[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.
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.