It couldn't happen here?
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I was racially profiled last weekend.
I arrived back in Berlin from a family holiday. My wife and son were on the first bus from the plane to the terminal building, while I waited on the tarmac for the next one.
A few minutes later, my wife sent me a message from the terminal building: ‘The police are spot-checking IDs so I’ll wait here with your passport’.
This was odd as we’d arrived from Italy and travel within the EU does not normally have passport control.
As I arrived at the terminal, I noticed two police officers standing in a corridor as passengers walked past. After seeing me, one of the officers immediately stepped in front of me and asked for my ID.
I politely told him my wife had my passport and pointed her out over his shoulder. As she walked over, I looked to my left to see that the other police officer was doing the same with another passenger - a man of Asian origin.
As my wife (who is white) appeared with my passport, the officer said something to the effect of “Ah, all ok, no problem”, taking my passport from her and immediately passing it to me without even opening it. He then gestured to me to move on.
Whatever the reason for checking my passport, it seemed to have been immediately solved by the appearance of my wife.
As we walked away, my wife told me that she had witnessed them stopping two other men, also dark-skinned and of Asian origin.
She was quite shocked and angry. When she expressed this, curiously I noticed that I wasn’t.
I felt some mild surprise but also familiarity and a kind of shrugging of the shoulders - this was not an unfamiliar situation to me. I’ve had many incidents similar to this, particularly in the few years after the 9/11 attacks.
There was some disappointment I suppose. I’ve been hearing from many people how incidents like this are becoming more and more common in Berlin and across Germany, but I was yet to experience anything myself in my adopted home - somewhere I’m very fond of.
What am I to make of this?
I’m not sharing this for any sympathy, however well-intentioned it might be. Nor am I sharing in an attempt to make anyone feel any guilt.
I am, however, sharing this to raise the alarm.
Things are happening, unpleasant and unusual things. Across the world, and certainly across Europe. And we must pay attention to the signs.
I have half-joked before about my outlook on the world being overly bleak, and how some friends tease me about this, but I’m not being frivolous here. From where I’m standing the signs don’t look good.
The direction of travel is towards the worst instincts of humans. And ugly things are brewing.
In the last two weeks alone, I’ve noticed these things without even looking for them:
In England, a violent far-right march in London on Remembrance Day, attacking police officers and attempting to disrupt the service at the Cenotaph. This bears repeating because it seems not nearly enough people are shocked by this: in 2023, thousands of far-right protestors enacting violence in the streets of central London.
In the Netherlands, the election of a far-right Prime Minister, a man who has been openly voicing racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic rhetoric for years.
In Ireland, riots in the streets of Dublin after false internet rumours about an attack by a foreigner. The Police Commissioner described it as “scenes that we have not seen in decades… a lunatic, hooligan faction driven by a far-right ideology".
In Scotland, violence in an Ayrshire village which saw riot police deployed and two houses damaged by fire. As yet, it’s unclear why this happened.
In Germany, my adopted home, there are many examples of a shift to the right, a clampdown on protest and speech, racial profiling and much more. One story is Iris Hefets, a woman who held up a cardboard sign at Hermannplatz, a square ten minutes walk from where I sit now, protesting against genocide in Gaza. She was on her own. She was immediately detained by the police - only to be released at the police station when they found out she was an Israeli Jew.
Across the UK, people are being arrested for peaceful protest about the climate crisis. Let’s put this in its proper language: there is now an unavoidable global crisis that threatens most human life on the planet and young people are being locked up for drawing attention to it.
Let’s call all of this what it is. It’s fascism. It’s racism. It’s othering. It’s silencing. It’s populism.
It’s a decline in basic humanity and rise in anger, hatred and violence.
As a person of colour, I have a long list of nasty experiences beginning in early childhood. Those feelings and the same language, things we might have thought we left behind in the 70s and 80s, are re-emerging.
A couple of years ago I watched an Oscar-winning short film called ‘The Long Goodbye’, made by the British actor and rapper Riz Ahmed. In it, an Asian family is at home on a suburban street - typical domestic scenes of siblings playing, elders cooking, squabbling and teasing.
And then a series of black vans pull up at the end of the street and start dragging other Asians out of their homes. What follows is both distrubing and, to me, not unthinkable. You can watch it here (caution: graphic violence).
It is horrific - and at the same time a masterful piece of artistry because it taps deep into a fear I never knew I had. Yet as soon as I saw these scenes, this fear exploded into recognition, like a bomb lying dormant in my psyche.
There is, I believe, deep in the soul of most people like me, a wound that has never quite healed and a deep, deep fear - that one day, they’ll come for us. One day they’ll turn on us and want us out of our own country.
One day the vans will turn up, the skinheads will jump out, as well as the plain-looking bureaucrats who could easily pass for local authority accountants. The police will watch on, maybe even help. And they’ll all take out their anger, fear and loathing on us.
How did we end up here? How might we end up somewhere worse?
Most of what we consider unthinkable doesn’t happen in vivid and clear public displays.
It happens in dark and dusty corridors, in the passing of legislation and bills amongst long debates that are barely reported.
It happens in the language used by politicians and leaders, that goes unchallenged, and is repeated in newspapers.
It happens in small shifts in what we now deem acceptable.
It happens when we don’t pay attention and allow these small shifts to pass by without comment.
As Mhairi Black MP said so eloquently in the Houses of Parliament last year: “Fascism does not come in with intentional evil plans, or the introduction of leather jackboots… it happens subtly.”
So what can we do? I’m not an expert but as someone exploring my own feelings about activism and what I’m willing to do, here’s what I suggest.
First, you don’t need to do anything big or take some grand action if you don’t want to or feel able to.
You don’t need to protest, march or get arrested. You don’t need to sabotage anything.
Do what you feel able to.
Here’s some suggestions:
Start paying attention. Take notice of what is going on - more than just the newspapers and TV channels, find a variety of sources. Then read other things to make sense of the news - try some Noam Chomsky, well-known philosophers or podcasts with respected experts analysing what is going on in-depth (for example, The Rest Is Politics or The News Agents).
Hold conversations with other people. Lean into difficulty, risk offence and being offended, take a position - not a side, a position.
Hold these beliefs loosely - be willing to change your mind as you learn more.
Get interested in what might feel boring. What is going in parliament? What are the government up to at the moment? What inquiries and court cases are going on?
Be curious about the wider context. What impact are the big things in the world having on our society? What are the knock-on effects?
Listen to minority voices. There are loud mouthpieces all over the media, dominating the conversation. Ignore them There is much more to learn from people aren’t being given a large platform. Find them, listen to them.
Question everything. Join the dots.
If you’ve read this far, I applaud your fortitude and patience with my words. You may detect a certain tone to this - I’m deadly serious and more than a bit worried about the future.
We can change it - but only if we start REALLY paying attention and doing the small things that can make a difference we might not even notice.
“Fascism does not come in with intentional evil plans, or the introduction of leather jackboots… it happens subtly. It happens when we see governments making decisions based on self-preservation, based on cronyism, based on anything that will keep them in power. We see the concentration of power whilst avoiding any of the scrutiny or responsibility that comes with that power. It arrives under the guise of respectability and pride that will then be refused to anyone who is deemed different. It arrives through the othering of people, the normalisation of human cruelty.”
- Mhairi Black MP
I’m a coach, consultant and facilitator living in Berlin. At the heart of my work is helping individuals and organisations to make sense of who they are and the world around them. You can find out more about my coaching work here and my work with men & masculinity here.