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Memory, the Righteous, international commitment

After the Twentieth Century tragedies in Europe and the opening of other persecutions and slaughters fronts worldwide, genocides and, more in general, crimes against Humanity prevention became the international politics agenda. At the beginning of the new Century, States sensitivity increased, but remains limited and, yet, feeble.

The author of the famous essay Hitler’s willing executioners, Daniel J. Goldhagen, in the following Worse then war coins a new term - eliminationism - to describe all of mass extermination forms, highlighting their political nature in being determined by executioners’ clear choises in order to obtain a power convenience. This is why an efficent opposed answer must be a political one and cannot disregard an international commitment which is not confined to act when persecutions already happened, or to later punishments. The most important part of an anti-eliminationist system regards prevention, that is the ability to make the suitable conditions for the violence explosion impossible. According to Goldhagen, democracy is the first requirement to pledge an eliminationist temptations free leadership. Impunity retraction, through a “direct intervention” approach and through a cogent hunt of the guilty on an international level, is the second requirement (as “impunity” always dominated in criminal mind leaders) in order to discourage any eliminationist temptation or future genocidary endeavours willing.

If the political approach is the instrument of direct intervention in eliminationism-risk situations, another political choice is not less important: the creation of a democratic mentality, open to debate (wich is something anti-eliminationist itself), and of a cultural climate - a way of thinking and acting, an education to dialogue and respect of the different from the self, which is able to grow in society involving new generations, destined to take on the responsabilities of a new internal and international ruling class.

The most important passage of such cultural formation is the educative memory: a reflection on the past for current behaviour, to avoid people from making the past generations mistakes; take the cue from the Righteous example, in order to base the current behaviour on personal responsability and the determination to think as individual; not to ideologically evade conflicts, in so opening the door to fundamentalism, but trying to settle them with the dialogue and the others’ reasons comprehension; listen the incentives of coscience in order to stand opposite to any kind of violence and take care of the world realities, in order to build a better future of Peace.

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