Posted 7:55 AM by Paul
Fear Itself

Was it JFK or FDR? I can't remember. "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." A beautiful sentiment from the optimistic country. Fear is corrosive and debilitating. It stops you moving forward and doing the things that need to be done.

February 2004 in the UK and the media is shrieking fear and indignation. The source of this incitement to be fearful is the impending succession of many Eastern European countries to the EU. The Mail and the Express warn of floods of millions of Eastern Europeans into the UK. We didn't get this so much when the Greeks and the Spanish suddenly had the right to work and claim benefits in the UK during the 80s and 90s. But they were Western rather than Eastern, and both countries only had small gypsy populations.

Both the Mail and the Express play on the fear of swarthy gypos infecting Albion. The Nazis were nearly as keen on exterminating Gypsies as they were Jews. Whilst I don't want to compare 2004 with 1934 when Himmler was starting up mobile gas chambers, it is still worrying. Echoes of a terrible past. Ant--gypsy racism aside, we are being encouraged to be afraid that our way of life will be threatened by a flood of Poles. That's right Poles. The people we declared war on Germany to protect on 4th September 1939 and then sold out to Stalin at Yalta in 1945. About 250,000 of them stayed in the UK after the Second World War and we hardly noticed. They worked hard, opened social clubs, built churches and helped make Britain prosperous.

It all seems a long way from 1989 when the Wall came down and Polish and East German troops refused to fire on demonstrators. The same people who cheered loudest when Communism fell, are now spreading fear and distrust of the populations who suffered most under the oppression, bureaucracy and the pitiful inefficiencies of a bankrupt ideology and a corrupt political elite. All this when the UK is richer than at any time in history, and our borders more secure. A whole section of the media is dedicated to spreading fear and envy. The same newspapers that ask us to hate asylum seekers also call on us to snigger when a TV presenter falls from grace or an actress puts on weight following a traumatic divorce.

The Government's response to all of this atmosphere of hate is to play to the gallery. They are bringing in half- assed regulations to control the anticipated "flood" of migrants and pretend that Islamic terrorism is a bigger threat in 2004 than Nazis was in 1939 . They try and placate the forces of Anglo Saxon small mindedness rather than appeal to our better nature.