Fred Bauder wrote: >> Well where will it stop? If we have a project, we should have a memorial >> project for all disasters. I echo Mr. Bimmler in his concerns about the >> motives behind this proposal. >> > > I think half a dozen might do, one for the victims of Hitler, one for the > victims of Stalin, one for the victims of Pol Pot, one for the victims of > Mao, one for victims of the inquisition, etc, > > We would not need to mess with small time killers like Osama bin Ladin. > > Fred > >
It's a bit more complex than that, actually. (Granting, arguendo that this idea had merit in the absolute, which is a position I do not actually hold) First in the case of the inquisition, certainly the Albigensian crusade would be fairly clear-cut. but what would we say about the stories of widespread torture by the inquisition, - which at least have been claimed by some to merely be a black legend, in terms of their widespreadness. Would we take a POV position on the side of widespreadedness of the Spanish Inquisitions abuses, or go for the more conservative stance of concentrating on the atrocities at the village of Alba for instance? In addition, your listing is clearly not nearly exhaustive. What about the jewish pogroms that predate the holocaust in Nazi Germany? I think that it is poignant that the wonderful play by Elie Wiesel by the name The Trial of God, while inspired (allegedly) by a real experience in the Nazi concentration camps, in fact uses as its dramatic back-drop, the pogroms. How about Christian persecutions in ancient Rome? Eradication of native Americans by bio-warfare. That again is a hard question in terms of choosing a stance. Just as in the case of the Spanish Inquisitions abuses, really genuinely thoughtful and sincere and insightful people radically disagree on the validity of those claims. Even if you rule out one-timers, like the Al-quaida, there is still the question of the more protracted case of the Palestinian people, that again was/and is ongoing in a fashion that is an extended conflict, and equally as with the case of the Spanish Inquisition and the Native Americans, a point of genuine and reasoned argument as to the validity as an atrocity of the unmitigated sort, and these denials are not merely the province of some lone nutters, without any touch to reality. To me these decisions about what to include, would not be merely the "simple" one of choosing the "clearly right perspective", I would personally claim there are always going to be shades of gray, no matter which way you cut it. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
