WW2 Remembrance is the post-bourgeois ideology of our juste milieu: unless we all come to grips with the past, we're certainly doomed to repeat history
Ord och inga visor, as we say in swedish (Words and no songs, complete gibberish in english I'm afraid, the meaning is that true/heartfelt words have been clearly spoken with no caveats or hemming and hawing).
May I offer a different explanation for the need to blame the party bg wigs and public faces? Not the usual one, that the collaboration of capital of all sides save the soviet/japanese ones had to be hidden or Operation: Paperclip or to kepp Operation: Unthinkable secret and similar - no, a different one:
Brasklapp*: I make no claim that this objectively true, since it can only be argued and thought about, not proven.
The subconscious goal in putting the blame solely on public faces of national socialism was to hide the role of the industrialised society and industrialisation as such.
Not industry, but industrialisation as in the reforging of society wholesale to serve the interests of industry and thus the owners of industry. War and massacres, genocide and deaths in the tens of millions were after all nothing new 1945, or even 1918. (It is at this point the yelling usually starts in real life, since apparently stating facts somehow lessens the horror of the war - I don't get it, but that's people's general reaction: WW2 stands out as some kind of unique evil.)
The mongol wars claimed far more dead than WW2, if looked on as a whole, and if the Black Death is figured it looks even worse. Several chinese wars in history had double-digit tens of millions dead, including genocide.
So it's clearly not the numbers. Is it culture? Hardly, all cultures have shown themselves capable - the scale largely being dependent on capacity and logistics. Look at how the aztecs put tens of thousands of heads on racks for public display. Tens of thousands at the same time, at that. Relgion fails too as explanation, as does lack of it, for the same reason as above. Shintoism was no hinder for the japanese to murder 5% of the population of the Philippines.
No, I argue that it is industrialism, and that this needed to be paved over with tribunals and trials portioning out the blame (quite rightfully too apart from the concept of Victor's justice, which several senior law scholars and judges in the US pointed out at the time, seeing as no Allied and especially no Soviet personnel was charged or tried). Before industrialism (not before industry mind) we did not live according to "clock time"; clocks were to keep time, nothing else. Even in cities life flowed along natural time, daylight and seasons setting the pace. Swedish historian Peter Englund described the difference very clear in his works about the Thiry Years War, since this created problems: tailors and shoemakers did not make as many wares as they could to sell as much as possible. They did as much as was needed to pay tax, make a living and build a nest egg for children etc.
A very different pace than industrialism's 8-8-8 concept: 8hrs work, 8hrs leisure, 8hrs sleep. With industrialisation came the subjugation of man under the needs of the machine and its owners, and those selfsame owners could not then as they cannot now allow the machine called modern society to be called into question, much less blamed for human ills and suffering.
Consider this: how would the Fulminata have handled uprising in Judea, if they had had access to the same logistical base as Germany had in 1939? Industrialisation makes humans replaceable, and thus of equal worth and dignity to eachother.
And if everyone is worth the same, everyone is replaceable. Whereas in the pre-industrialist, pre-capitalist society the village blacksmith or rackaren were eminently worth something: their craft, and as humans and fellow christians, the mortal sins being seens as real only 250 years ago.
*Brask-lapp is yet another swedish expression, relating bishop Hans Brask (1464-1538) who in 1517 was forced to sign a document petitioning to remove archbishop Gustav Trolle. According to Olaus Petri, Brask hid a note under his seal, saying "To this I am forced and compelled". Today, it means making a claim or a statement with a caveat or hidden reservation.
That is a good point, my friend: I recall the early post-WW2 intellectuals (sic) in W Germany--esp. Adorno, Horckheimer, and the rest of the so-called Frankfurt School making the same kind of argument: the connection between the Enlightenment and 'Auschwitz', so to speak.
Curiously enough, they may actually be correct (like, say, a broken clock is), but the intrinsic connection between industrialism, the crudest forms of materialism (like today, yes, the Marxist-Leninist nightmare was quite something, but they had ideals, quite unlike the current iteration of 'the West'), and corporate collectivism, or collectivising corporatism (I'd call it 'fascism', but then again, it's a label by now), are the main features of the thing we call 'Western Civilisation'.
Then again, I'd argue what we see today--which really coalesced in the 1920s and 1930s--is but a farcical reflection of 19th-century European Civilisation. The comparison between this era and today renders both your as well as my argument quite…forceful, I'd surmise.
These 'festivities' may, anthropologically speaking, be considered the annual re-affirmation of submission of Europeans' minds, (a-) histories, and bodies under the domination of our less-than-benign US and corporate overlords.
Interestingly, its performative and symbolic functions aside, I find the 'transposition' of this creed, or ideology, to the former Soviet Bloc even more curious--then again, it coincided with a veritable all-out push to criminalise scholarly dissent while the propaganda ('Schindler's List' and 'Saving Pvt. Ryan') was ramped up.
Yes, the profusion of Ukraine flags and sentiments of "standing with Ukraine" feel very propagandistic.
