Bigotry and Discrimination Will Lead Us Nowhere Good

After September 11 happened, I had serious worries that there would be an intense backlash against Muslims living in this country. While there were people who "disappeared" and there were isolated incidents of violence and hatred, we largely avoided any mass discontent or state-sponsored action. After we passed through those first fateful years, and the Patriot Act proved to be less onerous than was originally suggested, I believe we have now passed into that very sort of mass hysteria that we somehow avoided those 9 years ago. We are going in a dangerous direction.

I am alarmed by how many people are ready and willing to accept, and repeat, the discriminatory and bigoted statements that many right-wing Tea Party, Republican, and Democratic candidates and political commentators have made concerning immigrants--especially Muslims. It is a sad day that civil discourse in this country is now accepting public justifications for the ill-treatment of (mainly Hispanic) immigrants, and accepting the scapegoating of Muslims and gays for our nation's problems.

This is a slippery slope. I find it hard to believe that people have forgotten how Adolf Hitler came to power, and how race-baiting right wing groups that have gained sway in both Hungary and Holland in recent years. There are some unscrupulous politicians out there who understand the equation: troubled economic times + scapegoating an easily-identified and relatively isolated minority = popular political backing. If you think it can't happen again, know that the political party that recently became part of the ruling coalition in Hungary is backed by a paramilitary group that is trying to hark back to the Arrow Cross with its emblem. Don't know what the Arrow Cross is? Read this and this. Some of the Roma and Jewish scapegoating occurring in Hungary is not altogether different from comments being made in the open in the United States, by many people, about Muslims/Arabs and Hispanic immigrants.

Some very mainstream political candidates, such as Sharon Angle, and others were very vocal in suggesting punitive actions against these groups. Apparently rounding up all the illegal Hispanic immigrants and beefing up the Berlin...excuse me, border...wall will solve our problems.

Adolf Hitler, and the Jobbik party in Hungary, are have been elected democratically. Sharon Angle was nearly so in the Nevada. People in the United States, perhaps because of the sort of revisionism seen  by the governor of Virginia (suggesting the Civil War was not about slavery), or the Texas board of education (with their right-wing re-invention of American history), or maybe just our crumbling educational system, have lost sight of history.

It is cliche to have to say this, but those who forget history are bound to repeat it. Vicious, violent discrimination against religious or ethnic groups has happened again and again across the world since the Second World War. If good people do not act to hasten the our arrival at the place our nation appears to be marching to, then the United States will again repeat the sort of bigotry, discrimination, and violence that we have not seen domestically since the Indian Wars.