And
even Time is not saying
it saw what it calls, 'the
slaughter' [in]
Tiananmen Square.
--
The Statesman of India
|
The
Statesman
India, June 17, 2001
It's
All Part of a Propaganda
By Manohar Malgonkar
EARLY in June 1989, Chinese students
who had been carrying out an agitation for
freedom and democracy in Beijing's
Tiananmen Square were fired upon by units
of the Chinese army, resulting in the
deaths of -- in the words of Time
magazine -- "hundreds, perhaps
thousands."
Nonsense! -- retort China's own
official news services. For one thing, the
agitators were not students, but unruly
counter-revolutionaries. And they were
dispersed with methods which have now
become conventional for dealing with mobs
in street demonstrations: by using tear
gas, water cannons, rubber bullets and the
like. And no one was
killed. But but did we not see it
all on TV?
In fact we didn't really really see
anyone actually being killed -- the sudden
uncontrolled lurch of a body hit by a
bullet is quite unmistakable. True, we did
see the confrontation and it was, well,
toe-to-toe, but no bullets flying. And
even Time is not saying it saw what
it calls, "the slaughter". It took place
"on the avenues that lead to the Tiananmen
Square. None was shot in the square,"
we're told. What we saw on TV was confined
to the square itself. Groups of teenagers
in blue jeans moving about restlessly,
some reading posters stuck on a wall, and
that quite rivetting master-shot of a lone
protester in a white shirt standing in the
path of a regiment of rolling tanks.
How could he have escaped being
crushed? Still, we didn't see it happen.
And now, eleven years later, what really
happened to that young man and to his
fellow protesters is still a matter for
argument and not a fact of history.
Unbelievably as it might seem, even a
recent book, "The Tiananmen Papers"
said to be based on official Chinese
documents, admits that there is room for
doubt. Those who have sponsored the book
explain: "We still have no basis for
proclaiming their authenticity with
absolute authority."
Versions
If there can be such diametrically
opposite versions of an event which
happened only eleven years ago and under
the hawk-eyed TV coverage of the western
media, how can we assume that what passes
for history is largely a record of facts?
History is written by people like
ourselves; men and women with emotional
hangups, prejudices, blind spots, points
of view; prone to distort or magnify,
ignore or emphasise, conceal or highlight,
pander to the public mood.
Which is what makes history an easy
target for scoffers, as was conspicuously
brought out in a recent court action in
London. The basic issue before the judges
was the assertion by a British historian,
David Irving, that while, during
the second world war, a large number of
Jews might have been killed by German
soldiers, Hitler himself had nothing to do
with the killings, and indeed that Hitler
was "probably the biggest friend the Jews
had in The Third Reich," and that what is
called the holocaust never happened, and
no gas chambers. Indeed, Irving had openly
challenged a professor of Jewish studies
at an American university: "I offer a
thousand dollars to anyone who can show
documentary evidence of Hitler's guilt in
murdering Jews".
Mind you, David Irving is no Neo-Nazi
or even a crank. He is historian of repute
and has been praised for his scholarship.
Even if, by throwing a challenge to a
Jewish scholar about the reliability of
hard evidence of Hitler's participation in
the holocaust, he may have been playing to
the gallery, he knew he was on safe ground
in asking for "documentary" proof, meaning
that the testimony provided by the
writings of survivors of the death camps
and those who liberated them and of
subsequent investigations was all part of
a propaganda campaign to malign Hitler and
the Nazis. The sort of documentary
evidence he demanded was a
notary-certified copy of an order by
Adolph Hitler to the Camp
Commandant of Auschwitz
telling him to send the inmates of his
camp to the gas chamber at the rate of so
many every day.
Understandably, at that lecture in
Atlanta or even later, no one took up Mr
Irving's challenge. But what is of
importance in his argument is the
vulnerability of historically established
truths. Could it be that our ideas of the
Holocaust are coloured by our
prejudices?
Enemies
After all, in times of war, it is not
permissible to think of your enemies as
ordinary human beings: It is almost a
patriotic duty to think of them as
mindless savages, capable of the vilest
excesses. In the second world war, our own
troops were put through some rough and
ready brainwashing. Our human-figure
targets for rifle practice acquired
Japanese faces and helmets, and as we
charged making blood-curdling noises and
thrust bayonets into straw-filled
gunnybags, we were told to think of those
sacks as the bellies of Japanese
soldiers.
But of course, the Japanese too had
their own methods of teaching their people
how detestable their enemies were. John
Dean Potter, a British journalist who
went to Japan soon after its surrender
reports how the citizens of Nagasaki
dreaded the arrival of the American
Marines on their island "even more than
they did the Atom bomb." Their propaganda
"had told them that no man could join the
Marine Corps in America unless he had
first killed his father and mother."
That the unfortunate citizens of
Nagasaki should swallow this nonsense is
altogether understandable. After all
people who callously obliterate entire
cities with atom bombs must be beyond the
pale of human instincts. What is
astonishing is that relentless propaganda
can affect the judgments of otherwise
civilised adults and break through their
powers of disbelief.
Here is Rudyard Kipling, writing
to his American friend, Frank
Doubleday at the beginning of the
First World War:
"The record of horrors
committed is something ghastly. (The
Germans) cut the hands of a surgeon -
in order that he might never practise
again... In Belgium, women and girls
were publicly raped by the command of
their officers."
But of course, Kipling is known for his
contempt of the Germans whom he referred
to as the "Hun" and "The Teuton with large
cold eyes".
O.K. It did not take much convincing
for Kipling to believe in the barbaric
acts of the Germans. What I found
difficult to come to terms with was
Marghanita Laski's accusations in
her famous novel Little Boy Lost.
She was a lady of infinite charm and grace
and, above all scholarship. Here is what
one of her characters tells us, ostensibly
from first hand knowledge."... many
children they have packed naked into
trains with quicklime on the floor, so
that when these trains arrived at the gas
chambers, it was quite economical because
nearly all the children were dead already
... They have killed children (by)
...throwing acid at their naked
bodies."
Really?
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