The battle for freedom over tyranny
Is the battle of remembering over forgetting.
— Milan Kundera
And yet there is another battle, but I’ll save it for the end
As they write their lopsided histories of fiction
‘cause they get paid to show only one side
where the others just don’t count
this has been happening from their beginning of time
And even the adopted father of history committed this crime
So, where are the workers’ histories, Herodotus?
I don’t see them in your many anointed volumes concerning rich minorities and your obsessive hatred of the Persians,
Their struggles are just not mentioned and I want to know about them
Then and now
And I want to know why Lenin laughed at Churchill’s history of the Revolution
Written from so many miles away and before his time
And did that war end in 1918 or 1919 with the invasion of the white armies?
And I want to know about James Connolly and read his essay on landlordism
And I want to know what he said to his daughter working in that textile mill
Before what came during 1916
And I want to know what Orwell meant when he said that what he was witnessing in Spain in 1936 was not just a Civil War but the birth of a revolution, and why that was then put down?
And I want to know about the Australian servicemen who revolted at Sydney Central
And why I can’t tell the difference between the concentration camps in Europe during the 1940s and the ones for the immigrants today
And what the Wobblies did in ‘Frisco at the turn of last century to stop longer hours on the docks. And what they tried to do at Hoover Dam with workers dying every day.
And I want to know why the CIA murders of trade unionists
are mentioned in Colombia
Whilst being written off as “work accidents” in this country
And I want to know more about the Northwoods document and what they really did to the Maine? And why they are really afraid of little Cuba.
And that other September 11 in Chile
And soon they’ll be telling you your birthdate
And what literature you should be valuing
And why Shakespeare is looking so good when nobody seems to understand a fucking line
And praising Alexander the Great’s imperialism and not his mistake
And promoting Darius the III’s imperialism and not his mistake
And Genghis Khan’s
And Caius Caesar’s
And Dubya’s and not his mistake
And that function of patriotism that expires when the servicemen return
With stories of their own and who are suddenly forgotten and left on the streets
Then and now
And soon they’ll be telling you what you’re interested in
And where you should be putting what little they pay you
And calling you troublemaker when you start speaking the truth
And saying you don’t have the understanding of putting pen to paper
Just so you don’t start writing your own histories
Or make your own films
Or forge your own guns in a desperate bid for freedom.
Brad Evans
From Green Left Weekly, August 31, 2005.
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