Over Christmas, I was stopped in my tracks by the news that the United States government removed commemorations to Black American war dead in the Netherlands. The move has triggered a great deal of anger in Europe. The Dutch people treat the Allied war dead with a care and respect that borders on the sacred.
The fact that the United States moved against a Black war memorial during the Christmas season only deepened the outrage.
It is a tradition in Holland to light candles on the Allied war graves on Christmas Eve. Dutch families adopt particular graves. The duty to care for those graves passes from parent to child.
These commemorations at the Canadian war cemeteries at Groesbeek and Holten mean a great deal to Canadians who have loved ones lying in those fields. It makes us feel as if our uncles and granddads who never came home are lying with family.
And for the Dutch, the Christmas time memorials are important because they remind the children of the horrific winter of hunger when the people were starving and freezing as they waited for the Allies to break through with liberation.
This Christmas, the MAGA government shocked the people of the Netherlands by stripping the American military cemetery at Margraten of panels that were erected to remember the sacrifice of Black American soldiers.
The move sparked outrage.
The governor of the local province has demanded that the United States return the panels. Dutch spokesman Bas Alberson stated:
“The displayed panels represented a history that we can never forget and from which we can learn, especially now that differences in the world are ever more magnified.”
“They fought for a freedom that they did not have themselves.”
But the white supremacist government in Washington doesn’t give a damn about the people of the Netherlands, or the sacrifice of those who gave their lives fighting fascism. Stripping the war panels is just another opportunity to flex the hate muscles.
This is a white supremacist regime, and everything they have done in their so-called war on “woke” must be considered through the lens of a race war.
I urge you to read the book They Want to Kill Americans by counter terrorism expert Malcom Nance. He documented the rise of what he calls TITUS – The Trump Insurgency in the United States. He studied the shift of online hate following the rise of Trump to the development of heavily armed militia groups focused on the promise of destroying the Democratic Party and driving a white nationalist agenda.
Thus, we saw the rise of the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Boys, lone wolf race attacks, and the widespread acceptance of the QAnon conspiracy, which promised the coming “Great Storm” of vengeance against the Woke and the constant race-baiting by the
The insurgency was building to fight a second Biden term, but then Trump shocked even his own supporters by winning. To keep this race hate machine in the fold, Trump had to deliver. This explains the rise of the paramilitary force ICE and the arbitrary attacks on racialized people and immigrants. It is a form of civil war / race war papered over by a micro-thin claim of legal right.
Reassuring the race haters has meant carrying on a relentless attack on Black identity and history – all in the name of the war on “Woke.”
Soon after taking the White House, Trump fired General CQ Brown, who was head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pete Hegseth said it was about standing up to DEI. The highly decorated Brown is Black and he was replaced by a white man.
The Trump administration targeted the Smithsonian Institute for its work on documenting Black history. Trump was offended that they discussed the realities of slavery:
“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been… We are not going to allow this to happen,” he continued, “and I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums… This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE.”
Slavery was evil. End of story. Only a white hater would be offended by that statement.
Such comments by Trump explain the reasons he excluded Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth from the days that national parks are open for free. Instead, he made his own birthday a free day for families to visit.
Shitty and spiteful is the nature of MAGA. Hence, the attack on the war memorials in the Netherlands.
Over one million Black Americans signed up to fight fascism at a time when many of them were denied the right to vote in the United States. There are many accounts of Canadian and American interactions during the war where Canadian soldiers were appalled at the treatment of the Black American soldiers.
Now in death, they are being degraded by a regime of criminals. The United States has come too far to allow this level of race hatred to become institutionalized again.
Canadians, meanwhile, are looking at the liberation of Europe with new eyes.
The sacrifice to free the people from fascism was immense. During the winter of hunger, Canadians were determined to break through and get food to the people. The German army was aided by the traitor squads of the Dutch and Belgian SS, who would fight to the death rather than be captured. The fascists had embedded themselves in the villages and the cities, forcing a grueling street-by-street campaign to free the people.
In battles like Groningen, the Canadians withheld their artillery and air advantage in order to spare civilian casualties. This meant that a lot more young Canadian boys would die. Every soldier going in knew the score, and they did their part.
It is too bad that Pete Hoekstra, who comes from Groningen, has never gone to the cemeteries to light candles for those young men who freed his family from the Nazis. It is doubtful that he would bother to speak for the Black American soldiers who put their lives on the line to fight fascism.
But the Dutch people remember. And the Canadian people remember.
We remember because it is our duty to ensure that fascist hate never rises again.