Last year saw the passing of the Elections Bill. This “Stop the Votes” bill means that those who wish to vote in the local elections this May will now need to present an approved form of identification. A move clearly intended to stop “the wrong sort of people” from voting, in a country that already excludes upwards of five million people who live and pay taxes in the UK from voting. Just another measure intended to help keep the elite in power.
Following the announcement of new legislation intended to “Stop the Boats”, Gary Lineker has called out the government by comparing its language to that of Germany in the 1930s. Politicians and journalists, some of them referring to their Jewish relatives, have been outraged that the policies of the government are being so compared. In an interview with Nick Robinson the Home Secretary accused Gary Lineker of:
“ a flippant analogy that diminishes the unspeakable tragedy that people went through. I don’t think that anything that is happening in the UK today can come close to what happened in the Holocaust.”
The Home Secretary seeks to distract by asserting that there is no evidence of genocide being committed in the UK today, totally misrepresenting the point being made. Lineker’s comment referred to Germany in the 1930s and the events that led to the Holocaust.
In my article marking Holocaust Memorial Day I referred to the ten stages of Genocide, a model created by Gregory H Stanton the first president of Genocide Watch, to help explain how genocides occur, and noted that:
“… of the ten stages, classification, discrimination, dehumanisation and polarisation, all appear to be present in our society today.”
The whole purpose of this model is to show that Genocide doesn’t just happen, and that changes introduced over years and decades can progressively create an environment where genocide can happen. The seeds of the genocide in Rwanda were sown over a hundred years earlier. The model is intended to alert society to the consequences of policies that may at the time be popular, and seem fair and reasonable, but when combined with others can build towards unimaginable consequences. Following the announcement of the new legislation intended to “Stop the Boats” I would have now added persecution to the list above.
It is worth remembering the words of this poem based on a confessional statement by a German Lutheran pastor in 1946:
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a communist.
Then 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 for me.
This is displayed at several sites around the world including the sobering New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston.
Between Stop the Votes and Stop the Boats there are so many other recent examples that illustrate our slide towards tyranny, such as:
- The exchange between Kemi Badenoch, the Equalities Minister, and Carolyn Harris MP during a select committee meeting about the provision of support for women going through the menopause. The committee’s report had recommended a trial of paid leave to help women to cope better. The minister would have none of it, this wasn’t a matter of discrimination but a clear issues of Left versus Right, even though, as Carolyn Harris struggeld to explain, that the proposal had the cross party support of the committee.
- The recent documentary about Shamima Begum, featured Tim Loughton a member of Home Affairs Select Committee attempting to justify the decision to remove British citizenship from a young women for something she did as a child. The law used by the Home Secretary to remove citizenship from Shamima could also be used to remove British citizenship from the entire Jewish population of the country.
- The expulsion of Jews from the Labour party including Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, who was elected by members to the NEC last year, then suspended before she could even take her seat and later expelled.
Gary Lineker is right to compare Germany in the 1930s with the UK today. There are many differences, but to deny that there are clear parallels is just another tick in the box on the slide into tyranny.
