Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Lame Lens

The muggiest of mug's games is "my horrific historic event is more horrific than your horrific historic event"--the game that's afoot due to the Canadian "human rights" mausoleum appearing to favour the Holocaust over the Ukrainian Holodomor. And perhaps the worst argument for according the Holocaust special status is to claim that it paved the way for the "human rights" culture that arose in its wake. Please, if there's one thing we Jews don't need and Holocaust victims don't deserve, it is to be saddled with the blame for the dog's breakfast that is contemporary "human rights." Something to bear in mind when reading this, from the Canadian Jewish News:
...Farber agreed that the Holodomor was “a terrible tragedy,” but he said the Holocaust is on an entirely different level and has had “a profound impact” on Canadians and other peoples.

“The Holocaust redefined the limits of human depravity,” he said. “It challenged the very foundation of our civilization. One in every three Jews in the world at that time was murdered, a slaughter from which we have not yet recovered.

“The Holocaust was also the foundation for our modern human rights legislation, and it makes perfect sense that the Holocaust should have a permanent place in the museum. It also makes sense that the plight of Canada’s First Nations should also have a prominent place in the museum. What makes no sense is pitting one group of Canadians against another.”

Angela Cassie, the museum’s director of communications, agreed the Holocaust should receive a prominent place in the institution because of its historic role as a catalyst for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and human rights legislation that followed.

“Our goal isn’t to compare the suffering of different groups,” she said. “We will be using the Holocaust to show the fragility of human rights. It’s also one of the most thoroughly researched areas of recent history. We envisage the Holocaust as the lens through which we teach visitors how to recognize signs of human rights violations and point to actions they can take to combat human rights abuses.”...
In the annals of stupid ideas, that one must rank near the top. What utter bollocks--and how utterly perverse--to "use" the Holocaust to in effect validate Canada's quasi-totalitarian "human rights" apparatus. The only "lens" through which the Holocaust should be taught is the "lens" of Judenhass and its modern mutation Zionhass. Teaching it through any other "lens" is, in a word, unconscionable, and should be wholeheartedly condemned and rejected.

1 comment:

truepeers said...

I can't quite agree with your conclusion. I think it does need to be pointed out that white guilt and the "human rights" worldview is a response to the Holocaust, as is the new antisemitism that is in large part a resentment of the Jewishness and whiteness of this world historical turning point which is central for the way it reveals how a modern state can implicate all its professions and intellectual powers in genocide of the clearly innocent, peaceful - white people can never see themselves the same way again. (How enraged the Jew haters and Arabophiles get that this event that led immediately to African and Asian decolonization was also a white and Jewish event that also lent much support to Zionism...)

However, you are quite right to doubt the museum will reveal the problems with its own worldview that now leads to the decline of faith in the ethical achievements of Western civilization and a guilt that even apologizes for those who want to kill us.