Understanding evil
Jonathan Freedland is right: we need to teach the Nazi past with “renewed vigour” on the “urgent understanding that this is no longer about the past but about averting a deadly future” (1 September).
Mind you, the perennial danger of Nazi evil has been known since 1945 and has never been just about the past. In the 1960s my university history lecturer, Peter Phillips, who had spent time in a Nazi concentration camp, warned of the danger. The big question for us was how this terrible evil could have occurred in what was supposed to be a civilised Germany. We had at best only a partial answer to that question.
In tutorials we ran through some of the knowable causes of the Holocaust: the susceptibility of an acutely insecure population to strong leadership; their propensity to want a scapegoat for these social ills; and so on. But that, Phillips said, only took us some of the way. The rest of the answer lay in the unknowable evil that exists in the dark recesses of human nature.
What we did know as students was that this evil could come back to haunt us. And now it has, as Freedland points out, in the form of the Charlottesville phenomenon sanctioned at the very highest levels of US society.
Terry Hewton
Adelaide, South Australia
Failure of US diplomacy
Julian Borger’s article, Diplomacy takes a back seat, is correct (18 August). However, we need urgently to recognise that this is exactly what the so-called alt-right cohort, which includes Steve Bannon, Mike Pence and the Koch brothers, to name but a few, are working towards. They aim to destroy all the post-second world war international institutions, and to decimate US government departments.
Most likely they calculated Donald Trump to be most electable of their group, and hence allowed him to run as their candidate, knowing him to be a narcissistic buffoon with no experience of government. It seems likely that he could be impeached if he fails to govern or to achieve any of his campaign promises. In that case Pence, who is much more alt-right than Trump, and a much more effective organiser, would be president. That is a truly scary prospect.
Working to develop positive alternatives is what people of both conservative and liberal views must espouse.
Caroline Patterson
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
The fall of Macron
I am surprised that French pundits cannot explain Emmanuel Macron’s slippage in the polls (1 September). In the lead-up to the presidential elections there was an unnatural alliance as a result of the common cause to keep Marine Le Pen of the far-right Front National out.
Both the socialists and the communists said that they would vote for Macron, but once he was elected president they would oppose him. This is what is happening and is no doubt reflected by the polls.
Macron’s “Jupiter” style is mostly in the eyes of the Paris media bubble, who, like the media bubbles in London, New York and Washington, failed to tap the national mood that produced Brexit and Donald Trump.
Val Wake
Lodeve, France
Unnecessary surgery
Dara Mohammadi draws attention to a troubling trend (When surgery is just a stitch-up, 1 September). After a lifetime as a general surgeon I am increasingly concerned that surgical techniques are taking priority over non-technical skills. Acquisition of surgical competence has never been easier, but the balance between what can be done (quite a lot) and what should be done (not as much as you think) is not prominent in surgical education.
Candidates for surgical intervention arrive with substantial problems that demand close attention not only as to the timing of surgery but also as to its necessity.
By and large the operations described in Mohammadi’s piece are relatively safe, but it is no longer acceptable for surgeons to say that just because a procedure is low-risk, it is worth doing. The medical profession can hardly complain about lack of resources while such unproven interventions continue to burden those who fund our healthcare.
The colleges who train surgeons are mindful of this issue, but there remain surgeons who continue to deliver unnecessary procedures to a largely unsuspecting population. The inescapable conclusion is that the prime motivation for performing such procedures is financial.
Patrick Alley
Auckland, New Zealand
Briefly
• Gloria Keoji and others like her are the true heroes of the 21st century (Ties of bloodshed bind South Sudan’s refugee ‘families’ in Uganda, 25 August). Having next to nothing yet offering what you do have to those even more vulnerable speaks volumes for the human spirit. Her indomitable photo says it all.
Douglas Kittle
Kimberley, British Columbia, Canada
• Thank you for the admirable correction concerning Sagrada Familia’s status as a basilica (1 September). I went to Barcelona in 1971 and of course straight up the basilica’s front towers, and then remember seeing just one man in the interior chipping stone. Forty-five years later I was confronted by a mile-long queue and pennant-waving groups of Japanese. I’ll go when it calms down.
E Slack
L’Isle Jourdain, France
Email letters for publication to weekly.letters@theguardian.com
