From Normalization to Numbness: A Reflection on Narratives, Professional Complicity, and the Ethical Imperatives of Resistance for All Professionals
by Frank Matovu, 2025 Clergy & Religious Leaders Fellow
Introduction
Hitler did not kill over six million people single-handedly. The genocide required the complicity, cooperation, and active participation of countless ordinary people. Professionals in different fields–government officials, soldiers, police officers, business leaders, clergy, doctors, educators—were all part of this tragedy by directly carrying out the killings, enforcing discriminatory laws, facilitating deportations, and remaining silent in the face of injustice. Today, there still exist injustices toward, impediments to, even ruinations of, human flourishing. The question is: what is our role as professionals, and what are we doing about issues now? This past summer, I had the opportunity to be part of the FASPE program. The fellowship rekindled my hope that ethical leadership remains possible in a world full of systemic injustice and polarization. Standing in Auschwitz, I was forced to reckon not only with the atrocities of history but also with the uncomfortable reality that I too am vulnerable to the same temptations that eroded moral responsibility in Nazi Germany. Through rigorous dialogue with fellows from multiple disciplines, I learned how ambition, conformity, and neutrality can make professionals complicit in harm. These conversations deepened my awareness of my power and influence as a professional bible scholar and clergy member. They strengthened my commitment to use my influence to defend human dignity, resist harmful narratives, and speak for the voiceless. Drawing on Primo Levi’s testimony, Harald ’s cultural analysis, Martha Nussbaum’s reflections on political emotions, and Sumner Twiss’s caution about complicity, I argue that moral decay is not the result of extraordinary wickedness but rather of everyday temptations left unchecked. By remembering the lessons of the Holocaust and practicing vigilant self-reflection, professionals today can resist the dangerous slope of normalization and contribute to a culture that protects human dignity.
Confronting Complicity and Moral Numbness
If you do not think for yourself, someone will think for you; and if you do not decide for yourself, someone will decide for you. Indecision invites others to take control, leading to complicity. As a society, we have become accustomed to remaining silent in the name of preserving our peace. According to a 2024 survey,1 39% of people have opted to keep the news, or certain news, out of their space, claiming that it is depressing. Due to the intense and constant flood of information, our brains have developed coping mechanisms. We are at a point where we see people as numbers and statistics. Reading a headline that over 1,500 people have died in Syria or somewhere else in the world is no longer gut-wrenching—just another story to take in while we sip coffee. How did we arrive at such a state? The answer is normalization; practices, attitudes, or beliefs once considered shocking or unacceptable gradually become ordinary and inconspicuous. It is a dangerous slope because it numbs moral sensitivity, allowing injustice to take root.
The Holocaust stands as a paramount example. Long before 1933, “othering” of marginalized groups had numbed people’s moral fiber, normalized hate. It became acceptable for Jews and other “undesirables” to be sent away, while “Aryans” could swipe and auction off Jewish property with smiles on their faces. Ordinary men, with ordinary lives and dangerous narratives, nurtured this normalization. Nazi propaganda systematically denied "othered" people—especially Jews—the recognition of basic human rights. They, for instance, compared Jews to diseases and parasites, as in the 1937 exhibition Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew). A film of the same name portrayed Jews as “cultural parasites” while antisemitic flyers compared them to incurable diseases like cancer and tuberculosis.2 All these dehumanization efforts relied on racist ideology, exploiting existing stereotypes and creating new ones to portray targeted groups as subhuman and dangerous. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, “The Nazis believed that eliminating this 'threat' to German survival meant eliminating the people who were labeled by racial ideology as the standard-bearers of that threat,” that is, the Jews, Black people, and anyone categorized as inferior according to the Nazis' racial ideology.3
Such propaganda led then, and leads now, to society’s disengagement from moral concerns, leading actions taken against othered groups to become more acceptable. These actions, in other words, begin with ideas. We are not born monsters, but we all have the potential to become them under the right conditions. As Primo Levi writes, “[m]onsters exist, but they are too few to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”4 Levi’s words remind us that it was not an elite group of “monsters” who made the Holocaust possible but rather the countless ordinary men and women who allowed themselves to be swept along by propaganda and prejudice. The danger lies not only in the architects of evil but also in the everyday citizens who silently conform, accept, and even justify everyday injustice. This is the haunting legacy of normalization: entire societies can become complicit when individuals stop asking questions.
Harald Welzer poses a challenge specifically to those who hold Christian values who support this creeping normalization, calling those of us who believe now to self-reflect:
To think long and hard about how a modern, Western society with a Christian background could have changed, within the briefest period of time, into a radically exclusive society, so that non-Jewish Germans did not even notice the successive changes in their normative orientation and, throughout the entire period, were completely capable of reconciling their inhumane attitudes with their images of themselves as moral beings, considering themselves to be good people.5
His central argument is that the Holocaust was not simply an aberration but the culmination of a long history of antisemitic thought and action in Germany. He tells us how a society, which had long prided itself on its culture, philosophy, and Christian values, rapidly transformed into one that systematically and efficiently exterminated its Jewish population. In other words, ideas and narratives do shape our moral perception and behavior, even to the point of enabling complicity in atrocities like the Holocaust. Narratives and propaganda can gradually redefine what is considered normal or moral, allowing us (even the religious who esteem ourselves as invulnerable) with deep Christian roots to reconcile acts of exclusion and violence with our self-image as virtuous people. In this way, morality becomes detached from its authentic ethical foundation and then coopted by cultural or political ideologies. That is how powerful and dangerous shifts in society’s normative frameworks can be when uncritically accepted to a point where even those who pursue what is good for humanity start tolerating the unthinkable.
