End The Hysteria and Violence

By Toni Mikec on December 3, 2014

While I cannot and will not comment on whether officer Wilson is guilty or innocent, I fear that all the violence in Ferguson, Missouri is caused by one thing: hysteria. It is this hysteria, in turn, that incited these recent troubling events and compelled others to behave poorly as well.

As I write this response from my Paris apartment, (in a city where there is almost a protest every single week), I am frequently reminded of the accusations surrounding the trial of Alfred Dreyfus between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century and how they resemble our current situation.

In this important case, a Jewish-French soldier was accused of betraying military secrets to Germany. The trial progressed similarly to the one in Ferguson, with many members of the social elite assuming Dreyfus’s guilt even before the trial had taken place. In doing so, they violated the principles of the Third Republic: liberty, equality and fraternity. Even when contradictory evidence emerged, the prosecution ignored it (having gone too deep into the case to pull out without a massive loss of prestige).

Dreyfus was sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guyana as punishment. To justify their actions, the prosecution said these infamous words that I repeat for you now as their relevance to today cannot be denied: “it’s better to have this Jew languishing in misery than to admit that we made a mistake.” Only a part of the population of France remained convinced of Dreyfus’s innocence. The rest had either swallowed the anti-semetic rhetoric of much of the press or placed the prestige of the military above the question of Dreyfus’s guilt or innocence.

It was only when Emile Zola’s courageously written article J’Accuse (I accuse, coincidentally published today, January 13th) gave birth to the firestorm of criticism that it did, that the trial of Dreyfus was reopened. Although Dreyfus was eventually exonerated, his case served to divide the nation, pitting Dreyfusards (generally the left) against anti-Dreyfusards (generally monarchists and the far right). This only served to accelerate the weakness of the tottering Third Republic and it would eventually collapse in 1940.

Who is to blame?

The people really didn’t know any better, having been swept up in the government and far right propaganda surrounding the issue. Hate only inflamed hate and in the end, much of what the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen worked so hard to build was destroyed, culminating in the 1940-1944 “dark years” of occupation.

Many of these same themes could be said regarding the McCarthy trials in the 1950s, which was caused by and set off an anti-communist red scare across America. Many people were accused of having Communist sympathies and many lost their jobs and livelihoods as a result. It was only when Edward Murrow attacked McCarthy’s methods in a speech called “No Fear” that McCarthy’s fear mongering failed to work any longer.

I close with some selections from that speech and try to remind those that are reading to not give into the hysteria surrounding the Michael Brown case.

Please remember that “we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend the causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.” While it is admirable that the issue of police brutality has been brought into the light, punishing an innocent man is not the way to do it. Murrow also clearly argued that “accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.” These important things were conveniently forgotten by both sides of the trial; some of the witnesses gave false testimony, some people took a stance on an issue that they did not know enough about, the news failed to get the whole story and elites moved too quickly to accuse Officer Wilson of racism.

That leads to another question: were the actions of the prosecuting attorney motivated somewhat by the mobs of people threatening to loot the city of Ferguson, elite accusations of racism or some other factor? I don’t know what would have occurred had there been less media and elite attention but I do hope that we are able to return to rule of law quickly and that this kind of violence becomes less and less common. If we do not, Murrow warned us that “the actions [that have occurred] have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies.” We have ignored the rule of law and other things that we so proudly trumpet and the world can only take so many more of these errors before we lose our global prestige amongst our allies and our soft power among those that we seek to influence.

Murrow ended his speech with some famous words, words that I hope all my readers would take to heart: “we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home … And whose fault is that? Not really his [McCarthy’s], he didn’t create this situation of fear he merely exploited it; and rather successfully.” Whether the atmosphere in Ferguson had already been poisoned by some other event or if this was a reaction to the Trayvon Martin incident, I do not know.

I do know, however, that we have only ourselves to blame. Few have sought the truth but rather have only accepted what suited their mental dispositions. This time, there was no Zola or Murrow to restore sanity to a disordered country, just demagogues that fed the flames of hate, causing an infinite cycle of division and accusation. Nor have any of us demanded the truth. Our conception of “the truth” and “justice” is not the impartial justice that we claim and defend as Americans but rather what agrees with our views, regardless of if an innocent man is punished. In conclusion, Murrow mentions Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar as McCarthy had quoted a part of it. Murrow also quoted a part, and this part still holds relevance even today: “Cassius was right, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.’”

Au revoir.

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