Géraldine Schwarz | Picture : Astrid di Crollalanza 1
Today , humanity is again threatened by worldviews that make humans a means and not an end – which reduce them to simple pawns at in the service of an ideology , a capitalist logic , or technological experiments . In societies which have never known freedom and which authoritarian rulers refuse to enlighten , many people consent , or resign themselves , to being mere instruments , provided they enjoy a minimum of material well-being and entertainment .
But even in Europe we are not spared the risk to lose sight of the fact that politics , economics and technology must always be at the service of man and not the other way around . Some admire the economic success of China or the world power of Vladimir Putin . Others dream of Franco or Mussolini . Crimes and oppression disappear behind the fascination with conquest , the law of the fittest , the virile orchestration of power .
Are we becoming amnesic ? Have we forgotten the untold suffering ? The fratricidal wars and the bombings ? The tyrants who destroy the identity of humans , terrorize them , torture and manipulate them into disposable clones in the service of crime ?
Have we forgotten the promise of Europe : “ never again ”?
No , we haven ’ forgotten “ what happened ”. But we forget “ how it was possible ”.
If the Third Reich , Vichy-France , Mussolini , Franco and many others could commit crimes to such extend , it was / is ? because the attitude of the majority of the society allowed them to . Their attitude was an accumulation of cowardice , opportunism , conformism , blindness and indifference , which , when combined , created the conditions necessary for the rise and consolidation of criminal regimes . In German , there is a word to design them : Mitläufer , those who follow the current .
We have not lost the memory of the crimes but the memory of our own moral fallibility . But precisely , we can not learn from the past if we don ’ t ask ourselves : how can ordinary citizens , or a society as a whole , become complicit in a criminal regime ?
This reflection is essential because it sends each of us back to our present-day responsibilities – to our contradictions and the consequences of our actions and behaviour . It helps us realize that one doesn ’ t have to serve an unfair system directly to
EUROPE INSIGHT
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