As the battle for territorial gain for Putin rages in Ukraine, a different kind of battle is fought for the Ukrainians – one of survival and preservation of the freedom to be independent. As I gazed at the shattered and dilapidated relics from another age inside national World War II museum in New Orleans, Louisiana 3 weeks ago, I was reminded of the universal cruelty of war. However, throughout every bloody conflict, there lies hope for salvation.
Putin’s Brutal Advancements
The World War II museum in Louisiana seeks to celebrate tenacious courage in the face of hopeless onslaught as well as the darkest recesses of the human psyche. As I notice the glossy silver tea cups with Swastika engravings embedded in them recovered from Hitler’s mansion, I realized the stark parallel from one brutal authoritarian conquest to the next: The selfish desire to assert dominance and make his mark upon the world. As Hitler brutally marched 3 million troops into the USSR during operation Barbarossa, he was ready to give up everything if it meant fulfilling his ideologically goal of purifying the world from communism and Jews. Even if it means he has to force his men through the sub -10 degree blizzards. Putin mirrors this reckless ferocity as he is prepared to give up his all for political leverage in Ukraine, the country he has his metaphorical crosshairs on the Slavic nation.
A Culture of Political Dissonance and Censorship
As my eyes wandered towards the Allied front in the war of the pacific, I found myself inadvertently gazing at a preserved photo of a Japanese Propaganda leaflet depicting President Roosevelt as a grotesque monster, his hands reached out as a greedy miser. The culture of political manipulation of the press as well as the public has been the most common tactic during wartime era dating back to 17th Century Europe, but the distortion of information would have been as old as the dawn of humanity. The culture of manipulation is used even today in the form of forced suppression, passive manipulation through lies, and brutal anti-treason laws. This is apparent for both sides of world war two as soon after the war in the pacific, General Douglas MacArthur made sure to take a picture with the disgraced emperor of Japan, Emperor Hirohito, making sure to emphasize his superior stature and height, sending a message of superiority and dominance to his enemies. This culture perpetuates itself today in the war between Russia and Ukraine as Putin tirelessly passes laws to prevent the spread of information on the war in Russia. Recently, a teacher in Russia was prosecuted for spreading anti-war messages in her classroom. A teacher, the ultimate agent of truth to their young pupils, is now forced to tell lies in the name of the state.
“I just wanted to broaden my students’ worldview. I hoped to break through the propaganda that is being fed to this country. But look where it got me,” said Gen, who faces a long-term prison sentence for “discrediting” the Russian army after her message went viral.”
“We are seeing creeping signs of an authoritarian regime transforming into a full-on totalitarian one, in which a mobilized society actively tells on each other,” Kolesnikov said.
Forced to comply with an authoritarian leader, citizens have no choice but to participate in the frenzy of silenced violence.
Weapons of War and The Blazes of Death
Near the end of the US-Japanese war, as the US draws closer to mainland Japan, the desperate Japanese people launched Kamikaze attacks, crashing airplanes into American cruisers in hopes of slowing down the seemingly inevitable invasion of Japanese mainland. In an ironic display of divine justice, the Japanese people are ready to fight to the last soldier in defense of their homeland. The United States were forced to drop napalm filled firebombs in the mostly wooden Japanese cities. As the towns were caught in the blaze of warfare, close to 100,000 people burnt to death in the worst ways possible. The United States deliberately aimed at civilian targets in hope of coercing a Japanese surrender, yet the price of peace in the pacific ironically led to mountain-high piles of bodies. We might think the days of indiscriminate barbarism are behind us, yet attacks in the war less than a month ago paints a grim picture for humanity as thousands of civilians die at the hands of deliberate missile-bombing from Russian forces.
“Civilians are being killed and maimed in what appear to be indiscriminate attacks, with Russian forces using explosive weapons with wide area effects in or near populated areas,” said OHCHR spokesperson Liz Throssell, speaking in Geneva. “These include missiles, heavy artillery shells and rockets, as well as airstrikes.”
Our Future
The future ahead for humanity might not be one of forlorn hope, yet it would certainly be a long and tenuous one. At the end of the gallery, a closing message conveyed hope for humanity to learn from bloody conflicts for war, concluding that nothing justifies the annihilation of our people. Inches of sovereign domain mean nothing as parents and children are separated by war, teachers and their students mutilated by false assertions of truth, brothers and sisters burned to ash from scorching napalm as military boots step over their corpses in the name of a few inches of land.
“People are people. They fight and sometimes kill. Humans have always had a capacity to make war, if conditions and culture so dictate. However, Warfare Is Only an Invention—Not a Biological Necessity.”
