Alison Rose Levy: Addressing the Wider Arc of History Which Our Time Demands

I deeply appreciate this recent piece written by my friend Alison Rose Levy. May we all work in an ongoing way to shed our indoctrination and illusions, our apathy and inaction, our ignorance. May we channel and transform our denial and despair into truth and critically needed action. We are all needed to do our growing part in this great struggle for justice, peace, equity, unity, and preserving a sustainable and habitable planet. We are truly all in this together. May we not look away. ― Molly

Wasn't planning to write on Holocaust remembrance day but David Bedrick inspired me.

One of the most significant books of my life which I read in college and have never been able to find since-- was written by a German from a noble background (if I recall correctly) who witnessed the period before, during and after Hitler came to power, and was aware of the wrongness of it all and watched his fellow Germans, relatives, and people he knew look away, deny, rationalize, protect their own families and comforts and allow the country to go down the rabbit hole into fascism. I also went to high school with girls whose parents had been in the camps and who were first generation descendants. (Which I was not but had been significantly influenced by the war due to my father's service in the US Army on the Western front.) 

 

It wasn't until mid-life that my classmates and I began having those conversations about the past. But being in a state of recovery from such a history often requires a lot of comfort and safety for healing, so that current political choices are often based on assuring those comforts rather than seeing and addressing the wider arc of history which our time demands. This has been true of many of my generation and many people now here in this country. And it's why we have blinded ourselves to arrive at the point where we are. 

 

All of my advocacy work was aimed at a redirection of our system, but many people look at their need to put food on the table for their family, hard enough in times like these, and leave it at that. This Holocaust, or any genocide or enslavement or economic entrapment is not just about the people targeted as victims, it's about all of us. This misguided cooption of Darwin by capitalism has taught everyone that we survive at someone else's expense, not that we are all in this together. This isn't even what Darwin taught.

 

Nevertheless, here we are still believing that. And even the billionaires building a spaceship to nowhere, along with all of us (or our children or grandchildren if we have them) will all suffer different flavors of similar consequences-- unless intervening becomes a mass priority. 

 

And anyone lining up behind their favorite puppet still is blind to the truth, just as the pre-war and wartime Germans were. And some hyper-educated white boy, hung up on the purity of his body, telling us that HE and his kind are the prime victims of the capture of our country by the two-party puppet political system, is the blind leading the blind on the road to hell. 

 

The arc of history and what happened in Germany, in genocides, and in enslavement and economic entrapment, have a lot more to say about the real and mounting threats to human survival. Giving our children and grandchildren, and other species survival and a future requires that we leave our comfort zones, stop bowing to puppets in all directions, and deconstruct and reconstruct to give social voice back to all people.

 

― Alison Rose Levy