With Canada tumbling in a downward spiral into a police state, is it any wonder that students would give thug police a straight arm salute? The reference is obviously to the Nazi police state, and completely lost on some Jewish groups that apparently don’t understand that it happened before, and it can happen again, and it can happen here. (And I’m quite honestly sick of hearing people whine about how offended they are by everything and anything. Why not “always look on the bright side of life” instead of finding reasons to be offended?)
The Huffington Post reported in an article (source):
The appearance of so-called Nazi salutes at Quebec student protests was condemned by a Jewish-rights organization that asked people to refrain from using the hurtful gesture.
Some protesters have been using it repeatedly in recent weeks to mock Montreal police at demonstrations in which chanting crowds have referred to local officers as the “SS,” called them fascists and compared them to Nazi police for their alleged brutality.
…
While the gestures are meant as an insult to police — and not as any expression of support for Nazism — B’nai Brith Canada says that’s no excuse.
…
“We condemn, in the strongest of terms, this inexcusable display of hate by Quebec student protesters that has outraged the Jewish community and demonstrated just how low the level of public debate has fallen on the streets of Montreal,” CEO Frank Dimant said in the statement.
Ultimately, this boils down to some people being overly sensitive and in dire need of growing a bit thicker skin.
The Nazi holocaust of the European Jews is very, very far from unique in history. Anyone that would deny that obvious knows almost no history. But more than simply not being unique in history, it was hardly unique in the 20th century even.
Since the term “holocaust” has effectively been hijacked to specifically mean the “holocaust of the European Jews in Nazi Germany,” it’s pretty much a useless word now to mean what it originally meant. Well, perhaps unless you want to have people whining about how they feel insulted because you used a word correctly. The new term to replace “holocaust” is “democide” (source):
The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.
In the 20th century 262,000,000 people fell victim to their own governments (source). In the 20th century, the Nazi regime ranks a distant 4th place behind China, the U.S.S.R., and Colonialism (source):
Is it then shameful to use “Stalin” or “Stalinist” or “Stazi” as a derogatory term? Hardly. I’ve never met a Russian that was remotely thin skinned about anything.
The democide of the Chinese people by Mao isn’t really well known, and as such, those comparisons are really never made, or rare if ever. So there’s not much to say about how that would be offensive, though given what I know from Chinese friends of mine, I rather doubt that they would be offended.
The atrocities inflicted on European Jews, homosexuals, physically and mentally handicapped people, political dissidents, gypsies, and pretty much anyone else that the Nazis didn’t like, are similarly not unique. They weren’t unique in the 20th century, and they most certainly aren’t unique in history.
Where and when would you guess this picture was taken?
The picture was taken in 1865 in Andersonville, Georgia, USA (source). The man in the picture, a Union soldier, actually survived.
And the list goes on with countless cases of governments murdering their own people.
That B’nai Brith would attempt to censor students in Montreal is abhorrent. I say that because their analogy is pretty solid. It hasn’t come to the mass murder of Canadians, but the signs are clear. The rise of police states or tyrannies follows a fairly uniform path, and Canada is marching down that path just as the Police States of America are. This is hardly surprising though as Ottawa often seems to follow London and Washington D.C. like a lost puppy when it comes to laws, regulations, and foreign policy. Sure, they may not lead the charge to murder people in other countries, but they’re seldom far behind.
New legislation in Quebec has effectively made protesting illegal (source). A demonstration in May was declared illegal after a few Molotov cocktails were thrown (source), which effectively punishes everyone for the acts of a few people. Last time I checked, I wasn’t responsible for what you did, and vice versa. Police brutality is on the rise. One only need look at what is happening in Montreal (source – video). Apparently “safety during protests” now means teargas, batons, mace, running people down with cars, and kidnappings. The police in Canada basically have a license to murder people in cold blood. The video here shows a man crawling on his hands and knees after being shot, only to be shot a couple more times. When do Canadian police stop shooting? When they run out of bullets of course!
Freedom of information is being restricted more in Canada (source), making government less transparent and more secretive.
Bill C-30 in Canada is opening up the doors for Big Brother with utterly insane levels of privacy invasion. You can get a few questions answered about that abomination here.
- Making protests illegal.
- Legislating a surveillance state that the SS would have been envious of.
- Public beatings of people by the police.
- Police murdering people and getting away with it.
- Becoming more secretive.
- Secret police (source).
- Cooperating with torture (source).
Just which of those belongs in a peaceful, respectful, tolerant, and free society? Which of those doesn’t resemble the Nazis?
From the original article:
“The gesture is shocking because we are historians and we know that we’re not in the same historical or political context,” Licop said. “But the problem is that it’s a profound lack of respect to the victims of Nazism and the genocide of Jews during World War Two.”
That the political/historical context isn’t the same is trivial. One time and place is not another time and place. This is not information. It is trivial. However, the fact remains that the same kinds of things that happened in the 1920’s and 30’s are starting to happen in Canada. So yes. The analogy holds.
Again from the article:
Dimant, of B’nai Brith, put it even more bluntly.
“We’re talking about the Montreal police force, we’re not talking about Nazis here,” he said in an interview. “And to try to make any comparison makes a mockery of the Holocaust.”
Which is entirely missing the point. If anything Dimant is making a mockery of those deaths by refusing to allow them to be remembered as a warning for the future. Dimant is effectively imprisoning the memory in the past and condemning it to obscurity by limiting the meaning of those deaths to be purely isolated to that single time and place. How could anyone be more disrespectful of the victims of the most famous democide in history than by refusing to recognize that their deaths could serve as a warning for future generations?
Again from the article:
Audrey Licop, spokeswoman for The Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, says the fascist greeting was used by the Nazis in the 1930s and was mandatory for citizens in Nazi Germany.
And we should all salute August Landmesser:
Again from the article:
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs says the decision to use the Hitler salute, in the Montreal protests, is not an act of hatred — just one of ignorance.
“These are clearly not support for Nazism or intended as anti-Semitic displays,” said spokesman David Ouellette.
“It’s much more a function of the ignorance about history and the over-heated rhetoric that has plagued the current crisis in Quebec.”
How is it ignorant to recognize the signs of a rising tyranny and to connect the dots? Again, this is entirely missing the point. Canada is on the path to tyranny, just as the US and many other countries are, and to point that out is very far from disrespecting the victims of the Nazi holocaust. If anything, it is a tribute. Their deaths are not forgotten. The lessons of the past are not forgotten. This is a tribute to them!
The sad fact is, Canada is heading full steam down the path of tyranny. The students protesting in Montreal can see it. B’nai Brith apparently can’t.
What those that condemn the students for effectively amounts to saying, “You’re not remembering the dead the way we want you to remember the dead, so you’re disrespectful and offensive.”
I wonder if anyone finds that offensive?
The holocaust wasn’t unique by any means. It has simply been studied more than other instances of democide. We honour the dead by remembering them, and working to avoid their fates. Certainly, we honour the victims of the Nazi holocaust far more than the other 97% of victims of democide in the 20th century, all 262,000,000 of them. Perhaps we should reflect on the fates of those people as well. They were no less human than you or me.
And in case you’re curious, I’m not Jewish, but my ancestors on both my parents’ sides were targeted for genocide. So don’t tell me about how I don’t understand what it’s like to have my ancestors murdered. I fully understand what it is to have ancestors targeted for extinction. I just don’t dwell on it. And don’t tell me how I don’t understand what it’s like to be discriminated against. I know full well from first hand experience there.
Cheers,
Ryan
