There Is No Them

Today is the 29th of January. In the UK, this day has been assigned as Holocaust Memorial Day, a day to consider the horrific actions the Nazi regime took against the minority groups of Germany, Austria, Poland, and much of the rest of continental Europe. One quote on a poster in my college particularly stood out to me, for some reason:

It wasn't just the Jews. It was the physically and mentally handicapped, the blacks, the gypsies and the gays, who were tortured, shot, gassed and burnt because they didn't fit into someone's narrow template of what it meant to be human. 

~Rabbi Somebody Someone

Copied from memory, so probably heavily paraphrased.

 This quote is significant because it highlights probably the single biggest underlying issue that makes events like the 1940s holocaust happen. We cannot limit the definition of "human" or "person" based on our own limited views, not ever.

When put like that, it seems like a non-issue. Surely no-one in our civilized world actually excludes people from the definition of "human", right? The reality is that people do it all the time, even if we don't mean to. "I hate Muslims who..." "I don't mind all gays, just the gays who..." "People on benefits should all get jobs," "Gypsies should stop taking up our land space," "The mentally disabled are a burden to the state," and on, and on, and on. What comments like this do is they remove the status of "person" from the members of the groups we choose to scapegoat. We turn them into primarily images, based on their faith, culture, or ability. We conveniently forget that these are real, living people, with hopes and fears and ambitions and hates and loves. We forget that underneath whatever demographic group they may fit, they are essentially in the same boat as us. 

I've touched on this a number of times now: it is impossibly to accurately generalise an entire group of people based on a single face. When someone says "oh, he's a Muslim," "oh, she's a gypsie,"  we instantly come up with some kind of image in our head, when really we have no fricking idea. I do it as much as anyone else.

The whole practise of demographics is pretty much completely irrational. Well, okay, the way we use the data found in censuses and the like is completely irrational. If an area has a higher white population, we assume it must have certain characteristics about it. If an area has a higher population of people from a lower income band, we cast aspersions about the attitude/atmosphere of the area. Since income bands and ethnic groups are so diverse, it goes without saying that this practise is ridiculous. Realistically, we cannot place people in categories of more than one. Which would render the whole process pointless.

It's apparent, then, that there is no "them." There is only "us". The human species, a continuous mass of individuals all affected by much of the same thing.

The Holocaust happened because the Nazis were fixated on the idea of "them." they wanted an alien, outsider  group that they could use to blame all of Germany's problems on, when really, the Jewish, gay, disabled and black Germans were suffering just as much as the rest of the country.

I recommend you all go the Holocaust Memorial Day website, and light a virtual candle for all those whose lives were destroyed by an elitist regime who picked out certain people and called them "them". Light the candle with the hope that people will continue to accept the Jewish population as "us", particularly in the Middle East, but also in the West, and pretty much everywhere in the world. Let's work towards a future in which no-one is alienated or marginalised because of what they are, but celebrated for their personality and accomplishments regardless of physiology or heritage.

God bless. :)