Holocaust Memorial Day 2014

Whilst there remains a state which actively promotes denial of the Holocaust.

Whilst much of the Muslim world, and more than a few in the former Soviet bloc, and some in the West continue to want to deny the horrors of Nazism, it needs to be re-emphasised.  For a toxic coalition of the gutter-white racists and the Islamist totalitarians, are keen to revive anti-semitism, and more than a few so-called liberals, turn a blind eye to the latter group in particular.

Never forget.

I said it in 2013.

For the Holocaust wasn't the angry lynching of a whole population in the rage of war, or the vile act of a small number of followers of some thug who went far too far, nor is it the act of a culture or civilisation that otherwise would be thought of as primitive.  

No, it was the act of a modern society, corrupted by the culture of virulent collectivist purging.   A technologically and artistically modern society, taken over by a totalitarian monster, that went from mere scapegoating through to a quiet, shameful, eliminationist policy, and did so with mechanical, mass-produced, efficiency - akin to the production lines invented by Henry Ford, who, of course, shared many of these views about the Jews.

and in 2008 I said:

"The utter complete dehumanisation of all those effectively declared "unpersons" by the Nazis remains a horror unparalleled in its comprehensive efficient single mindedness."

Don't fall into the myth that this was something only the Germans would do....

Don't fall into the myth that such ideologies would never get traction nowadays...

We may all seem a very long way away from the horrors of the Holocaust.  

However, the price of that is eternal vigilance.  Vigilance for free speech, including the right to offend and the right of those who deny the Holocaust to express their drivel - so we can see them, rebut them, boycott them and treat them with the contempt they deserve.

For the Jews, Roma, "slavs", disabled, homosexuals, political dissidents and POWs that were executed on mass suffered because of one difference, one feature that made them unpersons with the state.

It wasn't aggression against other people.

It was being different.

Today, there are plenty who want to use force against those they disagree with or who have characteristics that "offend" them.   The "far-right" are few in number, but more numerous in continental Europe.   To them, unpersons are Jews, other races and immigrants.

Islamists want to sanitise public discourse so they are not offended, and they have successfully done this in almost all Muslim-majority states, with some ready to execute those who offend others.  To them, unpersons are those of other religions, no religion or even other Muslims who don't agree with them.

Finally, the "multi-cultural" self-styled "liberal" left want to control language so nobody ever be offended, as long as they fit one of the proscribed groups of the "powerless".  Their toxic ideology declares unpersons as anyone who utters the wrong opinion, and who are unpersons because they have the wrong genitalia, skin colour, religious faith, ancestry, education or personal wealth.

Treat them all with contempt

Today is a day to remember those who deserved to be treated, as individuals, as human beings, for the diversity they all brought, and which was all snuffed out because some treated them as a category.

Never again...