“Never again.”
Those words were spoken in the wake of the second world war, the revelation and realisation that a sophisticated, educated and civilsed nation of people could commit atrocities of such a scale. Not merely a genocide, a regime of torture, slavery and human misery under the guise of scientific enquiry and chauvinistic supremacy. The victors of the Good war satisfied their sacrifice and accomplishments in knowing that they had conquered an evil. Myths were born. It was the feat of the greatest generation. All other wars and enemies would be judged by this one, the second world war. The enemy were known to be evil because of what they had done.
The first world war, was known as the Great War. It was also, promised to be ‘The War to End all Wars’. So great was it’s scale and the magnitude of it’s destruction, a global conflict that destroyed the old world, ended the long nineteenth century and gave birth to an endless twentieth century, which lingers on to this day. The war to end all wars, only birthed more. Not just the sequel but those to this day.
“Never again,” as empty as, “to end all wars.” The myths and supremacy gained from the second world war, created new empires and institutions that promised stability and an end to genocide and injustice. Instead, they allowed for it. Proxies and empires fought despite a United Nations. Unlike it’s predecessor, the League of Nations which had the good sense to dissolve into shame, it remains as a pathetic monolith. War never ended, it gained new definitions, legalese and branding re-defined it. “Police action”, “Intervention”, or “sanctions” all under the auspices of peace and beneath the umbrella of self righteousness born in the victories over evil, in world war two. Two super powers, and a world divided among the victors, both responsible for their own imperial ambitions and mass murders in foreign lands.
Nearly a century after, “Never Again,” was promised a genocide runs with the blood of innocent into the Earth. A dystopian tehcnowar like that which we saw glimmers of in the mid to late twentieth century. Robots fighting alongside men, automated as much as steered by distant human operators. It’s not human. It’s terribly human. The rationalisation to kill children as pragmatic as it has always been. “Ethnic cleansing”, is a pariah concept that only barbarians and the enemies of ‘good’ would deploy, we are lied to know. When conducted by allies, it’s omitted as an act on scale or the innocent, are not innocent. They are all tarred into a collective, guilty by birth, identity or proximity. To be starved, exterminated or ejected. When the Serbian nationalists did this in the 1990s, we the voyeurs were allowed to be repulsed. When the Israeli government continues to do it today, it’s ignored or phrased differently.
Those who proclaim world war two as the, ‘good’ war will ignore the very bad that has been done since. Or, during. The legal institutions and international organisations set up have done nothing to prevent genocides each decade, the world over. They have not deterred authoritarianism, despotism or infringements on human rights. Instead these organisations, work with the repressive and mass killers as partners, have them as members or massage the definitions of what a human right is, according to the ideological needs of power.
The imbalance of concern for the innocent tends to satisfy the powerful. It’s with a disdain and omission of reality, that children are be obliterated, starved and murdered in plain sight. Photographs of burned Korean children consumed by Allied newspaper readers, who are taught to understand it’s is for ‘their’ own good, to stop communism. Vietnamese children naked, skin melting from napalm burns, the television viewer at home hears over the images, “we must burn the village, in order to save it.” It is a known truth. The CNN effect let’s the world watch with excitement a Neo-blitzkrieg, the enemy another Hitler. After the war, Iraqi children can die from starvation and an inability to get medicines because of ‘peace time’ embargoes, a fat woman of government can mutter on television, “eggs need to be broken to make an omelette.” Two decades later, what did that omelette taste like, was it even made, despite so many eggs smashed? We, the West clearly have eaten those omelettes, it’s reflected by our obesity.
Most recently, a fetus lay exposed, burned into death and the world’s voyeurs see it. Did it matter what ethnicity the baby was? Where they were born? What language the mother spoke? Should any of that matter? Because, we understand that it does matter. We have learned to know this. A Palestinian baby, mother are not important. They may as well be Biafran, doomed to the forgotten memory of newspaper clippings and history books, no longer read. Instead, now, they are lost in algorithms on screens of those scrolling for content. A mother, a child, their charred remains, forgotten to memes and content. Ever to be remembered by those nearby, who kissed them, held them, loved them, could smell them before and after, and who would go on to bury them.
It seems that we need narratives. Those born from an obedience to myth, the appeal to authority is all that matters, most depend upon it now. That baby, may, become a terrorist or is associated by proximity to terrorists. What is terrorism? If not the murder of children. Then again, the murder of children is apparently needed, reasoned to be an important outcome to achieve a goal. To make, omelettes. It’s not murder when the lawmakers of your land do so, otherwise their laws would become illegitimate. The babies, their ash and dirt mixed remains, collateral.
That declaration, “never again,” was Utopian. A sincere expression by people who mostly meant it. Cynically, it could also have meant that the victims of that genocide and oppression, would themselves as a group never suffer pogroms and mass death either. In becoming a truth. For the chauvinistic Zionists and their backers, this is true. When expressed however, it was meant for all human beings. Regardless of faith, race and culture. To assume supremacy because of nation, race, ideology and religion is wicked, vile. To see the innocent as an enemy because of nation, race and religion, is evil.
Piles of naked, lifeless bodies outside the death camps of Auschwitz may as well be those heaped masses of dead innocent at Dresden. Innocent murdered. Scorched, shadowy remnants of human life, lost in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, vaporised innocent people, the rationale of their guilt because of the deeds conducted by the government that coerces and rules them. Just the rationale that led to the terrorism of 2001, New York cities innocent as undeserving. Except inside the minds of mass murderers, political and ideological killers.
The world set forth with, again, again and again. The reasons always certain. The policy ambitions made sense for most of the generation involved. Until the attrition of extermination and war grew to be too much. Then, what was the original point. The invasion of Iraq was a mistake, Vietnam? In the case of settler colonialism, genocide is crucial, it is the bedrock of Manifest Destiny.
Ignorance is now, more than ever, a choice. Though, knowing seems as impotent as not knowing. The reality is that no matter how heinous, and unjust the outcomes turn out being. The ends, do seem to justify the means. The ends, are ever fluid. The ends, it turns out is endless power. More government, it’s avatar and identity may change. Though, it’s essence remains. The killers are retained. The appeal to authority is certain. The myths of the past, a skeleton that gives today a bloody shape.
The innocent must die. They will die. Those eggs will be smashed. The omelette, is power itself and those who are addicted to it, and love it. That’s how good people can do bad things. That’s why nice people, look the other way. That’s why most don’t care. They simply can’t care. Their world view, and living depend upon it.
For those that care, there will be an endless parade of innocent lives ruined and killed for us to witness with pornographic voyeurism, to be haunted by with impotent misery. Those who don’t care, the bliss it brings will only certainly ensure that it goes on. The innocent, they shall suffer ever more. The anguish, terrible, The laws and moral proclamations a disgusting epitaph to be spat across countless unmarked graves and graveyards full of those who should never again have been killed.
The promise of, “Never Again,” felt and still feels nice. Because it was uttered, unfortunately, it ensured, ever again and again and again, another murdered child, like a senseless rhyme spoken in bullets and bombs, again and again.
