Letter to the Torygraph

[peteryoung]

Mark Steyn in today's Daily Telegraph (available at the site with registration) has prompted this response, despatched this evening:

Sir,
Mark Steyn's opinion piece in today's Daily Telegraph (25 Jan), titled 'Europe has taken over the Holocaust', at first attempts to put this week's remembrance of the liberation of Auschwitz into some kind of accord with present day political reality in Europe and the Middle East, but instead makes the usual error of minimising the Holocaust by telescoping something that was in fact so recent into something that has perceivably gained too much 'vintage', to use an inappropriate term, because of its recurrent and proven media shock value. It's an easy trap to fall into, and a trap that is usually lined with a journalistic cynicism that reeks of an almost deliberate discounting of the personal histories of the millions who were affected by it. What began as a balanced article turned an inappropriate corner when Steyn took issue with Anthony Lipmann, son of an Auschwitz survivor, who recently wrote in The Spectator, "When on 27 January I take my mother's arm – tattoo number A-25466 – I will think not just of the crematoria and the cattle trucks but of Darfur, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Jenin, Fallujah." This is a well-expressed sentiment about man's inhumanity to man on any scale of suffering, but Steyn, clearly suffering from 'Holocaust fatigue', turns it into a numbers game and misses the point entirely. Jenin, he points out, was only 52 dead Israelis vs. 56 dead Palestinians. And Fallujah: "In rounding up a few head-hackers, the Yanks perpetrated another Auschwitz?" Steyn's thinking appears for the most part lazy, insensitive and misdirected, and he seems unfortunately engaged in reducing the symbolic value of Auschwitz – something any race of people are capable of doing – to a European historical footnote that needs to be remembered, seemingly now more than ever.

On the strength of today's piece I wonder if Steyn will, at the appropriate time, also be issuing similarly jaded opinions about co-opted commemorations of August 6th (the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima) by the rest of the world, and I also wonder where he will be pointing the finger then.

Comments

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

That's really something. I hope they print it.

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I've had the standard acknowledgement already, now it's just wait and see, I'd guess.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Hi, could you mail me your current email. I'm getting bounces from the one I've got.

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

Sent to your atomicrazor address.

[the-gardener.livejournal.com]

August 16th (the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima)

Sorry to be pedantic, but the correct date is August 6th.

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Slip of the key, ta.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Good letter. Genocide is committed one death at a time. And just because a fence is around a whole nation, doesn't mean you haven't constructed a prison.

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

Gosh, you're on LJ too!

Thanks. As you know apart from their crossword I'm no fan of the Telegraph (and even less so of The Spectator) and I guess this was just one knee-jerk reaction too far for me. If they print it I'll be very pleasantly surprised.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

What email are you using? You haven't replied to any of my emails (whimper).

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I did get them and thanks for your concern, but I've only been home two days out of the last ten.

I accept that's a pathetic way of acknowledging I'm crap and you deserve better, but there you are. And now you're here, which is good. Woof!

[fjm.livejournal.com]

And a "Bay" in return (bassets don't "woof").