[I thought I’d post this here too in case it got taken down elsewhere for being too political or controversial]
I have grandparents and greatgrandparents who were part of the first world war and my wife’s family has five relatives who were part of the Second World War. Both of us have people who are buried overseas from both wars. Those loses and even the returning veterans had a deep effect onboth our families for generations.
Whenever Remembrance Day commemorations take place, it bothers me that the remembrance almost always centers around ‘remembering heros’, ‘remembering the dead’, ‘remember soldiers’ … and in many ways an almost glorification or celebration of war, great battles and heroic duties and events. I am all for commemorating the memory of soldiers and especially the dead but it should be much more than that.
We should do our very best to remember WHY these wars took place and the origins of these conflicts in the first place. And I’m no talking about just fighting evil fascism and dictators like Hitler or Mussolini … but to think about how, where and why these circumstances happen in the first place. Dictatorships, authoritarianism, fascism doesn’t just spontaneously happen … they happen because an entire community of people, professionals and wealthy backers support it, create it, build it and maintain it … and if these conditions fester long enough and build enough power and authority, it consumes a country to the point of affecting entire global regions and leading to world wars.
So whenever I think about Remembrance Day … I don’t just think about remembering the fallen dead or the wounded returning veterans … I think about why these world wide events happen in the first place and what we could do to prevent them from leading to terrible global tragedies in the first place.
We need to remember the past critically and honestly so that we don’t repeat those same pitfalls in the future.
On the broadcasts, it seemed like it was worse this year, somehow. Never forget… that people have died, at some point, for various reasons? It’s the safe lane between “all our wars ever have been just” and actually saying things that might hurt far-right feelings, I guess.
Plus, it feels like the reporters are uncomfortable talking to the WWII veterans, because they’re from a different time, and it messes with the propaganda too much. That’s forgetting on purpose!
Maybe next year I’ll go to a local thing, even if it means facing small town drama.
To me, it is about remembering them and how war is something to avoid, not something to glorify.
Its not just about Canadian soldiers.
A coworker wanted to have a workplace moment of silence for Rememberance Day. Several of our middle eastern engineers had no idea what it was about. “What event is this to remember?” people awkwardly explained its about Canadian troops who died during wars fighting for freedom. One of them said “Over 1 million Iraqis were killed during the war. Are they remembered too?”
We didn’t have the moment of silence.
“Over 1 million Iraqis were killed during the war. Are they remembered too?”
Imo that’s the point of Remembrance Day.
I went to the Canadian war museum around Remembrance Day when they had a Nazi Holocaust exhibition. People had placed their poppies in a cradle that had been used in one of the extermination camp precursors. It seemed fitting.
Yeah, but if we do that part too, it’s political! Why do you want to be a political, controversial person? Isn’t it so much easier to go through the motions, and collect the civic piety, but in a way that requires no commitment or social cost?
What do you mean, that’s exactly what the day tells us not to do? /s
For as long as I’ve been alive it’s seemed as if remembrance day has involved some tension between the idea of honouring the noble sacrifice of killing and dying for your country, and the idea that we should remember the horrors of killing and dying for your country so that we know better than to end up fighting another great war. The former seems to be winning out more than it used to, lately.
I felt a notable switch from “never again” to “remember the heroes” after 911. Fucking depressing.
I’ve grappled with that yesterday, realizing that was the difference between naming it Veterans’ Day as in the US and Remembrance Day here.
It’s a clear naming distinction between, “our troops killed and died for a noble cause” and “it sucked that so many had to die to achieve peace, hope it doesn’t have to anymore”.
The US has Memorial Day to remember their war dead and Veteran’s Day to honor the people who have served. It’s just that the US has also stripped those days of much of their meaning, I think partly because we never suffered the devastation and shattering social effects (in both good and bad ways) of war directly on our soil and that of our neighbors.
the remembrance almost always centers around ‘remembering heros’, ‘remembering the dead’, ‘remember soldiers’ … and in many ways an almost glorification or celebration of war,
You’ve confused remembrance day with what TV shows for veterans’ day.
Remembrance day is the renewal of an apology and a promise. It doesn’t glorify anything.
To remember is to work for peace.
Exactly, the remembrance of the dead who died for what we have now should be honoured by doing our very best to work for peace and prevent the world from falling into the hands of authoritarian or fascist leanings so that we don’t send our world towards another world wide conflict.
Everywhere I looked this year, it turns into a glorification or deification of soldiers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers from the past with black and white pictures of the dead who took part in glorious battle. And when I talk to most people about the history of those same wars, no one likes to even think critically about the how or the why they came about in the first place.
And it’s getting worse … because all those actual veterans of the two great wars are now gone. We no longer venerate living veterans … we are remembering those who are no longer here any more … which means most people are free to imagine whatever simplistic idea of history they want to believe … and most would like to believe their ancestor was a fearsome warrior who killed a dozen Nazis with their bare hands. I see a lot of my relatives especially younger people thinking like this … even if their veteran ancestor was just a forestry worker that worked as part of the Canadian Corps overseas.
This is something I’ve thought myself. I do fear the lessons about how and why conflicts have occurred has been forgotten.
Nice!
Another one from 1937 was a film starring Humphery Bogart … ‘The Black Legion’ - “It is a fictionalized treatment of the historic Black Legion of the 1930s in Michigan, a white terrorist group. A third of its members lived in Detroit, which had also been a center of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.”
