Pour encourager les autres

It seems one can hardly move at the moment without tripping over a hate crime prosecution, usually a thought crime involving the use of prohibited speech.  For instance, the Uruguayan footballer Luis Suarez (above), who now plays for Liverpool, has been banned for eight matches and fined £40,000 ($ 62,496) for using a word which sounds like 'Negro', to serial hate crimes victim Patrice Evra. It mattered not that the word which Suarez used does not have any of the connotations which have been imposed upon it in the West when used in his own homeland, where one of the most revered figure in the history of Uruguayan football is Obdulio Varela, captain of the side that won the World Cup in 1950 whose nickname was "El Negro Jefe",  meaning the black boss, the word sounded like a racial insult so poor old Suarez had to pay.

One is reminded of the official in Washington who was forced to resign in 1999 for using the word “niggardly” in a speech.  Yes, it really happened!

Of course it appears that any number of words are equally toxic, as ex-football player turned TV commentator Alan Hanson discovered this week when he found himself clinging to his job and forced to issue grovelling apologies on account of having uttered the word “coloured” during a discussion about alleged “racism” in football. Does anyone care to bet on whether whether Hanson will suddenly vanish from out TV screens in they which David Starkey appears to have done since he accused white rioters of adopting black culture 

At the same time, the infamous “tram lady” Emma West is spending Christmas on bail following having been secretly filmed failing to express sufficient delight at her enriched multicultural environment, and England football captain John Terry is facing criminal prosecution for allegedly using an unkind word to a black player with whom he was having a heated encounter.

As British readers will also know there is a trial taking place at the Old Bailey, however, for the time being I demur from referring to that, given what happened to Rod Liddle when he did so

However, there is a purpose tor all these trials, the same purpose for which other totalitarian police states and dictatorships have used similar show trials at different times and in different places.  When rulers seek to impose unpopular policies on their citizens, they require victims whom they can make examples of, punish, humiliate and destroy so as to frighten the public into obedience, and to silence any objections to what is being done.

These trials, together with the regular press vilification of anyone who ventures into prohibited speech, either by accident or design, are intended to silence dissent, and they are very effective.         

Our rulers depend on the fact that few of the public are sophisticated enough to draw a distinction between “racism” and legitimately opposing mass immigration. Of course, it has never been illegal, or indeed racist to oppose mass immigration, but it has always felt as if it was.  That, of course, is deliberate, as the establishment, together with their acolytes in the press and entertainment media have done everything in their power to make it feel that way.    

Show trials were of course a feature of Nazi Germany, but, as with much else they were perfected to an art form in Stalin's Russia, where, by very publicly eradicating members of the pre-revolutionary Bolshevik party, for made up or ideological crimes, the cunning old monster achieved the dual result of getting rid of potential rivals, whilst at the same time keeping the Russian public terrified and obedient.

Show trials can also be used as racial retribution, such as in South Africa where four white teen aged boys can be convicted of murder and sent to prison on the evidence of the body of someone killed elsewhere, by someone else and at a different time.

However, such trials are intended to placate a racist majority, rather than to intimidate the majority as is the purpose of show trials in the West.     

Trials conducted in order to influence the behaviour of the wider public and where the punishment of the defendant is a secondary consideration are nothing new.  For instance, as early as 1756, the trial and subsequent execution of Admiral Byng for "failure to do his utmost" to relieve the siege of the British garrison on Minorca” was less about punishing the unfortunate Byng than it was about ensuring that other Admirals would try considerably harder in future.

Likewise the prosecution and swift dispatch of poor shell-shocked wretches, on charges of cowardice, during the so called "Great War" were ruthless and cruel attempts to make other young soldiers view staying in those terrible trenches and fighting that evil and misguided war, slightly less terrifying than running away.

In very many ways the prosecutions of John Terry and Emma West serve a very, very similar purpose. They are show trials, they are exhibitions, they are theatre, they punish, humiliate and usually destroy the offender but they are intended for the audience, the public. They are acts of terror, intended to make us obey.

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Pour encourager les autres: "in order to encourage the others" —said ironically of an action (as in a flogging or an execution) carried out in order to compel others to obey or submit