First post

 

For those who have suffered evil

What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

From the poem "September first, 1939", by W H Auden

Auden continues and ends

May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

In this weblog I hope to continue where Auden left off, attempting to shine a light of hope through the darkness and despair of a world that is as crazy and vulnerable as it was back in 1939. Then we were on the brink of World War 2, now we are on the brink of World War 3.

A staggering evil was carried our upon Jews and Gypsies by the German Nation (which had been the victim of the victorious West at Versailles, at the end of World War 1).

The crime of genocide was invented specifically to prevent anything like it happening again.

Yet it has happened again, and it is still being carried out by Israel on behalf of us in the Anglo-American Empire.

That Jews are committing genocide is unthinkable to many if not most of us. To some this is impossible, it could not possibly true. How could the people who were subjected to the gas chambers of https://www.auschwitz.org/en/ treat any other group with a similar barbarity?

Auden thought that all school children learn that this can happen. Perhaps he meant that they learn this from the experience of the school yard, where the bullied child becomes the bully to the younger children. When I was young we were taught that we should be good Christians and "turn the other cheek." However, all children grow up with a fundamental sense of "fairness." Turning the other cheek is for Saints, for the rest of us the right thing to do is hit back. When the bully is too scary to fight back against, we go home and kick the cat. The bible offers us the "scapegoat", someone or something we can abuse without consequences, something or someone who does not count for us or threaten us, the suitable victim.

My weblog is all about how this came about, and why it happened, based on 40 years experience in group psychology, psychotherapy and counselling as well as consultancy to organizations in Britain.

I learned my history from a teacher who escaped Nazi Germany. I learned about Israel from a Jewish Hebrew Scholar and Professor, who saw Israeli terrorism as a Kibbutznik for himself.