As a Jew and a Queer I won’t wear a poppy
Posted: November 21, 2011 | Author: maxwellzachs | | Tags: jewish, LGBTQ, military, queer, violence, war |3 Comments »
by Maxwell Zachs
I have been thinking lately about all the different ways the military pervades society, conditioning us from an early age to accept violence as normal. This is achieved in a number of ways, like through the strategic use of language or by creating a culture of militarism.
I remember watching the carnivals and parades in my home town in Kent with the military bands marching alongside the carnival-queens and my mum pointing at the pretty blonde girl at the front of the sea cadets marching with her shiny baton and saying ‘you could do that’ (funnily my mother never encouraged me to aspire to enter the pageant for carnival queen, no prizes for guessing why!).
A few years after that I joined the cadets and spent many hundreds of hours shinning my boots, practice my drill, climbing ropes and getting into fights with the boys. Later still I earned a scholarship to a private school and endured a sustained campaign from my teachers to consider the military as an option since my parents were obviously not going to be able to afford the fees at Cambridge like the kids in my class. In my late teens, estranged from my family, working in a factory and desperate to find the money to go to university I attempted to enlist in the Armed Forces for 7 years in exchange for them paying my tuition. Thankfully despite passing all of the exams, and completing the 5k run and the 50 sit ups I failed to complete the 15 full military press ups and was told to come back next year.
I never had any desire to kill anyone, I just wanted a better life. These days I realise that as a global community none of us will have better lives until we eliminate violence completely. This wont happen until the culture of militarism is reversed. I won’t wear a poppy because it promotes a false ideal of military heroism, there is nothing heroic about killing or being killed. I mourn the deaths of those men, women, and children that died but I wont call them heroes. A hero is
- A person, traditionally a man, who is admired for courage or noble qualities.
- The chief male character in a book, play, or movie, who is typically identified with good qualities.
Going to war, killing and then being killed is not a noble quality. Killing people is not courageous or good. Mostly those soldiers were forced into military service, they did what they had to do to not get shot by their commanding officers.
People who make specious arguments about how they ‘fought for our freedom’ or ‘saved us from the arms of Hitler’ are fools, they were victims and perpetrators of a false ideology. They were sold the same lies about military glory that we are still being sold now. They were innocents sent to slaughter, its not heroic its disgusting.
Someone told me the other day that ‘as a Jew I should be extra grateful for the Allied forces winning the war’ and ‘if it wasn’t for the military no one would have liberated Auschwitz’ I had to take the opportunity to point out that it was a military force that built Auschwitz in the first place…. As a Jew I would be extra grateful if people could stop using the holocaust as a justification for violence since if it stands for anything (and really I’m not sure it does stand for anything, it just stands as is) it is that with violence everyone loses. Jews know that as well as anyone.
As a Queer I refuse to wear a poppy because it glorifies and holds up the system of patriarchy and capitalism that suppresses the amazing spectrum of human diversity. It undermines gender diversity by enforcing traditional or binary conceptualisations of gender. LGBTQ people have suffered so much persecution and violence that it would be suicidal to give weight and power to any institution that uses these as methods of resolution.
As a Jew and a Queer I will not support any system that promotes the use of violence as a way of solving ‘problems’ especially when there are still so many people out there who see Jews and Queers as problems to solve.
I will remember the lives and deaths of the victims of war but not by wearing a poppy. I will remember them by actively creating a world where non-violence is the first and last resort when faced with conflict.
For more of Maxwell Zachs musings visit maxwellzachs.blogspot.com