Nazism in our brainwashed upbringing

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Nazism in our brainwashed upbringing

Who is not shocked to see teenage girl students
happily dressing up in full Nazi regalia, outfitting themselves as Adolf
Hitler and SS Guards to celebrate their Sports Day -- totally unaware
that they were also celebrating the world's murderers who killed six
million Jews in a state-sponsored ethnic cleansing during World War Two?

What were the girls thinking?

What were their teachers thinking?

The news reports and photos on the Nazi-themed parade of the students
at Sacred Heart School in Chiang Mai has shocked and angered many, and
rightly so.

Various embassies have tendered protests, including the Simon
Wiesenthal Centre, an international Jewish human rights group. The
school, obviously shocked by the international outrage, quickly offered
deep apologies, and rightly so.

According to the school, the girls had no ill intentions at all. They
were just completely unaware of the sensitivity, or lack of it,
involved.

That I believe.

The school also said no teachers knew beforehand of the Nazi parade
theme because it has been a tradition for the students to keep it a
secret until the parade day.

That I don't believe at all.

Photos on the internet showed the school buildings decorated with
huge Swastika flags and a three-storey-high wall-hanging in fiery red
depicting Hitler and his look-alike caricatures doing the "Sieg Heil"
salutes, with the word "Nazism" splashed big and bold on it.

Putting all this paraphernalia in place needed prior preparation. How
could the school administrators and teachers not know about this? Why
then pass the buck to the kids alone?

According to news reports, when a group of expat parents and teachers
conveyed their shock and dismay to the school, they were stunned to
learn that the Thai teachers did not see how the Nazi parade theme was
offensive.

With red as the theme colour, some have suggested a conspiracy theory
that the parade might be politically motivated to warn against what was
to come with the return of Thaksin Shinawatra.

Conspiracy or not, the insensitivity of the chosen theme is glaring.

How did this apathy come about?

Is it a matter of ignorance, which can be fixed by some history classes on the Holocaust? Or is the problem deeper than that?

What happened at Sacred Heart School is beyond the poor quality of our history classes.

To start with, I don't think the adults who knew about the
Nazi-themed parade are ignorant about the Holocaust. It is just that
they do not realise the danger of militarism and fascism. Nor can they
feel the pain of its victims.

Not that they are unkind. But for people who have grown up in a
country where toddlers are ordered to turn left and right like soldiers
since kindergarten, while the male high school students are forced to
cut their hair like the Marines -- and where a coup d'etat is a common
occurrence -- many have simply come to accept militarism as part of life.

The political indoctrination by the education system to foster
ultra-nationalism based on the supremacy of the Thai race also does not
help. It makes people believe that Thailand is a racially homogenous
country of ethnic Thais, which is false. Meanwhile, the military is
over-glorified as defender of the Thais. Any violence against "the
other" is then justified.

This is why mainstream Buddhist Thai society cannot empathise with
the suffering of the Malay Muslims in the deep South, even though nearly
5,000 people have been killed.

It is also why the systematic abuse of the highlanders and migrant
workers has failed to stir public outrage against ethnic discrimination,
thus allowing the wrongdoing to continue.

When we cannot feel the pain of the victims of ethnic violence close
to home, how can we feel for people so far away in place and time?

Instead of blaming the Sacred Heart students and teachers, we should
thank them for mirroring our society's deep militarism and lack of
empathy.

If we do not like what we see, then we should do something to end the systematic brainwashing that fills us with heartlessness.

Read comment

Comment 1

heartie®

date : 11/10/2011 time : 15:10

You've left out some very key points here Khun Sanitsuda. Forget about the heartlessness here for a moment. Nazism was very much about creating a supreme White race where non-white races and those with imperfections were downgraded to that of animals to be experimented on like lab rats or turned into slaves and then exterminated for the betterment of the 'supreme' white race. Do these people have any idea of what the Nazis would have liked to do to them personally? Now do you see how ignorant and ridiculous they seem to the rest of the world?!

