Thoughts on the current political scene

One or two people have sought to rebuke me for drawing comparisons between the political scene of the 1930s and today, one warning that it might cause offence. However, I cannot help but see the similarities. Yes, we live in a different era and the names are different. The details may well be different but I can't help thinking that we are creating a world so alike to the world of the 1930s. The difference being that this time we are the ones who are in danger of taking the wrong path.

Education is vitally important in all of this. Understanding of history is central: not just the details of the Second World War in particular, but also an understanding of the conditions that gave rise to forces like Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. I don't pretend to have a deep understanding of all of this: all I can do is say what I see.

One of the problems, especially for the younger generations, is that the second world war is beginning to go out of living memory. I grew up with grandparents telling me stories from the Second World War. My grandfather told many stories about being in Austria, among other places, driving tanks and, of course, there are many stories he would not tell.

I have always loved the Diary of Anne Frank. I have copies in English and in Dutch and I have been to see the Anne Frank House twice, the second time with my daughter. Talking to my daughter after our visit, we agreed that the lesson we learn is that we should not be horrible to people because they have a different nationality, religion, or whatever the particular difference might be. If you read the diary, and then visit the house, you cannot help but weep when you stand in the room in which she slept and wrote, thinking about what would later happen.

When I was at university, I read the book Se questo è un uomo by Primo Levi, an Italian Jew who survived Auschwitz. His account is deeply moving, harrowing, as he describes his own experiences in Auschwitz. His book begins with a poem, which is worth repeating here:

Voi che vivete sicuri [You who live safely]
Nelle vostre tiepide case, [in your warm houses]

Voi che trovate tornando a sera [You who find, when you get home in the evening,]

Il cibo caldo e visi amici: [Warm food and friendly faces]

Considerate se questo è un uomo [Consider whether this is a man]
Che lavora nel fango [who works in the mud]
Che non conosce pace [who knows no peace]
Che lotta per mezzo pane [who fights for a chunk of bread]
 Che muore per un sí o per un no. [who dies for a 'yes' or a 'no']
Considerate se questa è una donna, [Consider whether this is a woman]
Senza capelli e senza nome [without hair and without name]
Senza più forza di ricordare [with no more strength to remember]
Vuoti gli occhi e freddo il grembo [empty her eyes and cold her womb]
Come una rana d'inverno. [like a toad in winter]
Meditate che questo è stato: [Meditate on the fact that this has been]
Vi comando queste parole. [I enjoin these words to you]
Scolpitele nel vostro cuore [Sculpt them in your heart]

Stando in casa andando per via, [at home or on the street]

Coricandovi alzandovi; [when you go to bed and when you get up]
Ripetetele ai vostri figli. [Repeat them to your sons and daughters]

O vi si sfaccia la casa, [or may your house fall down]
La malattia vi impedisca, [may illness hinder you]
I vostri nati torcano il viso da voi. [may those born to you turn their faces from you].

Powerful words that ought to penetrate our very hearts and meditate on what has happened in the past.

Or I can recall the experience of hearing and meeting a holocaust survivor--Arek was his name, if memory serves--and being moved by a very personal story.

Or the book I have just read--El violí d'Auschwitz [The Auschwitz Violin] by Maria Àngels Anglada--which tells the story of a Polish violin maker being made to make a violin at Auschwitz by his Commandant, to win a bet he had made with a doctor, and the nightmares that still haunt the violinist who first played it.

Of course, there are many, many more testimonies of that time that should move our hearts to horror and cause us to become watchmen/-women, vigilant against the forces of evil that can bring such suffering to people.

So yes, the Second World War was a long time ago and the world is very different now. The precise details may differ and yes, we may not have concentration camps or labour camps. It may not lead to that. I pray that it doesn't.

But when you hear of the detention camps that immigrants are being placed in in America--a so-called beacon of enlightenment and democracy and freedom--where children are separated from parents, you cannot help but see the similarities with testimonies of people arriving at Auschwitz. How and why are we not condemning these practices in America? How are they allowed to take place? How is such an abhorrent individual allowed to lead arguably the most powerful nation on earth?

