Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Bet my genocide's bigger than your genocide: sad cult of suffering

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Bet my genocide's bigger than your genocide: sad cult of suffering

    Times OnLine UK
    September 16, 2005

    Bet my genocide's bigger than your genocide: the sad cult of suffering

    Notebook by Mick Hume

    HOW DID a discussion about combating Islamic extremism turn into
    an infantile game of `my Holocaust is as big as your Holocaust'?

    After July 7, the Government set up several committees to advise it on
    tackling extremism in the Muslim community. Now these advisers
    reportedly want Tony Blair to scrap the annual Holocaust Memorial Day
    and replace it with a Genocide Day that would recognise the plight of
    Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere. They say a special memorial to
    Jewish victims `sounds too exclusive to many young Muslims' who `feel
    hurt' that they are not included.

    If anything in our hyperbolic culture still merits being seen as an
    exclusive event, I would have thought it was the Nazi's industrialised
    campaign of genocide that killed six million Jews. Yet today it seems
    that millions more - by no means all of them Muslims - want to be
    recognised as having had a Holocaust of their own.

    A quick internet search reveals an (almost) A to Z of groups whom it
    is claimed have experienced genocide: Armenians, Bosnian Muslims,
    Chechens/Cambodians, Darfur Christians, East Timorese, Falun Gong
    followers, Gay men, HIV/Aids sufferers, Iraqis/Irish, Jews, Kosovans,
    Laotians, Maoris, Native Americans, Palestinians, Roma, Slaves in
    America, Tutsis/Tibetans, Unborn children, Victims of motor cars,
    White South African farmers, Xhosa, Yugoslavs, Zulus.

    (My apologies to any forgotten genocide victims with the initials O or
    Q.)It might seem a wonder that there are any of us left behind to
    commemorate the dead.

    No doubt some have strong evidence of mass slaughter. But when almost
    any experience of suffering, past or present, can be branded genocide,
    so thata US news network carries the headline `New Orleans evacuee:
    `It's Genocide!' ' , it inevitably demeans the word and belittles the
    singular horrors of the Nazi Holocaust.

    The UK Holocaust Memorial Day now threatens to blow up in the faces of
    its well-meaning founders. Frankly, they were asking for it. New
    Labour set itup in 2001 not only as a commemoration of the past but
    also as an expressionof the modern cult of suffering, which puts
    victims on a pedestal and invites us all to feel good about ourselves
    by feeling their pain. That in turn acted as an invitation to some
    Muslim worthies and other self-styled spokespersons for victims of
    genocide to claim their piece of the grief pie.

    Perhaps we would be better off scrapping these stage-managed,
    victim-fests altogether. Far from `feeling hurt' about being left out
    of the experience, some of us are only too happy to have been
    `excluded' fromthe Holocaust - a terrible historical event that has
    Never Happened Again.

    I WAS INTERESTED to see `police sources' reporting that all of two
    fuel protesters approached the Shell refinery at Ellesmere Port this
    week, but were ` frightened off by the size of the media pack'. We
    often hear boasts about the media being `the new opposition', but `the
    newriot police' is a new one on me. Still, perhaps it was fitting that
    the media pack burst the protesters ' bubble. After all, it was the
    media that so ludicrously inflatedtheir hopes of `causing chaos' in
    the first place.

    ALTHOUGH cricket is not normally my game, I concede that beating the
    great Shane Warne and his assistants was a significant sporting
    achievement. Butthe cricketati couldn't leave it at that. Even amid
    the victory celebrations, the snobs had to find time to have a go at
    football, boring on again abouthow cricket is altogether a more
    skilful, sportsmanlike and civilised game than brutish
    `soccer'. Apparently cricketers such as Andrew `Freddie' Flintoff even
    binge drink like gentlemen.

    One could offer various impassioned replies to these petty-minded
    allegations. But why bother? Let us just admit that football is simply
    notcricket, old boy. Which is why the world (as opposed to the
    Empire) loves it. With a bit of luck the Ashes hysteria will encourage
    some of the sporting tarts (male and female) who have attached
    themselves to football to dress up as Flintoff rather than Beckham,
    and pretending that they understand the law of lbw rather than
    offside. That would be something to celebrate. So come on, allyou
    new-found Freddie fans. Can we have our ball back now, please?
    [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected])

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Working...
X