The last known second-world war Nazi to live in the USA, Jakiw Palij, has at last been deported to Germany.
Neighbors described Jakiw Palij, 95, as an elderly man who kept to himself and would not have stood out – except for the protesters who often flocked to his front door to demand his expulsion from the country.
On Saturday, a Nazi organisation will protest on the streets of Stockholm, where I live. Thankfully, an anti-nazi demonstration will take place which will undoubtedly outnumber the nazis in many numbers.
Today, during lunch, people were discussing politics, as there's a national political election in Sweden in a couple of weeks. There have been fires lit in some places in the past weeks, cars scorched, that kind of thing.
"everybody knows, [the fires are] initiated by the immigrants"
dude at work
A friend has infiltrated some extreme right-wing Facebook groups and provided screenshots from them, showing how they're responsible for some of the fires, and how they initiated them solely to blame immigrants.
That may be true. May not be.
Still, during lunch today, somebody mentioned the fires, and said "everybody knows, they're initiated by the immigrants, and—"
I just said, "that's actually wrong - we don't know who have initiated them, do we?"
No response. I merely pictured all persons who have ever immigrated to Sweden, running around with torches, setting cars on fire.
It's weird, isn't it, how people get those ideas in their heads?
I'm trying to picture their train of thought; naturally there'll be some degree of subconscious normalisation going on.
Of course immigrants would do it! Somebody whose nationality is non-Swedish from the start if their life would do such a thing! If immigrated toddlers had the body strength required to hold, balance, and throw a torch onto a car, that shit would be happening en masse right now!
Some people are fucking idiots. But we can help them out. I'm not saying I'm better than they are—well, I kind of am, but being better than a xenophobe doesn't require much—but we can't fight them by using their own tools, or we'll be just as idiotic as they are. Currently. All people can get better in their ways.
myself on the tram
I was wearing the above t-shirt—a statement against sverigedemokraterna (SD), a party built on nazi values—on the tram while reading a book and listening to music, when suddenly somebody pushed their stomach very closely to my face.
I didn't mind at first, as I thought the tram was getting full. However, I happened to see people standing sparsely apart from each other, so I leaned back and looked up. An aggressive face belonging to some flaccid late-teenage boy looked down at me. He was wearing an SD t-shirt, obviously displeased with mine.
I took off my headphones and saw he wasn't wearing any, so I asked him how he was doing. No response. People on the tram were listening in on my monologue. I was asking if he was standing so close to me due to him wearing a pro-SD t-shirt and my wearing an anti-SD t-shirt. No response. I then asked him if he'd planned on staying silent in which case he'd just come across as silly and wouldn't do his party any favours (party favours, haha!). No response. I started reading again, trying to keep a straight face even though it felt very odd to have an angry and possibly deaf-mute boy hanging over me.
After a couple of stops he left the tram.
The guy who talked about immigrants at lunch today also spoke about how NMR—a self-admittedly nazi organisation—went around his neighbourhood knocking on doors. One of the guy's neighbours opened a door, told the NMR representatives that she didn't want their material and asked them to leave, after which they proceeded to beat her down.
I sometimes wonder if nazi, extreme right-wing, and right-wing solutions appear so attractive to people who have had a fairly easy life. People who have never really needed the aid of others, which is how most people on Earth live their lives. You don't have to look particularly far to see people have their children placed in ghettos based on religion; I'm not talking about "far" as in years, but in distance; that's happening in Denmark today.
If you seriously consider voting for political parties that contain demagogues, that seemingly provide easy solutions to complex and complicated issues, please consider this: if they basically spout what NSDAP did back in their day, think about their consequences.
Please think back to the nazi that this blog post started off about.
Imagine the lengths that people went to to have him deported, and why.
Now, imagine a future where we've given nazis and xenophobes enough trust and leeway to take over this country.
Believe me, history would be repeated.