Not a light post, this one...
This may be controversial.
This past Sunday, my lovely Anna and I went to the Imperial War Museum, finishing an emotionally-exhausting day at the Holocaust Memorial Exhibit. It was the the first such exhibit I'd ever been to, and I reacted pretty much as one would expect to react when faced with images of bulldozers plowing towers of emaciated corpses into a ditch. I left in shaky tears.
But I have to confess something: my tears were not because of history.
In the western world at least, we hold up the atrocities committed by the Nazi party as the absolute pinnacle of human inhumanity. How could the German people - they who gave us Nietzsche and Goethe and Johann Sebastian Bach - allow such a thing to happen? Why did so few people DO anything?
Anna, who is German, described how it is illegal to display a swastika in Germany - even in a historical context, such as the one painted on the original aircraft hanging from the roof of the museum. German war dead are not allowed to be honoured: the 17 year old conscripted to the front line is just as evil as Goering. As children, they have shame and guilt pummelled into them for the crimes of their parents and grandparents.
This bothers me. It bothers me because I don't agree that that 17 year old conscript is the same as the masterminds. It bothers me more that, by focusing on the condemning of the slaughter of 12 million people by one group of people, we appear to be fooling ourselves that it was an isolated incident that we are all somehow better than.
I was in tears when I left the Holocaust Memorial on Sunday not because of Auswitz but because of England. And the US. And Canada. Andandandandandand.
1930s era anti-Jewish propanda described Jews as a pestilence, destroying the very fabric of German society. They were flooding into Germany, taking over, spreading poverty and sin. They spat in the face of German custom and tradition, threatened the very existence of the German people.
In the exhibit, we all clucked our tongues and shook our heads at the horror of it all. Imagine! Such ignorance!
Just now, a comment on an article about the expected spike in the population of England due to immigration states: "This will be the end of Britishness as we know it. Pressure is already on us to describe Christmas as something else and we become more and more like America every day. The problem is that we all have to live and work together and we have already seen the spread of ghettos around the country around the country and are constantly reading of the problems they create. I cannot understand why people want to come here to improve their life and then immediately try to impose the habits and cultures of the land they had left behind on us."
In the same article, an anonymous commenters fights back: "I'm an immigrant! I came here not being able to speak a word of English. I managed to get straight As throughout high school and am in my penultimate year of a law degree, thank you very much. Celebrate diversity! We're not here to be clones of one another." That comment currently has a rating of -162, which is almost 20 lower than when I first read it 15 minutes ago.
A third commenter on another article takes it there: "This is frightening. Thanks to this government we, the indigenous population are being overwhelmed. It must be brought to an end now!" (Comment score: +72) The other 400 commenters agree, with only two exceptions. There is mass agreement on these boards that the British National Party should be voted in at the next election.
(Caveat: I am not exactly referring to The Guardian here, and I am guessing - hoping - that the average reader of the publications from which I have gathered these quotes are a vocal minority. That being said, I'm not sure how confident I am that the minority is so small. Back in the 90s, when I lived in the north, I often heard people talk about the "Paki" overflow and how "those people only look out for themselves." And a dear friend recently told me that "not a single Muslim spoke up against September 11th." And a colleague told me she would never wear traditional Indian clothes to work because it wasn't worth the hassle. So.)
We need to wake the hell up. There is something really scary going on and we are all too busy patting ourselves on the back for not being Hitler to notice it.
The way the media and the man on the street talks about Muslims today is almost verbatim to those propaganda posters in the Holocaust Memorial exhibit. It is a very VERY find line between what those evil Nazis were saying and what these ignorant Daily Mail assholes are saying. The Muslim world overwhelmingly believes that they are under attack from the West because THEY ARE. Maybe not all of us, but a lot of us. And this wave of hate flowing from both sides - Us and Them, who's the evil one? - has the potential to lead to another memorial exhibit.
It only takes a couple good, strong catalysts, you know? If greasy, chinless Hitler and his crew of overweight/limping/almost blind generals can lead an educated, philosophical nation into pursuing an ideal of broad-shouldered blonde health, someone else WILL come along eventually to light a fire on one side or the other.
I don't believe we have learned from the Holocaust. I do believe it could happen again, if the people wanting to do it could somehow subvert the all-seeing eye of the internet. I am quite confident right now that it WILL happen again, in some way, and that we may very well be witnessing the early stages right now.
And THAT is worth crying over.
This past Sunday, my lovely Anna and I went to the Imperial War Museum, finishing an emotionally-exhausting day at the Holocaust Memorial Exhibit. It was the the first such exhibit I'd ever been to, and I reacted pretty much as one would expect to react when faced with images of bulldozers plowing towers of emaciated corpses into a ditch. I left in shaky tears.
But I have to confess something: my tears were not because of history.
In the western world at least, we hold up the atrocities committed by the Nazi party as the absolute pinnacle of human inhumanity. How could the German people - they who gave us Nietzsche and Goethe and Johann Sebastian Bach - allow such a thing to happen? Why did so few people DO anything?
Anna, who is German, described how it is illegal to display a swastika in Germany - even in a historical context, such as the one painted on the original aircraft hanging from the roof of the museum. German war dead are not allowed to be honoured: the 17 year old conscripted to the front line is just as evil as Goering. As children, they have shame and guilt pummelled into them for the crimes of their parents and grandparents.
This bothers me. It bothers me because I don't agree that that 17 year old conscript is the same as the masterminds. It bothers me more that, by focusing on the condemning of the slaughter of 12 million people by one group of people, we appear to be fooling ourselves that it was an isolated incident that we are all somehow better than.
