The Remembrance Day Amnesia Racket
It was catastrophic, cataclysmic and all destructive. It wiped out empires and aristocracies and tore through the middle class. The First World War was a conflict that should never have happened, was pursued foolishly and incestuously by the royal families of Europe and fertilised the ground for an even greater war two decades later. It produced an atmospheric solemnity of grief and loss, and a lingering, collective neurosis.
On November 11, 1918, when the guns fell silent in Europe, some 16 million had been left dead. A ceremonial ritual grew up around commemorating the fallen. So horrific were those events that a convention known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact was born, an instrument that initially began as a bilateral agreement between the United States and France to abandon war as an instrument of foreign policy. Eventually, virtually all the established states of the day signed it, heralding a most fabulous illusion, pursued even as countries began rearming.
The commemorators that tend to make an appearance on Remembrance Day often prove to be the war-makers of tomorrow. The demand that we all wear red poppies and contribute to the causes of veterans would be all the more poignant and significant were it to discourage killing, foster peace and encourage the brighter instincts of human progress. Instead, these occasions are used by the military-minded to ready the populace for the next conflict, a form of vulgar conditioning. Before his death in 2009 at the ripe age of 111 years, Harry Patch, a veteran of the Great War’s trench warfare, proposed that war was “a license to go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn’t speak?” That logic is hard to better.
The statement here is not “lest we forget” but “what should be remembered?” Corpses are only memorable if they are useful. The fallen serve as bricks and masonry for the next slaughter, engineered by war criminals, the negligent and the incompetent. They died so that you could live and prosper, or so we are told. The commemorative classes repeatedly refer to “democracy”, “freedom” and “our way of life”, a seedy way of suggesting value in sending the young to an early grave. Accordingly, so that your children should be able to live in a way befitting their standing, you must participate in the next murderous, maiming conflict.
If these commemorations served as lessons, then they should be revered, repeated and rerun with mighty fortitude. Unfortunately, those lessons are never observed. Were that to be the case, such quixotic, costly provocations as the AUKUS pact, which incites nuclear proliferation and arming for future conflict against phantom threats, would be matters of the past.
As things are, these commemorative days mark human idiocy and venality, anticipating the next bloodbath that will enlist the docile for war, leaving the planners untouched by accountability, be it in any legal or ethical sense. To this day, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and former US President George W. Bush, remain at large for illegally invading Iraq in March 2003. It was an invasion based on a monstrous lie on Iraq’s capabilities, notably in the Weapons of Mass Destruction department, one that dismembered a state and unleashed an Islamic fundamentalist whirlwind in the Middle East.
Those in the Remembrance Day promotions business are keen to remind younger converts that the occasion is not just for previous generations. Bianca Wheeler, the new Director of Veterans SA, offers some unconvincing waffle to any unsuspecting newcomers to the creed: “Remember Day is about linking the past to the present, and then taking that and considering what it means for the future.” Wheeler, herself a former naval officer, is keen to change the conventional view of what a veteran is: not necessarily one festooned in medals from the great conflicts, but one dedicated to service. How eye-piping in sweetness.
With each November 11, there is a growing concern. The young seem increasingly estranged and disassociated from these occasions, worry those in the Remembrance Day amnesia racket. “For many young people,” ponders the Hawkesbury Post, a New South Wales paper, “Remembrance Day may seem like an event disconnected from their daily lives. After all, the wars it commemorates feel like ancient history.”
If history is but a record of agreed upon facts, then this occasion is one about agreed upon mythology. Wheeler would have you believe that a historical exercise is at play, hence the following platitude: “You can’t know where to go in the future without knowing where you come from.”
The onus should be on the war maker, the arms manufacturer and merchants of death, to explain why their nasty handiwork needs to be remembered. By focusing on the dead, we can ignore the reasons for their deployment, the circumstances they found themselves in countries they barely knew existed, falling for causes they could hardly articulate. The statues, monuments and honour boards always mention the heroically fallen; never do they mention those who signed their death warrants to guarantee the Grim Reaper his fill.
As things stand, the armaments complex has far better things to do than turning up at war memorials. Killing fellow human beings is a frightfully pressing business, and there is always ruddy cash to be made from the quarry of the eternally gullible.
