People like certainty. They like re-assurance and, what better way to underpin a validation of deeply held values than to hear a speaker appeal to the emotions that strike a chord. The key, for the speaker with ambition, is to be vague. Get specific and you alienate. Stay vague and you bring along all. Hitler did this perfectly. He didn't start out by telling the crowds that he was going to gas 6 million Jews, because for most, this was not a good thing. What Hitler did was to speak of sections of the community who were going against the common will in the vaguest terms possible. If I said that what this country needs is a return to British values, I wonder how it would go down? Oddly enough, I don't think it would go down well, for "British Values" has become, in the eyes of some, synonymous with racism and bigotry. It is all the more strange because to me, the term means, above all, enterprise, fairness, democracy, freedom of speech and a common purpose. In fact, it is a measure of the perversion of language that certain ideas like this have become taboo.
But what did Hitler set out to achieve? In simple terms he set out to create a master race, devoid of inferiors. He set out to place Germany at the pinnacle of human achievement and spent a lot of time constructing an edifice which reflected that. He also removed, by force, any opposition.
In order to whip up support for his vision he needed a scapegoat. He needed a scapegoat that would bear on its back all the failures of the German people. Scapegoating is a key element in the rise of Fascism. There has to be a monster which is incapable of self-defence.
And so it has come to pass that anyone who seeks to preserve our way of life, by, for example, putting limits on immigration, is now termed a racist. It's very clever. Ask the average person what a racist actually is and I doubt if you would get a coherent answer. But that does not matter, the damage is done. It's a word which, without being very specific, is now a portmanteau for anyone who does not subscribe to multiculturalism or unfettered immigration or indeed, the right of British People to self-determination. It is all the more a perversion of the term that those who come from the other countries in question practice such severe forms of racism and fascism that it is incredible that anyone gives them right of entry, let alone the right to stir up insurrection and hatred.
I think we have come to a watershed moment. The recent case of a family in Rotherham, a decent family who are foster parents, being denied their altruism because they voted for UKIP is a kind of marker in the war of words and views.
In a way I sympathize with the people of Rotherham. They voted Labour and by association they voted in a Labour-leaning council, whose executive must do the will of their leaders. It's called self-determination. We all have a right to elect people who will do our bidding.
The kindly people in this sorry affair have no redress. They have been branded racists becausee they voted for UKIP. It is a paradigm of the Hitler/Goebbels principle: keep it simple, keep it vague and never reveal the true purpose. Those in Rotherham who think they are doing some lost young people a favour by denying them a home, have bought into an impossible and dangerous dream of ideological purity, the likes of which we have not seen since the 1930's in Germany.
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