The Sadness of a Recurring Theme

Please - if you can spare the time - gaze on the photograph of the little girl in the photograph. She looks such a sweet-natured child, the kind of youngster that any family would be proud of, any school would like as a pupil, any child would want as a friend. With this in mind, it comes as a dreadful shock to learn that this lovely little seven-year-old girl is no longer with us. The shock deepens when we learn of how she died - it brought me close to tears.

For Emily Jones, as she was known, was stabbed to death in a park in Bolton, Greater Manchester, on Sunday, 22nd March. She was murdered by an anonymous mental health patient in what has been described as a random attack. Details are sketchy about the event, but they seem to follow a familiar pattern that I have written about so many times before: random, unprovoked, savage violence, followed by incarceration of an unspecified length. The BBC says:

"A 30-year-old woman arrested at the scene on suspicion of murder has been detained at a secure facility under the Mental Health Act."

As yet, the attacker has not been named, and we await further disclosures. We do need to know who she is, for future reference. As I have said too many times already, the people who carry out these atrocities may well be incarcerated in secure facilities, but there seems to be nothing to stop them from being released, "cured", in a short time - perhaps to kill again.

However long the murderer spends locked up, the parents and family of Emily Jones face a life sentence of grief and agonising loss. Emily was their only child, and what they are going through now is unimaginable. Indeed, Emily sounds like the type of child she looked to be. Her parents called her "the light of our lives" and said: 

"Emily had such a cheeky smile and was beautiful inside and out. She had a heart as big as her smile."
Emily's murder is a terrible loss to her family, and a sad loss to the world. We needed Emily Jones and we need many more like her. We can only nod in agreement to what her parents said:
"This random act of violence means that we will never get to see our beautiful little girl grow up into the wonderful young lady she was showing such promise of becoming...It is truly heartbreaking to wake up to a world without Emily in it and we cannot comprehend why this has happened".
I would like to thank Rednev for alerting me to this tragedy and I know that I speak for all who read this blog in sending our condolences to the parents and family of Emily; I am only glad to have been able to pay tribute to such an outstanding young lady. May she rest in peace. There will be, I hope, an investigation onto this incident, and we will learn just how and why this dangerous individual was allowed to be walking freely in a park, armed with a knife, with children around.
I would like to conclude with a note of explanation. Most people, I hope, will understand already why I post so regularly on this subject. Unfortunately, some commentators think I am obsessed; others have accused me of "laying down the law" - whatever that means. 
I write about the danger posed by murderous mental health patients for the very simple reason that anyone could become their victim. Emily, along with all other victims I have written about, was killed in a random attack. Any one of us, and our loved ones, could fall victim to these people. I keep writing about such attacks, because I hope that by alerting people, someone will pressurise the apropriate authorities to bring these atrocities to an end. Hope springs eternal...
There is of course, another reason. Every victim of these crazed individuals had a name, had hopes, dreams and families who loved them. I like to think that by writing of their tragic fates, I can help, somehow, to keep their memory alive. Anyone who doesn't understand that, well, I'm sorry for you.

Nigel Farage and his Racist Followers - a National Disgrace

Mistakenly, I thought I wouldn't be blogging about the Coronavirus crisis. After all, I thought, so much is said on a daily basis that comment from this blog would be superfluous. Well, I got that wrong. Looking on Facebook today, I read of an article in the Nursing Times which can be read in full HERE. The headline: 

"Nurses on coronavirus frontline facing ‘abhorrent’ abuse from public"

shocked me deeply, arousing feelings of anger, shame and outright despair. Ruth May, the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO), said on TV:

“I’ve seen all over Twitter some of our nurses and midwives and care staff being spat at and being abused by members of the public."

Predictably, there is a nasty racist component to all this abuse. A Filipina nurse, Reizel Quiachon, told of how she had been assaulted and racially abused.

“A man elbowed my rib, intentionally pushing me to the side, the female partner then shouted racial abuse. Doctors, nurses and healthcare workers are literally risking their lives on the frontline with limited resources and yet some people feel the need to impose more hatred and fear."

This disgusting attack, which shames us all, points out yet again that we have an unreconstructed racist element in our society that manifested itself as part of the Leave campaign during and after the EU referendum. I have talked of this before, but the beast is roaring again. The people who carry out this abuse and violence are taking their lead from their hero, Nigel Farage, who in turn has taken the lead from his idol, Donald Trump. Farage said, on Twitter:

"It really is about time we all said it. China caused this nightmare. Period."

There is a direct link from this outburst by Farage to the abuse of Reizel Quiachon. The morons who abused Reizel would be unable to distinguish between a Filipina and a Chinese girl - although that would not make their actions any less despicable. This incident is only one of a number of racist incidents against people from the Far East living in the UK. Channel 4 has reported this, and there is a rise in such attacks in the USA.

As for our old pal, Nigel, he has been described as a "hateful, repulsive racist". He will undoubtedly deny it, but will do sweet nothing to condemn or oppose the rise in hate crime. Of course not. Mr Farage knows that would alienate his racist admirers.

