Fintan O'Toole: We must all learn the art of political dentistry

These days, whatever walk of life we’re in, we all have to have a second job. It’s unpaid, often thankless, sometimes even a little dangerous. But it is utterly vital. It is the job of itinerant political dentist.

This strange-sounding profession was invented in, of all places, a pub in west Mayo in the mid-1950s. Its creator was a young German war veteran. He had been conscripted into the Wehrmacht in 1939, served in France, Russia, Poland, Romania and Hungary and been shot in the hand, leg, head and back. He had been part of the horrors his country had inflicted on Europe and did not want his compatriots ever to forget what they had done.

His name was Heinrich Böll and many years later he would win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

People in Achill, where he spent his summers, didn’t know that he was a great writer, just that he was a German. So on almost any given night in any given pub, he would have the same conversation. He described one particular instance in his diary when a friend called Pádraic eventually got round to raising the obvious subject: “Tell me, Hitler – was – I believe – not such a bad man really, only – in my opinion – he went a bit too far.” Böll’s wife Annemarie whispered to him in German: “Go on, don’t give up, pull out the whole tooth.”

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It is easy to imagine that the lessons of Europe's sojourn in the abyss were once clear to everybody ... But idiocy and prejudice never go away

“I’m no dentist,” he replied, “and I’m tired of going to pubs in the evening. I always have to pull teeth, always the same ones. I’m sick of it.”

Political dentistry

Annemarie simply said “It’s worth it” and so Heinrich began the extraction: “Now listen, Pádraic, we know exactly how far Hitler went, he went over the corpses of millions of Jews, children. . .” His patient objected that this was all British propaganda, so Heinrich pulled harder at the rotten tooth: “‘Hitler was’, I said, and I said everything; I had had a lot of practice, I was a good dentist already.”

When he was done, he asked Pádraic: “Did it hurt much?” “Yes, it hurts and it will go on hurting for a few days until all the pus is out.” Böll was proud of his handiwork in Mayo: “I’ve got into the habit now of pulling a certain tooth for someone every evening. I know exactly which one it is; by this time I’ve become quite expert in political dentistry, and I do it thoroughly and with no anaesthetic.”

Reading Böll’s Irish diary (which became as well known in Germany as the Bible) it is, at one level, quite shocking to encounter this casual “Hitler wasn’t such a bad man” stuff. This was just a decade after the end of the Holocaust and the liberation of the death camps. But it is also salutary. It is easy to look back and imagine that the lessons of Europe’s sojourn in the abyss were once clear to everybody and have been forgotten only recently. But idiocy and prejudice never go away.

In Ireland, neutrality and anti-British sentiment insulated many people from reality. But even in countries that had fought against or been invaded by the Nazis, the far right quickly re-established itself after their defeat. Something like what Böll heard in the pubs of Achill could have been heard in certain parts of Paris and even London in the 1950s and 1960s, albeit not uttered with the same air of naivety.

What’s most interesting about Böll’s encounters in Mayo, however, is the balancing of “Hitler was not such a bad man” with “he went a bit too far”. This apparent qualification or criticism is always the great enabler of fascism. Most people instinctively recoil from inhuman acts. If we support the cause in whose name they are committed, we have two escape clauses. One is to deny that they happened at all – the other side is just making it all up. This was of course true of the Holocaust, and it remains so: Holocaust denial is a thriving industry still.

But the other is “he went a bit too far”. The cause itself is fine but unfortunately enthusiasm for it led to certain regrettable excesses.

There is no safe dose of fascism. It is in its nature to go 'too far'. Regrettable excess is its fixed destination

Both of these mechanisms are very much with us now. But the second of them is even more dangerous than the first. For it distorts the whole nature of the far right ideology that is in the ascendant across the world. It suggests that the politics of hatred can be like a medicine that cures in the right dosage and becomes toxic only when consumed to excess. You can have white identity politics and its dehumanisation of migrants or Muslims or Jews (or gays or women or people with disabilities or nomads – the field is rich) but only up to a point. You can turn it off when it threatens to go “a bit too far”.

But this is what respectable people have always thought about fascism: let it have its head just for long enough to give the Jews/Catholics/blacks/socialists/liberals/ feminists/Travellers/whoever a bit of a fright. Let it rough them up a bit so they remember their place. And then rein it in. This is very much the phase we are in now: the forms and languages of right-wing authoritarianism, the strutting strong men, the systematic demonisation of out-groups, the normalisation of hate speech. But in the minds of most of the people attracted to all of this, the consequences are still limited. It will not be allowed to go “a bit too far”.

No safe dose

But there is no safe dose of fascism. It is in its nature to go “too far”. Regrettable excess is its fixed destination. The infection that starts in the sore tooth of poisonous identity politics spreads to the whole body politic. Unless we all act as itinerant political dentists. We do not have Nobel laureates travelling the pubs to perform one-on-one extractions of the venom every night. We have only each other. But that is a lot – perhaps it is even enough.

For even in this age of social media, conversation is still a moral arena. People form their prejudices in all sorts of ways but they test them in ordinary talk, at work, in the cafe, on the bus, in the pub, over the dinner table, at the match, after Mass. It is in these unremarkable encounters that we establish what is and is not okay to say about others.

It is here that prejudices either spread and become normal or are checked and exposed. It is here that political dentistry must be practised and the bad teeth of sweeping generalisations, paranoid conspiracy theories and mendacious “facts” pulled out. It requires a willingness to overcome embarrassment and break the uncomfortable silences that are taken for assent.

But as Böll’s wife told him, it is worth it.