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| Always remember Laval, QC June 2019 This photo originally shared on Instagram |
I was raised around these words. To me, they have always meant that the world had finally recognized the cancer that is anti-semitism when the full horror of the Holocaust was finally revealed.
I was also raised to believe that the experience of the Jews leading up to and during the Second World War shone a stark light on racism in all forms, that it illustrated the awful potential of human cruelty.
In my overarching naivete, I thought humanity learned its lesson from what had happened to us, and to too many others whose only crime was being part of the wrong, and targeted, group.
Silly me.
Jew hatred is not only alive and well in 2022, it is spreading. Worse, it is increasingly legitimized not only by individuals we might classify as irredeemable scum, but by institutions that are supposedly the bedrock of a just and fair society.
I see reports and direct evidence of Holocaust denial, delegitimization of Israel, anti-Israel tropes barely covering their Jew-hating origins, the same lies about Jews that fuelled the gas chambers and convinced millions more to either join in or stand silent.
I see digital platforms being cop-opted to spread misinformation. To perpetuate the same lies that allowed the Holocaust to happen in the first place.
In 2022.
It terrifies me. It should terrify us all. Because this isn't just a Jew-hatred thing.
Pick a minority and we've all lived the reality, that sick feeling when you feel those first flashes of barely concealed hatred the moment the person you’re interacting with realizes who you are. It's a frightening way to live.
Never again? It's a laughable notion in 2022, because it's happening. And too many among us have allowed it to happen by standing silent.
Why humanity continues to slide back into the abyss of cruelty is a question that should have been answered once and for all in 1945, yet it continues to fester today.
Why?
#NeverAgain
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