The massive rise in "hate crime" across Europe and America is tragic. The fact that leading politicians in a number of countries speak in ways that foment it is deplorable. A kind of Nazism is on the rise. In Germany in 2016 there were on average 10 attacks per day on migrants including attacks upon the buildings where they are housed, in some cases burning them down. This is the sort of thing that happened to Jews in the Middle Ages or during the time of Hitler. I find it difficult to write about since the stupidity of it all seems so completely obvious and one wonders how any sane person could involve themselves in such action, yet here it is. The awful case in Kansas that has caught the news over the past few days is just one item out of a huge number. People fleeing from war and oppression come to our supposedly civilised countries and find that they have jumped out of one fire into another. This is horribly sad.
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The Guardian newspaper keeps track here of people who die due to police action in the USA. Is this also a form of hate crime?
"Hate Crime" - a Euphemism?
It seems odd that such a violent term could actually be a euphemism, but why is it that certain acts when committed by a white person are called "hate crime" and when committed by a brown person are "terrorist acts"? Is there here a subtle implication that only "they" spread terror and only "we" obey laws? Or is it a fear that use of the same term for both "sides" would lead to our governments being labelled terrorist as well? Aftr all "we" have killed an awful lot more of "them" than they of us and the majority of "them" that "we" have killed with our bombs are, as like as not, innocent civilians who happened to be in the wrong place at the time.
Do we not have to come to realise that there is no "we" and "them" here? Yet this takes humility which is in short supply. Hatred is not overcome by hatred, it is overcome by nonhatred, and nonhatred demands humility. Yet to see that "they" are as "good" as "us", do we not have to face the fact that "we" are as "bad" as "they" are? Europeans and Americans fear immigrants because a tiny percentage might be terrorists, yet clearly a significant number of Europeans and Americans are also terrorists. We are human after all. We are all simply human beings facing the effects of long running Middle East wars in which our own countries are as much to blame as the people on the spot. Piling blame upon blame, however, does not heal. Only compassion for all parties does that.