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8 comments
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Phil Pryor -
Kerri -
Canguro -
Andyfiftysix -
GL -
leefe -
Gregory -
GL
Return to home pageI remember things alone now, on Anzac day and on Remembrance day, just about those poor and naive and gullible and enthusiastic ones who went and died, and for what? Sad, for “we” fought with and for the British, who did not aim to free the Kenyans, or Malayans, or any of the map’s pink bits. Uncles were captured (under age) and gassed, (TPI) and we were to go in the cadets later, because…old classmate Jack Howard is a war criminal, duped, insolent, proud, distorted, while a school captain we had got killed in a useless intrusion in Vietnam, just a conscript “Nasho” wasted. Only our efforts against a provoked Japan made any sense, as Darwin and other places copped a nasty blow. Why fight other people in their lands, being invaders, intruders, occupiers, savages? I think of peace, on those days…Those others were not fighting in Pitt St. Sydney, where I might have turned up to defend us…for defence is not killing elsewhere to assert some imagined superiority.
Yasmin Abdel-Magied was run out of the country for expressing similar sentiments to what l am about to write but l do remember being told by a fairly authoritarian and self important librarian at my work that “Lest We Forget”, was to remind us not to forget the horrors of war. And yet as Magied pointed out there is an ever increasing list of wars that abundantly illustrate we forgot decades ago.
To say war tourism and days of remembrance and commemoration are not glorifying war is nonsense.
Without the annual and frequent commemoration of events of war there would be no new cannon fodder to fuel the industry and continue the profits. Without war the USA would collapse.
Lest we NOT copy!
In this country, with the advent of WWI, at that time, the country’s population was less than 5 million, of which
nearly 420,000 men enlisted, more than 60,000 were killed, and around 156,000 men were maimed and wounded, gassed, taken prisoner, or maddened.
Less than 25 years later, nearly a million Australians signed up for what was referred to as ‘duty’ in the Second World War: nearly 30,000 were killed, 23,000 wounded, and 30,000 captured as prisoners of war.
In the space of a bit over thirty years, political decisions in this country resulted in the deaths of close to 100,000, around 180,000 wounded, along with many thousands of POW’s, many of whom died in captivity. These were appalling outcomes for a nascent so-called civilised society. Every town in this country has a shrine to the dead, and politicians continue to celebrate the lie of glory and heroism.
Perhaps, perhaps, in the future, later generations will refuse to submit to the false narratives of the necessity of killing their fellow kind.
Buffy Sainte-Marie… Universal Soldier, a call to the cessation of war.
lest we forget what we did yesterday cause i sure cant remember what i did two days ago.
Canguro, i too was/is a buffie saint marie fan but those sentiments are mear reflections of pain.
There is no utopia with no soldiers and no war. We are inbuilt to follow a messiah and society has figured out the best way to become a messiah is to have narcistic tendencies…. the cycle is perpetual. Some will say to me, hold on, some of us are not like that. I agree some of us are not, but face facts we are the minority.
We are no better than the apes whose genes we share. There is no evolution for us, another species would have to suddenly appear and simultaneously have better survival of the species techniques. We are too successful at protecting our own and destroying the competition. AI could be the ultimate saviour/destroyer. Designed in our own image…..now where did i read that…….
“Lest we forget…” Then we did:
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/timeline-of-20th-and-21st-century-wars
We forget all too easily.
Authorities are great at talking about sacrifice and honour and duty, but absolutely shit at actually taking care of the survivors of their warmongering.
Can we fget away from meaningless ceremonies and make sure veterans get proper medical care instead? Physical and mental.
Lest we forget our men foolishly throwing their lives away by being cannon fodder in so many difference wars and conflicts over the last century in OTHER COUNTRIES FOR OTHER NATIONS.
Every “remembrance day” I refuse to get involved or remember what is nothing but trying to glorify death. I’ve never understood the mind set of those that think serving in their country’s military is heroic or some noble cause. You are being conned by old greedy while men who strive for more power and glory. Why are the children of these warmongers never sent to be cannon fodder? No, they are protected by those that started the war so the they can be the elites in the future to start the next war. Killing each other seems to be one of our species primary goals. I guess to put a positive spin on it, think how much more over crowded our planet now would be if we hadn’t slaughtered each other en masse over our stupid beliefs and petty differences. War and conflict are clear signs that ‘homo sapiens’ have a long way to go to evolve in to a species to be proud of. Perhaps a name change is a good start because we are not very ‘wise’ or ‘astute’ as per the Latin meaning of the name.
On a “Holy Shit!” moment:
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/who-is-pete-hegseth-donald-trump-s-pick-as-secretary-of-defence-20241113-p5kqak.html