‘…here in Andres Bonifacio’s Republika ng Haringbayang Katagalugan, it is a Christian pastor martyred by Hitler’s regime that animates us…’
JANUARY 20, 2025 was declared as the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in one of his last acts as President of the United States of America, while the incumbent President, Donald J. Trump, signed an Executive Order directing the director of National Intelligence and other appropriate officials to “Immediately review the records relating to the Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations and present a plan for their full and complete release within 45 days.” [https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/01/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-orders-declassification-of-jfk-rfk-and-mlk-assassination-files/] Biden had proclaimed: “The battle for the soul of our Nation is perennial—a constant struggle between hope and fear, kindness and cruelty, and justice and injustice. It is a battle that has been waged on battlefields and bridges, and within courthouses and city councils. There is nothing guaranteed about our democracy. Every generation is required to keep it, defend it, and protect it. There is still so much to do to build the ‘Beloved Community’ Dr. King envisioned…” [https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/22/2025-01600/martin-luther-king-jr-federal-holiday-2025]
That was the USA last week. But today, here in Andres Bonifacio’s Republika ng Haringbayang Katagalugan, it is a Christian pastor martyred by Hitler’s regime that animates us, given that non-combatants from United Nations territories continued to languish in Japanese concentration camps 80 years ago: “We are very hungry, allowed only five ounces of rice or corn which loses about 20% when cleaned, cup of mush for breakfast, sometimes small coup of weak soup at noon; ladle of rice at 4 p.m.; with stood of some kind of pig weed, may be a little so-called gravy; someone dies every day; very few medicines, have been confined to quarters except for one hour at meal time (when we have any), since Jan 6, we lay on our bunks most of the time, so weak cannot walk up one flight of stairs without holding onto the rail and stopping to rest several times; morale is very low, all are quarrelsome, cranky, some beg from the Japs; some scrape up droppings of food from the ground under the mess tables and in the slop barrels, which a year or so ago were so full now have only a few weed stalk butts; I never thought Americans could get so low as some of the people in here, they will beg, borrow, steal and lie for scraps of garbage; will steal your dish, your food, soap, tobacco, clothes, anything which might be food or traded for tobacco; send their little children, who somehow keep strong enough to get about, out to beg and steal; they even raided the Jan kitchen for scraps of bones.” [Diary of Carl E. Rice, 16 January 1945, University of Santo Tomas, Manila]
That Christian martyr averred that the victory of Nazism in Europe would destroy Christian civilization: “When Hitler came to power in 1933 (Dietrich) Bonhoeffer abandoned his academic career which seemed to him to have lost its proper meaning. He left Germany for a time but he soon returned and on April 5, 1943, was arrested by the Gestapo and thrown into prison. On April 9, 1945, he was executed at Flossenburg just a few days before this concentration camp was liberated by the Allies.” [The Cost of Discipleship. Revised Edition. Translated from the German Nachfolge. NY: First Macmillan Paperbacks Edition, 1963]
As for revenge: “We are concerned not with evil in the abstract, but with the evil person. Jesus bluntly calls the evil person evil. If I am assailed, I am not to condone or justify aggression. Patient endurance of evil does not mean a recognition of its rights. That is sheer sentimentality, and Jesus will have nothing to do with it. The shameful assault, the deed of violence and the act of exploitation are still evil. The disciple must realize this, and bear witness to it as Jesus did, just because this is the only way evil can be met and overcome.” [Bonhoeffer, pp. 158-159]
Pastor Dietrich animates us today because 21st century collaborationists (aided and abetted by clueless WW2 historians, amoral popularizers, narcissistic celebrities and opportunistic bureaucrats) are slinging the propaganda of the Japanese fascists. That their war crimes can be justified. That both sides are equally blame-worthy. That collaborators can also be seen as patriotic. That their heinous role in the past should now be set aside in favor of peace in the present. All these are in direct contravention of the position of the original United Nations.
To eradicate Hitlerism.
The United States, the United Kingdom, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, China, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Poland, South Africa, and Yugoslavia plus Mexico, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Iraq, Brazil, Bolivia, Iran, Colombia, Liberia, France, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Venezuela, Uruguay, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Syria “are now engaged in a common struggle against savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world,” thus, they all pledge to employ full resources, military or economic, “in the struggle for victory over Hitlerism.” [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Declaration_by_United_Nations]
And here we are now: It is 89 seconds to midnight.
“Our fervent hope is that leaders will recognize the world’s existential predicament and take bold action to reduce the threats posed by nuclear weapons, climate change, and the potential misuse of biological science and a variety of emerging technologies…Blindly continuing on the current path is a form of madness. The United States, China, and Russia have the collective power to destroy civilization. These three countries have the prime responsibility to pull the world back from the brink, and they can do so if their leaders seriously commence good-faith discussions about the global threats outlined here.” [2025 Doomsday Clock Statement, Science and Security Board, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 28, 2025; https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/2025-statement/]