Comment 2

wizovoz®

date : 12/10/2011 time : 14:53

I am a 60 year old British citizen living in Australia, I have been visiting Thailand since 1979 and I read the Bangkok Post online most days. I am writing to compliment you on your article dealing with the topic of Fascism, as it pertains to current attitudes (which go largely unexamined). Your comments cut through all of the politically correct ‘static’ and refocussed our attention on the central, but sadly overlooked question of our heart. You have steered this divisive and regrettable occurrence (with the schoolchildren) in a positive and responsible direction, and it is exactly this kind of balanced and compassionate voice that is needed in media reporting. I do not make a practice of responding to newspaper articles in this way but your sentiments recruited my total support, thank you for making your point so eloquently, I can only hope that your conclusions resonate with more and more readers. Incidentally, I do not belong to the Jewish faith, nor do I subscribe to the hysteria which always ignites whenever there is a perceived ‘insensitivity’ to their history. I felt that the parallels you drew between between militarist models was incisively pertinent to the currently accepted politics in Thailand and elsewhere, we need more voices like yours.

Thank you once again for this refreshing breath of sanity in an otherwise stale and predictable debate, you have won me.

Please keep up the good work.

Comment 3

borow®

date : 12/10/2011 time : 21:03

So long the lecturers are unaware about the history in the 20th century so long the present generation is unable to judge whats wrong with their NAZI attitude ... see last year prince Harry in the UK.
And when I see here in Pattaya artists who paint Adolf Hitler, I only can they ... there is really, really a BIG lack of knowing the history in the world!

Comment 4

abbub®

date : 16/10/2011 time : 01:47

- " totally unaware
that they were also celebrating the world's murderers who killed six
million Jews in a state-sponsored ethnic cleansing during World War Two"

Well yes BUT...

Not only Jews were murdered. 6 millions Gypsies too. Homosexuals. Communists and Socialists. Mentally and physically challenged people, too.

The nazis were not only racist but political, fascist murderers too.

Their own referring to themselves as "national socialists" has nothing at all to do with Socialism. Like the misuse of the word "democracy" in countries where democracy is controlled to a point the people can just cast ballots within a framework so limited it is a sham.

Comment 5

ashoka®

date : 27/10/2011 time : 23:00

It's the lack of education on serious subjects like the atrocities committed during WW2. It's not cultural derision, it's cultural ignorance. It's a widely known fact that Thai schools teach nearly nothing about the world outside of Thailand, and this is the proof.

Comment 6

oshi®

date : 28/10/2011 time : 07:46

Why we have to care for Nazism.I think it died in the past! Educated people who studied the past histories knew the right things. So there is someone who think too much about the Nazism preading around and covering all over the world!

Comment 7

grumpy®

date : 04/11/2011 time : 17:16

Why do people get so uptight about individuals wearing Nazi attire. It happened, restitution has been made so get over it. The Israeli government are equally as bad as the Nazi Party in the way they treat the Palistinians.

Comment 8

tamsin®

date : 06/11/2011 time : 18:12

With reference to 'grumpy's' post, two wrongs do not make a right (Nazism and the Israeli/Gaza conflict) and more importantly, makes Thailand look incredibly ignorant and foolish.

I have lived here for many years and the ignorance of anything outside of Thailand, top down, is breathtaking. I pointed out to one woman that Thai 'culture' was copied from the Khmers, from their Muau 'Thai', Moolamsingh and temple architecture. All she could do was splutter 'you not see two ladies with sticks up the island?' A reference to the Heroines Monument on Phuket. Completely irrelevant to my point. Burmese invaders, and when will they ever get over that!? We get along with the Germans and Vichy France.

Ignorance is not bliss, it's dangerous in this case in discriminating against those not to be of the same race. It's called fascism.

Comment 9

karajan®

date : 11/11/2011 time : 23:31

Agree that Hitler’s killing of Jews was a great crime, but, don’t you think that this genocide has been rather overblown and should now be de-emphasized somewhat?

Remember that Hitler murdered a proportionately equal number of Gypsies, homosexuals, non Jewish Poles, Slovaks and non Germans, as he did Jews :

http://www.ukemonde.com/holocaust/victims.html

http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/people/victims.htm

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/NonJewishVictims.html

Why are Hitler’s non Jewish sufferers not given the same recognition as are his Jewish victims?

