PU#242 - AND I DID NOT SPEAK OUT: On Our Obligation To Acknowledge That Things Are Not Right
It was important, once, we were told, that we learn the lessons of history.
It was important, once, we were told, to remember that evil can only thrive when good people do nothing.
It was important, once, we were told, to not just be a bystander. To remember that oft-repeated poem by pastor Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
For me, I think that has been the saddest thing about the last few years. The apparent slide back into historical ignorance of how our greatest tragedies have unfolded. The apparent apathy there is towards acknowledging just how bad things are getting. The quiet, cynical, way in which we just watch domino after domino fall and continue to say nothing, do nothing, change nothing.
Britain votes for Brexit in 2016, and the very next day a wealth of racist incidents are reported across the country from newly emboldened bigots. The claim is that the Brexit vote had nothing to do with xenophobia and anti-European sentiment, yet for years before it happened our relationship to Europe was blamed for every domestic issue we had (regardless of our membership to the EU’s actual role in the issue) and our understanding of that relationship was corrupted and poisoned. Freedom of movement across the EU was framed as a threat instead of an opportunity. Protections for workers as danger to the economy instead of a basic human right. The idea of a common good trampled by individualist cries of wanting to do things our own way.
When Britain voted to isolate itself from its European neighbours, if we ignore the lies painted on buses which got us there (though they should never be ignored entirely), it was partly on the promise of the amazing trade deals we might get with America once freed from our European arrangements. But then America votes in Donald Trump a few months later. Mr Make America Great Again. Mr America First. His first use of a fascist slogan which, though not unnoticed at the time, didn’t worry people too much because everybody knew Trump was just a protest vote, right? No one would ever seriously vote the “grab them by the pussy” guy in as president of the United States of America, would they?
And when they did, instead of probing the rise of Trump seriously, his election was usually dismissed as a joke gone too far. A case of trolling gone wrong. A contextual phenomenon that created a perfect storm: certain elements of white America venting their frustrations and prejudices after the Obama years. Scared men (and not an insignificant number of women too) troubled either by the idea of the first female president in Hilary Clinton, or at least by the idea of having that particular woman as the first female president. Internet edge-lords who just thought the idea of a reality TV star taking the highest office in the land was funny so they became voluntary grassroots campaigners for him. Discontented and disenfranchised voters sick of business as usual in Washington who found the unguarded and unconventional way that Trump spoke as a politician refreshing instead of offensive. Sweary, unserious, rude, shocking. Trump was a clown, an outsider, and much of the rest of the world watched and laughed wearily until they too were confronted with what America had done to itself — and thus to them — as the outsider clown was sworn in on inauguration day. American carnage indeed.
The mishandling of the covid pandemic and the harmful misinformation president Trump peddled during that deadly time almost makes us forget the fact that in that first term between 2017 and 2021 Trump, who ran on the platform that he would erect a wall between the US and Mexico, tore families apart at the border and locked children in cages. Makes us forget that he played fast and loose with North Korea and the possibility of nuclear annihilation. Makes us forget how quickly he eroded the rights of LGBTQ+ people and how he fanned the flames of Islamophobia with his Muslim travel bans. How he undid years of environmental progress. How he refused to condemn white supremacists in Charlottesville. How he used violent force to clear peaceful protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death just so he could take a photo op outside a church. How he bullied the press and took away freedom of access to anyone who crossed him. How he was impeached twice — once for abuse of power and obstruction of congress, and the second time because he incited an insurrection in the wake of his election loss in 2020.
Needless to say, this new American president, whose name graces the cover as author of a book called The Art of the Deal, did not welcome a desperate, post-Brexit, Britain into a promised fantastic new trading partnership. Our “special relationship” with America on this side of the Atlantic Ocean (and lack of any economic leverage in the fallout from Brexit) meant neither Theresa May nor Boris Johnson could speak out against any of their American counterpart’s erratic and norm-destroying actions during that first term as they courted the president for trade. In fact Johnson even tried to copy a thing or too. Most similar between the two was the complete disregard for truth. Trump’s “alternative facts” approach to reality became as much a Downing Street phenomenon as it was in the White House. Whether it was the number of imaginary new hospitals pledged to be built with fictitious money not actually saved from leaving Europe; telling the Queen that parliament needed to be suspended when it did not; or denying the existence of covid-rule-breaking Christmas parties, Trump’s friend, Johnson, made lying the unofficial language of Westminster, just as he had made it a signature part of his previous career in journalism.
