The “haters” are out in force already!
My eyes prick with tears of sorrow AND anger…
I just read a social media post from my constituency’s new Labour MP, Jas Athwal, on testing out his commute to Westminster.
It was accompanied by a lovely ‘first day at school’ sort of photo of him alone in the vastness of the 900-year-old Westminster Hall.
There were lots of congratulatory comments as you would expect. But barbed amongst them were a few slanderous and vile hate comments about him, the Labour Party and our new UK PM.
Now, I know that’s nothing new for Jas Athwal, as Leader of Redbridge Council, or for MPs in general, or, frankly anyone on whom the “haters” turn their attention.
But it made me sick to my stomach that some human beings are so disconnected from their essence that they would CHOOSE to be hate-full.
And that some other similarly disconnected human beings deliberately use divisive rhetoric which only encourages and emboldens hateful behaviour.
And it made me angry… It made me roar like a Sumo wrestler prepping for a fight.
Because it is!
However much you disagree with someone’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviour, attacking them with hatred and speaking untruths about them is indefensible!
While it says far more about the perpetrator than the person they attack, it needs calling out. And it needs opposition in a martial arts kind of way…
It reminds me of that poem by Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran Pastor in Nazi Germany. It begins, “First they came for the Socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist…”
And ends the list of people they came for with… “Then they came for me and there was no-one left to speak for me.”
And, although he was in some ways a Nazi sympathiser, he too spent 8 years in Nazi prisons and concentration camps for his faith.
If we stay silent, who knows, one day that could be you or me!
So, this is a call to boldly speak out and, by so doing, energetically counter hatred whenever we come across it and in whatever context we find it…
For example, misogyny is hatred of women… Only saying!
There is much to do…
Are you with me, woman?
Are you with me?
Love and wild warm wishes…
Helping midlife women nourish their souls to empower their lives
First published on Facebook and LinkedIn on 7 July 2024.
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