Surely it could never happen here

I am currently in the middle of reading The Secret Hunters by Ranulph Fiennes. For those who don't know who this is he is an interesting character: a British adventurer who was the first man to visit both poles by land and has written a number of books. His wikipedia page is here, where I've also just learned that he was up for the role of James Bond at one point.

The book revolves around a man who was Jewish by birth and is trying to track down his family's wartime killers. It is well written although at times it can be extremely distressing as there are fairly graphic descriptions of atrocities at Auschwitz and in Rwanda. The book itself is supposedly non-fiction and based on a document he discovered in an antarctic hut.

At one point there are a couple of paragraphs about how he believes a nation can slide into the genocide of friends and neighbours.

The conditions necessary to create a genocidal mind-set within any given population are a depressed economy, uneven distribution of wealth, the existence of an identifiable minority, the strong political ambition of an oppressor group, and impunity. On top of all that, the genocidal leadership needs a base of social deprivation and tension which it can exploit to it's own evil ends. It must excite a sense of unjust suffering among the masses, and focus the resultant anger against a specific group.

And a little further on:

The level of education of the relevant population probably defines the level of sophistication required to mobilise them as killers ... Normally it needs the justification of a 'war' to convince us to join bands of killers.

When I read this it seemed there were a frightening number of comparisons between Nazi Germany, Rwanda and the state of the UK and America today. The minority in our case would likely be immigrant Muslims.

With high levels of unemployment, resentment against immigrants, falling standards of education and an ongoing "war on terror" (I hate that phrase!) is it really such a stretch of the imagination that such atrocities could happen much closer to home?

We have already seen the patriot act in the States and the various Terrorism Acts in the UK. Brown has been calling for extended holding periods for prisoners. Political correctness abounds so that citizens have to walk on eggshells around immigrants while not being granted the same courtesies. The media delights in reporting stories which support all of this - Mohammed the teddy bear being a recent example and it's all tied together under the wonderful title of 'multiculturalism'.

Now I happen to think that the laws of the land should be adhered to in most cases. This rule should of course be ignored when those laws allow for human rights abuse (and I mean genuine human rights abuse, not forcing a drug dealer to leave his comfy cell. The longer we continue on this path the stronger the hold of parties such as the BNP and, to a lesser extent, the UK independence party, although many of their suggestions have been quite sensible and widely misquoted). How far past that is it before we see a massive increase in racially motivated killings and the violence spirals out of control?

Time to start saving for that private island methinks.