A Holocaust is a Fact. But then the will to obliterate the memory of such a fact is also a Fact. And the D of PP plays the herald trumpeting the blind days to come.
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When Reality's up for Grabs
Mark Steyn - May 21, 2007
I find myself mulling over the future of the past. By which I mean that the latter depends very much on the former. For example, much as it may astonish younger readers, there are millions of people who grew up all over the world in schools that taught them that the Britannic inheritance was on the whole a good thing as opposed to the root cause of all the world's woes.
In Canada and around the western world, we have discarded large chunks of our past. The question is: what else can be junked?
Over in London the other day, there was an interesting story in The Mail On Sunday, which began as follows:
"Schools are dropping controversial subjects from history lessons--such as the Holocaust and the Crusades--because teachers do not want to cause offence, Government research has found . . . Some teachers have even dropped the Holocaust completely from lessons over fears that Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic reactions in class."
Indeed. This was from a study for the Department of Education, which reported: "Teachers and schools avoid emotive and controversial history for a variety of reasons, some of which are well-intentioned. Staff may wish to avoid causing offence or appearing insensitive to individuals or groups in their classes. In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship."
I felt vaguely I'd read this story before, and I had: different country, same discreet closing of the door on awkward corners of the past. In the Netherlands, schoolteachers are reluctant to discuss the Second World War because "in particular settings" pupils don't believe the Holocaust happened, and, if it did, the Germans should have finished the job and we wouldn't have all these problems today.
When these stories crop up in the papers, official spokespersons rush to reassure us that no formal official decision has been made. The Holocaust remains on the national curriculum, no plans to change anything, nothing to worry about. It's just isolated schools here and there where it's become a subject more honoured in the breach, and only in the interests of "avoiding causing offence." Which, let's face it, is what most of us want to do, because if you're "causing offence" it can get pretty exhausting.
In the Middle East, for example, I'm like those British and European schoolma'ams: on the whole, I avoid bringing up the Holocaust--in part because in the Muslim world it's a subject impervious to reason, but also because it's very disheartening to meet folks who are bright, witty, engaging, perceptive and then 40 minutes into the conversation you mention the Jews and discover that your bright, witty, engaging, et cetera companion is, at a certain level, nuts.
That's the problem a lot of European teachers are facing. If a large percentage of your class has a blind spot, it's easiest just to move on to something else. Hizb ut-Tahrir, a prominent voice among European Muslims, tells its adherents that "the Jews are a people of slander . . . a treacherous people" and that Islam commands believers to "kill them wherever you find them." Last year, a poll found that 37 per cent of British Muslims agreed that British Jews are a legitimate target "as part of the ongoing struggle for justice in the Middle East." Who wants to argue with that every time you mention the Second World War? Best just to drop the subject.
In 1984, George Orwell wrote, "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." The Muslim community in Europe does not yet "control" anything: they are, relatively, small in numbers, though big in certain cities and bigger still in the schools of those cities. Nevertheless, it is significant that, though still quite a long way from formal "control," they are already determining the shape of the future, and thus of the past. The Holocaust did happen. Millions did die. "Facts," said John Adams, "are stubborn things." But not in the Europe of 2007. Faced with serving a population far more stubborn than any mere fact, Continental teachers are quietly putting reality up for grabs. It's a small thing, initially--the sin of omission, of discreetly gliding over "controversy" in the interests of multicultural sensitivity.
And, to be honest, if ever there were a subject Europeans are anxious to drop, it's this one. They have Holocaust memorial days every year, and every year Muslim lobby groups refuse to participate on the grounds (as Sir Iqbal Sacranie put it) that the commemorations exclude any mention of today's "holocaust" and "ongoing genocide," in Palestine. And the broader population seems inclined to agree. Two years ago, Anthony Lipmann, the Anglican son of an Auschwitz survivor, marked Holocaust Memorial Day as follows: "When on 27 January I take my mother's arm--tattoo number A-25466--I will think not just of the crematoria and the cattle trucks but of Darfur, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Jenin, Fallujah."
Jenin? That would be the notorious 2002 "Jenin massacre," over which Robert Fisk and the rest of Fleet Street's gullible sob-sisters were weepin' an' a-wailin'. No such "Jenin massacre" ever took place: the Palestinian mass graves and Israeli war crimes were entirely fictions of the international media. Twenty-three Israelis were killed in fighting at the Jenin camp. Fifty-two Palestinians died, according to the Israelis; according to Yasser Arafat's official investigators, it was 56 Palestinians. Even if one accepts the higher figure, that means every single deceased Palestinian could have his own mass grave and there'd still be room to inter all those Holocaust history textbooks Europe no longer requires. Yet, to Anthony Lipmann, those 52-56 dead Palestinians weigh in the scales of history as heavy as six million Jews. And that's before we get to Fallujah: in rounding up a few hundred jihadist head-hackers, the Yanks perpetrated another Auschwitz? If Jenin can be a Holocaust, so can a bad train wreck. With Holocaust observances like Mr. Lipmann's, who needs Holocaust denial?
Well, as it happens, the Muslims do. Like Canada, much of Europe has statutes prohibiting Holocaust denial: the historian David Irving, you may recall, was convicted of "denial" and jailed in Austria. Muslim scholars are not impressed by these laws. "Nobody can say even one word about the number in the alleged Holocaust," says Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the favourite Islamic scholar of many Euroleftists. "Nobody can do so even if he is writing an MA or PhD thesis, and discussing it scientifically. Such claims are not acceptable."
But a savvy imam knows an opening when he sees one. "The Jews are protected by laws," notes Qaradawi. "We want laws protecting the holy places, the prophets, and Allah's messengers." In other words, he wants to use the constraints on free speech imposed by Europe (and Canada) to protect Jews in order to put much of Islam beyond political debate.
These are straws in the wind, but there will be many more of them from a political and bureaucratic class anxious to avoid "causing offence." What other bits of reality will be chipped away from the curriculum in the years ahead? And will what's left be enough to glue a nation together? After all, if you can't agree on the past, you're unlikely to agree on the future.
A few months ago, I met the splendid prime minister of Australia, John Howard, on the day of a new education initiative to get the country's history taught (as he put it) as an "heroic national narrative." It's a marvelous phrase, but in Britain and much of Europe the classroom can no longer agree on who are the heroes and who are the villai
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." Yes, that just about sums it.
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