Every so often, I come across an innocent looking exchange student, visiting scientist, tourist etc. expressing their outrage about this terrible offence to the universal (?) laws of free speech. At least, they complain, you must listen to the other side. The what? I reply before the conversation takes a nasty turn.
And, they often add, your journalists are biased because they rarely allow holocaust deniers a forum.
(For crying out loud.) I recently have started to reply with something along the lines of this twitter meme: If someone says it's raining, and another person says it's dry, it's not the journalists job to quote them both. It's their job to look out the fucking window and find out which is true.
Meanwhile the CEO of fb, a philanthropist, who believes that - having been raised in the Jewish faith - religion is very important, wants to allow fb users to make unintentional mistakes and for this reason, will not remove posts that deny the existence of the Holocaust.
I feel like we are standing close to the rim of the volcano, peering down into the crater, asking ourselves, will it erupt, will it stay silent? Surely, we try to calm ourselves, there's common sense, decency, experience, history, memory, empathy for godssakes.
Don't count on it, a friend told me yesterday. Being ignorant is the new trend.
When the generation that survived the war is no longer with us, we'll find out whether we have learned from history.Angela Merkel July 2018
Too far fetched? Connect the dots.
(click and read)
As for fb and friends, have a listen how your data is helping it along:
That Nazis are wearing swastikas and giving their raised hand salutes in this century is as mind-blowing as anything I've ever seen. The real newspapers of the real time back in the 1940s have the real stories. There are real photographs and real films. But nothing is as convincing as the hatred in the hearts of psychopaths. I often wonder why we keep fighting the same battles over and over and over? Because psychopaths stop at nothing. Bleak times ahead, my friend, bleak times.
ReplyDeleteThe twisted tentacles of all of this whole situation are so hard to un-pry and I don't know that we ever will but even worse is that I am not convinced at all that we can stop the damage which all of this evil and all of this ignorance and all of this horror and all of this hate has unleashed. And then there is all of the money...
ReplyDeleteAll we can do is challenge it, each and every time. If organisations won’t defend such a blatant truth, then it’s down to the likes of you and I. We can be fierce if we need to be!
ReplyDeletei was going to leave that quote about looking out the fucking window to see if it's raining, and then I saw you quoted it yourself. Yes! Exactly that. I feel sometimes that we have slipped into a parallel universe. I am so often in disbelief at what is transpiring, but that is not helpful. I am casting around to try and discover what actually IS helpful. Being here is good. It reminds me there is still core decency in our world. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI have no faith at all that humans have learned anything. for cryin'out loud, people still deny that the earth is round. are we headed to Nazi America? sure looks that way. all those Allied dead soldiers are spinning in their graves. all those deaths for nothing.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I am doing now is listening closely to the voices of those who have survived against all odds and who grieve the loss of those who didn't. Some of them are still living and speaking. Some of them left us their writing. They exist throughout history and will always exist.
ReplyDeleteThe hard-won sanity of the German people passed the laws making Holocaust denial and showing the hitler salute criminal offences in Germany. The U.S. government and many of its citizens have yet to have that level of sanity. What will it take?
I'm reminded of the hard-won sanity of the Japanese government as reflected in Article 9 of the Japanese constitution:
CHAPTER II
RENUNCIATION OF WAR
Article 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.
In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.
and:
We believe that no nation is responsible to itself alone, but that laws of political morality are universal; and that obedience to such laws is incumbent upon all nations who would sustain their own sovereignty and justify their sovereign relationship with other nations.
Thank you for this:
If someone says it's raining, and another person says it's dry, it's not the journalists job to quote them both. It's their job to look out the fucking window and find out which is true.
Steve Bannon may be the most evil person alive in the world today. The harm he has done, is doing, is criminal. I would despair if it was an option, but it is not.
ReplyDeleteYes to all of the above. Yet still we have to resist with hope. I'm struck in my own "conversations" on Facebook and elsewhere by how transactional everything has become and is -- how even thought itself, subjective thought, is bandied about. The rain quote is perfection.
ReplyDeleteDemocracy is so fragile that too many people in our country (U.S.) don’t seem to realize. Never could I have believed that our nation would be in the state that it is now. I’ve been sharing facts all need to know whenever possible as we can yet preserve our freedoms.
ReplyDeleteA pound to a pinch of salt you already know this but freedom of speech does not extend to shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre.
ReplyDelete