Thread by @shaunjlawson

Re: @chrisgreybrexit's thread about his heroic father-in-law: in September 1939, my Hungarian great-grandfather was in London. Seeking asylum for his Jewish family.

When war broke out, his wife pleaded with him to return to her and their three daughters. Fatefully, he did.

That decision ultimately cost him his life. He died in the camps only weeks from the end of the war. My grandmother, who doted on him, never forgave her mother for that heartbreaking request.

When they were deported to Auschwitz in 1944, my grandmother, great-grandmother and two great-aunts somehow stayed together.

They remained together as they were taken on to Frankfurt-am-Main, Zillertal, Ravensbruck and Mauthausen: via being experimented on, death marches and the utterly unimaginable, which I've documented on here several times.

After the war, my gran fled Hungary and settled in London

She went on to make a quite mindblowing success of her life.

And the rest of her family? In 1956, at the outbreak of the Hungarian uprising, she arranged for them to be smuggled over the Austrian border in the dead of night.

The British Embassy in Vienna organised immediate flights to London - and they were all in jobs by the start of the following week. That's the extent of the wonders my grandmother worked for them.

All of them went on to defy the odds in all sorts of ways.

My gran and her sisters all lived into their nineties.

And they never ceased being grateful to Britain for giving them that chance; the chance to start again and remake their lives after enduring the most horrific experiences it's possible to conceive of.

But in my grandmother's sitting room in Brighton was an old picture. Of her father.

Not a day went by when she wouldn't think of him. His death at the Nazis' hands left a hole in her which could never be filled.

In the ghettos prior to their deportation, he was beaten half to death in front of her. He never recovered from that beating.

The current discourse around refugees and asylum would have been unimaginable a generation ago.

UNIMAGINABLE.

There are few things quite so disgusting as this government and its yob media pals' rampant dehumanisation of just about anyone fleeing for their lives from horror.

Dehumanisation is exactly what the Nazis did too. And exactly what the Daily Mail did throughout the 1930s.

Apparently, substantial numbers of people in Britain, Europe and the US learnt NO LESSONS AT ALL from what the Nazis did.

The same substantial numbers who blame foreigners for their own failings, their own inadequacy, and who REFUSE TO VOTE FOR INVESTMENT IN THEIR COMMUNITIES.

I don't know about anyone else - but I'm getting pretty damn sick of privileged racist arseholes without the faintest bloody idea about what refugees and asylum seekers have been through stigmatising them.

Smearing them. Judging them. Dehumanising them.

And it's only by stigmatising, smearing, judging and dehumanising them that they can treat them like some 'other' - rather than the human beings just like us they all are.

Just about every single one of us will, at some point in the past, have been a product of immigration.

Immigration is how island nations in particular progress and prosper.

Can't find a school for your child? Can't get a GP appointment? Can't find affordable housing?

So VOTE FOR INVESTMENT you absolute morons.

Worried about how the UK's had such horrifically stagnant growth ever since 2010, and the huge cuts which are coming?

That's why WE NEED IMMIGRATION, you economically illiterate Brexit-cheerleading quarter-wits.

Without it, kiss goodbye to the NHS. And pensions.

Imagine a swathe of people so miserable, so stupid, so selfish and so racist that they think immigrants or refugees with nothing are somehow responsible for their ills.

Not the government that's been in place for 12 years making disgusting political choices throughout that time.

And here's the thing.

As Angela Merkel - who actually understands the lessons of history, unlike the absolute shower running the UK - recognised: if you give people sanctuary, they will never forget it and they will love your country and make a huge contribution to it.

Again, that's a very large part of how nations like the UK or US have prospered in the past.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Now look at both our countries - at the Tories and the Republicans - and despair.

Look, just as much, at Israel. Which has just elected a horrific bunch of grotesque racists.

It's hard to imagine any nation so spectacularly failing to learn the lessons of history. And in Brazil, as Bolsonaro supporters cry 'coup'? Guess what flag they wave?

Israel's flag.

That's how Israel is seen by the far right around their world. As their ally in hatred and ethnonationalism.

Things only ever get worse there. Never better. Because that's what happens when a nation heads down this disgusting path.

Things may also be about to get far worse in the US - where democracy itself may be about to literally die, murdered by gun-toting, flag-waving, criminal Republicans - and in the UK, we get the most vile government doing the most repugnant things every single day.

"It's OUR fish!"

"They're YOUR immigrants!"

"We demand freedom of movement for goods, services but not people!"

Think about what that says about us. About our 'values'.

It's enough to make me throw up.

Do you know how much of Britain is built on? About 9% at most.

"Don't let them in! We're full up!"

We're not 'full up' and we're a million miles away from being 'full up'. So take your NIMBYism and shove it. Sideways.

That very same I'm alright Jack NIMBYism which has caused most of the housing crisis: which is then blamed on the poorest and most vulnerable people by morons and racists.

It's not even NIMBY any more. It's BANANA. Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.

Absolute legions of arsehole Tory MPs desperate for the government NOT to build housing... because their arsehole constituents don't like it.

Are we being 'invaded'? We were invaded long, long ago. By a bankrupt economic ideology which does nothing but destroy everything.

And which continues to lead the UK and others to its own logical conclusion. To sneering, snarling, hateful fascism.

Change the system, get these bastards out, or pay the price.

#RefugeesWelcome