An insult to their memories

Today is the twelfth anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. All across the Internet, there is an abundance of memorial articles, tweets and status updates to commemorate all the victims and to remind the world that the atrocity should not be repeated in any form. The intent behind the each of these online remembrances is purely honorable.

In addition to 9/11/01, in several discussion forums I've observed some people mention two other notable September 11ths: the 1973 Chilean coup and the 2012 attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi. It would be natural to assume that the people highlighting these two other events are expressing their commemorations for the dead. Unfortunately, from what I've observed today, that isn't always the case.

Whenever I've seen somebody mention the Chilean coup on a 9/11 thread, they have not commented with the intention of educating others or paying any sort of respect to the dead. Instead, they use the coup as a passive-aggressive form of anti-Americanism and/or to trivialise 9/11 and its victims, or to claim that the attacks on 9/11 were justified because of incidents like the coup. They have no interest in the memories of anyone who died in the coup and only use them as an excuse to troll. Similarly, with Benghazi, most of the people talking about it in the various 9/11 memorial threads are not commemorating the four people who died in the attack: They are using the deaths as a crutch to spread conspiracy theories or to fuel whatever hatred that has consumed them. The victims are disrespected and otherwise forgotten.

I'm not overly familiar with what transpired in the Chilean coup and I certainly don't know everything about Benghazi, either (although I reject the "trutherism" regarding the latter"). I do know, however, that the use of any tragedy to dismiss another or to spread hatred is reprehensible and an insult to all the people who suffered and died. When you trivialise one tragedy, you trivialise them all.