Posted by:
Amyjo
(
)
Date: January 21, 2018 09:28PM
...."Speech creates realities, good and evil. And hate speech has a friend in silence.
Most Germans did not murder Jews or the Roma, but every person who knew what was happening in the death camps and chose to go about their lives was complicit in the atrocities.
My dear friend Rabbi Yehiel Poupko calls them “the tribe of folded arms,” and they bear their share of guilt. Silence is dangerous, because it spreads the notion that the problems of your neighbor are not your problems.
We are all familiar with Martin Niemoller’s litany “First They Came for the Socialists.” To this day, many use his words to illustrate that you cannot tolerate discrimination against others, because one day hate will come knocking on your door.
But this litany also underscores the important point that institutional discrimination is gradual.
First, they came for the socialists and the trade unionists. Later, the Jews.
First, you lost your job if you spoke out. Later, you lost your job just for being Jewish.
First, you were moved from your home into the ghetto. Later, years later, you were sent in cattle cars to Auschwitz.
Societies do not move from good to evil overnight. The challenge of the gradual descent into hate is to speak out early enough and loud enough to reverse its course."
https://www.commerce.gov/news/blog/2016/05/hate-speech-has-friend-silence-lessons-holocaust