Anne's Tears

Tearing down morality is another step in the war against free societies

Anne Frank became world famous because of her diary that was discovered and published following her death in Bergen-Belsen. But it was not just her writing, it was also the larger story of how hate mutates into murder and in the case of the Holocaust killing as an industrial process where millions could be destroyed in a factory setting. Yet there is even more than that in Anne’s story. She also came to symbolize humanity’s guilt over her death and the decades long journey to seek healing and the attempt to apply the lessons learned from that tragic phase in history. We would all be better human beings and never let something as heinous as this happen again. We would never stand by idly when merchants of hate would force defenceless families on train wagons to be sent to their deaths. We had learned and progressed. We were better.

The line-ups in front of the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam are endless on any given day, people from all over the world come to visit. I doubt if all of them understand the deeper ‘why’ but it must be the intuitive feeling that if we keep honouring and remembering Anne we contribute to creating that better world that she herself alluded to in her diary. It is not a religious ceremony, but it is close. The act of remembering and buying her book or other souvenirs in the museum store is our journey to underline our |moral stance. We will not forget Anne, we will learn and do good.

So defacing her statue this week on Amsterdam’s Merwedeplein (where she lived before she moved to hide in the secret annexe) with the words ‘Gaza’ in red was not just a protest against the current war. It was of course linking Anne’s Jewishness to Israel as a Jewish state and therefore another vile utterance of the anti-Semitic mania that is sweeping the world right now. There are many other and way more visible public spaces where you can register your feelings about ‘Gaza’. So this very act had even darker undertones with an ever more more lethal twist embedded in the red paint. It was an attack, a denigration, a defacing if you like of western society’s quest to become better societies where hate would no longer exist. It was taking a sledgehammer to morality itself and destroying one of the core tenets of a free and more humane society.

And who are the perpetrators? Angry students, woke activists, uneducated hooligans, misinformed academics, radical politicians, foreign infiltrators? Probably some or all of the above and it seems they have found each other. The war on Israel has unified them in their hate of the free west. And as we now know, these angry mobs that have taken over our streets, campuses and are attacking Jews are increasingly well organized, globally. They are actively supported and funded by nations such as Iran:

The Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, said Iranian actors have “opportunistically” inserted themselves in the protest movement via social media and other cyber activities, posing as activists online and promoting and even funding public demonstrations.

One of the things that I have often quoted is that anti-Semitism reflects a deep malaise in the societies in which it appears and that it is either the last gasp of a declining culture or the first warning sign of a new political order. And therefore an attack on Anne Frank is a direct attack on all of us, on our society, on our democracies, on our values.

The merchants of hate have witnessed the weaknesses and contradictions in western culture and are now in full force out to exploit these to their advantage. It is not about Gaza really. It may not even be about Israel, that is just a first battle in the much longer conflict. It is weaponized religion that knows its real enemy is freedom, democracy, liberalism and individualism. All totalitarian and millennial movements have sought to extinguish these values. Hitler’s concentration camps, Stalin’s gulag, Mao’s cultural revolution, all targeted the moral foundations on which these values were built. It is for shame that many leading politicians in western capitals fail to see how these actions are part of a larger play for global dominance. Progress on the battlefield, on the nuclear negotiation table and in disrupting our institutions is a long term strategy that is beginning to get results. Do not be fooled. Iran, closely aligned with Moscow and Beijing, is in it to win. No matter the cost, even to their own people who are offered up as necessary sacrifices.

If we stop defending the core moral foundations of the free world, if we stand by as Anne Frank is torn down, again I might add, then we have ceased to exist as a free and defendable society. Then we are witnessing the dimming of the lights so that we will no longer see the horrors that will once again come to visit.

Anne did warn us.