Anyone who studied history has asked himself how it was possible that Germany and its allies during the Second World War committed an abomination as the Holocaust. Millions of people killed because they were considered "different": Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, communists, opponents. To understand that just look at what is happening today in Italy. While an occasional newspaper article rhetorically asks whether Italians are racists in our country now there are people who quietly incite to genocide.
A recent case is that of the city of La Spezia, where the municipal administration has decided to reclassify a Roma camp inhabited by 50 people. Against this decision was created a group on Facebook (No more gypsies in La Spezia) who intends to organize a demonstration against the camp on 4 December. One local political battle with the city council that wanted to ban the rally, but according to the police there are no grounds to do so, since the request has been duly effected. Promoters have confirmed the peaceful nature of the rally, but the prosecutor of La Spezia has filed about 15 complaints in inciting racial hatred for sentences like this written in the bulletin of the group: "sealed train." "Let's sterilize them" "We want back those of X-Mas (a nazi-allied fascist band that in II WW tortured partisans)" "Gypsies are different from humans," "Kill them", "They should be eliminated," "Enough negroes, Gypsies, Romanians, all at the stake," "We need a final solution," "burn all the gypsies ',' We'll kill you," "Bring back the lagers," "Adolf Hitler has taught us that to kill Jews and Gypsies is not a crime."
Unfortunately this is not the only case. On the italian Internet phrases of this kind are very easily found and the police certainly can not stop them all. The group still exists, though now no longer contains such phrases, has nearly 4500 fans (but there is also a contrast group with 2400 fans) and some members complain that police violated their freedom of expression.
That's because unfortunately the majority of italian public opinion doesn't understand how serious are such words, nor why they are. But we must know that today in Italy there are millions of people who would be ready to behave like the Germans during the Second World War to "solve the Jewish problem." Most would be willing to close their eyes, and many would be happy to actively participate in a genocide. But how do you get to this point? How is it possible that millions of people become racist?
Racism is so easy for humans because it is the result of a childish basic reasoning that part represents the whole. If something is dangerous or frightening, all the things that look like it are harmful and frightening. Obviously this argument is profoundly wrong, even if instinctive, and both animals and men to grow and survive must learn to overcome it. If some red berries are poisonous does not mean that strawberries and cherries are too. Racism works in this way. If a jew is greedy and rich, all Jews are greedy and rich. If a gypsy steals, all gypsies steal. If a Romanian raped an italian woman, all Romanians are rapists. This reasoning is profoundly stupid and even a mildly intelligent gnat can understand that in the course of its life. But here comes the particular ability of humans to become more stupid as a group than they are alone. A natural ability that can be greatly magnified by the power of propaganda, as happened in Nazi Germany, and even more magnified in today's world, thanks to the extraordinary ability of television to lobotomized entire nations.
If in a country for years and years, the Roma, Romanians and immigrants in general appear on television and in newspapers only when they commit crimes, with particular emphasis and broad coverage, soon a lot of people will start to think that all Roma, all Romanians and all immigrants are criminals. Indeed, that they are the culprits of the "dramatic increase in crime" in the country.
Clearly, all this does not happen by chance: it is a mountain of falsehoods functional to a certain political group to get in power and keep it by artificially creating a scapegoat, an invented menace against which them, the good politicians, can protect the poor citizens. As in Nazi Germany, so Berlusconi's Italy.
No matter if in fact in the last two decades there has been no real increase in crime. No matter if in fact the vast majority of the members of a certain ethnic group are ordinary people, honest, with a job, a family and a house while the criminals are a minority in a proportion not higher than that of Italians. No matter if in fact immigration has created and creates enormous wealth for our country, just remember how we were all poorer twenty years ago to understand that.
The propaganda has already done his dirty work because it does not show on tv the hundreds of thousands of honest immigrants, the desperation of refugees rejected to Libya, the Roma people, European citizens since centuries like us, whose houses are destroyed without wondering where they should go, immigrants arrested and detained purely because they haven't a piece of paper, the racist attacks and violence taking place in Italy now continuously.
Racism is now becoming a source of pride for politicians who belong to the Democratic Party too, so they can demonstrate to citizens their attention to security, devoting themselves to the eviction of Roma camps. Because you know, all Gypsies are thieves.
Thefts of course cause annoyance and anger in people, and this is normal. But when an entire ethnic group as such is accused of theft, is not normal. It's racism. But now in Italy to deny that all gypsies are thieves and criminals seems odd. The propaganda has led the country to this level.
Like Germany in 1940. Nobody wanted to defend the Jews because "everybody knew" they were all thieves and potential rapists. And today in Italy is hard to find someone to defend the gypsies as human beings like us, because "everybody knows" they are all thieves.
And all this is helpful to many people. It's good that people are angry for theft even though the total economic damage of theft is ridiculous and insignificant in relation to the economic and personal damage that every citizen suffers from much more serious crimes such as corruption, mafias, pollution. It is no accident. It's very useful so that you can enact racist laws and ordinances among the applause of the crowd and decriminalize actually serious crimes without losing votes. The people are angry against the bogeymen immigrants "stealing" and forget the powerful men who kill thousands of people polluting the land, ruin families with financial scams, plung the country into unemployment and perennial crisis with corruption.
We know from psychology that a man can not kill another man unless he convinces himself that the other is not human. But if "the Gypsies are different from humans", if "all immigrants are rapists", then evict them, persecute them, hate them and even kill them is not bad, is not sin. It starts like this, it's not that particular, individual Roma who committed a robbery, or that individual, lone immigrant who committed a rape, it is said that "Gypsies steal" and "Romanians are all rapists."
And from saying these phrases really believing them to the justification of genocide, is just a snap.
Francesco Defferrari
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