Hannah Ardent coined the phrase the banality of evil but what about the banality of the modern centrist?
What is a life without heroes or villains? Is it even a life worth living - a blandness of moral ambiguity where hand wringing dominates and people are just sad about the bad things?
The Second World War forever looms large and on some level it is annoying to write about but hear me out, the above banality needs addressing.
The most sensible way to think about the conflict to me is actually to think about it as if you were a ten year old. When I was a ten year old I was enthralled by the Battle of Britain - the heroic exploits of the RAF that saved Britain. I loved reading about the adventures of the war - the exploits of the early SAS or LRDG in the desert. My grandfather had his naval war medals and I got to see them and imagine what it was like. I loved visiting HMS Belfast with him. The Germans were just the bad guys, they weren’t these demonic caricatures nor did I have any inkling of ideology.
You can’t stay there of course, you learn more and more and your feelings and thoughts evolve. I distinctly remember marveling at the exploits of Rommel, the desert fox facing Montgomery. It fascinated me how the Afrika Korps did so well, came so close. Again these were the enemy of my family - in a very real sense they tried to kill my grandfather and had they succeeded I’d not be here today but that was war. There still was never an abstract loyalty to the ideology of our time to oppose.
When eugyppius says:
If you look back on those terrible years and see unambiguous heroes and villains, you’ve gone wrong somewhere.
I can’t help just think of someone divorced from recent history, from their own people. Of course I will look back on the heroism I heard above from my grandfather or his friends. When you have a direct connection it is unambiguous. Now of course when you lean out to a higher level you become frustrated because you see the betrayal. Our grandfathers didn’t risk their neck so we could have Abdul or Jamal on our streets. That is the disgusting and maddening part of it. They weren’t fighting for ‘democracy’ or ‘diversity’ or ‘equality’. Those are modern lies but to look back and see your own folk as heroes is natural.
Villains are necessary as well but of course with more knowledge you develop more nuance. When I read Guy Sajer’s “Forgotten Soldier” you have villains in that story, and it isn’t just the communists. It’s the German military police and officers punishing their own men for uniform regulations as they retreat in shocking numbers from the Soviet offensive. You can look back on the exploits of the Germans with an understanding of the degree of heroism they took - is this the moral ambiguity that eugyppius references? Perhaps. Perhaps he wishes to look back on his own ancestors as the heroes they should be but can’t? Good men are capable of terrible things, sometimes all that happens is how you view the situation.
Like I said there are heroes and villains - it isn’t just moral ambiguity. There is a scale of herosim present constantly in most encounters of violence between men. Being good at violence is part of being a hero all that matters is the perspective we have. A broader perspective gives us an opportunity to see more heroes but also more villains. That makes life richer, it gives way to opportunities for art. The moment that kind of recrystalized this for me recently was thinking about the following event carried out by Paddy Mayne of the SAS. In this story the SAS are raiding a German-Italian airfield destroying planes but Mayne takes it a step further. He kicks open the mess room of the pilots and then ruthlessly cuts down the pilots with his Tommy gun before disappearing into the night. If we swapped Mayne for a German I can guarantee you people would call it cowardice, murderous. Almost evil. Mayne though was part of the winning side and so his actions there, extreme violence, get a pass. We apply a different standard. It was me realizing this small story in the war could both be the story of a hero or a villain that brought me full circle. A more mature understanding, but it’s still not moral ambiguity - the difference is that the morals we apply and think about stem from a more folkish conception.
At that gut moment you are without any ambiguity if you are in touch with your folk. Everything else falls away, especially the modern liberal interpretations of the conflict. War and conflict are inherently brutal and murderous. The only answer to such madness is always found in heroes and villains.