Yesterday marked the 65th anniversary of the surrender of Germany in World War Two marking Victory in Europe or V. E. Day. Nazism had been defeated, the horrors of the Holocaust uncovered and a new day was dawning on the planet. The dream of the United Nations was forming; to be established October 24, 1945. We had learned our lesson as we were forced to bear witness to the darkest depths of human depravity. Our ability to murder on mass shook us from the dream of civilization. Our collective soul cried out ‘Never Again!’
But in 2010, as the German Chancellor Angela Merkel sat on the dais next to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, representing the opposing powers of the conflict that had more in common than differences, where are we? What has happened to the dream, that moment of pure joy and hope?
As its predecessor, World War Two was not the war to end all wars. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the list is long and bloody. Our ability to kill has improved with each new conflict. Diplomacy is ridiculed as the the fires of nationalism brightly light the banners of the legions. The eagle of Rome and Germany now demands the people of the world bow down to the eagle of America. That the symbol of power since early history has been a scavenger should speak to us. But somehow it doesn’t. Fear, distrust and ignorance drive us into our imagined communities, not seeing the realities that connect us behind the myths that divide. And so the story continues written in the blood of millions.
Political lies continued to swim in human blood. In Hungary and Iraq honest people were encouraged to rise up against tyranny only to be abandoned when they did so in good faith believing that they would be supported. The Hungarians listened to Radio Free Europe spew its propaganda East. Not realizing that this was only a tactic to undermine Soviet stability they rose up and awaited the aid implicitly promised. They stood firm as the Soviet tanks rolled over the Hungarian frontier and into the streets of Budapest. Still gazing West in desperation as they were slaughtered, the survivors later lost in the void of the Gulag. The Shi’as of southern Iraq encouraged by Bush senior to rebel were again abandoned as were the Kurds of northern Iraq. How much different is this to the guarantees given to the Czechs and others prior to the war. Horribly the Tutsi and Hutu at different times learned that ‘Never Again!’ was hollow rhetoric as did the people of Srebrenica in their turn.
Domestic persecution so abhorred in the Third Reich still visits us as well. From the Cold War where America and the Soviet Union tried to outdo each other with show trials and mock patriotism to the Patriot Act and Canada’s anti-terrorism laws and Arizona’s yellow sombrero law (see previous post The Yellow Sombrero) we have repeated the ideas and concepts of Hitler and Himmler. People persecuted, hounded for what they believed or what they were not what they had done. Over one million Canadians were blacklisted as communists/socialists. Rarely were any Soviet spies. That was not the point. It was the idea that was feared, not the people. The idea needed to be destroyed lest it upset life of the power elite. Today it is Muslims. The ‘experts’ talk about Islamic culture and say it is violent, that it praises terror, that it is regressive. What they don’t say is, like Nazi depictions of Jewish culture, it doesn’t exist. It is a fabrication. There is no ‘Islamic Culture.’ There are several Arab, Persian, Turkic and Malay cultures. Most North Americans see ‘Islamic Culture’ and think Arab Culture but it in itself is not a monolith and Malay is the largest Muslim ethnic group. If the threat is real why would it be represented by a mythical creation? It seems only that some threat must exist. But why? What is it that the powers that be don’t want us to see. Today we can look back at the Third Reich and see what Hitler and Goebbels didn’t want the world to know. Will historians 65 years from now be revealing abominable secrets buried behind American imperialism? Research the provisions and justifications of the Enabling Laws introduced by German Chancellor Hitler in 1934 to see a reflection of the Patriot Act and its ilk. Racial profiling of Mexicans and Muslims is no different than that used by Nazi administrations. Look at the propaganda below showing the same basic caricature used in two contexts but really about the same people, Semites.
Mussolini said that fascism could more accurately be called corporatism. Is that not the culture we have today in Canada and the United States? Is not the corporation and the financial sector the new Rome? Is it not the sum total of existence, that which gives meaning to our lives? We are told constantly that there is not enough money, enough wealth to maintain the welfare state that was to raise all boats; to create a floor not a ceiling to use William Beveridge’s phrase. Apparently the neo-conservative Right has taken him at his word and want to cut the floor out from under the powerless in order to extend their ceiling to the heavens. Corporations steal our money to fund their failures. And still George Will this morning on This Week (ABC) claims that the crisis in Greece is the masses thinking they are entitled when their is no money left to fund such entitlements. What better example of self-entitlement than the bail out of General Motors or Lehman Sachs and the rest. They told us they were too big to fail. They told us we needed to give them more of our money for our own sakes. Those who would now eject us from our own homes, destroy our retirements and deny our children of the same education and career opportunities as their children feel so entitled as to believe that such behaviour is an act of gratitude. Don’t tell me there is not money to fund entitlements. You mean there is no money to fund those who don’t belong to your class Mr. Will.
But corporations have always held the people in disdain. They always believed in a natural leader class. That is why so many of them supported Hitler and nazi ideology, before and during the war. Ford enriched itself on slave labour in Nazi occupied Europe. IBM vaulted to the lead in tabulation later computation by designing the system that sent six million Jews to the gas chamber. President Roosevelt had to relieve Joseph Kennedy, father of the future president, from his post as ambassador to the Great Britain because of his praise of Hitler and Nazism and his repeated effort to undermine British resolve in the face of what he considered a superior German system. Do we believe that suddenly they changed their philosophy when the war was over? Are we that naive? Or just so afraid that if we say such things somehow we will be next on the train to the camps.
German education under the Nazis convinced young Germans that they were superior by blood to the other races of the world. They twisted ancient northern European myths to create an image of the Teutonic race as the defenders of civilization against the barbarian hordes. Anything that might bring that image into question was dropped from the curriculum. Self appointed ‘experts’ shored up the image with quasi-science and bad academics. Education seen as the conduit to maintain the social order whether or not that order is right. Sound familiar? Does to me. I see it every day in the classroom and I am both sad and afraid. I know where it will lead, not might lead. Young Americans today are brainwashed into believing that the American way is not jut the best way but the only legitimate way. Other cultures, other peoples, other values are ridiculed or vilified. The lie of democracy used to shade the evil intent: Power.
So what have we learned in sixty-five years? What has happened to the possibilities of 1945? Today they are just the puppets of power. Power corrupts. But mostly it perpetuates. Those who have it seek to keep it. Those who don’t lament their suffering as the Athenian generals counseled the Melians in Thucydides account of the Peloponnesian War,“for you know as well as we do that right … is in question only between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” or they live Zapata’s words: “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”
Today I mourn not because nazism and fascism were destroyed but because they survived. I mourn because the ideals of Adolph Hitler are the ideals of the Obama administration and American Imperialism. They are cloaked in the facade of democracy and humanist rhetoric but they are the same. I mourn because my country, like so many others, complacently accepts this outrage lacking the courage to die on our feet if needs must. We play the Jester to America’s Lear. Around the world today the celebrations are not of the end of something but of its perpetuation in secrecy. Hitler’s mistake was to open a window and let the world see. That could not be countenanced if the power elites elsewhere were to continue without public outrage. Secrecy reigns once more and all is well in Washington as on Wall Street. So celebrate, but excuse me if I weep.
