Dead Zone

I almost didn't bother to read an article in the New York Times titled The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking.  Oh, come on, I thought - how could anything possibly be more shocking than what is already known...that story must be some sensational hyperbole.  So I was surprised when I got to a number that made my jaw drop - literally!  I had thought that was just an expression...but there I was, staring at the laptop screen, my mouth gaping open in astonished horror.

"THIRTEEN years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe."

"The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945."

"The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington."

This is more than just a new embellishment to the historical record.  It has terrible implications for the future.  It's particularly unsettling because it demonstrates ever more clearly that the claim that ordinary citizens genuinely weren't aware of Nazi atrocities is preposterous...which clarifies just how intrinsically capable people are of extreme self-deception.  It seems there is no crime so brutally heinous that we cannot collectively overlook it when it suits our purposes.

Of course, this is obvious from the trees in their death throes all around us, while virtually no one notices that air pollution is poisoning them.  In fact the world is being destroyed in front of our eyes, and the most dissent we can muster is tepid marches, faux arrest spectacles, and pathetic petitions.

Stephanie McMillen

In a time when we are on the brink of numerous converging catastrophes, it lends credence to bleak warnings that overt fascism will overwhelmingly become the response.  The following documentary is a little under an hour, based on the book by Chris Hedges, Death of the Liberal Class.

Maybe they'll let me keep posting in the FEMA camp...