April 21, 2009 will mark this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah), where many around the world will pause and reflect on the tragedy of the Holocaust. At the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, there will be an annual names reading ceremony and “the Museum will lead the nation in commemorating the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, as well as the millions of other victims of Nazi persecution.”
As the museum states, the “Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims — six million were murdered; Gypsies, the handicapped, and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi tyranny.”
We come to this Holocaust Remembrance Day, mindful of the growing darkness of hatred and intolerance around the world. As many solemnly remember April 21 as Holocaust Remembrance Day, we realize that there are those disturbed individuals who celebrate April 20 as Adolf Hitler’s birthday, including Daniel Cowart, who celebrated last April 20 with his fellow Neo-Nazis in America prior to his arrest in October for a terrorist plot to murder Barack Obama and 88 black Americans.
We are mindful that the campaign of hate by Nazis continues today in America, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, and around the world, and this campaign of hate continues by Nazis against Jews, blacks, and others who do not accept the Nazi vision of hate and intolerance towards humanity. We have seen recent Nazi activity in America in St. Louis, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, and Maine; we have recently been informed of 196 known Nazi groups in America. The infamous Nazi web site StormFront was reportedly frequented by a killer of police officers in Pittsburgh. Reports have recently described the growth of Nazism again in Germany, with new German Nazis seeking the creation of a “Fourth Reich,” and who reportedly “relish the idea of a new Holocaust against the Jews.” Furthermore, as we recognize Holocaust Remembrance Day, we see one of the most notorious Holocaust deniers in the world – Iran’s President Ahmadinejad speaking at a United Nations-sponsored conference on racism. As some celebrated Hitler’s birthday on April 20, Ahmadinejad told this conference that the Holocaust was a “pretext” for aggression… and received applause.
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, the question we must ask ourselves is what has continued to empower this worldwide movement of Nazis, Holocaust deniers, and Holocaust revisionists?
The simple answer is hate. But it is not just any hate – it is an organized, institutionalized, hate based on supremacist ideologies. We must recognize that our defiance against Nazism is a defiance against organized hate and supremacism itself. Therefore, if we are serious about our vow of “Never Again,” then we must recognize the enemy not only as Nazism, but also as the organized hate and supremacist thinking that is the basis for Nazism and its ilk – both in the days of Adolf Hitler and sadly even in this 21st century today.
If the problem is hate, then we must conclude that the answer is love. No matter how horrific, offensive, and disgusting such evil may be, we must not lower ourselves and our standards to matching hate with hate. More hate will not and can not even begin to address this challenge of hate. We must prove that our love of humanity is greater than their hatred of humanity. Let us never question that their organized hatred is anything less than a hatred of humanity itself, because their supremacism hates the truth that all men and women are created equal. Their supremacism hates the universal human rights of equality and liberty for all humanity. Their hatred of these truths and these rights are a rejection of humanity itself. We cannot fail to take such existential anti-humanity threats lightly, and therefore we must take serious, consistent measures against these threats.
As Nazis and other supremacists use hate in an organized, institutional way, so we too must use love in an organized, institutional way. Our approach to fulfilling our vow “Never Again” must not be treated in a random, disorganized fashion. Our love must be based on something real and tangible, something that other human beings can measure and gauge as evidence of our commitment. To prove that our love is stronger than their hate, it is necessary for us and our governments to make a renewed commitment to being consistently responsible for equality and liberty. Our responsibility for equality and liberty is our sign of love and respect for our fellow human beings. You can’t love humanity and deny it equality. You can’t love humanity and deny it liberty. You can’t love humanity and deny it freedom. You can’t love humanity and ignore it when others seek to deny people their fundamental rights as human beings. We hold these truths as self-evident, and it is this declaration of love and respect to all of humanity that America and our universal human rights are based upon.
