Squandering the heritage of D-Day

What does D-Day comemorate? It opened a new front in the struggle against Hitler and led to the collapse of his regime.  The reason I've picked the photo above is not to trot out insincere homilies, like certain public figures but to show respect for the millions who suffered, all over, not only in battle, not only in 1939-45.  If we really care about the past, we need too learn from what went wrong in the first place.  The photo above swept the media a few years ago, and was used as a scare tactic, with the slogan "Why am I alone here? " to manipulate people by guilt. The photo was in fact  taken in St Petersburg in 2007 by Alexander Petrosyan.  He wasn't abandoned : the streets are lined with people in support.  The man was old, struggling to keep up with his comrades ahead of him. (Please see here for the snopes fact check).   How easy it is to twist public opionin ! As Hermann Göring is alleged to have said at the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials "All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in every country". Whether or not he actually said that, I don't know but it does address the way people can be fooled into rash action, often against their best interest.  But have we learned ? As world leaders gather to mark D-Day, fact is that some of them came to power exactly because they figured a way of fanning hysteria and hate.

To honour the millions who died, we need to think about the causes of war in the first place. 1939-45 was in many ways a continuation of 1914-1918, which itself was a rematch of 1936-7, 1870 and 1807-1814, and possibly more.  In 1945 the difference was that people realized that one way to avoid war was for people to work together for peace.  From this grew Nato and eventually the European Union.  The last 75 years have seen a cessation of hostilities longer than Europe has seen in centuries. That doesn't mean that there won't be conflicts, but it's still better than war.  Instead we now have populism which thrives on mass hysteria. Not long ago there was an attempt to  make Christians think there was a "war on Christianity". It turned out that that was being spread by right-wing extremists, including the AfD. They were resurrecting a meme popular in the Cold War.  Then, the targets were Communists, but extremists have no scruples : their targets can switch at any time.    Good people need to stick together to stand up to rising extremism of all kinds.  Divide and Rule works, all too well.  Instead we have a world where the tactics that got Hitler to power are getting people into power who might make Hitler seem small fry. Modern technology could mean  media manipulation on a scale greater than we can imagine. The stakes are higher, too.  The evil have everything to gain by playing people against each other. But like turkeys voting for Christmas, the masses are easily fooled.  . Please read the article in the New York Times by Roger Cohen "The Donald thinks D-Day is all about Him"