Speaking about the impact narratives have on the development of systems of justice, Martha C. Nussbaum notes that societies must secure the emotional commitments of their citizens in this endeavor. Emotions “have a narrative structure” and “the understanding of any single emotion is incomplete unless its narrative history is grasped and studied for the light it sheds on the present response.”6 Humanity, in other words, is doomed if we continue securing our emotional commitments with sloppy, intolerant, self-preserving, and “othering” narratives that propagate hate. Such emotional commitments, especially like Christian nationalism today, cannot provide adequate, non-marginalizing foundations.
Sometimes these narratives come from people who have secured and gained our trust, from demagogues. For instance, commenting on the biblical command “love your neighbor” in Leviticus 19:17-18, Nussbaum notes that it is grounded in Israel’s narrative of liberation from Egypt. In that context, “obedience is given in response to God showing His love for Israel, and showing Israel the value of human life, thus teaching Israel to love their neighbors with emotional commitments that lead to obedience.”7 The secured emotional moral commitments eventually manifest in the people’s habitus and written treatises on justice. In other words, when narratives are turned toward “the other,” they often exploit natural human emotions like fear and distrust, then secure emotional commitments to “othering.” Demagogues can mobilize this fear in violent and dangerous ways, reframing prejudice as virtue. Thus, there is a need to constantly question our ethics and moral frameworks and practice the habit of self-reflection.
We can see the process of emotional commitment in the Holocaust itself, which was carried out with the participation—active or passive—of religious leaders, business executives, civil servants, and the general population. Many professionals rationalized their actions as duties to employers or shareholders, allowing themselves to feel “innocent” because they were fulfilling professional obligations. This is one of the “gray zones” of ethics: moral teachings and codes can be overridden, twisted, or subverted to serve evil purposes. Many are more comfortable being neutral and enjoying the perceived benefits of complicity. We can all be in this position given the right circumstances.Sumner B. Twiss warns of our own vulnerability:
I can (and do) ask myself whether I could have responded as Speer, Hoess, and Eichmann did to their social situations—thus imaginatively conceiving myself as a perpetrator—I believe that these memoirs succeed in establishing in readers an odd form of ‘solidarity in sin’ or potential complicity in evil—due to a shared sense of shame, guilt, and sadness about the human condition in even having to address the issue of the prevention of atrocities against fellow human beings. I believe that all of us, under the right circumstances of stress, hierarchical authority, indoctrination, pressure to group conformity, isolation, cognitive distortion, and susceptibility to prejudice, could in principle become criminal.8
Twiss reminds us of the unsettling reality that the potential for moral failure is not confined to a few monstrous individuals we have heard about in the news but exists within all human beings under certain conditions. By asking whether he could have acted like Speer, Höß, or Eichmann, Twiss highlights the profound challenge of recognizing our own susceptibility to evil when faced with stress, hierarchy, indoctrination, conformity, isolation, and prejudice. Indeed, we cannot ignore the potential for “solidarity in sin.” We should then all share a sense of shame and guilt, acknowledging that atrocities like the Holocaust come about not solely as a result of individual wickedness but from conformity with sinful narratives, ideologies, and systems. We must remain vigilant in self-reflection.
What We Can Do About It
Remembering the past is essential. How we remember it is equally important. George Santayana famously said, “[t]hose who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”9 While true, we can add much to this statement to make it more powerful. Memory alone is insufficient; what matters is the quality of our remembrance and the actions that follow. History can easily become a static record of events, or worse, be dismissed as fiction—a danger already evident in reports of young people denying the Holocaust. According to The Economist, a survey carried out by YouGov found that “young Americans—or at least the subset of them who take part in surveys—appear to be remarkably ignorant about one of modern history’s greatest crimes. Some 20% of respondents aged 18-29 think that the Holocaust is a myth, compared with 8% of those aged 30-44 […] An additional 30% of young Americans said they do not know whether the Holocaust is a myth.”10 We invite complacency when we detach ourselves from historical atrocities, imagining them as irreversibly confined to the past. Active remembering demands more than passive consumption of historical facts. It calls for critical engagement and deliberate cultivation of safeguards against moral numbness.
