Almost two years ago I worked for a spirituality based web-magazine. I was employed as a mindset and empowerment writer and as think pieces and opinion columnist.
For my columns the company wanted me to talk to proven psychics and gather their predictions for the coming year(s).
The forecasts I received were almost unanimously dark: the upcoming Jupiter transit would cause all kinds of bad to break out in the world and dark days were expected.
The company wasn’t happy; that was not what their readers wanted.The predictions had to be happy, upbeat messages.
I was confused: wasn’t it better to write what the people saw and told me?
I for one believed them; I noticed the growing shift to darkness in the world. The increasing divide between people: races, sexes, beliefs, rich and poor and knew that it wouldn’t be long before things would come to a head.
But despite that, the article was pulled.
I wrote a few fluffy pieces on positive living, but when the 70th Anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation came up, I wanted to write something deeper. I had been hired for think pieces and opinion articles, after all.
The reaction to the article was astounding: people responded in droves. But not in a good way. There were several anti-Semitic responses, but on the whole, people were angry to see an article that wasn’t fun or positive.
The article was removed from the website, and I was fired.
I was upset and frustrated, of course, but above all that I was worried – and I still am.
What is it that makes people want to look away and ignore what is going on right under their noses?
Just because it doesn’t make you happy, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. We can’t keep burying our heads in the sand, not even Ostriches do that (it’s a myth).
It upset me then, and it upsets me even more now. Things seem to be going beyond what had been predicted.
This is the article that what I wrote back then.
Reading it again, after the elections, the public rise of the “alt-right”, the race baiting the anti-women politics and seeing CNN allow a neo-Nazi to ask “Are Jews people” live on TV it seems even more fitting today.
Today marks 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. On Holocaust Memorial day world leaders are coming together in Poland to commemorate this bitter-sweet historic moment.
Speeches will be made, flowers laid, tears will fall, and many will say that we must “remember.”
But what are we indeed remembering?
When asked, most people reply:
“A lesson from history we should never forget.”
A nice sentiment that sadly rings false these days seeing the world has long since forgotten what truly happened and how it started.
Isn’t it strange that while the media is filled with so many wonderful stories of people that survived the Holocaust: Jewish heroes that survived the horrific camps against all the odds, Anti-Semitism is on the rise around the world?
This has been going on for a long time: particularly in Europe Jews have been attacked on a daily basis. So many Jewish people fear for their lives and that of their friends and family.
Online the insults and hate thrown at anyone Jewish is shocking and frightening.
The media has, for a long time, tried to ignore what is going on, tried to say all these events were one-offs, isolated events until reality (the events in France, especially) told them otherwise. Now the press has quickly changed their tune and is trying to pin it all on Islamic radicals. Indeed a big problem, but not the only source of worry.
What is even more worrying, or tragic is that millions of “regular” people harbor feelings of Anti-Semitism, and most don’t even know why.
A recent UK poll revealed that almost half of the UK harbors anti-Semitic feelings, while another poll showed that 80% of European Jews are planning to leave Europe to make aliyah to Israel.
How can it be that 70 years after Auschwitz was liberated we have returned full circle to the events that led to its creation?
This has been going on for so long that it is hard to stop the tide.
Most people think it is okay to blame “the Jews” for whatever may spring to mind.
Why? They don’t know.
They heard it somewhere. Where? Usually, the internet, where “conspiracy bloggers” and right wing extremists build websites that deny the Holocaust and claim Jews run the world, are “The Illuminati” and whatever else springs to mind.
The dark side of the internet, the side that creates hate and brainwashes people: If it looks like research, if it looks like a news site, if it is written; it must be true, most people think.
These are the techniques Hitler used: propaganda, making people believe lies.
We are at a point in time where propaganda and demonisation are used more than ever on so-called “alt-right” websites. Not just against Jews, but against every aspect of society that is deemed “weak,” “different” or “strange.”
These too are the people that ended in the camps with the Jewish people: the disabled, gay people, women, Romani people and everyone that wasn’t similar to the desired Germanic race, the so-called “ubermensch.”
This “superior race” is what many still desire, and being different is still feared.
“We must learn from the past to understand and change the future.”
Learning Kabbalah and Jewish history these were the words I heard most.
Over the last 70 years, so many Concentration camp survivors warned us that all this would repeat itself if we were not careful and ignored the warning signs.
Despite this, the world forgot and ignored the warning signs, and now we are at a crossroad, only time will tell if we can survive what lies ahead.
The views on my cards are bleak, though one card shone brightly: “Hope.”
I hope that this time people will learn before it’s too late.
Photo Credit: rik-shaw (blekky) Flickr via Compfight cc
Very powerful article! Great read! It makes me incredibly sad when I hear the news nowadays 🙁
Wow, for some reason the reactions to my post were not forwarded. I just want to thank you al kind responses to my article. It is good to hear others feel the same as I doXX
Yes, somehow, as the days and weeks go by since the election, we are normalizing Trump more and more. I don’t mean everyone, but the media, and many Americans are beginning to accept him. My only hope is that the Electoral College will see fit to decide he’s not worthy of the office of President. Because he certainly isn’t. Thank you for writing this piece.
This is an important piece. I keep seeing the common traits between Hitler and Trump yet no one will admit it. So, thanks for writing this. It says a lot that you were fired from that news site for this piece. Scary. Losing our voices is the first step to control…we can’t let that happen.
Elie Wiesel said, “Indifference is worse than Hate.”
This is what I am observing in our country and around the world & it scares me, saddens me.
My prayer is that we STAND together, unite, listen, REALLY listen, & love one another before it’s too late.
Is it too late?
Superb piece.
PS. I still don’t understand why people ( if you want to call them that ) do not like Jews. Such ignorance and hate and superiority is something I can’t comprehend.
Danni, You’ve written a powerful and thought provoking piece. The media will continue to let us down by not exposing the things that really matter. It is more tragic to see a man like Steve Bannon as chief White House strategist and senior counselor. It seems we have learned absolutely nothing from the past, we forgot about it and soon it will become our future.