aaj tak live news: Searching the souls of dissidents

Friday, February 17, 2012

Searching the souls of dissidents

Michael Bond, contributor

PEOPLE who blow the whistle on unethical practices - or break ranks in protest at what those around them are doing - are rarely cast as heroes in their time. More often they are judged on their disloyalty to their colleagues rather than their contribution to the greater good. Hence the vilification of Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of providing Wikileaks with classified reports about the Iraq war and what he considered the "criminal political backdealings" of American officials. Many Americans consider him a traitor.

In Beautiful Souls, journalist Eyal Press explores what motivates such people to heed the voice of their conscience despite the threat of ostracism or worse. This book is a study in the psychology of dissent, but more explicitly it is a collection of stories very well told, a biography of unlikely courage - unlikely because Press chooses people who are not brazenly heroic and whose noncompliance is subtle, their deeds largely unsung.

They include people like Paul Gr?ninger, a police commander in north-east Switzerland who at the start of the second world war was dismissed for refusing to enforce a law barring Jewish refugees from entering the country; Aleksander Jevtic, a Serb who in the early 1990s at great personal risk saved dozens of Croats from death or torture by convincing his superiors they were Serbs; and Leyla Wydler, a financial adviser who was fired from Stanford International Bank for drawing attention to its dubious investment practices some years before regulators pulled the plug on the company.

To make sense of what drives such people, Press strives for psychological explanations, but they are not forthcoming. Apart from resolute moral conviction, these individuals have little in common that might predict such behaviour. Rarely is there a rousing backstory to heroism. Jevtic turns out to be a self-confessed layabout, much to the author's disappointment. And though Press doesn't mention him in this book, Oskar Schindler, who famously saved hundreds of Jews from the gas chambers during the Holocaust, went bankrupt several times before and after the war.

The lack of a convincing theory in no way undermines Press's narrative and even adds to the sense of wonder at what these people did. These were not born rebels - they suffered, often greatly, for their courage. As Press observes: "Their problem was not that they airily dismissed the values and ideals of the societies they lived in... but that they regarded them as inviolable."