For the people of Ukraine I will always feel empathy. No good comes of war, it is full of violence and terror and destruction. I would not wish this on anyone.
But, as you say, one must draw a line between the ordinary people and the organs of the state, government, political leadership, military leadership, etc.
Though ultimately it is those in Washington DC and Brussels for whom I reserve my true disgust.
Meannwhile, "back on the farm", Americans are dying of obesity and Fentanyl and have no idea why. We have two cretans hoping to be the next President, death by gun violence goes around the clock, the rich are personally psychologically miserable, the rich and famous take the suicide way out, govt Welfare housing looks like Soviet style architecture covered inside and out with degrees of shit, ie housing as incubators for babies that will grow up to go to prison never learning anything that requires abstract thought. So don't hate us too much. We have the greatest piece of literature - The Constitution of the United States of America and even that could not carve out a decent society.
Industrialization anywhere in the world will send much of humanity to the waste bin while the few live beyond a 100 years, or live in luxury with their money safely in tax shelters.
Evolution is exemplified by the German scientist who invented mustard gas and with another German scuentist developed chemical fertilizer that saved billions of lives. There are thanks to those fertilizers a population worldwide that is not going to succumb to famine and that strains resources while the industrialization that keeps wheels moving cannot renew the face of the earth.
Humans have a common ancestor with the chimpanzee, two branches that, distinct from other members of the Animal Kingdom, will kill their neighbors out of impulse without need for survival. The counter to that impulse is the instinct to survive, not typically by growing food with good agricultural practices but by stealing land, raising armies and taxing the nonviolent masses, seeking progress using a means of monetary exchange, always seeking increase, until the capital, representing nothing tangible, itself becomes the desired food.
Modern peoples will not kill for religion any more, so we must connive and lie (see Pres Obama and VP Biden set the stage for Ukraine tragedies) and steal in order to continue progress toward a meaningless goal.
You'd think the sunlight would eventualy wake humanity up? Is it sin or is it biology or a perverse evolution that keeps the world in darkness? Personally, I perceive the Bible, the whole thing, as offering "The" light but it does so person by person, not nation by nation.
I am working with the Robert F Kennedy Jr campaign, a nutty but good person who would unpack and shed light on a lot of lies. Pray for us. Evolution and the nuclear clock tells us it is time to pray and quite literally to repent. Sorry for going so far off topic. I always do.
Ord och inga visor, as we say in swedish (Words and no songs, complete gibberish in english I'm afraid, the meaning is that true/heartfelt words have been clearly spoken with no caveats or hemming and hawing).
May I offer a different explanation for the need to blame the party bg wigs and public faces? Not the usual one, that the collaboration of capital of all sides save the soviet/japanese ones had to be hidden or Operation: Paperclip or to kepp Operation: Unthinkable secret and similar - no, a different one:
Brasklapp*: I make no claim that this objectively true, since it can only be argued and thought about, not proven.
The subconscious goal in putting the blame solely on public faces of national socialism was to hide the role of the industrialised society and industrialisation as such.
Not industry, but industrialisation as in the reforging of society wholesale to serve the interests of industry and thus the owners of industry. War and massacres, genocide and deaths in the tens of millions were after all nothing new 1945, or even 1918. (It is at this point the yelling usually starts in real life, since apparently stating facts somehow lessens the horror of the war - I don't get it, but that's people's general reaction: WW2 stands out as some kind of unique evil.)
The mongol wars claimed far more dead than WW2, if looked on as a whole, and if the Black Death is figured it looks even worse. Several chinese wars in history had double-digit tens of millions dead, including genocide.
So it's clearly not the numbers. Is it culture? Hardly, all cultures have shown themselves capable - the scale largely being dependent on capacity and logistics. Look at how the aztecs put tens of thousands of heads on racks for public display. Tens of thousands at the same time, at that. Relgion fails too as explanation, as does lack of it, for the same reason as above. Shintoism was no hinder for the japanese to murder 5% of the population of the Philippines.
No, I argue that it is industrialism, and that this needed to be paved over with tribunals and trials portioning out the blame (quite rightfully too apart from the concept of Victor's justice, which several senior law scholars and judges in the US pointed out at the time, seeing as no Allied and especially no Soviet personnel was charged or tried). Before industrialism (not before industry mind) we did not live according to "clock time"; clocks were to keep time, nothing else. Even in cities life flowed along natural time, daylight and seasons setting the pace. Swedish historian Peter Englund described the difference very clear in his works about the Thiry Years War, since this created problems: tailors and shoemakers did not make as many wares as they could to sell as much as possible. They did as much as was needed to pay tax, make a living and build a nest egg for children etc.
A very different pace than industrialism's 8-8-8 concept: 8hrs work, 8hrs leisure, 8hrs sleep. With industrialisation came the subjugation of man under the needs of the machine and its owners, and those selfsame owners could not then as they cannot now allow the machine called modern society to be called into question, much less blamed for human ills and suffering.
