Everyone needs to hear or read this

This is a video of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s remarks made at Auschwitz.

What she says matters: she speaks of “barbaric crimes,” and about people who were “humiliated, tortured and murdered,” and she says “this is the place where the most horrible crimes against humanity took place.”

Let us be clear: the victims of these “horrible crimes against humanity” included political opponents of the Nazis, homosexuals, Gypseys and others but the main purpose of Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and so on was to eliminate Jews. Anti-semitism was the driving force. But, as Geoffrey P Johnson write in the Kingston Whig-Standard, “As memories of the Holocaust fade, the world is witnessing a frightening resurgence of anti-Semitism and the genocidal ideologies that feed it.” As I have said, Anti-semitism seems to be the “everlasting prejudice” and it seems to thrive, equally well, amongst the right-wing followers of Donald Trump and the left-wing, progressive followers of Justin Trudeau. in fact, I think progressives, including the Liberal Party of Canada itself, find it all too easy to embrace antisemitism as they court parts of Canada’s multi-cultural mosaic of communities. And, as I have also said, progressives, like Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland tend to end up leading us towards authoritarianism of the sort that we normally associate with Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.

The holocaust must never fade from memory. As Chancellor Merkel says, “we cannot keep silent … [because a place like Auschwitz] … obliges us to keep the memory alive.” It is vital for liberals, including those (rather a lot, I sincerely hope) who remain in the Liberal Party of Canada and in the New Democratic Party, also, to speak out whenever our progressive ‘leadership’ starts to slide towards antisemitism … which includes, in my opinion, voting for a UN resolution, sponsored by North Korea, Zimbabwe and the Palestine Liberation Organization even when the intention of the vote is to distance Canada from Donald Trump. I will comment about that in the article which follows this one.