It seems to be fashionable, or the cool
thing, to reduce complex issues to simplistic 3 or 4 word slogans.
If history is any guide slogans repeated
often enough, are assumed as truths. Belief in these slogans leads to a steep
inclined plane which propels all involved lower and lower into ever more harsh
and deplorable policies. Apathy by the educated and predominantly self proclaimed
elites in any country you care to name, who conflate identity with skin colour;
skin colour with ethnicity; ethnicity with criminality (drug dealers and
rapists); and ethnicity with religion (“they worship a different God”);
religion with a need to compile a register, to make a list of all such people
the easier for them to be kept under surveillance – such conflation is self
destructive. It will lead very quickly to concepts of national and racial
purity, and is only a short step from barbarism.
What follows is a damning statement about
the dangers of apathy in the face of slogans and propaganda, by the German
theologian Martin Neimöller, who had been imprisoned by the Nazis:
“First they came for the Socialists, and I
did not speak out –
Because
I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and
I did not speak out –
Because
I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not
speak out –
Because
I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me – and there was no
one left to speak out for me.”
If, today, now, the words Mexicans, Blacks,
Muslims, “illegal immigrants”, Afghanis, Syrians or whatever are substituted
with any of the above, the picture presented would be a bleak one indeed.
