Lynne Stewart and the American Inquisition

We attended a luncheon and planning meeting at my daughter's school yesterday. The meeting was to discuss a series of special events to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the College. The school began as a Catholic instititution, but in 1905, when France passed legislation that separated Church and State, the school had to make some adjustments in order to receive government funding. And so, though it is nominally a Catholic school, it must follow the national educational guidelines which include tolerance for all faiths.

One of the attendees of this luncheon was an Abbe from Toulouse who belongs to the order that founded the school and which still keeps ties with it, though not religious ones. He will soon be defending his Ph.D. thesis in Medieval history. The headmistress of the school has degrees in history, and her mentor was also present, being invited to give special lectures on Egypt as part of the 150th Anniversary programs. We were there because my husband has been invited to give a scientific lecture.

So, there we were at the dinner table with all the teachers and administrators of this small, private, French college - some 20 people - and the issue of America and George Bush and Condi's recent Capers in Old Europe came up. I noticed that the subject was being handled carefully out of consideration for me, the only American at the table. The Abbe, however, was not so concerned with my finer sensibilities and pronounced, with a snort, that the Neocon administration was exactly like the Inquisition!

I'm sure he was deliberately trying to goad me, but he was surprised when I agreed with him and even mentioned that I had written exactly that myself quite recently. Everyone at the table relaxed, and I was granted an privileged hearing of the opinions of ordinary French people on the subject of George Bush and America.

Now, let me make it clear that most French people are able to separate the government from the people, and while they love Americans, they don't have any illusions about the nature of governments in general and specific. After all, France got fed up with her own corrupt government and killed them all... You could even say that the seeds of this attitude were planted during the Inquisition, and watered by the blood of martyrs to royal and priestly prerogatives. It could also be said that the fact that France is a fiercely secular state is directly due to the hatred of the church that was nurtured in silence during the Wars of Religion.

In any event, there are no illusions about George Bush among most French people. They know their history - they lived it, remember it, and teach it - and it seems that I'm not the only one who sees the comparisons betweeen what is happening in America and the Inquisition.

This comparison has recently become even more terrifyingly real. I read in the news the other day that Lynne Stewart had been convicted of "violating special administrative prison rules and of providing material support to terrorists." It was ssynchronous that this came so soon after I had written about the Inquisition, comparing it to the Mad March of Fascism in the United States tody. In that post, I wrote:

A person suspected of Cathar sympathies was not always informed of the charges hanging over his head; if apprised of the danger, he had no right to know who his accusers were; and if he dared to seek legal help, his lawyer could be charged with abetting heresy.

Sounding more and more like George and his War on Terrorism ...

Whatever the verdict of the inquisitor - who was prosecutor, judge and jury - no appeal was allowed. Anyone could be held indefinitely in prison for further questioning without cause of explanation.

Yes. Enemy Combatants, no doubt.

The inquisition destroyed the bonds of trust that hold societies together. Informing on one's neighbor became not only a duty, but a necessary survival strategy. And so it is becoming in America today. [...]

In theory, of course, no one could be punished if no one talked because the inquisitor could not act without a writ of denunciation, but in practic, no community possessed the cohesion needed to combat the power of a secret tribunal.

The same is true in America today. Everyone has been adequately conditioned by watching "reality TV" and "Survivor," and they know the rules: Do unto others before they do unto you.

And so it was in the Languedoc, the historical model for what is happening in the United States today, and for what happened in Germany under Hitler. [...]

The real proof of genuine piety toward the Catholic Church was defined as the number of people the sinner was willing to betray!

Armed with a list of proposed offenses to be considered "heretical" or "supporting heretics," which included just knowing that a heretic had crossed one's property and failing to report it, the Inquisition proceeded to intimidate the population of Europe on a scale that was impossible to imagine.

Jennifer Van Bergen wrote yesterday on CounterPunch:

Only a few weeks ago, Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Barkow told the jury in his closing statement that Lynne Stewart "thought she could blow off the rules that apply to everyone else because she's a lawyer, and she's above the law. She said, 'I think my client is more important than the law. My cause is more important that the risk to lives of innocent people.'

This is a complete distortion of the woman I have come to know. [...]

Lynne Stewart never ever thought she could blow off the rules that apply to everyone else. She never thought she was above the law. She never supported or endorsed terrorism. Nor did she ever intend to provide material support to terrorists.

The words she spoke to her client were meant for her client alone and the one who has violated rights here is the Department of Justice. They violated something so sacred that it can hardly be spoken without somehow losing the value of it: they violated the attorney/client privilege.

The DOJ violated this privilege by listening in on her conversations with her client, which they then took out of context and tried to make into a monstrous thing.

But is anyone prosecuting them for this violation? No.

The DOJ has violated something more, as well. They have violated the right of an accused to have zealous counsel represent them. This right is so fundamental that our Framers put it in the Bill of Rights: the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

The DOJ has violated the last vestige of democracy: the judiciary, by using this system to destroy one of the watchdogs of liberty, our criminal defense lawyers. Without criminal defense lawyers, who will protect us from government incursions of our rights?