When Trump was voted out in 2020, and especially after the ugly scenes of the January 6th insurrection, it felt like maybe the nightmare was coming to an end. A vaccine for covid arrived. The world opened up again. Maybe all would finally be well?
Then in 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine in clear violation of all kinds of international law…and nothing happened. Buses started flying Ukrainian flags and we were all encouraged to visually support Ukraine, but support didn’t translate into taking any firm stand against Russia’s actions. A few hotels took in Ukrainian refugees and a few more blue and yellow flags went up around the country, but it’s now 2026 and Russia remains an occupying force while Ukrainians continue to fight a war against them by themselves, alone and now largely ignored. After all, the following October, in 2023, Hamas attacked Israel, leading to Israel’s disproportionate response against all of Palestine, putting Gaza under siege and causing a humanitarian crisis which is still ongoing. An attempted genocide that has only been rubber-stamped and supported by the UK and US governments. The violence continues today, the death toll rises, daily misery builds, but we live now in a world where such things simply occur without consequence. Just one reel amongst many on Instagram or TikTok. Easy to scroll away from or block out from the feed. Or, if sufficiently outraged, post about and feel like something had been done.
Trump was still gone though, and then the UK voted for “change” in 2024, ousting the Conservatives after fourteen years. However, as we began to see that a new Labour government’s vision of “change” bore little of any substance, we watched also the cognitive and physical decline of Joe Biden in the US. Incredulous that the lunatic candidate, Trump, who had done so much damage in his first term as President, was back as the Republican candidate despite his two impeachments and election-subverting incitement of an insurrection.
We were sure that America couldn’t possibly make the same mistake twice, this time in full knowledge of who they were voting for…weren’t we?
Since his second inauguration in 2025, Trump has simply continued where he left off. Nothing he has done has been uncharacteristic or unexpected. He has gutted all federal agencies of any sort of liberal policy guidance, killed Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, stripped even more rights for LGBTQ+ people, unfunded any publicly subsidised artistic expression that does not show sufficient deference to him, bullied networks into cancelling shows which have not put him in a positive light, and continued to undo what little environmental progress there has been in a world hurtling evermore perilously close to climate catastrophe. He has mobilised ICE into a cruel private army who have not only ruined lives through deportations and daily acts of terrorism, but have actively killed several American citizens without redress. In his prejudiced bid to eradicate illegal immigrants from the country, Trump has had many other American citizens deported and lengthily detained without just cause. Meanwhile he has given tech oligarchs free reign over US legislation, sent out unhinged AI images of himself as a quasi-religious figure, unilaterally kidnapped the president of Venezuela, and, most recently, bombed Iran, killed thousands, and plunged the global economy into crisis without even a nod to international law.
This is the new normal. The one we do nothing about. As with Ukraine, as with Gaza, an unthinkable war crime has been committed, with more following each day, and it simply becomes another news alert we glance only at the depressing headline about before quickly flicking it away.
Like with the racist-coded flags of St George and the Union Jacks which continue to intimidatingly line British streets eight months since they were first put up by groups with known links to the far-right and just left to quietly terrorise those who they so brazenly target.
The day-to-day background noise of life in 2026.
Because for the last ten years (at least) they have been coming for the Pro-Europeans, for the Mexicans, for the Palestinians, for the Ukrainians, for the people of colour, for the LGBTQ+ community, for the immigrants, for the asylum seekers, for the “woke”, for the Muslims, for the poor, for the vulnerable, for the feminists, for the women, for the pacifists, for the Jews, and, most egregiously, for the truth…and we have not spoken out, time and time again.
We have not stood up and said, sufficiently loudly, that something is seriously wrong.
We have not learned the lessons of history. How the Rwandan genocide did not start with the assassination of president Habyarimana, nor the Nazi holocaust with the first concentration camps, but with the years of background bile and hatred which poisoned one group against the other, slowly, imperceptibly, over time, so that the fuse was already burning brightly long before the final inciting incident occurred and the powder keg erupted.
We have forgotten how the Nuremberg Laws came into place long before Kristallnacht. How dehumanisation is not immediate, but gradual and concerted. How grooming works slowly: eroding the boundaries of what is normal until the abnormal is happening without you even realising what lines have been crossed.
If you see something, say something. Here we all are looking for suspicious discarded luggage on planes and trains and the real ticking time bomb has been displayed in plain view across the daily news each and every day.
What is it that addicts say? That you can’t get help unless you first admit you have a problem? Well I think it is clear that we have a problem. And this one needs a significant intervention before we self-destruct to a point where we can’t get back.
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