I was in tears when I left the Holocaust Memorial on Sunday not because of Auswitz but because of England. And the US. And Canada. Andandandandandand.
1930s era anti-Jewish propanda described Jews as a pestilence, destroying the very fabric of German society. They were flooding into Germany, taking over, spreading poverty and sin. They spat in the face of German custom and tradition, threatened the very existence of the German people.
In the exhibit, we all clucked our tongues and shook our heads at the horror of it all. Imagine! Such ignorance!
Just now, a comment on an article about the expected spike in the population of England due to immigration states: "This will be the end of Britishness as we know it. Pressure is already on us to describe Christmas as something else and we become more and more like America every day. The problem is that we all have to live and work together and we have already seen the spread of ghettos around the country around the country and are constantly reading of the problems they create. I cannot understand why people want to come here to improve their life and then immediately try to impose the habits and cultures of the land they had left behind on us."
In the same article, an anonymous commenters fights back: "I'm an immigrant! I came here not being able to speak a word of English. I managed to get straight As throughout high school and am in my penultimate year of a law degree, thank you very much. Celebrate diversity! We're not here to be clones of one another." That comment currently has a rating of -162, which is almost 20 lower than when I first read it 15 minutes ago.
A third commenter on another article takes it there: "This is frightening. Thanks to this government we, the indigenous population are being overwhelmed. It must be brought to an end now!" (Comment score: +72) The other 400 commenters agree, with only two exceptions. There is mass agreement on these boards that the British National Party should be voted in at the next election.
(Caveat: I am not exactly referring to The Guardian here, and I am guessing - hoping - that the average reader of the publications from which I have gathered these quotes are a vocal minority. That being said, I'm not sure how confident I am that the minority is so small. Back in the 90s, when I lived in the north, I often heard people talk about the "Paki" overflow and how "those people only look out for themselves." And a dear friend recently told me that "not a single Muslim spoke up against September 11th." And a colleague told me she would never wear traditional Indian clothes to work because it wasn't worth the hassle. So.)
We need to wake the hell up. There is something really scary going on and we are all too busy patting ourselves on the back for not being Hitler to notice it.
The way the media and the man on the street talks about Muslims today is almost verbatim to those propaganda posters in the Holocaust Memorial exhibit. It is a very VERY find line between what those evil Nazis were saying and what these ignorant Daily Mail assholes are saying. The Muslim world overwhelmingly believes that they are under attack from the West because THEY ARE. Maybe not all of us, but a lot of us. And this wave of hate flowing from both sides - Us and Them, who's the evil one? - has the potential to lead to another memorial exhibit.
It only takes a couple good, strong catalysts, you know? If greasy, chinless Hitler and his crew of overweight/limping/almost blind generals can lead an educated, philosophical nation into pursuing an ideal of broad-shouldered blonde health, someone else WILL come along eventually to light a fire on one side or the other.
I don't believe we have learned from the Holocaust. I do believe it could happen again, if the people wanting to do it could somehow subvert the all-seeing eye of the internet. I am quite confident right now that it WILL happen again, in some way, and that we may very well be witnessing the early stages right now.
And THAT is worth crying over.
Comments
As Tom Cruise's latest film reminds us not all Natzi's were bad. Nor are all American's good; there are those that ethnic cleaned their land of the Indians and fund and support war while decrying it and declaring the virtues of peace.
Any blanket indictment is simply a substance less evaluation of human beings - generalizations are killers, and create killers as well.
Thanks for pointing this out - an excellent piece.
I share your worries, Erika, and the rise of the BNP - much in the news after Nick Griffin's question time appearance on Thursday - is witness to the fact that ordinary people are starting to hold the most frightening of opinions. Perhaps almost as bad as Nick Griffin is the dancer on Strictly who triggered a huge debate about his use of the word "Paki". I don't know about you, but i was appalled by the likes of bruce forsyth saying that it was okay and that no one can take a joke anymore. What's happening to us?
I must say, although I think it's abhorrent that anyone would want to do so, I do find it a little odd that Holocaust Denial is considered a crime in many countries. Millions of Jews were slaughtered by the nazis, but so were millions of other types of people. The holocaust was a hideous event, but it wasn't the only hideous event. Why does it get special privileges? Are you allowed to deny the nazi treatment of homosexuals and gypsies, perhaps, but not the jews?
The truly shocking thing about events like this - whether it's mass, industrialised slaughter or something else - is the way that it became so bureacratised, and that it was carried out by people like you and me who stamped books and collected luggage and loaded trains. We comfort ourselves by thinking that the nazis were uniquely evil, but the banal truth is that they couldn't do it alone and that - as you say - normal, honest-to-goodness citizens were all complicit. It can happen again and I do agree that we seem too smug by half that it won't happen here.
The rhetoric used around immigration by all parties - not just the BNP - is truly terrible. They're trying to win favour with the electorate, of course, who are concerned about this issue.... but where does it stop? It's a real issue, for sure, but we're also dealing with real people. Britain has a proud history of immigration, and immigrants and their decedents have made incalculable contributions to our societies. Why are we so worried now? What are we afraid of? Why are we allowing people like Nick Griffin to say things like "the experiment of multiculturalism has failed". If that's true, then humanity has failed.
...and in the States they are generally known as Republicans or Tea Partiers and they spread hate and fear.
It IS easy to see how it could happen again. I'm in Arizona, and it could easily happen here against Latins. It's wrong and it's scary but there are too many who BELIEVE the lies. Nothing good will come of this.