Tuesday, April 25, 2017

We Must Never Forget That Genocide Begins With Groupthink

We Must Never Forget That Genocide Begins With Groupthink:
"This year Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day and Holocaust Remembrance Day coincide on the same day: April 24, 2017.
On April 24, 1915 hundreds of Armenian community leaders and intellectuals were rounded up in Constantinople, arrested, and killed by the Ottoman government then ruling Turkey.
That event marked the beginning of the government-sponsored massacres of 1.5 million Armenians. It is why April 24 has officially marked the day of remembrance of the Armenian genocide for nearly a hundred years.
Image result for history quotesHolocaust Remembrance Day, known in Hebrew as Yom HaShoah, memorializes the 6 million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazi government during World War II.
...There has always been a strong object lesson in the connection between the Armenian genocide during World War I and the genocide of the Jews during World War II.
It is a lesson inscribed on one of the walls of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in the form of a statement by Adolph Hitler.
He rationalized mass slaughter and expected people simply to avert their eyes and forget: “Who, after all, today speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
I think Hitler’s point was that merciless slaughter is never a public relations disaster as long as you’re in it for the ruthless consolidation of power.
That’s because people forget.
All the time.
The powerful also often use propaganda tools to promote such lethal forgetfulness.
Humans are very susceptible to groupthink, ignorance, propaganda, agitation, and psychological manipulation that weakens their resolve.
People are also often all too eager to blame their own problems on convenient scapegoats.
These human flaws clarify why “Never forget” is the cry associated with the Holocaust and all crimes against humanity.
This is why everybody must respect the study of history. 
After all, studying history is about remembering. 
It’s about learning from experience, which is why we must emphatically reject any attempt to water down the accurate teaching and study of history..."

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