Obscenity of War behind the Red Poppy

Today is Remembrance Sunday, the day when the dead of two Great Capitalist Wars are remembered not only by their surviving comrades-in-arms but by the pompous and shameless hypocrites among the ruling classes of the Western establishments and their conduits in the Christian Churches and Mainstream Media.

The irony of this hypocritical nonsense is, of course, unmentioned. For it was these very same establishments, their flunkeys in the churches and the media that were quite happy for these unfortunate men and women to be sacrificed in the name of their capitalist Behemoth. And sacrificed they were in the most horrendous nightmares of WWI and WWII.

The British soldier, Wilfred Owen, is known for his anti-war poetry and particularly Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori, a bitter commentary on the reality of the horrible deaths that soldiers met on the battlefield in contrast to the jingoistic nonsense put about back home of how sweet it was to die for one's country.

Along with Remembrance Sunday goes the Red Poppy Movement which purports to be a symbol of respect for the dead. But is it really? Has it not become just a part of the poisonous, hypocritical nonsense promoted by a ruling class who continue to send their country's men and women into the killing fields, to slaughter and be slaughtered?

How long must this grotesque hypocrisy go on without being challenged by its would-be victims?

And, as always, the Establishment and its media have an extremely selective memory about exactly who it was who sacrificed their lives to keep the British Empire going. The other day, the rather bovine Peter Sissons on BBC News 24 interviewed a young Muslim student about a Press Release from Dr Muhammed Abdul Bari of the conservative Muslim Council of Britain warning of the dangers of Britain going down the road that Nazi Germany did.

It's something I have been shouting from the rooftops for sometime from this blog so it was a great relief to hear a conservative Muslim leader take up the message. A Youtube clip of Dr Bari saying this, by the way, has mysteriously been taken down.

This was all too much for the pompous Sissons who suggested that with Remembrance Sunday coming, wasn't it a bad time to make allusions to Nazi Germany?

Which shows what an ignorant man Sissons really is. His statement was not only nonsensical but it was an obscene insult to all the many thousands of Muslims (mainly from the Indian subcontinent) who died in both those wars defending the very Empire that oppressed them! Bearing in mind that they along with so many others from the Empire fought fascist totalitarianism, isn't it ironic that it is their children and grandchildren who are now being turned into the scapegoats and victims of Britain's new police-state chickenhawks?

Showing how a State is quite prepared to sacrifice lives by the thousand and, now, according to Dr Gideon Polya's figures of a Muslim Holocaust, of millions only to turn round and abuse both the dead and their descendants with the hypocritical trappings of pomp and circumstance.

For this reason I condemn the Red Poppy Movement as an empty and grotesque thing which does nothing but glorify the State's death machine. If folk truly care about those who died fighting for freedom they should wear the White Poppy launched in the 'twenties by the Women's Cooperative Movement as the socialist and anti-war alternative.

"The wearing of a white poppy on Armistice Day became a focus for the peace movement, and the Peace Pledge Union took it up in 1936 as 'a definite pledge to peace that war must not happen again'. In 1938 'Alternative Remembrance' events began: a pacifist religious service was held in London's Regent's Park, followed by a march to Westminster and the laying of a wreath of white poppies at the Cenotaph. 85,000 white poppies, by then an acknowledged symbol of peace, were sold that year. Many people wore them alone, others wore a red poppy as well.

When an ex-serviceman broke the Armistice Silence at the Cenotaph in 1937, with his loud cry of protest against the hypocrisy of praying for peace while preparing for war, he had made clear what everyone was beginning to realise: the people who shared the Silence were not of one mind about what Remembrance meant."

Movement for the Abolition of War