This responsibility is even greater for those of us in professional roles—journalists, medical personnel, clergy, engineers, educators, and others. Our positions carry authority, and people turn to us for guidance and expertise. They trust that we will direct them toward flourishing within their communities. This trust brings with it profound ethical obligations. In my own vocation as a clergy member, I recognize the inherent power embedded in spiritual leadership. Christopher Beeley captures this truth well when he writes:
It is common to think of pastoral ministry as a kind of service, and so it is. But before we consider its servant-like quality, it is important to appreciate the real power that leaders carry in their communities and in the lives of individual people. Like actual shepherds, Christian pastors exercise a clear and necessary authority over their flocks, by which they can guide the church members toward God. In the earliest document in the New Testament, Paul speaks of the authority of leadership in very strong terms. He admonishes the church in Thessaloniki to have respect for "those who labor among you and have charge over you in the Lord and admonish you." Because of their work, leaders are to be "highly esteemed in love" (1 Thess. 5:12-13). Similarly, we see Jesus giving the twelve disciples great "power and authority" to cast out demons, heal diseases, and preach the gospel (Luke 9:1).11
Beeley reminds us that authority has always been central to leadership, not only in the church but also in other professions. This authority can be a tool for advancing human flourishing or a weapon for destruction. If our ethical commitments to human dignity—regardless of gender, race, or social status—are compromised, we risk offering broken services that perpetuate harm rather than healing. We must remain vigilant, questioning how our decisions affect us and those who depend on us. We must be willing to assume moral responsibility for our actions. Awareness of the power we hold is a safeguard against normalizing the unthinkable. A fellow FASPE participant posed a haunting question: “it is easy to ask what professionals did between 1933 and 1945 and why they remained complicit, but the question is now: what did we do in 2025?” This question should unsettle us. Are we so cautious that our caution becomes an excuse to preserve the status quo? Do we justify complicity under the guise of self-preservation?
We must also be wary of seemingly ordinary motivations that, if unchecked, erode our moral clarity. Ambition, competitiveness, and an unrelenting focus on career advancement can subtly shift our priorities from ethical responsibility to personal success. A fixation on profits risks reducing human beings to mere economic units. Pride in professional cleverness breeds arrogance, and fascination with technology or social engineering can make us insensitive to human consequences. Limiting moral responsibility to our own group fosters exclusion while claims of professional neutrality offer convenient excuses for inaction. Even the desire to remain close to power, in the guise of mitigating harm from within, can lead to compromise and complicity. These tendencies collectively form a slippery slope toward moral numbness, weakening our ability to recognize and resist ethical corruption. As a Christian, the foundation of my resistance is the conviction that every human being is created in the image of God and possesses inherent worth. For others, whether religious or not, the call is to hold fast to values that safeguard human dignity, staying resilient against propaganda and resistant to divisive and polarizing narratives that perpetuate hate.
Conclusion
Future generations will ask what we did to preserve human dignity now. The answer will hinge on whether we actively resisted normalization or silently enabled it. The Holocaust teaches us how swiftly prejudice can escalate into annihilation when normalized through narratives, institutions, and professional roles. It reveals that evil often advances not through the malice of a few but through the complacency of many. If we do not think for ourselves, others will think for us; if we do not decide for ourselves, others will decide for us. We must put our guards up and develop a heightened sense of self-scrutiny, paying close attention to hints of looming complicity.
The choice before us is urgent: to remain complicit until it is too late or to resist now—before the unthinkable becomes the norm. When narratives and propaganda are not sieved through proper ethical filters, you can be deceived into believing that the devil is your savior, or as Voltaire said, “if you can make people believe absurdities, you can make them commit atrocities.”12
Frank Matovu was a 2025 FASPE Clergy & Religious Leaders Fellow. He has a master’s of Leadership in Global Christian Education from Prairie College, and he is a Master of Divinity candidate at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas.
Notes
1. Nanji, Noor. “More People Turning Away from News, Report Says.” BBC News. June 17, 2024. Accessed September 12, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj7799jv74vo.
2. Rapaport, Elisa, and William Schabio. “Propaganda.” In The Holocaust: Remembrance, Respect, and Resilience, edited by Michael F. Polgar and Suki John. Enablers section.
3. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Victims of the Nazi Era: Nazi Racial Ideology.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. Accessed September 12, 2025. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/victims-of-the-nazi-era-nazi-racial-ideology?series=28.
4. Levi, Primo. If This Is a Man. 1947. Reprint, London: Abacus, 1987.
5. Welzer, Harald. “Track 17: Did the Holocaust Have an Audience?” In Gleis 17/Track 17, ed. Nikolaus Hirsch, Wolfgang Lorch, and Andrea Wandel. Chapel Hill: Sternberg, 2009: 29-39. 31.
6. Nussbaum, Martha C. Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013, 236.
7. Nussbaum, 236.
8. Twiss, Sumner B. “Can a Perpetrator Write a Testimonio? Moral Lessons from the Dark Side.” Journal of Religious Ethics 38, no. 1 (March 2010): 5–42, 12. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25676545.
9. Santayana, George. The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905, 205.
10. “One in Five Young Americans Thinks the Holocaust Is a Myth.” The Economist, December 7, 2023. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/12/07/one-in-five-young-americans-thinks-the-holocaust-is-a-myth.
11. Beeley, Christopher A. Leading God’s People: Wisdom from the Early Church for Today. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012, 61.
12. Arouet de Voltaire, François-Marie, "Questions sur les Miracles," in The Works of Voltaire: A Contemporary Version, trans. William F. Fleming (New York: E.R. DuMont, 1901), 21:226.