Or we have Boris Johnson referring to Muslim women who wear the niqab as 'letterboxes', Africans as 'piccaninnies'. How is this acceptable? Can we not see what is going on? When confronted about the 'letterbox' thing, his defence was that ordinary people in Britain are fed up with being muzzled (i.e. not allowed to say what they like). So, we have a man who may well become our prime minister legitimising language that we thought we had moved on from. Ordinary people being given permission by the would-be prime minister to use racist and discriminatory language. From there, it is but a small step to the point at which people feel that they have permission to further victimise minority or immigrant groups. Now, this may not be Boris' intention, or Farage's, or the intention of any of that hateful crew, but that is what will happen.

And when Jacob Rees-Mogg was asked about it, his response was that we shouldn't be snowflakes, and then directly asked the reporter whether he was a snowflake. (If memory serves, it was a man.) Let's pick this apart: what Rees-Mogg was, in effect, doing was silencing voices that would speak against the would-be leader of our government, silencing those who would object, and ridiculing them. Again, people will follow his example and accuse those who object to what is going on of being 'snowflakes', ridiculing them as the huge numbers of disgruntled people feel that racist speech and action is legitimised.

So why am I drawing comparisons with the Second World War? Because this is how it starts, if my inadequate historical knowledge serves me well:

1. We experience a period in which a population perceives itself to be struggling.
2. We see leaders arise who promise to make their countries great again. (Putting the 'great' back into Great Britain, or 'making America great again'.)
3. We see organisations or groups blamed for the conditions in which we live. (The European Union, Muslims, people from Eastern Europe, Mexicans) Here it has to be noted that Trump has been far worse with this, referring to Mexicans as rapists and drug dealers.
4. We bring about a suspicion of 'experts' and institutions and the establishments who warn us against what we are doing, and tell ordinary people that we are giving them a voice.
5. We seek to separate ourselves from others in order, using ideas of sovereignty and national pride, to get people on side. (Brexit)
6. We form alliances with those who speak the same language. (Trump, Johnson. Trump having been very vocal about May not doing a good job and Johnson will be better.)

We don't yet know what happens from 7. onwards. But tell me this, how is this list not almost exactly like what happened after the First World War and brought about the Second?

Now, not everybody who voted for Brexit is bad, racist, or anything else. Not everybody who voted for Trump is evil either: in fact, much of the 'Christian' vote for Trump was around the issue of abortion, almost a single-issue vote. Not everybody who voted for Trump or Brexit would approve of the isolationist, xenophobic, or even racist language. But here's the thing: those who voted for Trump, those who voted for Brexit, those who will make Boris prime minister, those who will vote for the Conservative Party under Boris Johnson, those who will vote for the Brexit Party, will all be responsible for opening the door to a world in which we can create exactly the circumstances in which people like Hitler came to power.

The Germans were not, and are not, all evil people. The Germans in the 1930s would probably have been horrified if they had known what they would unleash under the Nazis. Even when I was a University student, in 1997, I remember meeting Germans who were still telling me that they were taught to be repentant about the Second World War, much like the Jürgen the German sketch that Harry Enfield was doing at the time. The Second World War didn't happen because all Germans, Italian, Russians, Japanese and whoever else were evil and racist: it happened because we opened to the door to those who were. The Holocaust happened because good people made the wrong choice because they couldn't see what they were doing.

Somebody warned me that my comments and comparisons might be offensive to people. GOOD! I hope that they are! I hope that what I and others like me say will cause offence because we need to be awakened from the stupor in which we seem to be living. We need to be called to open our eyes and see what we are creating.

Some would say that priests ought not to be political. But I with my fellow priests are called, by the words of the ordinal, to be 'messengers, watchmen...they are to teach and admonish...to guide through [the world's] confusions'. I made vows that I would do these things and so that is what I am doing.

I might be wrong about what we are creating. In fact, I hope and pray that I am. I pray that I won't, like that German I met, be apologising in 50 years time, if I am still alive, for the world that we will have created.

The Second World War happened because, in part, people kept silent. I will not keep silent. I will not be told to be careful about what I say in case people are offended. I will always speak out for truth and justice. I will always speak for the rights of the oppressed. Because, guess what, that appears to be exactly what Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ did. To him be glory and honour, now and to the ages of ages, Amen.