Twin Towers and Tsunami’s: When Some Are More Equal Than Others
After a brief spell of the runs that lasted a few days, I’m now back and fighting fit for another installment of my rebellion against the Evil Empire, chavs, call centres and the cult of the celebrity amongst other things.
While contemplating life, the Universe and disemboweling neo-con Republicans (not the best thoughts to be pondering whilst evacuating a watery mass the size of the Exxon Valdez oil slick into my toilet bowl), it suddenly occurred to me that although we never forget the horrors of WWII and the genocides that took place, we seem to forget other horrific episodes in the course of history. Some may and indeed do argue that as it is still relatively recent, therefore it is not out of our collective psyche as yet.
But surely by that rationale, we should then be hearing a lot more about more recent genocides such as Pol Pot in Cambodia (which resulted in the deaths of around 3 million people by the Khmer Rouge) or the massacre of a million Tutsi in Rwanda.
However it occurred to me that one of the reasons this occurs is the reason why we are told never to forget the victims of 9/11 as opposed to the thousands more who died in Afghanistan and Iraq – they are not westerners.
Some could argue that the massive outpouring of sympathy generated in the wake of the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 would discredit this argument. But I think that some important distinctions can be made here. Firstly, this was a natural disaster, not a consequence of direct human activity. Therefore as no one is to blame, our sympathy doesn’t really extend to guilt as it does with regards to the Holocaust. I ask myself, will we still be holding a minute’s silence 5 years from now for the victims of the tsunami? I doubt it very much. But you can bet your ass some neo-con pro US shitrag like the Sun newspaper* will be clamouring to remember 9/11.
Secondly, there was no real sense of identification with the victims of the tsunami unlike that of 9/11,where even French President Jacques Chirac said “We are all Americans” now (something that most red-necked hillbilly hicks seemed to have conveniently forgot a year and a half later). This seems to illustrate the idea of westerners valued more than non westerners.
Finally, the media exposure of the tsunami, while extensive, was still far less than that of the Twin Towers falling and the fact that it happened in the US ensured the event was still in the news 3 months later – indicating perhaps our morbid fascination with human violence.
The fact of the matter is that we are very selective in our morals and emotions if and when it suits us. Take for example the sudden concern of apologists and supporters of the Iraq war. Only when it became apparent that no WMD were discovered did they then turn to clamouring for the thousands killed as a result of Saddam’s guns and gassings. Yet men like Rumsfeld were the very ones selling him these weapons . He’s even got the handshake to prove it!! Likewise, when those poor kids were killed at Beslan last year, quite rightly the world condemned it, yet how many more kids were killed in Chechnya as a result of Russian forces prior to this. Who’s mourning them?
In this respect, until we learn to value equally all human life, not based on self interest, selective amnesia and xenophobia, we will be seeing a lot more hate and suffering. Hitler once said that no one will remember the slaughter of the Armenians by the Turks. He was right there but didn’t realise that his own personal genocide would open up a can of worms that is still impacting today.
Never has the quote from George Orwell’s Animal Farm seemed more appropriate: “All animals are equal. But some are more equal than others.”
* I must at this point mention that this shitrag can only be compared to Julius Streicher’s Der Sturmer in its poisonous views and thus wholeheartedly advocate the mass extermination of all Sun readers.