I stopped blogging. I got inside my head, worried about what people would think about me, broke into a cold sweat imagining conversations people would be having about my tendency to overshare. I was also trying to be a little serious with ‘proper’ writing and feared a blog would hurt those chances.
But.
The world.
I can’t say nothing.
In the end, I have decided to swallow the fear because you have to decide if you are going to stand by or stand up.
A few weeks ago, I watched the film, Nuremberg. It’s a stunning movie. I sat, silent, gripped. A film, based on a book that’s based on another book: 22 Cells by the Psychiatrist who was responsible for the mental health of the Nazis due to stand trial at Nuremberg. In the film, they alluded to the fact that the psychiatrist, Douglas M Kelly, was never the same, his book flopped and he suffered from life-ending depression. Five minutes after the film finished, my son and I looked at each other, blinking and said, “We have to read that book.” We did and I would recommend it if you want a view on what is happening in the world today.
‘Oh come on,’ Mrs All Trades, I can hear you thinking,‘It’s not as bad as that.’
I don’t want to be a fear-monger but there are definitely parallels.
Thinking about what could stop it and watching the ICE murders in America I came to a conclusion that only a small proportion of Germans were true Nazis and probably the same small proportion were activists, fighting for regime change. Most people, were, like me, in the middle. Us stodgy middlers think we have no influence but we do. We fall into one of two camps. Those that stand by and those that stand up. It’s subtle and you would think it makes little difference because both positions are inactive.
If more Germans said, ‘Das ist nicht richtig!” then things might have been very different. From reading 22 Cells, I think this is the subtle shift that happened in the UK.
When my children were born I decided they needed a family tree and discovered my husband had an uncle by marriage called Adolph. When I expressed surprise, my husband only ever known of him as Dolf, my mother-in-law told me that they had been Blackshirts and shrugged, as if were nothing.
At that time, post-first world war, a lot of people were scared and dissatisfied. They were looking for someone to blame. Some rich UK people thought that aligning themselves with the Nazi party would make them richer. But most people were somewhere in the middle. They laughed at the idea or shrugged their shoulders when asked what they thought of it all.
Then Joachim Von Ribbentrop (one of the Nazis later to stand trial at Nuremberg) visited the UK. He was a champagne salesmen and was well connected to the uk elite and therefore seen as the right person to bring the UK on board. However, he made a fatal error. Instead of bowing to the King and following protocol he gave a Nazi salute and shouted, ‘Heil Hitler.’ As his shiny black booted heels clicked together those standing by stood up. ‘That’s not right,’ they said and a possible history shifted.
My blog will be used for standing up, exploring my thoughts in more depth and hoping, that if you read this, you’ll stand up with me.
