Bigotry doesn't start on the streets

What are the take-aways from the last couple of weeks in the UK?

1. Many more people will take to the streets in favour of ex-pats from other countries coming into the UK than will oppose them.
2. There are small but large enough number of people who currently see immigration of certain people into the UK as the reason their lives are not what they want them to be
3. There are people who are willing to sit behind the scenes and pull the strings of all these groups from afar
4. We generally don't do anything about a societal problem until something breaks
5. Often the purported breaking point is a false-flag and not a genuine symptom of the issue at hand

Frankly, none of these things are new to any of us, are they? Nor are any of them particularly unusual in any country, culture or group of people. Whether we like it or not, we have all been susceptible to xenophobia since the dawn (arguably long before) of humankind however many millions of years ago.

What is different today is that we have a huge amount of recorded history from which we can learn, spot trends and ideate potential solutions. In this first of a series of musings on how we can improve how we deal with bigoted behaviour, and how if realise our place in it we have a better chance of preventing it from becoming a destructive force, I want to argue that we may be looking the wrong way and taking heed of the wrong phenomena.

We all have in our heads the grotesque images of the culmination of years of unfettered xenophobia and racism, they are almost all accompanied by images of murder and persecution on governmental scales. Rwanda in 1994, Central/Eastern Europe in the 1930's & 40's, Sudan today, the Soviet Union in the 1930's-1950's, the USA & South Africa during their Apartheid eras, the list goes on. (I haven't tried to make it remotely exhaustive and I am sure you can think of many present and past examples not on this list)

I think it is this list which is causing us a problem in being able to spot this stuff before it turns into violence and real fear/hatred. We seem to look for the end result, or at least we don't appear to act when we see the beginning stages. The Holocaust didn't start in Dachau, the genocide in Rwanda wasn't first thought of as Juvenal Habyarimana's plane was shot down above Kigali. All of these events were fomented in the homes, pubs, restaurants, meeting halls and minds of people who are just like you and me. Fomented months and years before anything happened which was noticeable to the outside world. Normal, good people were getting scared, being fed information which led to them coming to what felt like perfectly reasonable conclusions about a group of people who they are being told is the root of their problems. Always being told lies, the real truth always being hidden from view.

There is one thing in common here with all of the examples mentioned and unmentioned. Those perpetrating and those on the receiving end of the heinous acts got to the point where they were unable to see each other as like them. Too often they couldn't even see each other as valid humans. Another common factor was that the group on the receiving end of the violence or oppression were never the cause of the problems the other side was trying to solve.

We need to remember that every bigot on earth feels truly justified. If bigotry is the outcome, it is because of a period of time where the life experiences of that person/group has been such that the most practical conclusion they can come to is that they would be better of if a certain group of people wasn't there or fundamentally changed their behaviours. Often to the point of losing their identity. Then, crucially, using the fact that their target group is unwilling to undergo these changes as proof that the group in question is truly dreadful and action must be taken on a higher level.

This is where we got to in the last couple of weeks in the UK, but I hope that we can reflect on the previous paragraph and realise where we are also prone to indulging in these thoughts, however justified we may feel. It may help us as we move forward towards finding potential answers...

In the second part, we will turn the lens inward, into our own societies and social groups and see what trends are currently enabling us to feel justified in othering people and groups of people, and how we can maybe start to relate better to those we currently feel to be beyond the pale.