Careless Talk Costs Lives

The theme for this year's Holocaust Memorial Day is "ordinary people". Hidden in these simple words is a universal truth that 'ordinary people', when fed denigrating, demeaning words and images of 'other' people, can become inhuman in their behaviour towards them. Words have consequences when they distort and dehumanise other races, groups, religions or creeds.
The Nazis propelled a nation towards unimaginable cruelty and genocide, not just of the Jewish community but the disabled, gays, and the Romany community. Anyone in effect who didn't fit their sense of national identity.
We commemorate the Holocaust not as a single event of unique madness but as a terrible trait of humanity perpetuated so many times before and since.
As reported in this article, Suella Braverman was confronted by a child survivor of the Nazi genocide, Joan Salter, and reminded that words have consequences.
When Braverman alludes to an "invasion on our southern coast" she is likening the small, inflatable boats arriving to what Putin's Russia army is doing in Ukraine. This is patently nonsense, there is no force massing on our southern border. What we have is a broken immigration system, as Braverman has admitted, which the government needs to fix. People who arrive need to be processed quickly through a functioning legal system to establish whether they are asylum refugees or not. But ramping up the rhetoric makes people angry and vengeful. Already we have seen a fire bomb attack on the Dover immigration centre, fuelled by a racist ideology. Using provocative language only encourages a mindless reaction and can be dangerous.
Unfortunately Suella Braverman doesn't see it like that.