Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Mob rule

Knowing full well that talk of the nazis makes readers run away, as opposed to talk of Paris Hilton, which makes them click in droves, this horrendous item of what happened in Austin puts me in mind of the pictures I saw in the Holocaust museum in Washington. In Austin Texas an angry mob beat a man to death because they thought the car he was a passenger in (he wasn't even the driver) ran over a child.
The nazis understood the psychology of mob rule and they used fear, intimidation and their special breed of savagery to instill mob behavior in ordinary citizens. You see picture after picture of soldiers, police and regular citizens taunting and humiliating Jews and other unfortunates. You see mobs whipped to a frenzy by the hysterical growls of Hitler or Goebbels.
There is safety in numbers, which is why the nazis were able to do what they did.
Now, I may be jumping the gun here, because I have not heard more details about this bizarre, idiotic lynching, but the victim was Hispanic, to judge from his last name, Morales. I posit that the recent anti-immigrant discourse and mood in this country, which must be at a fever pitch in the border states, has something to do with this terrible thing.
There is huge resentment against Hispanics and though that is certainly not the sole reason for this crime, there seems to be some form of dehumanization going on. These kinds of things are not supposed to happen in this country and they better not start happening now.

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