Police State Alert!

Yep, CCTV was introduced for our protection from nasty terrorists, wasn't it? Wasn't it? Oh, I see, we're all under suspicion now...How silly of me to think the scope of surveillance would be limited to terrorists. In my local last night I was having a discussion with some friends about the rise of Hitler, the SS and the persecution of the Jews and we all agreed we're in something of a similar time just prior to Hitler's rise out of the Weimar Republic.

All the PC stuff we do think and say now, about not offending people of sexuality, faiths, cultures etc, was all there at that time of the Weimar Republic. Once the economic crash came, though, it all went tits up and everyone forgot about being 'nice'. Neighbour, turned against neighbour, brother against brother, as Our Lord said.

The whole 'shop a benefit cheat hotline/call social services if your next door neighbour's children are too fat' stuff we get now is a very similar tactic employed by the Nazis in their persecution of Jews, homosexuals, dissidents, or anyone else they despised. It turns out that even the Pope of the time, Pope Pius XII, feared arrest and raid of the Vatican and laid plans for his successorship should the Nazis have arrested him for encouraging the Church Faithful to hide Jews, which, of course, they did. The Servant of God, Mother Richard M Beauchamp Hamburgh, being just one, who, baptised at St Mary Magdalen, Brighton, is now up for beatification for doing just that. Hardly, the actions and fears of 'Hitler's Pope' were they?

Anyway, I'm digressing. The tactic of 'shopping your neighbour' was the exact tactic employed by the Nazis. Whole towns were not flooded by the SS. The SS relied on the hatred, fear and suspicion of the people's Jewish, gay, dissident neighbours, to 'give them a call'. Then, they'd come round and the rest is, as they say, history...repeating itself.