To avoid a continued, extremely dangerous liberal sin of omission — A repost of a piece written in October 2009
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| Jesus writes in the sand . . . |
This review and reflection has been done, as all of you will be aware, during a time when right-wing, nationalist and proto and actual fascism can be seen clearly to be on the rise in the UK, Europe, Israel, the USA and elsewhere. Now, as a life-long liberal, free-religionist I have always been what one can call an “anti-fascist”—I mean, how could any liberal, free-religionist be anything but an anti-fascist?!
And then, this morning, I see that Trump has just declared that he’s designated “ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.”
But anti-facism/antifa is NOT an organisation, but a basic disposition, a basic way of being-in-the-world. Of course, I’m not so naive as to believe or claim that there exist no people who call themselves anti-fascists but who have, do, and will continue to promote violence, but I do claim and believe that there are countless millions more whose anti-fascism is all about creating a peaceable kingdom for ALL people regardless of race, nationality, left or right leaning politics, sex, gender, etc.. However, I think we now know that Trump and his current regime are actively going to go after our peaceable antifascist brothers and sisters in America who, like me, are profoundly committed to non-violence. But, as the Belgian author, David Van Reybrouck, writes, the truth is that Trump et al. seem intent upon using the brutal and unforgivable murder of Charlie Kirk as its “Reichstag Moment” and, frankly, that scares me to my core. Alas, the same frightening dynamic which is being displayed in the USA is increasingly being displayed here in the UK — witness the huge right-wing march in London on 13th September. As the old adage has it, “when America sneezes, Britain catches a cold.”
But, but, but, this dynamic has been obvious to some of us for many, many years, and—at least in my opinion—liberals have played a key role in allowing this dynamic to develop and increase. Liberals—and I count myself as one of them, albeit these days as a Conservative-Liberal-Socialist—Liberals must stop committing an extremely dangerous sin of omission. What that sin is I wrote about way back in 2009, and so here is a link to that piece (which will explain why the picture at the head of this post is of Jesus writing in the sand). As I recently said at the end of a post only a few days ago on a related subject, I fully realise that almost no one will now go on and click the following link to read what I wrote sixteen years ago, but just in case someone wants to have a look, here it is. But, if you choose not to read it, don’t then go on to say that warnings, such as my own, were not made. Let those with ears hear and those with eyes see:
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