Consider this: how would the Fulminata have handled uprising in Judea, if they had had access to the same logistical base as Germany had in 1939? Industrialisation makes humans replaceable, and thus of equal worth and dignity to eachother.
And if everyone is worth the same, everyone is replaceable. Whereas in the pre-industrialist, pre-capitalist society the village blacksmith or rackaren were eminently worth something: their craft, and as humans and fellow christians, the mortal sins being seens as real only 250 years ago.
*Brask-lapp is yet another swedish expression, relating bishop Hans Brask (1464-1538) who in 1517 was forced to sign a document petitioning to remove archbishop Gustav Trolle. According to Olaus Petri, Brask hid a note under his seal, saying "To this I am forced and compelled". Today, it means making a claim or a statement with a caveat or hidden reservation.
That is a good point, my friend: I recall the early post-WW2 intellectuals (sic) in W Germany--esp. Adorno, Horckheimer, and the rest of the so-called Frankfurt School making the same kind of argument: the connection between the Enlightenment and 'Auschwitz', so to speak.
Curiously enough, they may actually be correct (like, say, a broken clock is), but the intrinsic connection between industrialism, the crudest forms of materialism (like today, yes, the Marxist-Leninist nightmare was quite something, but they had ideals, quite unlike the current iteration of 'the West'), and corporate collectivism, or collectivising corporatism (I'd call it 'fascism', but then again, it's a label by now), are the main features of the thing we call 'Western Civilisation'.
Then again, I'd argue what we see today--which really coalesced in the 1920s and 1930s--is but a farcical reflection of 19th-century European Civilisation. The comparison between this era and today renders both your as well as my argument quite…forceful, I'd surmise.
Not sure if you’re familiar with Caitlin Johnstone. You might enjoy her writing.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/04/27/everyones-anti-war-until-the-war-propaganda-starts/
Thanks, Faz, for the link! I know of her work, but I haven't seen that piece!
There is nothing to celebrate on 7, 8 or 9 of May. Dot.
Unless you want to celebrate the official beginning of the United States of America Empire...
But then I've nothing to celebrate, nor my family, parents, and grand parents at all!
These 'festivities' may, anthropologically speaking, be considered the annual re-affirmation of submission of Europeans' minds, (a-) histories, and bodies under the domination of our less-than-benign US and corporate overlords.
Interestingly, its performative and symbolic functions aside, I find the 'transposition' of this creed, or ideology, to the former Soviet Bloc even more curious--then again, it coincided with a veritable all-out push to criminalise scholarly dissent while the propaganda ('Schindler's List' and 'Saving Pvt. Ryan') was ramped up.
Thank you for your historical perspective.
Yes, the profusion of Ukraine flags and sentiments of "standing with Ukraine" feel very propagandistic.
For the people of Ukraine I will always feel empathy. No good comes of war, it is full of violence and terror and destruction. I would not wish this on anyone.
But, as you say, one must draw a line between the ordinary people and the organs of the state, government, political leadership, military leadership, etc.
Though ultimately it is those in Washington DC and Brussels for whom I reserve my true disgust.
Meannwhile, "back on the farm", Americans are dying of obesity and Fentanyl and have no idea why. We have two cretans hoping to be the next President, death by gun violence goes around the clock, the rich are personally psychologically miserable, the rich and famous take the suicide way out, govt Welfare housing looks like Soviet style architecture covered inside and out with degrees of shit, ie housing as incubators for babies that will grow up to go to prison never learning anything that requires abstract thought. So don't hate us too much. We have the greatest piece of literature - The Constitution of the United States of America and even that could not carve out a decent society.
Industrialization anywhere in the world will send much of humanity to the waste bin while the few live beyond a 100 years, or live in luxury with their money safely in tax shelters.
Evolution is exemplified by the German scientist who invented mustard gas and with another German scuentist developed chemical fertilizer that saved billions of lives. There are thanks to those fertilizers a population worldwide that is not going to succumb to famine and that strains resources while the industrialization that keeps wheels moving cannot renew the face of the earth.
Humans have a common ancestor with the chimpanzee, two branches that, distinct from other members of the Animal Kingdom, will kill their neighbors out of impulse without need for survival. The counter to that impulse is the instinct to survive, not typically by growing food with good agricultural practices but by stealing land, raising armies and taxing the nonviolent masses, seeking progress using a means of monetary exchange, always seeking increase, until the capital, representing nothing tangible, itself becomes the desired food.
Modern peoples will not kill for religion any more, so we must connive and lie (see Pres Obama and VP Biden set the stage for Ukraine tragedies) and steal in order to continue progress toward a meaningless goal.
You'd think the sunlight would eventualy wake humanity up? Is it sin or is it biology or a perverse evolution that keeps the world in darkness? Personally, I perceive the Bible, the whole thing, as offering "The" light but it does so person by person, not nation by nation.
I am working with the Robert F Kennedy Jr campaign, a nutty but good person who would unpack and shed light on a lot of lies. Pray for us. Evolution and the nuclear clock tells us it is time to pray and quite literally to repent. Sorry for going so far off topic. I always do.