Now, the idea of a convicted terrorist having any sort of privilege is perhaps unfathomable to a jury. But that privilege is considered sacrosanct and we all have it, we all may call upon the attorney/client privilege because without it, we have no defense attorneys, we have no defense, and we have no witnesses to government abuse of our rights.

Lynne continued to believe in her client's innocence, and to declare that evidence against him was fabricated by our government in order to secure his conviction.

Has this fact come out anywhere? Has any newspaper revealed that the client Stewart represented was convicted on fabricated evidence? Have any of them investigated the charge? Has the Department of Justice investigated it?

No? Why not?

Well, as far as I know, Lynne never brought this charge out to the press during her trial. But it was certainly known to the DOJ. And if it is true that her client was convicted on fabricated evidence, what does it mean that she is now convicted because of her representation of him? [...]

This day, while I do not want to believe that the prosecutors themselves maliciously prosecuted Stewart, the best I can believe is that they have blinded themselves with their own zeal. But I have seen prosecutors and government officials declare what they should have known were untruths about the law, what I knew were untruths and if they didn't know they were untruths, they could only have been ignorant of the law.

This day the Justice Department has done a great injustice, not just to Lynne Stewart, but to our entire system of justice, to our country, and to our democracy.

Jennifer Van Bergen must not know her medieval history very well or she would recognize exactly what is happening in America today. Just as the Inquisition was declared to be a War for Salvation of Souls, but in reality, was a war for Control, so is the United States "War on Terror" in reality a Terrorist War Against Freedom.

What has happened in the conviction of Lynne Stewart is that a clear message has been sent to those who might try to stand up for the freedom of the individual and that message is: If you defend the right of the individual against the predations of the State, YOU are going to be destroyed. And so, there will be no more defense of anyone's rights. This is not a legal system, it is a system designed to create fear, to destroy social bonds, and to put absolute power into the hands of a few, immoral elitists.

Martin Niemöller, a German Protestant pastor learned this lesson the hard way.

Niemöller was a commander of a German U-boat in World War I. A seminal incident in his moral outlook, as he related in many public speeches later in his life, occurred when he commanded his submarine crew not to rescue the sailors of a boat he torpedoed, but let them drown instead.

In 1931 Niemöller became a pastor in a wealthy Berlin suburb. As a German nationalist he initially supported Hitler, but as the Nazis began to interfere in church affairs, he moved into opposition.

In 1937 he was arrested because of his outspoken sermons, and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In 1941 he was moved to Dachau, where he stayed until the end of the war.

Shortly after the end of the war Niemöller became convinced that the German people had a collective responsibility for the Nazi atrocities. In October 1945 Niemöller was the the prime mover behind the German Protestant Church's "Confession of Guilt".

It was clearly in this Oct/Nov 1945 context that Niemöller's most quoted saying began to evolve. This early statement implies that he may have thought first of the Communists, then the disabled, then Jews, and finally countries conquered by Germany.

In a 6 January 1946 speech, Niemöller said:

We preferred to keep silent. We are certainly not without guilt/fault, and I ask myself again and again, what would have happened, if in the year 1933 or 1934 - there must have been a possibility - 14,000 Protestant pastors and all Protestant communities in Germany had defended the truth until their deaths? If we had said back then, it is not right when Hermann Göring simply puts 100,000 Communists in the concentration camps, in order to let them die. I can imagine that perhaps 30,000 to 40,000 Protestant Christians would have had their heads cut off, but I can also imagine that we would have rescued 30-40 people, because that is what it is costing us now.

In 1947 his reputation was challenged because he devoted substantial energy to protecting Nazi war criminals from the death penalty, and because of some pro-German things he had said in his own defense while on trial by the Nazis in 1937. However, during the 1950s and 1960s he refused to join in the dominant anticommunist sentiment in the West, which earned him the respect of the left again. His uncompromising stance allowed him to remain a figurehead of the German peace movement into the 1980s.

Niemöller's quote generally runs as follows:

First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I said nothing.

Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing.

Then came the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist.

And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did little.

Then when they came for me, there was no one left to stand up for me.'

Many people use this quotation in various ways. Some of them even alter it to suit their purpose. When Time magazine used the quotation, they moved the Jews to the first place and dropped both the communists and the social democrats. American Vice-President Al Gore likes the to quote the lines, but drops the trade unionists for good measure. Gore and Time also added Roman Catholics, who weren't on Niemöller's list at all. In the heavily Catholic city of Boston, Catholics were added to the quotation inscribed on its Holocaust memorial. The US Holocaust Museum drops the Communists but not the Social Democrats; other versions have added homosexuals.

‘The Nazis did not come first for the Jews," Peter Novick tells us in his book, The Holocaust in American Life, "First they came for the Communists" - a circumstance acknowledged by Niemöller. The Holocaust Museum in Washington DC is just another place where "Communists" is omitted Niemöller's homily. [Some interesting background on Niemöller can be found HERE]

And so it is in America today: Categories of heretics have been established, and little by little, it will become possible to hold the hammer of the New Inquisition over the heads of everyone.

They came for Lynne Stewart. When will they come for YOU?