Crystal Night Must not be Repeated versus other European Minorities

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http://www.juancole.com/2013/12/repeated-european-minorities.html


Crystal Night Must not be Repeated versus other European Minorities
By Anne-Ruth Wertheim
Dec. 7, 2013

We never want to allow one part of the population to be attacked again because another part of the population has started thinking that there is something wrong with them.

The violence that took place on Crystal Night did not happen by chance, it broke out after people’s minds had been primed for many years. The time had come in which the delusion that Jews were the cause of all society’s ills had been planted in the minds of enough people.

Today you can see something similar happening once again in Europe. The mechanism is identical. Racist prejudices about certain groups are brought into circulation, preferably about groups, which are recognizable, by their appearance one way or another. Many of the prejudices are suspiciously similar to what was said about the Jews, in particular allegations which put fear into people: that they have a scary religion, are unreliable and dangerous, want to take our jobs, are criminals and want to take over the world.

Fear is often the ultimate incentive to kill. Nevertheless, a far too large number of bystanders nowadays believe – many of them well-meaning people – that it won’t go that far. They insist that the people should be allowed to express all those negative qualifications, in the interests of freedom of speech. They are not aware that the spread of hate and fear always takes place surreptitiously. Hate and fear nestle bit-by-bit in the minds of people on the quiet and once this has been done, it is difficult to remove them.