Europe’s leaders shamelessly exploit the memory of the fallen: 1918-2018
Posted by PTR on November 11, 2018 · Leave a Comment
One hundred years ago today the guns fell silent across Europe. Yet despite all the promises such as “homes fit for heroes”, November 11th 1918 was not the start of a European renaissance.
Instead the past century has seen a steady crumbling of European civilization. Community solidarity has withered; violent crime has overtaken our capitals; and the very people walking our streets would have seemed unimaginably alien to the Britons of 1918.
One thing they would have recognised: lying and self-interested politicians who have abused this weekend’s centenary events to advance their own agendas.
Yet the very fact that the likes of French President Emmanuel Macron have been impelled to advance their own anti-nationalist, one world programmes – exploiting the memory of countless dead Europeans who would not have signed up to one word of that agenda – shows that these elites are no longer feeling secure.
All those shameless liars who carried wreaths of poppies this weekend know that they are steadily being exposed. In Italy, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, France and many other nations the tide is turning.
In 2018 we know that the victims of Europe’s two disastrous 20th century civil wars did not die for freedom: for what ‘freedom’ is there today in a Europe that is (temporarily) under the thumb of politically correct laws, and where today’s surviving ex-servicemen are treated with contempt – in some cases even threatened with prosecution for their brave anti-terrorist campaigns of the 1970s.
Yet even in a world where ex-servicemen are driven to suicide by the societies they fought for, we can still be moved by the spirit of Laurence Binyon’s poem written more than a century ago.
