The Antisocial Socialist

World War I killed 20 million people.

The Great Influenza epidemic killed between 17 million and 100 million during and immediately after.

The odds of a soldier dying in WWII were 1 in 26.

The odds of a kidnapped Indigenous child dying in a residential school at the same time was 1 in 25.

As a culture, the choices we make around whose deaths are mourned and whose are forgotten are significant. 

Wish me luck that I can make it through the entire day without having to hear "In Flanders Fields" recited.

Watching Remembrance Day assemblies in a public school these days is akin to watching The Passion. Stripped of the context of Jesus' life and preachings, Mel Gibson's atrocity was nothing more than torture porn, and worse still, torture porn in slow-motion. Likewise, stripped of the context of history (does no one teach Causes of WWI in history class anymore?), Remembrance Day assemblies are poorly crafted mummers plays, reminding the children that Our Glorious Dead Died For YOUR Sins—you ingrates. You slothful, cowardly ingrates, who don't really appreciate the freedom and democracy bought through the sacrifices of long-dead young men. It's a strange message in a school, in a city, where so many are refugees from war-torn countries, where so many are acutely aware of the realities and the horrors of war and have experienced it much more directly than have their teachers.

The lack of context, in our case, was surreal. In avoidance of a direct engagement with what war is, everything gets thrown together in a pastiche of "things that kind of make us think of soldiers and war." We got photos of the trenches and smiling regiments and skeletal Holocaust victims and the atom bomb and propaganda posters set in a PowerPoint to the tune of Lennon's "Imagine." We got the expected rhyming poems about the importance of poppies. We got a lecture from a 22-year-old soldier on the importance of Canada's peacekeeping missions. We got a glurge song about wanting to punch a dude in the face for not observing the two minutes of silence. We got the most godawful rendition of "Amazing Grace" I have ever heard. The fake coffin brought in to commemorate the dead of WWI and WWII was draped in a maple leaf flag—the one that wasn't used in Canada until 1965. But who cares about historical accuracy, amirite?

The thing is, the idea of remembering soldiers who died in war is really important. Really, really important (though, in fairness, we ought to take more time in general to remember workers whose lives are considered expendable by those who employ them). We do both the dead and the living a disservice, though, when we lie about why they died and what the wars were fought over.

Because, yeah, they died for someone's sins. But it wasn't the sins of my context-deprived children. They died for the sins of the rich and powerful. Not for freedom or democracy* in most cases, but because someone was greedy, someone was after a piece of land, someone had a longstanding grudge. That doesn't make them less brave or less worthy of remembering. But understanding why wars were fought goes a long way towards making sure more brave young folks don't join the ranks of the fallen.

For obvious reasons, I am not in charge of organizing the Remembrance Day Assembly at our school. I'd likely have read excerpts from Johnny Got His Gun and Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. Or read poetry with complicated rhyming schemes (or even no rhyming scheme at all!). My favourite WWI poems are Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est and The Parable of the Young Man and the Old, but since I post them most years, I thought I'd do Brecht this time.**

TO MY COUNTRYMEN

(An meine Landsleute)

You, who live on in towns that passed away,
Now show yourselves some mercy, I implore.
Do not go marching into some new war
As if the old wars had not had their day,
But show yourselves some mercy, I implore.

You men, reach for the spade and not the knife.
You'd have a roof right now above your head
If you had taken up the spade instead.
And with a roof one has a better life.
You men, reach for the trowel, not the knife.

You children, that you all may remain alive,
Your fathers and your mothers you must waken
And if in ruins you would not survive,
Tell them you will not take what they have taken,
You children, that you all may remain alive.

You mothers, since the word is yours to give
To stand for war or not to stand for war
I beg you, mothers, let your children live!
Let birth, not death, be what they thank you for.
I beg you, mothers, let your children live!

Frankie Armstrong's version.

* Whose democracy, exactly, were they fighting for? Canadian women didn't have the right to vote until 1919 (two years after WW1), and people of Asian descent didn't get it until 1948 (three years after WWII). Inuit people didn't get to vote until 1950. It wasn't until 1960 that other indigenous people in Canada (many of whom fought and died in the wars!) could vote without losing their status.

** At least I think Brecht wrote it. There's always a chance that one of his girlfriends wrote it and he took the credit.

Recognizing the Spanish Civil War vets
by Chris Arsenault
November 11, 2005
Rabble.ca

As poppies adorn every respectable lapel, cannons blare and politicians make speeches praising sacrifice for country in this, the year of the veteran, one group of Canadian freedom fighters dwindles without a penny in pensions or official recognition.

( continued )