I read a news article about a French comedian being banned for making anti-semitic remarks. He’s also been charged with denying the holocaust, which is against the law in France. My question is, what about all the other holocausts?
Why aren’t all groups that have been subjected to systematic genocide, mass murder, theft of their lands and possessions honored with memorials, given reparations, and the perpetrators hunted down and brought to justice?
Why isn’t it against the law to deny that the Native American holocaust happened? Or the Congolese holocaust? Why isn’t the French occupation of Algeria called a holocaust? Or dropping the atom bomb killing hundreds of thousands of people and causing birth defects for generations?
I certainly don’t deny that an actual historical event happened, but I also don’t deem one group of people more important or more deserving of justice than another, either.
Considering the massive killing still going on all over the world, maybe remembering history doesn’t keep you from repeating it, but rather the opposite. Maybe forgetting about it would stop all the revenge killing. How else will age-old conflicts over land and religion ever be resolved but for everyone to start with a clean slate?
Copyright © 2014 by Andrea L. Walker
All rights reserved. This article or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the writer
except for the use of brief quotations.
Why aren’t all groups that have been subjected to systematic genocide, mass murder, theft of their lands and possessions honored with memorials, given reparations, and the perpetrators hunted down and brought to justice?
Why isn’t it against the law to deny that the Native American holocaust happened? Or the Congolese holocaust? Why isn’t the French occupation of Algeria called a holocaust? Or dropping the atom bomb killing hundreds of thousands of people and causing birth defects for generations?
I certainly don’t deny that an actual historical event happened, but I also don’t deem one group of people more important or more deserving of justice than another, either.
Considering the massive killing still going on all over the world, maybe remembering history doesn’t keep you from repeating it, but rather the opposite. Maybe forgetting about it would stop all the revenge killing. How else will age-old conflicts over land and religion ever be resolved but for everyone to start with a clean slate?
Copyright © 2014 by Andrea L. Walker
All rights reserved. This article or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the writer
except for the use of brief quotations.
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