Stanislav Daniel: Hate does not start with gas chambers - even among your loved ones there might be somebody supporting populist gibberish and claiming it as their "opinion"

Those words were not uttered by a Nazi in 1930s Germany, nor by some famous racist at a neo-Nazi march. They are the comments my cousins make about Ukrainians.

These people are from my own family. Romani people.

One shared a video from the “Freedom and Direct Democracy” (SPD) party and I responded that while we can all have different opinions, as Romani people we should avoid the SPD. His reaction didn’t take long.

What he said made me sad. Really sad.

It wasn’t that his words hurt my feelings – unfortunately, I’m already used to them. It was because among Romani people today I am finding there is support for those who exploit fear of migrants, Ukrainians, LGBTQ people – and sometimes even other Roma.

It’s as if some Romani people are doing their best to cozy up to the majority. Maybe they hope they will finally belong by doing so.

That’s an illusion, though. Fascism does not select whom to spare or whom to victimize based on who works and who doesn’t, who is decent and who isn’t.

Racism doesn’t read your CV. Racism looks at the color of your skin.

This is just like when Tomio Okamura claimed the WWII-era camp for Roma in Lety u Písku was not a concentration camp, but a “labor” camp for those who allegedly didn’t want to work. In reality, they sent Romani people to Lety irrespective of their characters, their jobs, or their merits.

If today a new ideology were to appear carrying the banner of hate, all of us Roma would be marched into its camps irrespective of whether we had commented favorably on an SPD video or protested against it. Some might say such populism is developing because there is a lack of education.

That would be too much of a simplification, though. Today our access to information is easier than at any time in history.

People do not want to look for the truth, though. They want to be the ones who are right.

For that reason, people only look for what confirms their own “truth”. Frequently, after watching the film “Schindler’s List“, people ask: “How could that have happened? How could people have permitted it?”

This is how it happens. This is exactly how it happens.

Hate does not start with gas chambers. It begins with the sentence “Let’s aid those who deserve it. Not the monkeys.”

I have to admit that I did not further respond to my cousins’ comments. I don’t want to argue with them.

I do love them. If anybody wanted to harm them, I would stand up for them.

That’s just how I am. I don’t want to feed hatred, because that’s exactly what this evil wants – to divide us.

Divide and conquer. It’s always worked.

Why am I writing all of this? I basically don’t even know.

Maybe it’s just because I know I’m not alone in this. You, too, have somebody close to you who supports populist gibberish and presents it as their “opinion”.

You don’t know how to respond to it either. Maybe, at the start, it’s enough not to lose your respect.

I don’t mean respect for the nonsense somebody says. I mean respect for the person saying it.

My cousins have written something I will never respect. However, I will still respect them.

That’s how we Roma are. Happy International Romani Day to everybody!