As for the abuse of nursing staff and doctors, words fail me. These selfless men and women are working long and hard to combat this 2!st century plague, and deserve our thanks, our praise and support. Mr Farage and his racist followers - an important section of the Leave campaign - make me feel deeply ashamed to be British. Compare the way nurses are being treated here to the way they are being praised and honoured in Europe. In Spain, Italy, Switzerland and even Turkey, they are applauded from balconies.

Well, it's up to the rest of us to condemn these vile attacks upon the brave men and women who have come to this country to care for us when we are sick. They deserve the highest praise that we can give them - and that applies to all NHS staff, wherever they come from. I hope this final image speaks for all of us who contribute to, or read, Rhymes and Routes.

Holocaust Deniers: a Cult Mentality

About four or five days ago, I re-posted an article on Facebook about the lady seen in the photo above: Dita Kraus. She has recently published a book titled "A Delayed Life", about her experiences as a Jewish girl in the Nazi concentration camp system. During the article in "The Journal", she comments poignantly about Holocaust denial: 

" I have still a number on my arm from Auschwitz – and people say it never happened? I just don’t know what to do because it is more than one can believe. I am lost when I am confronted with somebody’s denial of the Holocaust.”
My reposting drew two highly pertinent comments from Ian Hill and Neville Grundy (Rednev) that are well worth repeating here. Ian Hill told of his wife's stepfather who entered a concentration camp in WW2:

"...he was in the Signals Corp and he was one of the first people to enter Belsen having been sent in to restore electricity and sanitation. He and his colleagues were horrified by the state of the people who had been held there and did everything they could to help them."

Neville makes the irrefutably valid point that it would have been impossible to fake the concentration camp photos taken in 1945:

" If you look at science fiction films up until the 1960s, and TV science fiction even later, you'll realise how primitive special effects would have been in the 1940s: there is no way the convincing-looking footage that we have seen could have been produced, especially in a war zone".

Well said, all three! I thank Ian and Neville for giving me permission to quote their comments, as they provide us with three key elements to employ against Holocaust deniers: victim testimony, witness testimony and logical refutation. Now, all these elements exist in abundance, and have been employed against David Irving, Dermot Mulqueen, Richard Verrall and their dreary tribe for decades. And yet, despite victim and witness testimony and convincing refutation in print and in court, the Holocaust deniers continue to maintain their drivel, mostly online and, all too often, unchallenged.

So why do they do it, and what drives them? Neville Grundy points to a possible answer:

"Holocaust deniers either have a nasty political agenda or are stupid - there are no other possibilities".

Well, I agree about the political agenda. As said previously, only the neo-Nazis stand to gain politically from Holocaust denial, which is why their reading lists are filled with titles by David Irving and others. How far each neo-Nazi believes in Holocaust denial is difficult to assess - I am sure that some know it to be false, but find it a useful tool to mobilise less intelligent fascists. There might be people who believe the Holocaust never happened, but deny being Nazis (really?). What is of interest here is the obvious fact that, despite an abundance of proof that Holocaust denial is rubbish, these people carry on believing in it anyway. (6% of British people are said to believe in Holocaust denial). Stupidity, mental illness, might be factors, but there might be something else in play here.

In 1981, the late Professor Paul Wilkinson wrote "The New Fascists", in which he cast a baleful and perceptive eye over the new fascist groups emerging post-WW2 (some are still with us). I gave my copy to charity years ago, regrettably, but remember the valid point he made about these far right groups. Instead of regarding them as rational means-to-an-end  political organisations, we should think of them as  politico-religious cults. Instead of having achievable objectives, their "programmes", such as they are, are actually statements of faith, rather than fact. Apply this to Holocaust deniers, and this fits like a glove. Of course they cannot admit that their beliefs are irrational - those beliefs are somehow sacrosanct to them -  anything else would be a denial of their faith.

This can be borne out by a comparison with other cults, one example of which can be found in the failed prophecies of the Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs). I am not implying that the JWs have anything doctrinally in common with the neo-Nazis; the JWs suffered terribly in Germany under the Nazis. However, when you read the list of prophecies made, and unfulfilled, you can only attribute the fact that the JWs continue to flourish and recruit, to unquestioning, unreasoning, faith. Holocaust deniers are much the same, holding fast to their irrational beliefs in the face of overwhelmingly contrary evidence, aka "The Truth".

Were all cults as peaceful and quiescent as the JWs, we would have nothing to be overly concerned about. Unfortunately, many such cults are capable of terrible violence. If we regard the Nazis as a cult, this is undeniable, but violence is not not exclusive to them. There was, for instance, the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult which carried out the horrific sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground railway system in 1995. which killed 13 people and injured many more. According to the BBC, the cult leader, Shoko Asahara, said the attack was:

 "a holy attempt to elevate the doomed souls of this world to a higher spiritual stage".

Fascist justifications for violence sound much like this, and are about as rational.

All other assessments of Holocaust denial are admirable, and I have no criticism of them, but, if we include the fanaticism of cultish belief, I think we can develop a more comprehensive strategy for dealing with this contemptible rubbish that exists only to advance the cause of neo-Nazism and incite anti-Semitism. The better we know our enemy, the better our chance of defeating him.