Ahead of the Europe-wide Day of Remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes on 23 August, Vice-President for Values and Transparency, Věra Jourová, and Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, issued the following statement:
“Over eighty years ago, on 23 August 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed between Germany and the Soviet Union just before the Second World War broke out. For many, this fateful day marked the beginning of a cycle of Nazi and Soviet occupation and violence.
On this day, we pay tribute to those who fell victim to totalitarian regimes in Europe and those who fought against such regimes. We recognise the suffering of all the victims and their families, as well as the lasting effect that this traumatic experience left on the following generations of Europeans.
Let us work together so that our shared past makes us stronger for the shared future – and does not drive us apart.
Freedom from totalitarianism and authoritarianism is not a given. It is something we need to stand up for every day anew. It is at the heart of the European ideal. Together with the rule of law and democracy, this freedom is at the core of the European Treaties we have all signed. We must continue to stand, united, for these fundamental European values.”
Background
The Europe-wide Day of Remembrance for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes has been celebrated since 2009, when the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for the “proclamation of 23 August as a Europe-wide Remembrance Day for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, to be commemorated with dignity and impartiality”.
It is an occasion to keep alive the memory of the victims, millions of whom continued to suffer long after the end of World War II and the defeat of the Nazi regime.
The European Commission supports projects across Europe that address the history of totalitarian crimes and encourage remembrance. Building on the Europe for citizens programme 2014-2020, the new Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values programme supports remembrance actions on the causes of totalitarian regimes, in particular Nazism, but also fascism, Stalinism and other totalitarian communist regimes.
The people who liberated Auschwitz were just as bad as the ones who built it.
"Over 80 years ago (and almost a year before 23 August 1939) on September 30, 1938, the imperialist powers of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy signed the Chamberlain-Hitler pact in Munich to partition the sovereign nation of Czechoslovakia, itself nominally a military ally of France. For many, this marked the intensification of capitalist-imperialist repression."
Liberals love to bring the Soviet-German pact up to prove that the Nazis and the Soviets were "allies", thus somehow proving their harebrained horseshoe theory.
They never mention what went before though. You never hear about how the imperial nations at the time initially hoped they could "turn Hitler East" and get him to crush the USSR for them. You never hear a word about how the USSR tried to form a defensive alliance with western European powers against the Nazis, only to have the Br*tish sabotage the efforts. You never hear about how what was effectively a truce with the Nazis bought the USSR precious time to prepare for the war everyone knew was inevitable and how that extra time might have saved the USSR from being overrun and Europe from going full fash.
Liberals doesn't tell you about this. Most liberals doesn't even know about this as uncomfortable parts of history are simply forgotten by the media and educational systems of the capitalist world. Instead they know just enough history to see the world as a western movie where you have good guys fighting bad guys and then the good guys win.
And if you try to teach liberals a little history they will not take it. Anything that goes against their existing prejudice is summarily dismissed as conspiracy theories and devious communist propaganda.
Churchill was a genocidal lunatic and cruel drunk whose own civil service and ambassadors wrote of his swings between murderous hate and being so inebriated he'd repeatedly shit himself.
Yet I live in a country where he's a hero, held up as the best of us, where banks and insurance companies share his name, where his likeness is emblazoned on bobbleheaded pugs on car dashes and in shop windows, and his speeches play over television commercials and sports highlight reels.
It's enough to make to you feel like you've gone mad.
Oh boy I wonder if this will condemn the British and French empires for their brutal colonisation and denial of democracy and independence to people all over the world, including entire continents.
Oh wait no they're the good guys I guess
And treat the murder of brown people as equal to the murder of whites? Lol, what are you expecting?
Stopped reading after Nazi/Soviet pact. It's weird how they always forget to mention how Stalin wanted to form a pact with Western Europe if Hitler attacked. Also weird how they leave out how buddy buddy they were with Hitler as well.
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030005003
We should have a common memorial day for both the victims of fascism and capitalism, given that fascism wouldn't even have been thinkable without the precedent of imperialism creating made-up race theories, embarking on brutal expansionism and putting people into concentration camps to make room for the settlers.
How is a memorial day for the victims of fascism and capitalism different from one for the victims of capitalism?
didn’t even attack the Germans
sinking german battleships, submarines, losing an aircraft carrier & battleship of their own, hundreds of civilians and sailors dying on cargo vessels
the germans had border defenses mirroring the maginot line. taking troops thru that was not only difficult, it'd nullify the advantage the maginot gave--->holding a frontline with relatively few troops
the place to attack'd be thru belgium, which wouldnt allow any allied troops in until the germans were already invading :belgium-cool:
idk why people still expect anything less than fascism from the fascism continent
Look fat, liberal European civilization is the inheritor of a glorious past and anything bad about it is actually due to the malign influence of foreign degen... Uh... totalitarianism.
What is totalitarianism? Because it seems like the common usage of it is just saying that a regime is illiberal, and that all illiberal regimes are at some level the same (even if they disagree with completely different aspects of liberalism)
It seems like "totalitarianism" is synonymous for exercising authority while not being in the good graces of the Western neoliberal order.
