Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.
Joe Gandelman writes a very personal memoir about Auschwitz, and holocaust denialists, and how remembering these things is important more than anything because it makes us remember the evil that can be wrought in the name of ideology. Read it here.
A note on our important Editorial Policy.
Or you could buy something for Dean from his WISH LIST!
Celia Farber
Music, Movies, Books, and Etc.
Questioning the HIV/AIDS establishment
|
Dean's World uses and recommends:
Scroogle Search
Your donations also make Dean's World possible.
Or you could buy something for Dean from his WISH LIST!
The danger is the unchallenged lie.
You remember, Dean, that every April or so, Ara Rubyan was trotting out his dismal faded photographs of murdered Armenians hanging from a bridge in eastern Turkey and looking like dead sharks displayed from the superstructure of a deep-sea fishing boat as sport trophies.
The problem is, the more people linger over ancient wrongs done to them, and the more they identify with all these victims of the world's woes, the less they live in the present and future and the more they remain enslaved to their several frequently dreadful histories that other people only pretend they care about.
Armenians, Jews and Serbs are three outstanding examples of "victim" folks who prey on the sympathies of the other nations, and who in fact have created big or little victim-focused industries based on little more than the passed-along memories of wrongs or outright horrors that most normal people would prefer to forget.
The Armenians are nothing now. A sort of forgotten little former soviet socialist republic in the mountains the southern Caucasus range, beset by frequent devastating earthquakes and the memories of their lost provinces in eastern Turkey.
The Jews, who for sure have more than their share of enemies all across the world, and who therefore ought to forget their past and concentrate on extending the extant and power of the state of Israel, seem unable to focus an anything except these crummy nazi murder camps around Poland.
(I think it is self-evident that 175 Israeli nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, along with the Jericho III missiles to deliver them with great range and exquisite precision, are more useful than all the endless tears shed over the six million murdered Jews of Europe.)
The Serbs are another special case. Their short-lived medieval kingdom was smashed by the Ottoman empire at the battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389, came to wrack and ruin in the 20th century on three occasions.
First, it was a Serb conspiracy to murder the heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne that immediately began World War I and the destruction and occupation of their country in 1915.
Second, it was another Serb conspiracy, in 1941, that overthrew their own government and angered Hitler into invading Jugoslavia and breaking up Serbia a second time.
Third, it was yet another Serb conspiracy in 1989, leading to the outright suppression of the Albanians in Kosovo, that led almost immediately to the breakup of Jugoslavia and the wars, ethnic cleansing and destruction that accompanied that breakup.
And running like a thread through serbian history is their inability to forget their national defeat at Kosovo Polje.
One wonders, from reading the national histories of such folks, whether they are peoples with a future or just a collection of bitter, hostile memories of wrongs that can never be righted.
The appropriate answer to all this stuff, in my judgement, was for the Armenians to have killed as many Turks as possible during that struggle in 1915, then have cleared it all out of their minds.
For the Jews, they ought to have killed as many Germans as possible in World War II, then cleared that out of their minds when the war ended.
For the Serbs, the time to have fought the Turks was in 1389, rather than taking it out on the Muslimanni of Bosna in 1992.
As for the Hutus and Tutsis, who in even knows which is which? Since the Hutus were slaughtering the Tutsis, I suppose it would have been appropriate for the Tutsis to have organized an army and murdered the Hutus.
Anyway, as I have written before. Survivors interest me a lot more than victims.
As for the basic question of why these things happen. It's just human nature. So remember. Kill the killers before they get a chance to start up the machinery of death for real.
Because later you won't be able to do anything more about it except to show increasingly faked sorrow at public events like the big conventions regularly held by the Auschwitz industry.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb
I well understand your perspective on this matter. It is not without merit. Certainly your view is useful as a cautionary note. Certainly, if we were to remember Auschwitz primarily as a cautionary lesson about the dangers of anti-semitism, it would be very close to fulfilling the predictions you make.
Then again I'm not so sure: remembering the Holocaust was and is central to the worldview of many a tough Israeli bastard out there who uses it to flame his passion for defending his homeland and to cry "never again."
