Lessons of the past

I was thrilled to hear the news today that a group of camp survivors have been awarded honours for the work they do in raising awareness and educating people about the holocaust. For me, this is the most vital thing that someone can do if he or she has experienced, first hand, what happens when human beings get out of control. And it’s a brave, brave thing to do. Imagine standing in front of a group of strangers on a weekly basis and telling them about the very worst period of your life? A period so black that you’ve blocked most of it out for fear of what might happen if you remember? They should have been honoured long ago.

I heard a radio piece earlier in the week about the Rwandan genocide. It is staggering to think that this happened in the 1990s. There is a tendency in all of us to think that we’ve somehow evolved beyond behaving like animals, but the makers of the documentary were incredibly clear about how the genocide came to pass. Propaganda. Hutus turned against the Tutsi people after a century of mistrust and misrule, but they were galvanised by a radio station. Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines, (RTLMC), played up-to-date music and had young, funky presenters, some of whom had honed their craft in more established radio stations outside the country. These presenters spread malicious gossip and told obscene jokes which whipped up the Hutu population into a frenzy to the extent that they thought killing their neighbours with machetes and brutally raping them was not just okay, but an absolute duty. What these presenters did has been viewed, in retrospect, as SO damaging, that many are now serving life sentences for the role they played. 

Can you imagine getting to a stage where you think it’s your duty to kill someone? Of course you can’t! Or can you? 

Sadly, the likes of Derren Brown have proven time and time again that, in the right circumstances, many of us would kill and maim if we thought we could get away with it, or were pushed into a temporary place of insanity where we felt we somehow had no other choice.

It’s why I worry about the press today. It seems we can justify any position simply by accusing someone else of supplying fake news. Two diametrically opposed sides of an argument will frequently use the same statistic to prove their point. Black can become white in a heartbeat.

For every atrocity there’s a conspiracy theorist waiting in the wings to say it never happened. I read an insane piece of junk today which claimed that the murder of military drummer Lee Rigby never happened. Or was it junk? A conspiracy theory gains more and more traction as it falls into different pairs of hands. How many times have I only heard the bit of a story I want to hear, or gone off on a rant as a result of reading nothing but a click-bait headline?

A lot is going wrong at the moment, both on an international level and a national level. I don’t know if it’s coincidence, but many friends of mine seem to be very troubled on a personal level as well. Society is disintegrating. People are feeling less and less responsible for their neighbours. A gulf has opened up between rich and poor. Many of us perceive ourselves to be right at the back of every queue...

So now’s the time to ask one simple question: what would it take for ME to do something terrible? Ask that question right now whilst you’re secretly thinking that nothing in the world could make you dob in a neighbour for harbouring a fugitive or turn a blind eye whilst someone is killed outside your front door. But what if you’d been told this person is a paedophile? What if you’d been told he was a murderer? Would you turn a blind eye then?

The lessons of the past are everywhere and sometimes we need a little refresher course.