On January 6, 2021 we witnessed the desecration of the seat of our democracy by a hate filled mob. We witnessed the Confederate flag proudly paraded inside the Capitol rotunda. I ask, in the defense of evil what is there to be proud of?
Please! Someone convince me that Confederate symbols and monuments are not memorials to a failed ideology of hatred that considered Whiteness and its cultural characteristics as the highest standard of being human, the apex of civilization.
An ideology that placed Africans as sub-persons, a race not quite human and suited for exploitation— thus justifying race-based slavery, which was considered as a cause worthy of dying for and the ‘appropriate’ institution for African people by White supremacist masters, in a failed attempt to preserve it.
Please! Someone convince me that Aushwitz is not a memorial to the consequences of hate. A hatred so deep, so evil it morphed into unrestrained inhumane actions characterized by the classification and numerical labeling of Jews as mere cattle — an inferior class of humanity; a people deemed not worthy of sharing the same space or the same air as the White (Arian) race.
Please! Someone convince me that a hate-based ideology does not lead to intolerance and inhumane treatment of fellow human beings, in the form of enslavement, torture, forced separation of families, rape, extrajudicial executions, and eventually mass murder and genocide.
Auschwitz stands as a memorial that reminds us of what happens when we allow evil to proliferate. When we remain silent in the face of attempts to glorify, memorialize or defend evil. If we are to be true to the promise to ‘never again’ allow evil to take a foothold anywhere in the world, we must not permit memorials in the defense of evil.
Finally, the history of evil deeds are not worthy of glorification or memorialization, in any form, unless it is clearly intended to stand as a warning to what happens when evil is allowed to take its course.
He who hesitates is lost.