Still: it's fairly clear to me that you have a point that some Jews do in fact cling to the Holocaust as if it is their own personal property, their sole personal horror as a people, and seek to take it not much further than that. I don't condemn them for that, especially those who were there. But I think that for the wider world, this misses the point. (And in this regard, I am pleased to say that people like Simon Wiesenthal generally agree with my perspective--just in case there are any jews angry with me for what I say here).
The lesson of Nazi Germany for the wider world is not that anti-semitism is a raging danger. The lesson is that people enslaved to the will of an ideology--any ideology in my view--and removed from the bounds of traditional civilization are capable of the most incredible monstrosities.
When we look at the Holocaust, it is seductively easy to draw the wrong lesson. Here we had a nation--Germany and to a lesser extent Austria--which was a towering citadel of civilization. This was the nation of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart. Of Martin Luther and the Reformation. Of countless towering achievements in poetry, philosophy, theology, mathematics, medicine, biology, architecture--even pluralism and tolerance! And in the space of barely a decade one madman was able to turn it into a psychotic state that destroyed not just Jews, but Gypsies, Poles, the crippled and lame, that was willing to put the torch to the Louvre, kidnap or kill a Pope, and turn mass killing into a mass industry.
But even still, if the lesson ends there, then we make a mistake. Because they we are tempted to take away from it that something uniquely German is to blame. Perhaps it is "authoritarianism." Or perhaps it is snazzy uniforms and a respect for the military. Some who are terribly shallow on their history will even try to claim that it was religion to blame, that Hitler was somehow the ultimate expression of Christian thinking (which is wrong on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin).
Dilate out from there and from my perspective that's the only real danger of remembering the Nazi Holocaust: that we'll try to pin it on Hitler, or the Germans, or this or that shallow connection we see with German culture or attitudes.
The truth of the matter is that if you look at the history of the 20th century, genocide--true genocide, not the fake "genocide" of "cultural imperialism" or other such stupid rubbish--it's frighteningly common. The first to receive such treatment were the Armenians, who the Turks intentionally set out to simply obliterate as a people (and no, anyone who thinks the American experience with Indian tribes is the same thing is woefully undereducated on the matter. Ditto those who wish to say that African slavery was the same thing: no it wasn't).
So it wasn't the Jews who were first: it was the Armenians. (And again, it's me, a non-Armenian, who chooses to remember that each year, as I will again when the time comes later this year.)
Beyond the Armenians, look at what Lenin did to the Cossacks. Look at what Stalin did to the Ukrainians. Look what Mao did to his own people. Look at the greatest monster of them all in my own view: Pol Pot, who may have killed fewer than Hitler or Stalin or Mao, but gave the world what may have been the most frightening and nightmarish regime that ever existed on Earth (although history may prove that the Kim regimes in North Korea may have been even worse).
To me the important lesson of genocide--and the 20th century was, whatever else may be said of its wonders, the Century of Genocide--has little to nothing to do with one culture dominating another, one "enslaving" another, with snappy uniforms, intellectual discussions, or any of that. It is--for me anyway--simply this:
The limits to human evil simply have never been fully plumbed. And when we allow ourselves to be enslaved to an ideology, when we cease to think for ourselves and question authority--and also when we throw away all bounds of traditional rules and norms for civilized and moral behavior--we sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.
I am no Jew and I remember the Holocaust. I am no Armenian and I remember the Armenian genocide. I am no Ukranian, but I remember Stalin's butchery of 10 million Ukranians. I am not Cambodian, but I remember Pol Pot's utter and complete insanity. I am not Korean, but I burn with a seething hatred for Papa and Baby Kim. I loathe with a righteous fury scum like Mengistu and Mugabe and Castro and Milosovic and Saddam. I hate them all, and I refuse to renounce my hate--indeed, I wonder at the sanity and decency of any man or woman who cannot hate them.
In every one of those cases, I have no dog in the fight. I do have a dog in the fight when it comes to discussing the American Indians and their treatment, having had a half-breed for a great-grandmother, but I recognize that the cases are not comparable. The White Man, when he arrived in North America, was mostly represented by poor illiterates not much less savage than the people they faced. The same when it comes to slavery in the U.S.: many a white European arrived here as an Indentured Servant, and was treated even more poorly than the average slave. Those are different arguments worth having on their own, and I am generally sympathetic to your view that sitting around whining about how bad you have things in life because 50 years ago your grandma and grandpa were treated badly is whiny crybaby bullshit.