Stalin was equal to Hitler in murdering innocents; would you be as angered if those schoolgirls dressed up in Stalin regalia and put on Stalin moustaches?

Hitler is now a distant memory, somewhat like Dracula ( who impaled tens of thousand of people) it is quite common to see people don Dracula costumes at Halloween and at fancy dress parties, why the outcry over school girls in Hitler fancy dress?

If those girls don’t abide by Hitler’s philosophies ( as I am certain that they don’t) there is no reason to raise an outcry over their dress.

Comment 10

siamitude®

date : 14/11/2011 time : 13:57

Thailand was nazi Germany allied during second world war under the dictator Pibulsonkran.
Comment 7 is just unacceptable and its author might be sue for lese-intelligence.

Comment 11

Ian Wensor®

date : 14/11/2011 time : 16:17

Hopefully others equally as ignorant as those school kids will realise they're being politically exploited by those who enacted that recent draconian law that gave them power to gag the press. The way things are going, it won't be long before objectors will be made to wear insignias similar to the jews in Hitler's nazi Germany during World War 2

Comment 12

ms.linda®

date : 16/11/2011 time : 08:37

Working at a school in Bangkok, a Thai teacher suggested Nazi costumes for our Sports Day, totally unaware of the implications.Perhaps she was aware that Thailand was on the side of Germany and Japan duting WWII and knew little else. I am hopeful that the Thai educational system will become more global in the future.It has been my experience that ignorance is the root of most evil and the Thai that I know would not have knowingly rallied the actions or beliefs of Hitler. Racism does occur in Thailand and unfortunately in all countries of the world, if we are honest with ourselves.

Comment 13

banmebkk®

date : 23/11/2011 time : 23:15

Most Thais don't know anything about the Nazi. I've seen university students hang the nazi flag up at apartment buildings thinking its cool. They think its something foreign like Bob Marley and the weed symbols and its cool or something. So they put it up without knowing the significance.

Comment 14

golan®

date : 02/12/2011 time : 15:04

The name of the school suggests a Christian school. The bizarre incidents were apparently done with the full knowledge and approval of teachers and other school authorities. It's hard to believe this could happen with complete impunity in a civilized culture. In my recent travels thru Thailand, the only time I witnessed or heard of prejudice was when a mixed race foreign couple tried to get served in a restaurant (2 instances), but this was in contrast to many positive experiences. Is the government going to allow that school to stay open and it's staff unpunished? This goes far beyond freedom of speech. Racism in any form is unacceptable.

Comment 15

jerrelli®

date : 09/12/2011 time : 01:31

This happening is a little unbelieveable. The atrocities done by the Nazi Party is very well documented. I know during my Time in Vietnam, the local people there, in the 1970's had a good understanding of what occurred and they found it as rehensible as the rest of the world. I do not know who influenced these young girls to take up these particular banners and ideals. I believe it is not by coincidence or by accident as some would seem to have us believe. Someone with an agenda of their own planned this series of events and chose to use young beautiful Thai girls as the way to gain attention. Consider the effect and it may be possible to surmise the cause?

Comment 16

bennu®

date : 17/12/2011 time : 04:05

Worthy article. Sanitsuda is of a rare species who writes from a sensible perspective, and who still is a person who doesn’t view the world from her particular angle alone, driven into a corner and merely justifying herself. In many countries in the West Nazism is mostly related to immigration from poor countries, and a democratic approach has generalised a potential discrimination to all citizens, and to Hitler’s invention, the second world war, which makes the victors in that war incorrectly look at such behaviour from one unblemished angle alone, in its appeal of a large-scale phenomenon, so forgetting the small rumour in which one is brought up. In a war, enemies adopt each other’s strategy. And in a family the same strategy is adopted, where the children are the immigrants. This is how they get brainwashed, for children adopt attitudes, they don’t mind much about the wording. Therefore we have to look at the world as children to detect such, even though being able to express ourselves as adults, before we blame the language itself for Nazism, and only miscommunication and the confusion of tongues are left to define politics. As it is.

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