Don't Mention the War
More idiocy from Robert Fisk, of the usual variety. ("More and more, President Bush's rhetoric sounds like the crazed videotapes of Osama bin Laden..." Whatever, Bob. Tell it to the Arab News.)
Noting the frequent allusions to Hitler and World War II as instructive parallels in the discussion of the current crisis, Fisk asks a revealing rhetorical question: "must we, forever, live under the shadow of a war that was fought and won before most of us were born?"
Forever is a long time, but broadly speaking, the answer is yes. The Second World War and the defeat of fascism was the defining event of the twentieth century. (And if fascism had not been defeated, that would have been the century's defining event.) More than anything else, and for better and worse, it shaped the world we live in, laid the foundation for our contemporary political and social reality. Those who liken the struggle against al Qaeda and Islamofascism to that against Hitler and National Socialism may be mistaken (though I think they're more right than wrong) but you can't really argue that it's not a relevant topic. Is Islamofascism the 21st-century face of the kind of totalitarianism that was vanquished in the 20th century? Perhaps so, in some respects, and perhaps not in others. Fisk isn't interested in refuting these contentions, nor in demonstrating the ways in which such parallels are inappropriate or misconceived. He just wishes people wouldn't keep bringing them up. He wants to rule the entire topic out of bounds, "for the purposes of this discussion" anyway. (Those with other points of view are encouraged to seek other sections, presumably...)
Perhaps it's reading a bit much into an offhand comment of a notorious crackpot, but, as I said, I think it's revealing. Fisk and his ideological buddies are often accused of trying to adapt reality to fit the theory, rather than the other way round. Here's a pretty clear example of it, of the frustrated desire to write off an entire century so that the creaky old ideology can make it through at least one more sputtering column. It's a doomed enterprise. Diehard adherents to the dying ideology exemplified by Fisk, particularly those in Europe, are going to have to get used to the idea that people will keep bringing up the unpleasantness of the last century, fair or not. When Jews are vilified and persecuted in France, Vichy will always spring to mind. When crowds rally around cries of "death to the Jews" and "Hitler didn't finish the job," rest assured: the subject of the Holocaust will come up, even though it happened "before most of us were born." And when a United Europe funds and champions terrorist organizations dedicated to the destruction of Israel's six million Jews, some troublemaker will inevitably bring up what happened the last time Europe was united. Fair or not, that's the way it is. Reality and history can't be asserted out of existence. My advice to Robert Fisk: get used to it.
Posted by Dr. Frank at May 25, 2002 12:10 PM | TrackBack