‘Never again’
Y
ou are conscious of considerable media
coverage given of the seventieth anniver-
sary of the destruction of the Nazi
concentration camp at Auschwitz and of the
existence of Holocaust Day, a day that com-
memorates the murder by the Nazis of millions
of European Jews, the killing of travellers
(Gipsies) and of political opponents. Interviews
with victims bring tears to your eyes, and former
concentration camp attendants explain why they
were able to kill inmates. You are horrified at
the information you receive – the starvation,
brutality, the killing and the sophisticated
methods used for nefarious purposes – and you
can only agree with the general theme of ‘never
again’. At the same time you have read about
the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda in Africa,
and the grisly ethnic cleansing in former
Yugoslavia where whole communities were
wiped out, women raped and men placed in
concentration camps. The media is full of the
following: Jewish cemeteries have been
desecrated, black people killed by gangs and even
by the police, Muslims are ‘blamed’ for terrorist
atrocities like the destruction of the Twin Towers
in 2001 because these actions were committed
in the name of Islam and extreme right-wing
movements like the British National Party or the
Freedom Party in Austria are campaigning to
have immigrants expelled from the countries
in which they have settled. At the same time
you read about left-wing regimes denounced as
fascist when they violate the human rights
of political opponents. Inevitably a number of
questions suggest themselves.
- Are we witnessing the re-emergence of fascism
in our modern world?
- When does a racist become a fascist? Are the
two synonymous and if not, how do we
differentiate them?
- Can we call people who support nationalism,
fascists?
- Is opposition to immigration fascist in
character?
A group of high school students from England observe a room of
corpses from the Rwandan genocide (at the Murambi Genocide Memorial)
© Peter Dench/In Pictures/Corbis
