Saturday, December 06, 2008

The uses of memory




It is a passtime of progressives to undo the traditional reading of many historical events as merely propaganda serving the interests of the victor. Their own predictable narratives are not lacking in motivation either, I might add.

In Canada, on December 6th 1989, --I was living there at the time-- a noteworthy event occurred.

Here's the standard narrative: In Montreal, Marc Lepine shot 27 female engineering students at the Ecole Polytechnique, killing 14, before fatally shooting himself. Prior to the murders, he sent all the male students out of the room and shouted his hatred of feminists as he executed them.

The mass murder prompted tighter gun laws, which included the creation of the controversial national firearms registry. It also prompted Parliament to create the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women in 1991, to coincide with the anniversary of the tragedy.

Two items that were suppressed in the narrative were "Marc Lepine's" cultural context: Arab Muslim, born Gamil Gharbi, ... and the fact that the unarmed men agreed to abandon the women and leave the room in the first place.

Mark Steyn provides some additional thoughts and reflection on what became a standard Women As Victims of Patriarchy and Its Guns discourse.

Some words of Steyn that are apt: (bolding mine)
Let’s face it, our society is in trouble. The real problem is not the killer. It’s those men who think nothing of letting someone kill women. There’s something dark, lurking and evil in the idea that manliness is dangerous. This is what happens when there’s a lack of testosterone in society. How can we raise boys to be uncomfortable with traditional boy behavior and then expect them to act like honorable men? We cannot.

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