Ghosts of the past

[misscam]

Almost four years ago now, fifteen year old Benjamin Hansen was killed by neo-Nazis within walking distance of where I attended University at the time. His only crime was to have an African mother. And I felt as if it was me they had stabbed and left to slowly bleed to death under a cold winter sky. This should not be. This is Europe 60 years after WW2. This should not be. This poison should not linger still. But it does, and all I have to fight it with is the ghosts of the dead haunting me – and the anger their voices give me. This should not be. This will not be.

I wrote that to a challenge over at dabblings and it left me thinking. The murder of Benjamin by neo-Nazis has of late come up again in the media, due to the murder of one of his classmates (this not racially related). It's been almost four years now, but I've come to realise his murder is one of those things I will remember as shaping me. I did not know him. I probably never would have either way, but he was as much a Norwegian as I was and no damn ghost of Hitler shall tell me otherwise.

And when I read news like this, I can almost feel his ghost haunt Europe like an ill wind.

He is still here.

Comments

[sinneahtes.livejournal.com]

*fumes and is sad at the same time* Neo-Nazis, and the KKK, and white supremist morons seriously need to wake up in the lives of their own victims, and deal with the hell they create. I saw a VH1 special on racist musicians once (the kinds who have crowds shout things like "Heil Hitler!" during their performances), and the majority of them were too cowardly to even have their faces on TV without sunglasses and bandanas covering them as they spewed their racist bullshit. Their reasons for hating blacks were as stupid as things like "a small gang of them attacked me on the sidewalk over there, so now I'm ignoring what members of my race has done to their race and hating ALL of them."

Selfish brats. Not that they ever care when yet another news story pops up about a black kid being shot by white cops while reaching for his identification. (That was the outrage that happened about 6 years ago in my county, if I recall correctly. I still can't get that image out of my mind.)

I always want to remind people that their *own* ancestors were probably African as well, and were immigrants from other lands, but not everyone believes that and I don't want to be arrogant in forcing anyone to believe that, that is, if they don't already believe it and just bring up the point that it was so long ago that their ancestors became "European" (or "American").

[avari-elf.livejournal.com]

How do you think I feel about with what's going on in France?
I'm not sure there's the same type of racism, though. Rather a mixture, maybe: on the one hand we have the people who vote for the FN, for various reasons (fear of immigration, dislike of Muslims, disgust at corruption...), and on the other we have the rising antisemitism of a lot of young people, mainly from the Arab community (who tends to identify with the Palestinians, for no real rational reason but a general dissatisfaction about the state of society), but which is also now influencing a lot of other kids. Nice, huh?

I weep for my country.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Hate has nothing to do with reason most of the time. If you really want to hate someone, you can find reasons. And some of these people seem to really want to hate. Maybe it makes them feel like rebels or empowered or whatever.

And I happen to believe as you do - we all came from the same apes, which came from a mammal which came from some being of the sea which came from a single-celled organism. Meet the family.

(Sometimes I feel like some of these people are regressing us back to single-celled oranisms. Bah.)

[misscam.livejournal.com]

FN is Le Penn's party? I remember him. *shudders* We got one of those, but he was convicted of racism for declaring all immigrants should be sterilized and his party is tiny, tiny, tiny. We do have a party that plays on xenophobia that has about 15-20% support, but they're not quite in Le Penn's league.

And anti-semitism just does not seem to die, does it? I'm so sick of the most verbal people on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict - the Palestinian supporters who encourage anti-semtitism and terrorism, the Israel-lovers who scream anti-semitism at the merest hint of critism and defend any actrocity with "Israel has a right to defend itself". Bite me. *refrains from starting huge rant*

I weep for us all sometimes.

[mademoisellenon.livejournal.com]

I read once that one in every 10 German youths admires Hitler and looks up to him as a role model. That scares me. History has a very annoying way of repeating itself, particularly when we don't listen.

I was trying to comment on Dabblings but the page doesn't want to cooperate. Arrrgh, evil technology! That little blurb was probably one of the most powerful things I've read in a while. Of course I can wax poetic about it some more but you with your meh attitude about compliments will most likely come after me with a trout.

[sinneahtes.livejournal.com]

Rebellion, empowerment, I think so... among other reasons, but those two are usually the first to spring to mind. And I'm sure that for enough of them, they saw their parents/peers/teachers/whoever feeling and thinking a certain way and decided to copy it.

Don't humans (*all* humans) and chimps only have something like a 2% difference in DNA, anyway? :P And even if you're a Creationist Christian (or member of another belief that believes in Adam and Eve), The Garden of Eden was likely not in Europe, Adam and Eve were likely not white, and if they were the only two humans at the beginning, all humans would still be related through them. Bottom line: Humans are humans, none better than others.

Some people seem to already be back to the level of the primordial slime that came before the single-celled organisms. :P