Cruelty exists in the world, like bacteria. But it grows better under certain conditions, fueled by its fertilizers, intolerance and hatred.
–Eric Francis, Auschwitz Photo Diary
When I first read Eric’s work on Auschwitz, I thought it was such an important piece of historical journalism that I kept it close by, bookmarking it in my computer. At the time it was first published in Planet Waves, the Republican majority in Congress had just pushed through the Military Commissions Act suspending Habeus Corpus, reversing a primary tenet of the US Constitution: that you cannot be detained indefinitely. I keep the Auschwitz Photo Diary around like a personal Fe-911 fire alarm, as “In Case of Emergency – Break Glass.”
Listening to the national screaming match over a mosque in Manhattan last month, I was compelled back to that photo diary. There was something about the tone of New York City’s downtown mosque controversy — the near hysteria and xenophobia reminiscent of and even worse than the days immediately after September 11, 2001 — that sent a chill.
Nearly a decade later, Democrats are in and Republicans out but struggling to regain a foothold back into power. We are at a new period of economic contraction — a perfect breeding ground for fear, intolerance and hatred. Throughout the history of the world, periods of economic crisis and uncertainty are often marked with the socio-psychological phenomenon called the frustration-aggression complex: the violent acting out of group fear, usually against an outside group, based on economic uncertainty and powerlessness.