When I hear about people of authority in American or another country wanting to lock up or deport an ethnic or religious group, I remember the famous words of Martin Niemöller. He was a German Lutheran Pastor and an early supporter of Nazism. Later, he saw the error of that philosophy and spoke against it. He survived his stays in Dachau and Sachsenhausen death camps.
Of all his writings, Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for the quotation:
“First 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.”
It should concern every moral, civilized person when they hear our country or another jailing or deporting religious or ethnic groups. A country does this because a few powerful people have created an infectious paranoia to increase control of a population.
Niemöller’s quote shows how Adolph Hitler used one group after another to gain control over his people in the 1930s. Colonists and later Americans used paranoia of Indians to kill 18 million of them and take the resources of their lands. Later, the Chinese, Germans, Japanese, Mexicans, and Catholics among others were pilloried as America’s bogeyman.
Now we are supposed to be scared of the Muslims, immigrants, and the usual minorities. Now we are told by the gun lobby, the far right wing groups, the religious right, and other to fear those groups and deport or lock them up. During the last election we saw how such paranoia can be stoked and its effects on our people.
Today, more easily than any other time in our history, a few Americans or Russians can create such paranoia to incite such extremist views and actions. The goal is to disrupt the fact that a nation that stands together and stays together is invincible, but a divided nation falls from within.
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