I love a bit of hyperbole, me.
A cathartic, Bevanite satire or a passionate rant.
Yet, there are certain things more eagle eyed readers may notice I've avoided. There are cheap shots to be had here, in the world of Disability campaigning and I shy away from them.
At the same time, history could tell us much today, if we only listened. If we went back to the early thirties, when MacDonald and Snowden insisted cuts were the only way out of recession, paving the way for the greatest depression in modern history, we might feel differently about the current austerity programme. Blair might have re-read Bevan's great speech to the house on Suez to remember that one ought to have a damn good reason to go to war.
So it is in this article:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/fact/the_holocaust_and_disabled_people_faq_frequently_asked_questions.shtml
I hesitate, as I don't need to use such a graphic example to highlight modern day cuts to the sick and disabled that are already easy enough to oppose. That's not what I'm doing here.
At the same time, when health allows, I love to go canvassing or phone banking or sit at Labour street stalls, and polling stations, and I know well that most people have lives to live. They don't read 1931 Hansard snippets or have a PHD in economics or history. They go to work, they pay the bills, they struggle to get by and have any time left to spend with the kids. One can only assume history won't repeat if you're confident that each and every person knows what that history is. The atrocities in the article above took place in the early thirties too and economic meltdown and early fascism were close bedfellows.
So, again, in 2011 we face swingeing cuts and "tough choices." We teeter on the brink of a world depression and Keynesian stimulus has given way to monetarist, neo-liberal dogma. So, without ever suggesting our own coalition are even the same species as the early fascists, it may just be timely to remind the world - whether right wing crazy-men, shooting congresswomen in Arizona or assassins in Pakistan - what unfettered ignorance can conceal, what "turning a blind eye" can countenance and what short memories allow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ik4f1dRbP8
Proof hate and ignorance can thrive in dreadful times.
Originally posted here
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