Cultural Toleration and Nationalism

Introduction

According to *** (), constant confrontation with others often demands cultural knowledge as well as tolerance to ensure intercultural dialogues.  Therefore, cultural understanding can be looked at as the toleration towards different cultures as well as people from different ethnic groups and nationalities without the adverse attitude or even prejudices in evaluating their customs, traditions, and many more. *** () describes nationalism as a system that is created by people who often believe that their nation is superior to others. In most cases, the sense of superiority tends to have its roots in a shared ethnicity. Most nations often create nationalism based on religion, language, culture, or even a set of social values.  Therefore, this paper will compare the cultures of tolerance and repression depicted in the two books and show how nationalism fits in.

Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968, By Heda Margolius

This book tends to start by Jews facing mass deportation from Prague in the early 1940s (). In October 1941, the Kovaly family was forced out from their home and then sent to the Lodz Ghetto, and soon after, to the ill-famed death camp in Auschwitz. Heda was separated from her parents after they were executed in a gas chamber upon arrival. According to *** (), Heda marched from Auschwitz to Bergen Belsen which was more cruel than Auschwitz. In one march with the other prisoners she escapes ().

However, Heda was soon reunited with her husband, Rudolf Margolius after the war came to an end. Rudolf was also a survivor of the concentration camp as well as a dedicated communist. Therefore, since Rudolf was a communist, it tends to show that he and his family were nationalist who wanted the best for their country. However, in the communist coup that took place in 1948, Rudolf acted as the Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade, but later fell prey to the Stalinist purges and soon arrested in 1952 (). At this time, he was forced to confess to forceful allegations which included crimes such as espionage, treason as well as sabotage. In late 1952 he was executed together with 10 of his co-defendants. After the arrest and execution of Rudolf, Heda illustrated how “suddenly the world tilted and I felt myself falling… into a bottomless space” (). Heda then had to raise Ivan, their child, while at the same time fighting to sustain the state-indorsed repression. She was later dismissed from her work and forced to work for long hours for small pay. After going through all this repression she remained tolerant mainly in the hope of a better tomorrow. However, the state confiscated her possessions as well as savings and she was forced to vacate her home together with her child where she then moved to a single room in a dilapidated and dirty apartment on Prague’s outskirts. The room was cold to the point where ice formed in the months of winter and cockroaches that were as large as mice would crawl up the walls ().

It is apparent that Heda had a high sense of nationalism since even though she went through such a hard time she still would not relocate. This is surprising since relocating would have helped her to start a new life with her child mostly because that the even her former friends abandoned her. *** (), indicates that Heda shows how she turned out to be a social outsider who was treated like a leaper (). In most cases, former acquaintances as well as friends would snub her when they passed each other on the streets while others would stop and even stare with spite to the extent of spitting at her. The tension that came from living under these circumstances resulted in Heda becoming sick, though she was deprived of medical treatment. However, after being admitted, her temperature was at 104 and even had numerous other forms of ailments that made the doctor treating her to describe and also compare to a survivor of a concentration camp.  In the fall of 1968 Heda moved to the U.S. which shows that a person has limits when it comes to tolerance and nationalism. Heda went through a whole life of suffering due to political influences that questioned her and her husband’s stand as nationalists. However, after the torment, she could not tolerate it anymore and longed for greener pastures after a long life of oppression and darkness in her country of birth. This shows that when a person fights the world or the repression in one’s country and gets to lose each time, to some point a person has to leave and move to another place.

Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance

In 2004 the Dutch film-maker by the name Theo van Gogh was shot in the stomach while cycling to work (). The murder then shot him several times and then used a machete to cut his throat. The murderer was a Moroccan Dutchman who was referred to as Mohammed Bouyeri. After this heinous action he then pinned a note onto the dead body seething with radical Islamist rhetoric (). Ian Buruma, a half-British and half-Dutch, grew up in the Netherlands and at the moment he is the professor at the Bard College in New York. After van Gogh was killed, Buruma returned to the country that he had left when he was only 23 years of age to try and comprehend the historical forces as well as individual histories that resulted in this killing in the continent’s most well-adjusted and tolerant cities.

According to *** (), other source 45% of Amsterdam’s population in 1999 comprised of people from foreign origin while in 2015 it was at 52% (). In some senses, Holland is a special cases and the most important question is becoming urgent in different parts of Europe is how to make such people, particularly, second as well as third generation migrants, feel that they are at home in such a liberal and secular society. This then in turn tends to question the level of tolerance that the people should have and whether there is a sense of nationalism. However, Theo van Gogh loved to show himself as a type of licensed clown also referred to as the “village idiot” who was often allowed to say those things that were considered unsayable. Also, Theo van Gogh was a rebel who had a lethal turn of phrase where he supported the side of any party that was ready to defy conventions. Theo van Gogh, together with the Somali-Dutch politician referred to as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, created a film referred to as Submission where Koran verses were projected on naked women bodies in a not a subtle effort to show the women oppression in different Islamic communities. In Buruma’s book, it is clear that such unambiguous antagonisms are not only insufficient to show what happened, but responsible to aggravate aggression to a point that it can become intolerable to everyone. Buruma demonstrates that Enlightenment principles have been grabbed by conformists who often think that multiculturalism has increased and also show that their obligation to them as a emblem of cultural and national identity. Enlightenment values are derived from reasons and are often universal and rooted in the Western culture.

Conclusion

From the two books tolerance and nationalism are evident. In this, both show a level of suffering in the authors’ home countries and try to show how people or the mentioned parties have taken a lot of challenges with the hope of better life within their nations. However, regardless of their tolerance to different forms of repression, to some extent, where nationalism is portrayed. For instance, Heda struggled a lot after the death of her husband and for a long while she decided to stay in the country. Also, Buruma’s book there is a concern of ensuring multicultural understanding and coexistence to ensure nationalism. However, when there lacks a balance among the population and people cannot tolerate the injustices in society, then nationalism is forfeited.

Bibliography

Cottee, Simon. “Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the limits of Tolerance.” Democratiya (2009).

Harter, Nathan. “Under a cruel star: A life in Prague 1941-1968 by Heda Margolius Kovály, Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1997.” (2010).

Betts, G. Gordon. The Twilight of Britain: Cultural Nationalism, Multi-Culturalism and the Politics of Toleration. Routledge, 2018.