Those who cannot remember the past...

...are condemned to repeat it.

People, I'm scared. When I look at the news, I'm really, really scared.

My gran, who is now 101 and a half year old, grew up in Nazi Germany. She has told some stories about people sitting in their hallway, waiting to get some food. Her father being active in the church, and her mother being afraid of Bad Things Going To Happen (because of the church involvement, and because he was semi-openly against the Nazi regime, and supported people who suffered from it). Of people being shushed when chatting on their balcony. Of people in their acquaintance disappearing. These are a child's memories, so they are a bit vague, and some things she did not understand back then, which you can clearly read out of her tales... but if you hear these stories today, well. You know exactly what was happening, and why the mother was afraid, and that my great-grandfather was doing dangerous things.

Unless, you know, you'd be a person who chooses to ignore all knowledge about how dictatorships and extreme right-wing politics tend to go bad, and cause harm to many, many people - including those that are supposedly "proper human beings" or whatever the diction of the fascists is.

Part of Germany is going right-wing again, with a bang. A guy from the AfD, which is more or less the new NSDAP, has become District Administrator in Sonneberg, in Thuringia. How, how on earth can anybody living in a country that had the Holocaust get the idea that this is a good idea? (Well, if you ask me, probably it's because they are afraid (which in the current state of things everywhere is quite understandable), and one outlet against fear is aggression, and then you just need some scapegoat to be aggressive against. Because of course you are not afraid, no, because that would be weak. The AfD provides plenty of ranty talks about random people or institutions to blame for things going bad, and the corresponding aggressive talk against them, which makes them probably very appealing to a lot of people who are, in their hearts, afraid of stuff and looking for scapegoats, and an outlet for their frustration and aggression about things Not Going Well. And I can totally get this, as a reason for lashing out against someone defined as "the others". Note, please, that being able to understand how something happens does not mean finding it okay. I can completely understand a lot of things that I still find utterly shitty and horrible.)

I really, really hope that there will be enough people hereabouts to stand up, when it's necessary, and vote middle or left or green or whatever, just not right-wing... which these days, unfortunately, is not only the AfD party, but also CDU/CSU, which used to be slightly right of the middle. These days, however, even though the "black" CDU has done their best to turn more brownish than black, and have done so for years, it looks like those used to be going for the brown component in the black party are now preferring to vote for the openly brown "blue" AfD. (Political) brown is not a good colour. Especially not in Germany.

(Blue, in my personal life, is my favourite colour, so I'm extra miffed about their using blue as party signature colour. Blue, which is the colour of Mary (Mum of Jesus), and the colour of purity, and of woad and indigo.)

In a society where aggression is seen as fine, and where violence (only against the Bad People, of course) is seen as acceptable or even good, nobody is safe. I do not want to live in a world like that. 

In a society where fear rules, and aggression is seen as fine, you basically have two options: Shut up, be quiet, and go along hoping you will be spared, or stand up and fight. If you shut up and accede, you're supporting the system, and the injustice, and the acceptance of violence, and you are thus part of it - and that's not a good thing, and it does not guarantee you at all that you won't be one of the victims. If you stand up and fight, you are making yourself visible, and that's dangerous, of course, because then you may make yourself a target, and a victim. (Theoretically, there's a third option, which is to actively play a part in making society more aggressive and more filled with fear, but I hope that this is not really an option for anybody reading this text.)

I have had history lessons in school. I've read "Lord of the Flies" and Bert Brecht's plays ("Arturo Ui" especially) and I've watched a play about "Die Welle" (The Wave) when I was in my late teens. We went there with the school, and to this day I remember the fear I felt when at some point a group of actors went off the stage to stand in the auditorium, two in front of each door leading out. 

I watched that play, and it made me aware of, and afraid of two things at the same time. The first thing is the realisation of how easy it is to establish totalitarian structures and a regime of fear and inequality if you go about it in the right way. And the second thing is that I am not sure I would have the guts to stand up against it if it starts happening in my time, and life, and region. 

Germany used to be a relatively nice and safe place to live in. I do hope, fervently, that it will stay this way, and that we'll manage to keep the right-wing fanaticists in check. That enough people realise, soon enough, that talk about burning down refugee homes and re-establishing concentration camps and lining up people on a wall and shooting them (and yes, these are actual things that AfD politicians said, in public!) is Not A Good Thing, and that rampant violence will not care about details like whether this doctor with a migration background might have saved your life later on, when you need a heart bypass, but since he was killed due to his skin colour, or eye colour, or pick-whatever-stupid-reason-instead-here-to-get-a-scapegoat, well. Dead doctors don't operate.

Brown is not a good colour. Fear is not a good feeling. Violence is not a good solution. A society based on the Might Makes Right hurts everyone. 

Nobody should have to suffer from any of these. Here's hoping we'll manage to not repeat our Nazi history. Here's hoping I'll be strong enough to do my part in preventing it.