Adolph Hitler came to and held on to power this way: Identify a group of people and then say they are the cause of the country’s problems. They must therefore be destroyed; first, by establishing the fact they are evil people who do not deserve the same rights as everyone else. From here, it is easy to marginalize them inside the spectrum of people’s awareness, their perceptions, their sense of what is right and wrong, or what is just. They are not the same as everybody else. So that even as they are being killed in the streets likes dogs, we should not worry. They are not “us.” We have nothing to be afraid of. Unless we speak out to defend them. Then we must be just as guilty. It is therefore only right for us to suffer the same fate.
Adolph had his Jews. We have our very own drug dealers and drug users. You see, it doesn’t matter who “they” are. They can be the Chinese, communists, Muslims, troublesome journalists, elitist intellectuals, terrorists, etc. What matters is that we are convinced: They are evil! What happens after that is classic history. It happens over and over again. And still, we, stupid humans, seem never to learn.
We do not remember, for instance, how, once, after having gotten rid of the Jews, Adolph would take the killings many steps further by invading Germany’s neighbors. The Polish were degenerates. The Russians were communist barbarians. The justification for death and destruction acquires its own inertia in the run of history. It is like fire. It requires only a substantial spark. And all we have to do is look the other way, and keep silent while they do the work of saving us.
And so for now, it is the war on drugs, drug dealers and addicts. No doubt they are hateful enemies. But what’s to keep our saviors from including their own political enemies, literally, anyone they dislike? What’s to keep them from using it as universal political ammunition and for simple political leverage?
And what about our own pesky neighbors? Our own little enemies? It doesn’t take anything much. All it takes is to point a finger, or make a very private call, or put out names in newspapers. The accused’s day in court becomes purely optional, even arbitrary. Our saviors can do anything they like. That’s the whole point of it. They are saving us from “them.”
In the meantime, we have to wonder if anyone is even keeping a record of all these? 300 killed in the space of a month. How can they investigate each killing if they were even inclined to? And how easy would it be to kill anyone now by using as pretext this war on drugs? Murder is in season. The dead are nameless. They are only the labels: drug dealers, addicts, criminals, enemies of our savior, Rodrigo. Our enemies.
Yes! We will have law and order. And all this within the appointed deadline. But whose law? And by whose order? And everyday we must know how we have exited the door of and move step by goose step away from whatever civilization we have ever accomplished here so far. Change is here.