threats and insults. [...] Rather than reconsider his position, McCarthy stormed out of the hearings, insulted Baldwin, and accused the Army of a cover up. He had suffered a humiliating – if temporary – defeat. Unable to let the matter go, he was still railing on the floor of the Senate against Baldwin and the Army months later...
How politeness became a tool of radical democratic politics
https://aeon.co/essays/how-politeness-be...c-politics
EXCERPT: Long before current fears about incivility in public life – before anxieties about Twitter-shaming and cable-news name-calling – politeness was very much on the minds of United States leaders. In 1808, the US president Thomas Jefferson ranked the ‘qualities of mind’ he valued. Not surprisingly, he included ‘integrity’, ‘industry’, and ‘science’. These traits were particularly important to American revolutionaries seeking a society based on independent citizens, rather than harsh rulers and inherited privilege. But at the top of his list, Jefferson chose not these familiar Enlightenment values but ‘good humour’ – or what contemporaries usually called ‘politeness’.
Placing politeness first seems surprising. Today, the term often connotes a lesser, private virtue, reminiscent of antiquated childhood rules and required thank-you notes. At worst, politeness keeps people from revealing themselves or speaking out against injustice. One of the longest-running US reality TV shows, The Real World (1992-), suggests in its introduction that the truth about who people are comes out only when they ‘stop being polite – and start getting real’.
However, 18th-century Britons and Americans believed that politeness was essential for a free society. Autocrats shouted, cursed and berated. But they sought only obedience. Leading a more open society required respect for other people, sensitivity to their expectations and concerns. By the time of Jefferson’s ranking, politeness had been part of the project of challenging authoritarian rule for more than a century....