“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”George Santayana (1863-1952)
These words written between 1905-1906, are often misquoted but always it seems the meaning is the same no matter how it is phrased.
In the days of the Weimar Republic a political party was born that would prove exactly what happens when the free press is used by those who practice intolerance, bigotry and believe that the ends justify the means.
Newspapers like the Volkische Beobachter, Der Sturmer and Signaal fed the German population with lies, with scare stories dressed up as scientific fact, articles which led to the murder of 6,000,000 human beings.
It is not known how many RM Millions were spent by the medical and scientific community attempting to prove that the Aryan race were superior to any other race. Their theories and opinions were willingly taken up by editors and owners of Newspapers like Julius Steicher (Der Sturmer) who published the most outrageous and blatant lies.
Today we have articles in the same vein that vilify 20-25% of the population that make outrageous claims and blatantly lie, articles like the recent “use snipers to ’pop’ smokers in the Herald and Post.”
It is irresponsible journalism of the worst kind, directly comparable with Streicher who incidentally was hung at Nuremberg for his journalistic faux pas. It is bad enough that they published this within days of two acts of barbarism committed in Norway one of which included the gunning down of over 60 innocent souls, but to imitate Der Sturmer is truly unforgivable.
I cannot say where these kind of articles will lead, I cannot predict the future but I can learn from the past, the past teaches that those who form public opinion should be held to an exceptionally high standard, their proof should be absolute, not maybe, not perhaps not could or should. It should never, ever advocate hatred and violence toward any person race, or creed. Those journalists, editors and newspapers who do so are no better than Julius Streicher and Der Sturmer, if anything they are worse because history has clearly shown where their hate-mongering leads.