Lisbon to Auschwitz to Alligator Alcatraz: Cruelty and the human face of evil

There are few things more characteristic of the Trump regime than cruelty, often gratuitous cruelty. It is the human face of evil in one of its most repellent forms.

Susan Nieman, in her masterful work Evil In Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy, traces philosophical thought from the devastation of the earthquake that utterly destroyed Lisbon in 1755 to the horror of Auschwitz in the 20th century. Lisbon was like New York City today. Imagine it being completely destroyed by a natural calamity.

The catastrophe of Lisbon set off two centuries of philosophical discussions by the greatest philosophers of that era. Lisbon shook our trust in God and the world. How could such happen in a world superintended by a good God?

One result of the calamity and our attempts to make it intelligible was the separation of “natural evil” — earthquakes, disease, floods — from “moral evil,” the evil of our own human hands. Such catastrophes as Lisbon had nothing to do with God, the philosophers argued in various ways. And human evil, by its new definition, came from evil intention.

Nieman writes, “Modern conceptions of evil were developed in the attempt to stop blaming God for the state of the world and to take responsibility for it on our own.”

Of course, for many religious folk at the time, the destruction of Lisbon was seen as the judgment of God on the multiple sins of the city, a cruel judgment we see still today whenever a natural catastrophe occurs.

Auschwitz

Then came Auschwitz. It challenged our ability to understand the world and humanity. “Thought stood still.” No one would write about the Holocaust for 20 years. Its moral and intellectual shock was akin to Lisbon.

“Humankind lost its faith in the world at Lisbon and its faith in itself at Auschwitz.”

Nieman writes that humankind lost its faith in the world at Lisbon and its faith in itself at Auschwitz: “Auschwitz was conceptually devastating because it revealed a possibility in human nature that we hoped not to see.”

Auschwitz was deliberate evil of mass proportions. Rounding up children from all over Europe, herding Jews into cattle cars to their death took systematic planning. But the definition of evil as coming from evil intention had to be reconsidered. For some there was the pure malice of hatred for the Jews. For others, like Adolf Eichmann, he was just trying to move up in the ranks.

Nieman writes, “But the problem was not that Nazi murderers were either particularly brutal or particularly heartless — but precisely that, by and large, they were not.”

Some went along hoping the scope of the horror would abate. Some, the German Christians, were lured to support Hitler by his Christian nationalism and promises for an economic and moral revival. Innocent bystanders were swept up as cogs in the wheel of that malevolent regime.

Of the “ordinary complicity” of the many, she writes, “Of all who might have become criminals, only some participated in the Final Solution. Of those who might have become heroes, even fewer actually defied the powers that be.”

The Holocaust exploded the definition of evil as that which comes from evil intention.

“What counts is not what your road is paved with , but whether it leads to hell.”

Nieman writes: “The world must hold you responsible for what you do, since it is what you do, not what you intend, that resounds in the world. … What counts is not what your road is paved with, but whether it leads to hell.”

She speaks to us today in our own time of crisis: The Holocaust “could not have taken place without the participation of millions of people who were not particularly committed fascists, or even fascists at all, but were willing to follow whatever orders made for the least thinking and most comfort.”

Is she talking about us?

Alligator Alcatraz

Now we turn to Alligator Alcatraz and cruelty, the face of human evil we witness today. Alligator Alcatraz is emblematic of the cruelty of the policies and actions of our administration. The Marquis de Sade pictured pure evil in his characters: “Evil for them is a means of physical pleasure, the only drive that ever moves them.” Sadism is characterized by the pleasure derived through the infliction of pain.

So we see today a cruelty marked by a perverse pleasure it takes in hurting others. It can start early. A boy picks wings off a live insect, a schoolyard bully pushes classmates to the ground and laughs. Kristi Noem, our Homeland Security chief, writes in her political biography about shooting her 14-month-old puppy Cricket who got loose and attacked her neighbor’s chickens. She thought it so normal for rural life that she believed it would burnish her reputation for being tough.

This year our government built a large immigrant detention center in the Florida Everglades and nicknamed it — for laughs — “Alligator Alcatraz.” A smiling President Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Homeland Security Director Noem toured the facility and posed for pictures. Escapees won’t get far, they joked.

The name given the facility has racist overtones, evoking a past where Black children and adults were jokingly called “Gator Bait.” One reporter called this spectacle “the meme-ification of violence.”

“Such casual cruelty is a hallmark of this administration and its cheering supporters.”

You may have seen the photographs people have made of themselves grinning and cheering under the Alligator Alcatraz road sign — like the lynchings in the South where photos were taken and sold of victims being lynched. Such casual cruelty is a hallmark of this administration and its cheering supporters.

Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration policy, can hardly suppress a smile as he spews hate against immigrants. “You are nothing,” he ranted at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, and added “God is on our side.” Pascal wrote in the 17th century what is true for all times: “Humankind never does evil so completely and so cheerfully as from religious conviction.”

Brown and Black immigrants, credentialed or not, are being rounded up and illegally deported. Kristi Noem poses outside the fence of those put in a detention facility in her fashionable fatigues. One woman talked of ICE agents laughing as they drug her out of her house.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia

Few stories are as gripping as the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He had as a teenager fled from the gang violence in El Salvador and come to our country. A husband and father of three children, he was sent to a dangerous and inhumane prison in El Salvador under trumped-up charges — at first the government said it was an “administrative error.” The official lies and coverup extended his stay there for a mercilessly long time. Back in America, he has been in prison and recently has been given over into the custody of ICE, and plans are being made to deport him to another country, Liberia being one named.

On Sept. 2, Heather Cox Richardson reported the attempt of the Trump administration to ship a plane of unaccompanied minors to Guatemala where they would be exposed to a multitude of dangers. They (about 76 of them) had been released from the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a governmental agency whose role is to protect the well-being of refugees awaiting possible legal entry into our country, into the hands of ICE.

Some of these children already were onboard the plane when Judge Sparkle Sooknanan received a phone call at 2:36 Sunday morning during the long Labor Day weekend from a lawyer telling her of the plan to deport the children. By 4 a.m. she issued an emergency order blocking the removal of these children and scheduled a hearing for Monday. One plane of children already had left and had to return. The larger plan was to move up to 600 unaccompanied minors to their country of origin where they could be trafficked, abused and even tortured.

Judge Sooknanan’s vigilance and bravery are a sign of what we must do to stop such human cruelty in plain sight.

Official cruelty in its cooler, more detached forms is manifest in budget legislation such as the “Big Beautiful Bill” (the name itself a cruelty ) passed this year which robs the poor of their health care and takes food from hungry children’s mouths, all to pay for the tax cuts given to the most wealthy in our nation.

Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winning author Eli Wiesel says, “We are not all guilty, but we are all responsible.” We must not be bystanders.

 

Stephen Shoemaker most recently served as pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Statesville, N.C. He previously served as pastor of Myers Park Baptist in Charlotte, N.C.; Broadway Baptist in Fort Worth, Texas; and Crescent Hill Baptist in Louisville, Ky.