Danger: Government can kill you

 

Although I enjoyed the study of history at school, I was never much good at remembering the numbers like 1066 and 1812. One of the few numbers that did stick in my mind though is six million. It is reputedly the number of Jews, Gypsies and others exterminated in the Nazi death camps. This occurred less than the average lifespan ago.

My childhood, now itself consigned to history, was spent during a time of little choice in TV viewing. I was subjected to the sort of BBC docu-mentaries that included old sepia film footage of soldiers loading hu-man cattle onto rail cars destined for the death camps.

I had already learned by then that three little kids could beat up one big kid. I wondered why those being rounded up didn’t turn on their oppressors. Although unarmed they outnum-bered their SS guards by more than 10-to-1. Simply by weight of numbers they could have put up a decent fight. Win lose or draw, it had to be preferable to the horrific alternative.

But alas, hope springs eternal in the human breast and as they board-ed the cattle trucks they had little knowledge of what lay in wait for them at journey's end. The light at the end of their tunnel was the glow from human crematoriums. They had been told they would be relocated to ‘work camps’. I expect they were being ‘positive’. Perhaps after Sarah and Rachel were separated from the other prisoners at Auschwitz one said to the others ‘Well they may have beaten us, starved us and worked us to the point of death but it'll be nice to have a shower.’

When rumours of the cyanide showers and wholesale incineration of humans were whispered, most Germans preferred to believe the work camp myth rather than the almost unbelievable truth. It is hu-man nature to believe a comforting lie rather than an uncomfortable truth. Had Holocaust victims known from the outset the intentions of their masters they would surely have resisted. It is impossible to systematically eliminate more people than the current population of New Zea-land without their co-operation. Their consent was obtained by trickery and coercion. When the war ended and the full story revealed, the world gasped ‘How could this happen?’

Had some individual or group assassinated Hitler at an early stage they may well have saved millions of lives but if caught they would have been treated as criminals and possibly strung up much like Mussolini finally was. Those responsible for such never own up, they are justifiably ashamed and worse, they are afraid that someone may decide to treat them as they have treated others.

It did happen and is happening again. Sure there is no cyanide, no concentration camps, no mass extermination (at least not here and not yet) but the spin and propaganda used to manufacture consent among a gullible popu-lace would turn Goebbels green with envy.

An ill-informed ma-jority have been trained to obey authority no mat-ter how absurd or even morally reprehensible it may be. How many of us comply with unreason-able authority without question? History shows that more often than not jackbooted uniformed authority is more likely to oppress than to serve.

Our own government, to date, is only responsible for the deaths of 10 New Zealanders in Afghanistan. The numbers of Afghanis killed is not certain. These lives were thrown away. Now the longest running war in history it is like Vietnam and Iraq before – a war that can’t be won. It has served only to gobble up precious resources and make the world an angrier more dangerous place. I have yet to hear a convincing argument why the Afghani war should have been waged at all. Our own government has never told us the reasons for our participation or what ultimate outcome is desirable, yet we go along with it all the same. Our politicians have proven inadequate in such tasks as running a coal mine, organising a state payroll for teachers, overseeing the affairs of local government, among others. Is it reasonable to trust them to make decisions about what goes on in other countries without even consulting us?

The most dangerous and deadly of man’s ad-versaries is man in gen-eral, and governments in particular. In comparison sharks, snakes, scorpions, and crocodiles are pussycats and these often have a valid reason for killing people.

The leading cause of unnatural death over the last century is not suicide, work or hunt-ing accidents, adverse drug reactions or ‘com-plications’ from medi-cal intervention. No, the responsibility for the majority of unnatural deaths over the last century lies with government. Big or small, whether by King, dicta-tor or any other system yet devised, government is a dangerous beast that must be kept on a short leash. In this our election year we must remember that government must be accountable to the people, not the people to government.

 prof_worzel@hotmail.com

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