Every year I teach a unit on the Holocaust to my eighth graders, and every year I, like the kids, learn something new. This year, in encouraging them to seek out and read other sources about Anne Frank, I discovered
Anne Frank Remembered, a memoir by Miep Gies, who was integral in hiding the members of the Secret Annex. Miep’s words struck me, not so much for the obvious comparisons between the Bush Administration and the Nazi occupiers of Holland, but because of the eerie parallels between the official and unofficial dissemination of information, both then and now.
According to Miep, soon after the Nazis conquered Holland, “The official radio now played nothing but German music all day. The movie theaters showed only German films, so naturally we stopped going to the movies.” (58) How similar to our own predicament today! The mainstream media, for the most part, broadcasts little but pap and propaganda. Is it any wonder than fewer Americans than ever are watching news programs, or that journalists are currently held in lower esteem than in nearly any other point in American history?
For the occupied Dutch, however, there was a ray of hope—Radio Orange:
“In late July, Radio Orange, the voice of the Dutch Government in Exile in London, began nightly, and was like a drink to the thirsty. As the newspapers had stopped printing anything but the German news, we knew nothing about what was going on in the outside world and longed for any information. So each night, although listening was illegal, we’d all gather around our radios for Radio Orange.” (59)
Like the Dutch who got their real news—and the hope that came with it—from the BBC and Radio Orange, many of today’s citizens get real news from the Internet. All those stories that
should be headline news, but aren’t—the stolen 2000 election, faked intelligence leading to war, antiwar protests, the stolen 2004 election, the Abramoff scandal, the Plame scandal, etc.—all the information that could lead American citizens to rebel against their oppressors, as the Nazis feared the Dutch would, can be found on the Internet, as it is rarely found in the mainstream news media.
The Nazi occupiers knew their propaganda was useless if the Dutch had access to alternate sources of news, and so had it “decreed against the law to listen to the BBC.” (58–59) Today’s news media and government, while not outlawing the Internet, certainly do their level best to discount and discredit it. Scarcely a day goes by without a television program or newspaper somewhere questioning the merit and validity of news taken from the Internet. And just as the Nazis eventually began confiscating Dutch radios, the U. S. government, in attempting to sell Internet neutrality to the highest bidder, seeks to similarly curb the influence of this independent source of information.
Despite all the obstacles created to limit access to detailed information, those of us who are tuned in to the Internet have our own Radio Orange, full of information and hope. We have access to all the stories that the mainstream media, for whatever reason, chooses to ignore. We know that the
Brooks Brothers Riot in Florida during the 2000 election was perpetrated and carried out by Republican congressional staffers flown in for the occasion. We know that most, if not all, of the intelligence that led our country to
attack Iraq was incorrect or faked. We know that millions of people in America and around the world
protested against the war. We know that Ken Blackwell and other Republicans worked to
steal the 2004 election via Ohio.
Access to a few facts may seem like a trivial thing, but people in power know that ignorance of the masses is their best weapon, their best means of controlling a populace. Conversely, those who would be oppressed understand that knowledge is the real power. The hope that comes with knowledge and truth and unity of purpose was deemed so important that even those hiding in the Secret Annex took the risk of leaving their hiding place every evening in order to listen to the forbidden newscasts:
“Shortly, it was time for the radio broadcasts, and the entire group trooped down to Mr. Frank’s office below to pull up chairs and gather around the Phillips radio on the table. The whole room bristled with excitement when the near-and-yet-so-far voice of Radio Orange came through the radio. ‘Here is Radio Orange. All things went well today. The English...’ and on it went, filling us with hope and with information, our only real connection to the still-free outside world.” (114)
Like Miep Gies and the stalwart Dutch before us, we who listen to the Internet “Radio Orange” are filled with information and hope, because we have a connection to the “still-free outside world.” We are not trapped in a cage of blissful ignorance. We know the truth. We know that there is an active resistance against the occupying forces. We know that the resistance movement is growing, and its momentum is increasing. We know that the occupiers on on the verge of defeat, however hysterically they may screech otherwise.
Because we have real information, we have hope. And because we have hope, we can outlast and overcome these people who are destroying our country.
Quotations from:
Gies, Miep, with Alison Leslie Gold.
Anne Frank Remembered. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
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