So I was procrastinating earlier this week listening to an old Stephan Molyneux video about WikiLeaks, and he had this to say:
So let’s imagine for a moment that you were sexually abused by some uncle when you were a child, and then one Thanksgiving dinner or one Christmas dinner, you put your knife and fork down. Everybody’s sitting there, your uncle included, sitting across from you. You put your knife and fork down you clear your throat and you say:
‘Listen, I have something that I need to say.
‘Uncle Joe here sexually molested me for years when I was a child.’
Now this may not be true for all families, but I believe it’s true for most. . . . . Who is your family going to be upset with, the person who committed the crimes in the family, or the person who has revealed them? I don’t think you have to look very hard in your heart to find the answer to that question.
I certainly didn’t. You see, I’ve done something not entirely dissimilar. I told my family about the fact that many key members of the former US federal government administration were up to their ears in a sex trafficking ring, and they worshipped Satan. It’s all there in WikiLeaks, and if you haven’t heard of this before you can find out more here. A few of them were ok, but responses mostly ranged from ‘that simply isn’t possible’ to ‘shut up’.
In response to this, I lost my cool a little and said a few things I later regretted. I suppose I expected to get a little respect for my opinions after having been right about the recent US election when they and the media were wrong. In my mind, ‘I told you so’ is in my mind the second most compelling argument you can make, but apparently the world doesn’t work that way.
In that moment, however, I suddenly understood something that had perplexed me from childhood: the question of why the holocaust was allowed to happen. Killing millions of people is a logistically complex enterprise; it is implausible to suggest that the camps were completely hidden from public awareness. Why didn’t someone stop it? I understood then for the first time that the holocaust didn’t happen because people didn’t know; rather, it happened because they didn’t want to know.
I saw the scene playing out as clear as day:
‘Hey Mum, Dad, everyone, listen, I have something that I need to say.
‘That smoke from that military encampment over there – they aren’t burning garbage’.
‘That can’t be true.’
‘That isn’t possible.’
‘We have a justice system and laws and whatnot. Someone would stop them.’
‘We are trying to have happy family time, can we not have this political argument right now?’
‘Can you please just shut up?’
Molyneux believes he is saving the world. He argues that civilizations had been rising and falling since the dawn of humanity, but now, with the communication power of the internet we have the chance to get the truth out there and break the cycle of history. However, if he listened to his own podcasts more, he would understand that people value honesty in the abstract value only. The instant the truth requires uncomfortable sacrifices to be made by you personally, then . . . . no, that just can’t be true, and no, you can’t read me a few WikiLeaks.
You see the exact same phenomenon in the church all the time. Everybody loves Jesus! He was just like Pope Francis who said don’t judge! But when following Jesus requires personal sacrifice, like for example for you to stop being with your living brother’s wife . . . .
There is enough information in the world. The problem is not and has never been a lack of knowledge. The problem is a lack of the moral and intestinal fortitude required to recognize that radical stupidity is radically stupid. We lose the culture because while we fight an info-war, the enemy is fighting an integrity war.
In everything they do, they seek to destroy not only integrity, but also the memory of it. Everything they do is designed to grind down your will to live, your will to tell the truth, and your will to see the truth. Those who tell the truth spend their lives in court fighting hate crime charges, while those who commit real crimes get suspended sentences and good behavior bonds. The lies they tell you today are completely different to the lies you believed yesterday, and the lies they tell you tomorrow will be different again. Every day there are new pronouns to remember and new words that are offensive to ‘minorities’, and God help you if something you say today is added to the banned words register tomorrow.
Integrity is torn down the same way it is built up: an inch at a time. Each day you sacrifice a small pinch of truth for the sake of your social, financial and emotional security. One day you bake a gay cake, the next day you use preferred pronouns, the next day you don’t judge pedophiles. Before you know it, compliance becomes habitual, freedom becomes slavery, and ignorance becomes strength, so that when you hear rumors of atrocities, you don’t know and you don’t want to know. Then you wonder why you are suddenly bound by inaction, when the truth is that by practicing inaction, you let your strength gradually waste away into oblivion.
That’s how the holocaust happened.
Happy holocaust remembrance day.