THE NORMALISATION OF ATROCITY
A school for children in Gaza run by the United Nations, and destroyed by the Israelis.
What will the next generation of soldiers, police and politicians know of peace and justice? We were in born the aftermath of war, raised among the debris of bombing and surrounded by families who had all lost someone dear in the Second World War. “Never again” I was taught, as I absorbed the horrors of the Holocaust and the hideous fascist ideologies of Hitler and Mussolini. I never visited Spain or Portugal until the fascist dictators Franco and Salazar and Caetano were deposed, or dead. As a student I fought to bring down the fascist, racist regime in Apartheid South Africa and to counter the evil exploitation of the colonial era.
Our grandchildren have been witnesses to the blanket bombing of Gaza and to Palestinian genocide perpetrated by the descendants of Holocaust victims. They hear the silence of our political leaders (including Arab political leaders) and see the active complicity of Biden, Trump and successive British governments in the genocide. The destruction of Gaza will leave what impression on the youth of today? Every single day on their television screens, our children see pictures of extreme violence and interviews of extreme hypocrisy. “Never again” has become “Every day more killing, and no one seems to care”.
Other genocidal politicians are slaughtering the citizens of Sudan and Yemen in two civil wars supported by the U.S. and its allies Saudi Arabia, Egypt and United Arab Emirates. After the Rwandan genocide, which took place while the U.N. Security Council dithered (and with the active support, it seems, of the French and Belgian governments), we cried “Never again” : and yet it goes on. In Sudan and in Congo-Zaire, for thirty years war has been fought in the Third World; the third world war is the struggle between Western corporations to obtain minerals and profits: a deadly war of atrocities funded by extractive corporations.
Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, a retired professor of international relations, wrote this month on the website Pressenza: “Sudan poses a terrifying question: what remains of ethics when the political sphere becomes an arena of total irresponsibility? In such conditions, guilt is diffused, accountability evaporates, and atrocity becomes trite. Violence no longer shocks; it normalizes itself. This is perhaps the most insidious horror of all—not that human beings are capable of cruelty, but that cruelty and violence can become routine, administered, and legitimized by identity, faction, or territory.“
And the massacres continue. The U.S. has abandoned their Kurdish allies in Syria and the Islamic State da’ech rises again with U.S. support …. or indifference We ignored Yazidi victims yesterday; the Kurds are the next victims. Kurdish women soldiers keep one grenade strapped to their body in order that the Islamist conquerors shall not take them alive. “Never again” is becoming “Oh yes, once again: but who cares?”
They care. I care. The new generation in Europe and America has forgotten the horrors of war and the immorality of genocide. The oligarchy rules, crypto currency fraud has become fashionable, democracies stumble, extractive corporations make profits from the deaths of millions, and we do not care. We have lost our moral compass. Our culture has forgotten the lessons of the Second World War because our leaders are too young to remember, or too venal. The result has become the normalization of atrocity. Our grandchildren will learn the lessons for themselves in the horrors that are coming.
Dr Robin Edward Poulton is a FORMER PEACE MAKER born in the 1940s. He is a practitioner of conflict transformation (the sort of process that won a Nobel Peace Prize for the European Union).