History is not a straight line. What goes around, comes around.
On 16th November 2011, Volker Kauder, a close ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, warned Britain that it would not “get away with” looking after its own interests at the expense of Europe. He said European nations “are now speaking German in that they are backing Chancellor Merkel”.
1930’s fascists Hitler and Mosley had “Europe A Nation” as their slogan. Hitler’s 1942 “Europäische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft” translates to “European Economic Community”. Foreign Minister Carl Clodius said at the time there would be a currency and customs union across Europe.
I don’t write this to join in the chorus of anti-German feeling about at the minute, but rather to make a much more intriguing point. There follow two news items from today:
Angry relatives of missing mine workers in South Africa complained that the authorities had failed to produce a central register of the 34 people shot dead last Thursday.
On 21 March 1960 at least 180 black Africans were injured and 69 killed when South African police opened fire on approximately 300 demonstrators.
How many people aged under 25 today, I wonder, would know the significance of the Sharpeville Massacre?
And….
Japanese politicians today set sail for a group of disputed islands, in the teeth of protests by China, which claims them for its own.
Over the past forty-five years, China and other countries have allowed Japanese war crimes to be forgotten. In fact, the only constant reminders of the victims of World War II in Asia were the events commemorating the Japanese who were killed by atomic bombs dropped by the United States. The young generations, Chinese and Japanese alike, are not kept informed about the consequences of imperialist militarism.
Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to make the same mistakes. German commentators like Wolfgang Munchau affect being disgusted by comparisons between the EU and the Nazi Grossdeutscherreich, but they have no right to be. Black South African politicians would no doubt regard comparisons between recent events there and Sharpeville as unaccaeptable Bwana racism, but they have no right to be so arrogant – or unconcerned by the comparison. And while the Japanese people have shown admirable self-restraint during a decade of unparalleled economic hardship, they have only ever grudgingly apologised for heinous war crimes committed with a barbarous disregard for human life.
As with the ludicrous feminist concept of a complete change in gender role within forty years (and without reference to hormonal instincts) so too those globalists who would deny cultural difference and nationalism are heading for a fall.
Cultural flaws should be honestly recognised where they occur. They should be closely observed and, under certain circumstances, feared. Europe is about to be tossed into an anarchic re-alignment. The original Asian tiger faces an uncertain future alongside the new bigger tiger on the block. And one day very soon, the father of the Rainbow Country is going to die.
We ignore these realities at our peril.
The Slog 