The question and our efforts to answer it reveal something unsettling; that civilisation and culture provide only the most fragile layer of defence against the encroachment of terrible darkness. This thin veil of security and freedom and rights is held in place by the flimsiest of pegs — intellectual and political freedom, respect and civility, and tolerance and the rule of law. When any one or a number of these pegs are compromised, weakened, or removed the structural integrity of the whole system that guarantees our safety and security is damaged...
Brexit Day
As if on cue, no sooner was Brexit Day over than news began circulating of a notice posted for residents in a Norwich tower block telling people to speak English or go home. ‘We do not tolerate people speaking other languages than English in the flats,’ said the notice, before going on to encourage immigrants to return to their own countries and free up housing for white English-speaking British people. Monika Wiśniewska, a Polish author living in England, took to social media to describe how Polish people were now being described as ‘vermin.’
Another Srebrenica
We may pretend that this could never happen here, but mass murder was thought out of the question in Srebrenica. The reality is that this can happen here, and it will happen here if we do not find a way of stopping the temperature rising. Already we have reached boiling point. All that is holding the old order in place is the democratic habit of a few generations, but this is eroding. It seems perfectly clear to me that we have reached a critical moment.
The Just War Myth
The common belief that Britain, acting as the policeman of Europe, went to war with Hitler to stop the Holocaust is an ex post facto justification. The Nazis’ “Final Solution” – the beginning of systematic murder as a solution to the “Jewish Problem” – did not begin until the Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942. Adolf Hitler’s opinions regarding the Jews were well known long before the war. He wrote a book outlining his antisemitism and his plans to deal with the Jews of Germany. Britain may or may not have been comfortable with this development in Berlin, but it did nothing.
Israel can’t use the Holocaust as an Excuse
Israel’s goal is the total destruction or at least the absolute subjugation of Palestine to make way for the completion of the Zionist project, the creation of a hegemonic colonial-settler Jewish ethno-state. Criticism of this genocidal programme and the provisional Apartheid state it has constructed has been muted by the shadow of the Holocaust. Apparently the nations of the world are somehow guilty of a crime so monstrous against Israel that they are simply now no longer able to point out the moral enormities of Israel.
Overreaction
Is it an overreaction to suggest that we are repeating the history of the 1930s that led ultimately to the Nazi genocide in Europe and a global total war that resulted in the destruction of a continent and the use of nuclear weapons?
Who and What We Are
Yet our nationalism – as Nicola makes so clear – is a nationalism of a nation that knows who and what it is. What it is – is wonderful. With leadership like this in our Scotland there will never be soil deep enough for the blood and soil poison of that uglier nationalism of Westminster.
Why is Israel Refusing to Accept Syrian Refugees?
Why would a modern, liberal democracy – the most enlightened state in the Middle East – not want Africans to integrate into its society? Why would a modern democracy not offer refuge to people fleeing violence from a neighbouring country?
Random Public Journal 