Fear and Hatred Will Tear Us Apart
I have been struck by the amount of fear and hatred that is now regularly peddled in politics and media. Things are now said and reported, by supposed leaders that would have been unthinkable and met with the appropriate levels of disgust and protest just 10 years ago.
Certain types of people, certain races of people, and certain religions are all being singled out as either acceptable or unworthy. Politicians say it, media reports on it and then we all think that we have to accept it as true and reasonable. It’s not.
You may recall from history a fellow called Adolf Hitler who led an attack on the Jewish people internally and the world at large externally – all based on his extreme view that he was entitled to “cleanse” the world by killing millions and millions of people he deemed unworthy. As though one human was somehow less than another!
The work of Hitler sickened us all and that is why I am so alarmed at an emerging action in our communities, across the globe, that are pushing the same agenda. Right now, in the U.S there are people running for Government that openly identify as supporters of Nazism. Here in Australia we have politicians that are not far less extreme in their views.
In his book The Coming of the Third Reich, historian Richard Evans wrote of that time in the 1920’s and 1930’s “it had now become possible to utter in parliamentary sessions and electoral meetings hatreds and prejudices that in the mid nineteenth century would have been deemed utterly inappropriate in public discourse.” It is frightening how our society could mirror that same language less than 100 years later.
Folks, we don’t need to hate our fellow man. Hatred will lead us to war and to doing unthinkable things to our fellow humans. Those terrible things will be done to men, women and children. And quite frankly I have seen enough sickening images on the nightly news to remind me of the pathetic injustice of hatred across our world – that is not me, that is not who I am, and I am sure that is not you either.