As someone from England who took History for his GCSEs, where WWII was the primary focus...
I'm seeing history repeating itself. In my own country. Where the history being repeated is from another country. (Tbh we are probably repeating our own history, I just lack knowledge)
And I don't just mean "people in power use vulnerable groups as the scapegoat to rise to even more power"
Do you know, or remember why the Nazis were able to ris to power? One of the biggest reasons was because Germany, post-WWI, was poor. I will always argue that the reparations is what hit Germany the hardest. They got their military force, and land taken away from them. But it wouldn't have even mattered because Germany didn't even have the money to keep an army.
The "allies", as they're called put Germany into, if I remember correctly, £6.6b worth of debt. If it weren't for the reparations being abolished, they would've still been paying it off until 1985.
The citizens of Germany were desperate. They were hurt, they were in pain, they were angry. They wanted help. That pain was taken advantage of. In exchange for power, the citizens were promised for the reparations to be lifted. This did happen, mind you. But something else also happened.
The suffering of the Germans were placed onto one group. They were told where to direct their anger. So, they did.
A hurt person can't think rationally. You know the saying; hurt people hurt people. It's usually not intentional, it doesn't come from a truly malicious place. It usually comes from a place of wanting their hurt to be relieved. If a hurt person is fed the lie, or made to believe that hurting another will relieve their own pain... They are more than likely to believe it. Anything to relieve the pain... Right?
Even though the Jewish people were just like the non-Jewish people, citizens of Germany who were being hurt just as much as everyone else... They were othered, labelled as the source of pain, when they had absolutely nothing to do with it. They became the scapegoats so the Nazis could rise to power, and control the people.
Hurt people are easy to control.
In England, we are currently dealing with a cost of living crisis. We are artificially being made poor by the people in power. It's not a true cost of living crisis, after all. We're not in mass amounts of debt. Bills are being raised, cost of essentials has been rising, paychecks aren't increasing to account for this, and inflation seems to be rising so, so quickly. An artificial cost of living crisis creating genuine, authentic poverty.
Up North, where I live, it's particularly bad. The North has always been poorer than the South. Liverpool, in particular, has constantly been the victim of this othering.
We're hurt. And hurt people... Hurt people... Hurt people can't think rationally. Hurt people want a way to relieve the pain. They seek to put their hurt onto others in a hollow attempt to relieve their own. Because it is hollow. The relief never lasts for long.
Our government knows this.
Transphobia and anti-immigration have been horrific the last few years. Reform is taking advantage of this. People are mindlessly supporting reform because "they'll get rid of immigrants. They'll get rid of the people causing our pain. They'll get rid of our pain."
Hurt people can't see that the people promising to relieve their pain will only hurt them worse.
Hurt people can only see what they want to see; hear what they want to hear.
I'm scared. I'm not an immigrant, I'm not even a person of colour, but I am trans. Violence against trans people has been horrible the last few years, especially in Liverpool. The same for anti-immigration. England is repeating Germany's history. People are so willing, so eager to support a party that they are refusing to see will only hurt them more than they will help.
We are poor. We are hurting. We're vulnerable.
Reform is only out to hurt the poor, the hurt, the vulnerable.
Green party isn't great, I know they're out of touch, I know we don't see eye to eye with them... But at least they care about this country. At least they don't want to go after the vulnerable. At least they aren't blaming others for our pain.
I did not mean for this to turn into some like... Creative writing-like thing. I was just airing out my thoughts.