But when the human animal is loosed from all normative lessons of what constitutes civilized behavior... and simultaneously, when the human animal ceases to think for himself and allows himself to become enslaved by an ideology, ANY ideology... the limits of his evil simply have yet to be reached. Rabid atheists love to decry the religious, pointing to all the religious wars and pogroms of history, but refuse to acknowledge that atheist regimes like those of Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot and Castro and countless others butchered more people in the 20th century than the awful Muslims or Christians did in the previous 19. Those who decry "militarism" seem unwilling to acknowledge that GI Joe did more to end oppression in that same century than every Quaker who ever lived.
I see now that this little response I composed off the top of my head turned into a lengthy and rambling jeremiad, which was not my intent. So let me just close by saying:
I understand your concern, Mr. Harris, that obsession with the crimes of the past can cripple future generations into a paroxysm of self-pity and slef-righteousness. I have seen this in action, and I acknowledge the danger there. Your average black man today whining that he wants his 40 acres and a mule, your average Ukranian who demands that those fucking Russians owe him something, your average feminist screeching that her mothers were oppressed so she needs special treatment today, your average polish man who comes to Michigan looking for a job at Ford who bitches at all those obnoxious Polack jokes, needs to back up and get some fucking perspective and escape the pity-party of "woe me and my ancestors."
I grant you all of that. Every bit of it.
But.
But.
If we are unwilling to look in the face the full depths of human evil, of the evil that the human animal is capable of, we are fools indeed.
Damn Dean... Amazing words. I was told words similar by my mentor when I got out of prison. When you are enslaved to an ideology (as I was in a street gang), it is amazingly horrible how easily it is to just do it. Without thought. Without question. You look at people as less than meat. That's something I wouldn't wish on anyone.
Unlike you and Rosemary, Stefi and I lived and studied in Israel for 1-1/2 years in 1973-1974. I talked with plenty of 'tough Israeli bastards' who held most of the six million jewish victims of the nazi mass murders in more or less open contempt for allowing themselves to be walked peacefully in gas chambers and put to death.
The Israelis I studied, played and talked with were the kind of folks who at least would have coordinated, maybe said to one another "let's roll", and killed one of the nazi guards with their teeth, just to get at his MP-40 machine pistol and kill a few more, before being put to death.
And I don't agree with you about you think is the lesson of all that happened in those death camps. In my judgement, which is the one I go by in these matters, the only lesson to be learned from the holocaust is how to get hold of weapons and ammunition in an emergency and to learn to kill with them, in cold blood.
Meaning, don't consult with some useless fucking international organization like the League of Nations or the UNO. Don't even waste time consulting with some rabbi, priest, pastor, imam or whomever. Just make sure you acquire the right target, and don't waste too much precious ammunition on him.
Can't bring yourselves to do all of the above? Still thinking about the goodness of the human soul and all that shit? Then crawl off into the gas chamber and die there, if you think that's an appropriate way to check out.
You want to fight evil, Dean? There's only one thing that works, from the way I see it: Find the bad guy and neutralize him. Permanently. No bad guy, no evil.
You say you got evil organized by a powerful country with a big army? Help mobilize an even stronger country or group countries, and you can have the unique pleasure of burning their citizens in to death in firestorms, as your air forces pulverize their cities. Wherever there is force, someone can organize a stronger force. That's the way we won World War II, back 60 years ago.
I didn't think much on you being part american Indian, Dean. And it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Did our forefathers here steal all their land? You're fucking-A right they did, and I have no qualms about that whatsoever. The weak, backward and disorganized througout human history have lost their lands and frequently their freedom to the strong, advanced and well-organized.
That's why the lands of the continental USA were explored, exploited, and expropriated, all with about 50 years in the first half of the 1800s. Anyway, the Indians can now get even with the whiteface suckers by setting up gambling casinos in most states, with monopolies such as would have brought a smile to the face of Juan Trippe, president of Pan-American Airlines in the 30s and 40s. If any of them prefer to live in animal-hide tents in mid-winter, and live by killing deer with bows and arrows, there's always northern Canada and Alaska.
So. All you would-be victims out there. Get smart. Get organized. Get armed. Get trained. Then if push comes to shove, maybe you can be a survivor.
That's the way the show works, folks.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI