I wrote the following email to Franklin Foer, editor of the New Repulic. I thought that some of you might enjoy reading it.
-trza
Dear Mr. Foer,
How are you? Very well I hope. This may be sort of a round-about email, but it is something I wanted to get off my chest.
I know that you are a big fan of soccer, something that you and I have in common. I very much enjoyed your book How Soccer Explains the World. I just returned from the World Cup Germany, where I followed the USA squad through their three first round matches. I don't know if you made it to the Cup, but I'm sure you have been following the matches on TV. Germany looks quite good, and I can't wait for their match against Argentina. But, I digress...
While I was in Germany, I and two of my friends took a day off from soccer and biergartens to visit the city of Dachau in Bavaria and the concentration camp memorial in that town. It was a very sobering experience to visit the grounds upon which so many innocent people were murdered. We walked through reconstructed buildings containing the sleeping quarters of the prisoners, the incinerators where bodies were burned, and through a disturbing room built to resemble a shower but intended for use (though never actually used) as a execution chamber, from which poison gas would have been released from the vents in the ceiling. We also watched a video with footage taken by the SS, depicting the horrific conditions the prisoners were forced to live, work, and die in.
The entire time I was at the camp my mind returned to the same question: how could any people have done this to others? I was further confounded by the total disconnect between the brutality and evil of the Nazis and the warmth and love shown to me and my friends by all the Germans we came into contact with as we traveled around their beautiful country. The only answer I could come to was that many bad and many more normal people had become twisted into monsters by the grotesque ideology of fascism and Nazism. I recently saw the German film Sophie Scholle, which also explores the mechanisms of the Nazi state. There was something truly twisted about the ideology of fascism that warped an entire country so horribly that it could construct factories of death and torture like the concentration camp at Dachau.
I write this because when I returned to work yesterday, I began to read discussion on some Web sites that I frequent (specifically Talking Points Memo) over a post that a contributor your magazine, Lee Siegel, wrote while I was away. In that post, Siegel compares the "blogosphere" to fascism, coining a tortured new term, "blogofascism." Ridiculously, he compares certain bloggers, like Markos Moulitas from Daily Kos, to the lumpen proletariat who formed the base of Hitler's political support.
I must say that I sympathize with some of the points made by Siegel in his article. For example, the blogosphere can be overly obscene, can rely too much on shorthanded personal insults rather than intelligent debate, and can overall be too caustic. However, after witnessing the grim results of true fascism at Dachau, I can only be offended by Siegal's careless use of the term. Some, like Josh Marshall, have reacted to Siegel's piece with derision and mockery, which certainly is appropriate. However, outrage is the emotion that most immediately rises in me.
Normally, I wouldn't care enough to write a long letter to an editor I'm never met of a magazine to which I've never subscribed. If it were the Nation or the National Review that had published such a piece, I would have dismissed it. However, I was especially disappointed with the piece because it was published by the New Republic under your supervision. As I said, I am a fan of yours. You are an excellent writer, and I have much respect for your opinion of matters of the day, whether they are about politics, soccer, or other subjects. I had a great deal of hope that you would improve the quality and discourse of the New Republic, and that your tenure would give me a reason to subscribe to the magazine. Sadly, this series of events has turned me off of your magazine, perhaps for good. I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but in my opinion you should get a handle on this nonsense before it does any further harm to your reputation or to that of your magazine.
Thanks for taking the time to read my e-mail. I hope you enjoy the rest of the Cup.