Against Barbarism

We are in the fight of our lives.

There is a place for geopolitical and strategic analysis of Israel’s war with Hamas and its allies and associates—how it affects politics in the Gulf, whether it will reduce American aid to Ukraine, how Russia may exploit the situation, and so forth. But such discussion will miss an essential element of this war, a conflict that is not solely, or even primarily, about politics or desperately conceived purpose. It is about barbarism.

Americans have fought barbarians in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Ukrainians have been fighting them for years, and particularly since February 24, 2022. Sometimes, as in Rwanda, we merely note them with embarrassment and eyes averted. Other times, as during the massacre at Srebrenica committed by Serbian forces, we flinch, and act belatedly and inadequately. We express pity for the dead, but often fail to fight for the living.

Barbarians fight because they enjoy violence. They do not only kill and maim—the armies of civilized states do that all the time—but go out of their way to inflict pain, to torture, to rape, and above all to humiliate. They exult in their enemies’ suffering. That is why they like taking pictures of their weeping, terrified victims; why they make videos of slow beheadings; and why they dance around mutilated corpses.

Occasionally, as in Russia today, or Germany in the 1930s, or the Gaza Strip under the Hamas dictatorship, they seize hold of a whole society, and instill their doctrines in a cowed population, converting some and terrifying others into passivity. Then they are truly dangerous. But underneath the reveling in their power to hurt lies the real secret of barbarians: They are insecure because they are losers and, deep down, they know it.

Barbarians live for grievance—grievance against those who they believe have wronged them, but also against those who enjoy the good things in life. That is why they enjoy wrecking homes and kidnapping children and, as Russian soldiers have done in southern Ukraine, raping women. That is why they excel at building only certain kinds of things—arsenals and strongholds, booby traps and minefields, sports stadiums and missiles of all kinds, but not places of beauty and contemplation, elegance and human proportion. They prefer either the fetid bunker or the gaudy palace and despise the suburban garden or the tranquil quadrangle. They dream of an unrealizable utopia, in which their nation dominates the Earth, or their religion extirpates all others, or their enemies grovel for a mercy they will never grant.

Barbarians fear argument and are driven to madness by certain books and certain ideas. In place of reason, compromise, forgiveness, or compassion, they revert to rage, and that is because they sense their inner weakness. A curious inquiry about truth or values is beyond them. They have no use for the legacies of Athens or Jerusalem.

Civilization is built and protected by many forces—law, religion, habit, philosophy. It is not impregnable, and can be undermined from within. The challenges sometimes take mild forms, like flash mobs looting and burning a luxury store, or a crowd shouting “Gas the Jews!” in front of the Sydney Opera House. The challenges can take more violent forms as well, as murderous gang violence motivated by greed or ideology has shown in more than one liberal democracy.

Civilization can also be undermined in another way. Greece, on its way to succumbing to Roman power, turned again to the sophism and cynicism that had first arisen in a declining Athens facing a rising Macedon. If you do not believe in civilization or simply are unwilling to fight for it, you construct philosophical systems to appease what remains of your conscience and denigrate those who shame you by their courage. Opportunists in civilized countries flatter barbarians and make deals with them when they look strong. And why not, if you do not believe in the values upon which civilization is built?

In its later and more decadent forms, most notable today at some universities and news organizations, the softening before barbarism takes the form of whataboutism, an inability to say, simply and definitively: “This is evil. This is barbaric. It is just to fight this.” In its flabbiest form, it is the declaration that war never achieves anything. In fact, war achieves many evil things, and occasionally prevents even more terrible things. My dearly loved cousins would not have walked this Earth had their mother vanished in the smoke and ashes at Auschwitz.

A story tells of an old Jew being beaten by a storm trooper. The Nazi sees his victim murmuring a prayer and stops for a moment to demand, “What are you doing, Jew?”

“I am thanking God,” his victim replies.

“You? Thanking God? For what?” the Nazi asks.

“For not making me like you.”

The story is probably apocryphal, but is nonetheless profoundly true. Yet it is inadequate for our time.

The old Jew could not fight, but what remains of the civilized world can. It can arm, it can stand together, and it can steel itself to inflict violence differently than the barbarians do, but to far greater effect. The civilized nations are enormously wealthy, have large and capable armed forces and behind them vast reserves of talented men and women. They have the capacity, should they care to exercise it, to contain and push back the barbarians—who, let us remember, will never entirely go away, and who will always haunt our nightmares.

Policy-wonkish hand-wringing about damage to a rules-based international order is true, but it is thin stuff. The reality is that barbarians have attacked the margins and in some cases—as on 9/11—the core of the civilized world. We need to shake ourselves loose of the notion that these are completely distinct and limited phenomena. They are not. All of us, not just Israelis and Ukrainians, are in the fight of our lives, and it is about time we recognized that, and acted with the vigor and courage the times demand.