Racism in Poland
Jew-hating is the echo of fear. Frightened little men with distorted images of the world and ignorant louts with leather-boot-brains are to be found seeking someone — anyone — to blame for the predicament of their misery. Failing to recognise the real foe, which is the profit system in which they exist as the providers of their masters' privilege, they seek out a cultural group and chant their poisonous slogans of hatred. In Poland jew-hating (better to call it that — anti-semitism makes it sound like a philosophical outlook) is on the rise. Frozen prejudices are thawing out in the new, freer political atmosphere of post-state capitalism.
Assignment (BBC2, 7.45pm, 13 November) showed how the current Presidential election in Poland has brought out some of these sickening old prejudices. Workers interviewed on the street complained that the Jews ran the country. The reason for the awful poverty of most Poles was the Jews. The Walesa campaign has pandered to the kind of crass nationalism within which portrayal of the Jew as a non-Pole — a disruptive alien — has a place. This is the dirty work of running Polish capitalism which Walesa and those other brave workers of ten years ago have taken on.
In 1980 they knew who their enemies were: the Communist Party bosses; today the Jews are the scapegoats. The irony is that there are hardly any Jews left in Poland. The Nazis saw to that — about four million Polish Jews were systematically slaughtered. In Russia the same hatreds are being concocted by those in need of new enemies to blame.
Decades of so-called communist education and media have left nothing but a working class which is prey to this most ignorant of bigoted beliefs.
Gullibility in Britain
Equinox (Channel 4, 7pm, 18 November) reminded us just how many mugs there were in Britain and how many swines there are who will happily take money for exploiting such gullibility.
The programme examined the attempts to expose the frauds and — more often — self-deceptions of those who claim that they can read fortunes by looking at tarot cards, communicate with the dead and hold conversations with men from flying saucers. It is fear of rational thought which attracts the believers to such nonsensical beliefs.
Doris Collins was shown prancing up and down a stage delivering phoney messages from dead people to ignorant workers who do not want to believe that death means the end of life. "I have a message here from someone from a Jim — or a Jimmy — or a Timmy . . ." And someone somewhere whose father was called that or something like it or something close enough to let them imagine that they are getting their money’s worth raises their hand and allows Doris to tell them what they want to believe.
Then there was the expose of the detestably stupid Christian Dion: a caricature of a fair-ground fake — but perhaps he believes in what he says. Dion appears on London radio telling callers what their future will be like. By employing an array of cliches and likely possibilities Dion is able to create an image of a man who is doing something other than looking at a pack of silly cards and telling people what they want to hear.
The likes of Doris and Dion prey on the uncertainties and anxieties of working class life. They persisently fail to be put to the test of rigorous scientific scrutiny. They are the fools of a foolish culture and the providers of untruth to those who cannot face the truth. It has been a bad month for prejudice and fraud — bring on the Queen's Speech and the nativity play and let the sickly trend continue.
Steve Coleman
No comments:
Post a Comment