In September of 2016, Ed Miller, an undergraduate history major student from a US university went to attend his fall semester in a European university as a part of a study-abroad program. Besides taking the required courses, during his holidays he was able to travel throughout Europe visiting historic palaces, churches and museums, especially the ones dedicated to the resistance movements against the Nazi regime during the Second World War. To Ed, all those museums were the reminders of a human promise of “Never again”. In the meantime, his own country was undergoing a most divisive political process to elect its next President.
On his return in January, he realized that something amiss. Most of the country’s mood was in a state of utter shock and despair. The new President won the election on a platform of bigotry of hatred towards religious and ethnic minorities. To add salt to the injury, the President actually lost the popular vote by a margin of more than two millions, but still won the election via an obsolete electoral paradigm “electoral college majority”, still in place from the foundation of the country from centuries ago.
Then one day, while checking for messages from his social networking sites, he came across to a post, as if sent from an underground resistance movement, reminiscent of the European history he learned about a few months ago. First two instructions that attracted his immediate attention stated: a) Don't use his name; b) Remember this is a regime and he's not acting alone. Ed’s memory immediately took him to the Dutch Resistance Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands. There, in room after room, the history of Hitler’s rise and Nazis’ invasion and occupation of Netherlands were displayed through old images and printed reports from the period. But, equally impressive was the display of the account of country’s resistance movement: the bravery of the citizen, the tactics the resistance-fighters employed as well as the hardship ordinary people endured, while fighting an evil force.
Next post in the list from the social media was direr: “c). Do not argue with those who support him - it doesn't work.” Ed remembered a historic image hanging on one of the walls of the museum known as the Topography of Terror in Berlin, Germany. This museum was erected at the very site that once served as the nerve center of combined evil machinery, the Gestapo and the SS. In that picture, while an entire crowd was engaged in a Nazi-salute, there was one exceptional brave gentleman who remained stoic. While describing the time and place of the image, a line said “No identification or further whereabouts of the gentleman was ever found.”
As Ed went down the remainder of the post, a few more lines stood out: d) Keep your message positive; e) Support writers and the artists because they spread the message; and finally, f) Resist.
(After this essay was finished, a gunman shot at two Indian immigrant engineers, killing one, described as a hate-crime.)
On his return in January, he realized that something amiss. Most of the country’s mood was in a state of utter shock and despair. The new President won the election on a platform of bigotry of hatred towards religious and ethnic minorities. To add salt to the injury, the President actually lost the popular vote by a margin of more than two millions, but still won the election via an obsolete electoral paradigm “electoral college majority”, still in place from the foundation of the country from centuries ago.
Then one day, while checking for messages from his social networking sites, he came across to a post, as if sent from an underground resistance movement, reminiscent of the European history he learned about a few months ago. First two instructions that attracted his immediate attention stated: a) Don't use his name; b) Remember this is a regime and he's not acting alone. Ed’s memory immediately took him to the Dutch Resistance Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands. There, in room after room, the history of Hitler’s rise and Nazis’ invasion and occupation of Netherlands were displayed through old images and printed reports from the period. But, equally impressive was the display of the account of country’s resistance movement: the bravery of the citizen, the tactics the resistance-fighters employed as well as the hardship ordinary people endured, while fighting an evil force.
Next post in the list from the social media was direr: “c). Do not argue with those who support him - it doesn't work.” Ed remembered a historic image hanging on one of the walls of the museum known as the Topography of Terror in Berlin, Germany. This museum was erected at the very site that once served as the nerve center of combined evil machinery, the Gestapo and the SS. In that picture, while an entire crowd was engaged in a Nazi-salute, there was one exceptional brave gentleman who remained stoic. While describing the time and place of the image, a line said “No identification or further whereabouts of the gentleman was ever found.”
As Ed went down the remainder of the post, a few more lines stood out: d) Keep your message positive; e) Support writers and the artists because they spread the message; and finally, f) Resist.
(After this essay was finished, a gunman shot at two Indian immigrant engineers, killing one, described as a hate-crime.)
