On October 25, 2023, journalist Omar El Akkad tweeted:
“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”
This is not only true of Gaza. In school, we learn the horrors of Nazis murdering six-million Jewish people during WWII, but when it was actually happening, the holocaust was ignored and downplayed by our media.
While Akkad’s statement is as terrible as it is accurate, it does leave something out, revealed in this clip from the 2003 documentary On the Threshold of Oblivion. It’s a short conversation during a tour of a German tank museum between elderly, former Nazi soldiers and a young Dutch woman. During this conversation, the elderly former soldiers not only justify their actions during WWII, but indignantly portray the Nazis as the martyred heroes of the War.
Nazis—elderly or otherwise—don’t have a monopoly on hate. And, unfortunately that hate is not restricted to the past.
In 1955, a Mississippi white woman accused 14-year-old Emmett Till of whistling at her. This accusation was the catalyst for young Till’s abduction, lynching and his killers’ acquittal by an all-white jury. The white woman would later admit that her accusation was a lie.
For decades, people spoke out against this monstrous act and eventually, in 2008 a sign detailing the murder of young Emmett was installed at the Tallahatchie River site where his body was found. But despite there being no obvious downside to calling a thing what it is, soon the sign was torn from the ground and thrown into the river. A replacement sign went up only to be quickly riddled with bullet holes. A third went up, also destroyed by bullets. A fourth sign—this time necessarily bulletproof—was installed in 2021.
Some will look at Mr. Akkad’s tweet and conclude that at least people will eventually be convinced, but very unfortunately, everyone will not have always been against this. Nowhere near enough people will ever be against any of this. Right now, you could wander through any comment section—including the one from the above YouTube clip—and find countless people who gladly celebrate the murder of marginalized peoples. They’re much more common than many of us want to believe. I mean, they’re overflowing the White House.
So, should you keep trying to convince right-wingers?
Honestly, do what you feel you should. Just keep in mind that there are both openly and as Mr. Akkad implies, secretly hateful people in this world and none of them got that way through careful consideration of facts and/or logic. They got that way because our country offers them something in exchange for their hate. It could be a sense of community or personal superiority or political power, but whatever it is, the solution is a society that actively rejects hate. And, while that may sound fantastical, historically, our country has actively and successfully rejected hate many times. It’s just that our progress often gets destroyed and its history erased… Usually because we’ve allowed hateful people back into the conversation out of a belief that we could change their minds.
https://letterboxd.com/film/on-the-threshhold-of-oblivion/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/us/emmett-till-ole-miss-students-fraternity.html
Thank you Samual. So well written/explained.
Another great essay!