#remembrance day

[atomic-chronoscaph]

World War II aircraft factory photographs by Alfred T. Palmer (1941-1943)

[sharonbphotos]

Lest we forget

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.

[For the Fallen, Laurence Binyon]

[thespookydookie]

sadly i couldn't get anything for 11th pumped out this year, but i wish you all a peaceful remembrance day

"whatever hope is yours,

was my life also"

[catgirltoes]

One bit of rhetoric around Remembrance Day I find quite disturbing is the framing of soldiers in the First World War as having sacrificed their lives for their country. To sacrifice something implies willingness on the part of the person doing the sacrificing. To claim a murder victim sacrificed themself is justifying their murder. And yet we don't hesitate to describe the deaths of millions in the war machine as willing sacrifices.

To suggest that the Canadian government sent thousands to their deaths is seen as radical, absurd, even a slap in the face of those who died. And yet how else am I to understand the mass mobilizations of the Great War as anything other than purposeful mass murder in the name of nationalism?

Which is to say: fuck your ceremony, fuck your military, and fuck your country.

[all-action-all-picture]

Parade of the Dead by Georges Bertin Scott (1873-1943).

[ganymedeaguspluto]

you know the thing that annoys me about "remembrance"?

the First World War was a consequence of a crisis in nationalism, which is an ideology that at that point had existed for at most 150 years prior to the outbreak of WW1 (but in most countries in Europe had only existed for about 60-70).

(nationalism is the idea that there is some quality that unifies people living in a "nation-state": that, for example, German people have some kind of essential "German-ness", or that British people have some kind of essential "British-ness", that they can all rally behind. it's a fiction, obviously)

so when nationalism collapses and leads to all-out war, the various countries of Europe send a bunch of young men to fight in service of their (still relatively new) respective "national identity": the idea that their State (and their local bourgeoisie)'s interests are aligned with their own. and it fails. millions of people die for effectively no reason.

AND THEN, instead of going like "alright lads, sorry. we fucked up. this whole nation-state thing was an incredibly shite idea. we're gonna do something else now", people were like "look at the sacrifice! these young men died for their country! all gave some, some gave all! rah rah rule Britannia! 11 o'clock silence! the Last Post! wear a poppy!watch me wank into this flag!"

it's infuriating. the people who died during the First World War didn't die for their country: they just died. they killed and were killed in service of a fiction, a racist delusion used to justify atrocities.

so fuck remembrance day. you wanna do justice by the people who died during WW1? become an anarchist. kill the nation-state, not the foreigner.

[printsofyesterday]

Yorkshire Evening Post (Leeds) - Monday 11 November 1918

Source: British Newspaper Archive

Lest We Forget

[duchess-of-lara]

The Princess of Wales attending the Remembrance Sunday Service at the Cenotaph on Whitehall, London over the years || 2011 ~ 2025.