BRIAN READE: 'Trump's World Cup is like Hitler's Olympics - we have a major lesson to learn'

BRIAN READE: 'Trump's World Cup is like Hitler's Olympics - we have a major lesson to learn' Horrendous Steven Ogilvie attack was terror being turned on anyone with a different colour skin from men of violence, says Brian Reade, and now's the time for the government to act TOWARDS the end of 1939, English poet WH Auden called the previous 10 years “a low, dishonest decade”. The 1930s was a dark time, when men with evil intent seized power by playing on fear and prejudice, enabling them to inflame the world, cause tens of millions of deaths and almost destroy civilisation. Today it feels uncomfortably like we’re back in that bleakest of decades. Then, as now, people suffered poverty and job insecurity through the after-effects of a global capitalist crash, nations diverted money to rearming as war appeared inevitable, trade suffered from protectionism, Europe faced a refugee crisis and a belief took root that the liberal, democratic system could no longer offer answers. Which created a vacuum for fascists who promised authoritarian dictatorship, brutal suppression of opponents and expunging outsiders as the route to “restoring order.” The wheel has gone full circle. The current World Cup will go down as Trump’s World Cup just as the 1936 Olympics went down as Hitler’s. Both autocrats were supporting far-right military machines at the time (Hitler bombing Spain for Franco, Trump bombing Iran for Netanyahu), both organised hit squads to eliminate their minorities (Trump’s ICE squads with Latino and African immigrants, Hitler’s SS with Jews and Romanies) and both hijacked a major sporting event to demonise “inferior” races and glorify their own Populist agendas. Then, as now, Britain was not immune from events. Aristocrat Oswald Mosley’s fascist party, known as the Blackshirts, brought terror to the streets, attacking minorities and demanding an overthrow of democratic government. Today, a new wealthy elite cajoles young men to don black, take to the streets and terrorise minorities with the aim of fomenting a fascist takeover. This week’s attack in Belfast on Stephen Ogilvie was horrendous and the perpetrator deserves everything our laws can throw at him. The government must also properly act on the fears a majority of British people hold that our immigration system is broken. But let’s not sugarcoat what happened in response to that knife attack. Masked men, egged-on by fascist sympathisers, went looking for ethnic minorities to burn out of their homes, with no thought for the life inside. It was, as Claire Hanna, the Belfast SDLP MP, called it: “A race-based pogrom” straight out of the 1930s fascist playbook. Terror being turned on anyone with a different colour skin from the men of violence. Meanwhile salivating on the sidelines, giving the thugs credibility, multi-millionaire Rupert Lowe’s Restore party promised to “put murderous third-world savages to death” and the likes of Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson and the Reform leadership wrestled each other into the gutter to try to appear lower than Lowe. History will repeat itself if we fail to learn lessons from the horrendous events of less than a century ago. The main one being that fascist leaders give simple answers to complex problems in order to dupe the masses and gain power and wealth. Answers that never arrive. Just blood-drenched anarchy whipped up by these low, morally defective men. Auden’s poem was called “September 1, 1939,” about the Nazi invasion of Poland that triggered global carnage. In it he wrote of the world being “lost in a haunted wood” and warned: “We must love one another or die”. Contrary to fascist lies that is the only human lesson worth learning.