Our declaration of love for humanity must be the fundamental basis for our decisions individually, as nations, and as human beings. “Never Again” begins with our choice as individuals and as nations to love, not hate. “Never Again” requires a consistent commitment to this declaration that “Love Wins” through the universal human rights of equality and liberty. This is hard work. It requires very painful and difficult decisions. Such a commitment will require great sacrifices in implementing. But such a consistent implementation of our love to humanity is necessary. We cannot choose to “pick our battles” on defending universal human rights. Whether it is Nazis in Germany or America, racial supremacists, religious extremists, Communist totalitarians, or others who would defy humanity’s universal rights, we must take a stand — even when we don’t have the resources, even when it is not in our financial interests, and even when it will make us unpopular and rejected.
A vow of “Never Again” also requires understanding that human freedom is everyone’s responsibility. The tactics and the debate over right-left political issues has become so obsessive that the larger understanding of the threat to our human freedoms is lost. We saw this recently with the reports by tacticians in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Such tacticians have recently defined “right-wing” threats in a follow-up April 2009 report to “left-wing” threats in a January 2009 report. The tactician view of tracking “right” or “left” threats, instead of being consistently responsible for equality and liberty in our policies and decisions as a nation, gives our nation’s leaders a false sense of accomplishment. This is not stating that we do not have threats in America, as there are threats around the world. But our focus must be on those who would deny freedom for humanity. Moreover, the right-left perspective fails to even understand the real threats. Nazis and racial supremacists are not merely “right-wing;” they represent enemies of human freedom. Communist totalitarians and Anarchist nihilists are not merely “left-wing;” they again are enemies of human freedom and the values of equality and liberty. We keep debating the wrong issues. As we face global enemies who stand united against human freedom, liberty, and equality, the real issue that we must debate is who stands for human rights and who stands for the love of humanity. To succeed, we need to spend more time on ideas, and less time on tactics. We must stop trying to win a struggle of ideas by a cacophony of disconnected tactics.
A vow of “Never Again” also requires integrity. It requires being conscientious about rejecting Holocaust denial and rejecting Holocaust revisionist views whenever and wherever they are presented. To those who have supported Holocaust denier Ahmadinejad’s views, we must identify them and hold them accountable. To those organizations and individuals that promote Holocaust denial and revision, we must identify them and hold them accountable. This does not mean that we match their hate with hatred of our own. But what it does require is that we firmly communicate that we will not accept such mocking of the tragedy of the Holocaust, and it means taking those measures that demonstrate our seriousness as people committed to human rights. This includes any organization that seeks “revisionist” views of any of the Holocaust victims, including “revisionist” views of its homosexual victims.
A vow of “Never Again” also requires courage. We must fear no evil. We cannot extend our love of humanity while we live in fear. Nor we can expect fear to be a motivator of love. There are those who believe that free people have yet to respond to those who defy such freedoms, because such free people fail to have sufficient fear of the threat. They believe that another terrorist attack on America will somehow motivate Americans to “do something” about the enemies of freedom. Yet here we are, in the 21st century, still fighting Adolf Hitler’s Nazism from over 60 years ago. Here we are, in the 21st century, still fighting Holocaust denial and revisionism. And we wonder why the 9/11 attacks were not sufficient motivation for many to fight for freedom. And we wonder why nearly eight years after the 9/11 attacks, we still have 9/11 deniers and revisionists. The fear of evil will never be enough to lead humanity to defend freedom. In our vow of “Never Again,” we must learn from history and learn from human experience. We will not defeat the enemies of freedom with either hate or fear. We must have the understanding, we must have the integrity, and we must have the courage to defy hate with love.
Finally, a vow of “Never Again” requires vision. It requires the vision to navigate the course of human history by the bright stars of freedom, equality, and liberty, even in the darkest night. It is the darkest nights which truly illuminate the stars of freedom that our humanity may have once taken for granted. It requires the vision to see that the many who stand silently for human dignity, such as the thousands who turned out for the opening of the new Skokie Holocaust Museum in Illinois, far outnumber the Nazi activists and hate mongers who seek to grab every headline. When faced with the existential enemies against freedom, it requires vision, to realize that our greatest strength and our greatest defense lies in our love for humanity, and our commitment to be responsible for equality and liberty.
It requires vision to realize that ultimately Love Wins.