A Little Bit Nazi...

You know, I can't help but feel that recent unpleasantness which saw a child removed from her parents in Ireland because she was blonde and blue eyed and they were travellers, was a bit, well, Nazi.  Thankfully, the child has now been returned after tests showed that she was definitely the daughter of the parents in question.  Nevertheless, the whole thing leaves a bad taste in the mouth.  What sort of world are we living in where people's suitability as parents is apparently judged on the 'ethnic appearance' of their children?  How dare these horrible swarthy gypsy-types have a fine Aryan-looking child?  They must be child abductors!  I know this particular incident took place in Ireland, it is easy to imagine something similar happening here in the UK.  It would be a natural extension of the government's continuing demonization of the poor, infirm and disadvantaged.  You could just imagine some high achieving working class child having their parentage questioned: how can awful layabout working class oafs claiming benefit possibly have sired a child destined for university? 

Worst of all is the fact that this whole incident was the result of some busybody, (who had doubtless seen the news reports about the blonde child taken away from a Roma family in Greece because she didn't look like them), posting something on social media.  I'd really hope that police anywhere would need a little more than that to go on before they started taking children away from their parents.  Sadly, we live in a society where the authorities actively encourage people to report their neighbours because they think they are illegal immigrants, terrorists or they just don't like the look of them.  Worse still, the supine acceptance of the security services' wholesale surveillance of the entire population, whether they are suspected of criminal activity or not, by the political classes and media in the UK, further legitimises the idea that it is OK to denounce people you don't like to the authorities on the slightest pretext.  Which isn't just reminiscent of Nazi-occupied Europe, but also the witch hunting crazes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, where a sure way to get rid of a rival was to accuse them of witchcraft, based on the flimsiest anecdotal evidence.  If the victims o such allegations were poor, as they usually were, then they had no way of defending themselves against the full force of the authorities.  A bit like travellers accused of child abduction...