I remember back when I was at school and university, there were discussions of the culpability of the German electorate for Nazism, because Hitler (barely) came to power by the ballot box. Essentially, was it reasonable for people to foresee Auschwitz in 1933.
And I do think there is much to be acknowledged. (1) Hitler only squeezed into power. He couldn’t have risen to dominance without the folly and hubris of centrist and leftist politicians, for which the German people cannot be held responsible.
(2) The German people might have elected him, but they weren’t offered the choice again. This indicates that neither he nor they were confident in ongoing support. On the other hand, it could not have been clearer what the Nazis wanted and believed.
Everything you needed to know was there in ‘mein Kampf’. So those votes for Hitler, without which he could not have done what he did, were only capable of being cast because two things were true: (1) voters knew the warnings of what would happen ...
... and either didn’t take them seriously, or didn’t care. Secondly, they didn’t take their vote seriously as a political act with meaningful consequences. They thought democracy was a charade and facade, which is understandable given its ‘figleaf’ role in the Bismarckian Second
... Reich. As I watch Belfast burn and see black alumnae of Cambridge University who have lived in this county since they were 10 years old publicly declare that the home office is about to deport them, I feel the same way. We warned you this would happen. If, in a democracy ...
..you cast a vote despite being warned of dire consequences, against the structure of democracy and the rule of law itself, based on the promises of people clearly extorting your vote from you through devious means, you cannot claim innocence or ignorance of the consequences.
This is decadence. Not ‘decadence’ as some people think of it, as morally corrupting, luxuriant self-indulgence, but decadence of democratic society itself. The corruption of freedom and fairness though the engineering of resentment, hatred and poverty.
In summary, I don’t think you can corrupt a democracy without corrupting the electorate first. You need to convince them of their powerlessness, especially when pitted against lesser humans, the benefits cheat, the immigrant, even the corrupt ‘Establishment’.
Once you have convinced them that their vote is useful only as a protest and nothing more, you stoke their desperation through Austerity, make them as fearful of the future as they are resentful of their neighbours. Then why not cast that useless vote to smash everything up?
... After all, it can’t really do any harm, and maybe it will shake things up and make people take notice. And there. Look how quickly and simply it has been achieved: the corruption and decadence of democracy itself. So there is your answer. Those Germans who voted Nazi ...
... did so despite seeing Brownshirt violence and listening to their opponents warn of the consequences, and they didn’t care and they didn’t believe the warnings. But that couldn’t have happened without supine opposition from politicians, without rank cynicism ...
... from all elements of civil society. And the same is true of Brexit. Where we are now was never an inevitable consequence of the vote. Some sort of reasonable, light, compromise Brexit was possible right up until May imposed the ‘Red Lines’. But it was always a likely path ...
... one we warned about again and again until we were blue in the face without being heeded once, as the cynics who had grasped power unjustly knew it could be taken away unless they rushed to make their victory irreversible. And that is how we ended up here.
And yes, OF COURSE a burnt out bus in Belfast isn’t Treblinka. And a deportation to the Netherlands isn’t a one way trip in a cattle truck to a gas chamber. Believe me, I am not trivialising what happened then by suggesting it is happening again right now. Quite the opposite...
... lI am saying that you need to heed the warning. That each of these things is a single step on the thousand-mile journey to those unparalleled extremes. On its own, incomparable, but as part of a matrix of indicators, a warning about how far and how bad things can get.
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