{"id":3008,"date":"2015-01-29T08:06:21","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T08:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.longkeshinsideout.co.uk\/?p=3008"},"modified":"2015-01-29T08:06:21","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T08:06:21","slug":"work-harder-to-end-racism-learn-lessons-of-holocaust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.longkeshinsideout.co.uk\/?p=3008","title":{"rendered":"Work Harder to End Racism: Learn Lessons of Holocaust"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Work harder to end racism. Learn lessons of Holocaust<\/h2>\n

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(John Coulter, Irish Daily Star)<\/p>\n

Tonight I won’t sleep for fear of nightmares because tomorrow has become one of the toughest days in my life and has been for several years.<\/p>\n

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Tomorrow (Tuesday 27th January 2015) is International Holocaust Memorial Day when many across the globe remember the six million who perished in Nazi death camps in the 1930s and 1940s.<\/p>\n

But it will have added significance as tomorrow marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz Birkenau in Poland, where more than a million humans were murdered.<\/p>\n

After almost 37 years in journalism, I thought the Irish conflict had enabled me to experience every emotion imaginable. Wrong! I still have nightmares about the visit to that place of mass genocide; that’s why I want to stay awake for all of tonight, so the nightmares won’t come back.<\/p>\n

As I started on the Auschwitz tour to write my article, I was physically ill. Passing through the camp gates with its sickening iron sign in German, I had to rush back into the visitor’s centre and vomit.<\/p>\n

Hitler’s SS had its genocide machine at Auschwitz down to a fine art \u2013 butchering 3,000 people every half hour. Just imagine everyone killed in the Troubles dying in only 30 minutes.<\/p>\n

Nothing in life ever prepares you to confront racism. I once spent 18 months researching a two-part series on links between republicanism and the evil Ku Klux Klan in the US.<\/p>\n

But one of the KKK’s supporters lived in Ireland and within hours they had traced me, forcing me to leave the North until the heat of the story cooled.<\/p>\n

Officially, I was taking my annual leave. In reality, I was getting out of Ireland on the best plane available. I stayed at a camp site in Jersey. Ironically, the Klan nearly had its own vengeance on me because I almost blew myself apart lighting a camping stove!<\/p>\n

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One of the creepiest moments of my career hunting racists came when I interviewed former British National Party (BNP) MEP Nick Griffin, then Chairman of the National Front (NF), over lunch.<\/p>\n

He was accompanied by a few senior cronies. He handed me a booked entitled Attempted Murder, which basically was a rant about people opposing the NF.<\/p>\n

I almost puked over Griffin during that working lunch when I discovered a half page on myself, claiming my articles exposing the Front were “lurid publicity designed to frighten the NF away from involvement in Ulster”.<\/p>\n

I’ve always pondered if Griffin knew I was the John Coulter criticised in the NF’s ‘wee black book’ and this was his way of letting me know I was being watched.<\/p>\n

Or maybe it was just one of those strange coincidences in life where Griffin happened to give one of the NF’s strongest critics a copy of its silly, but sinister wee book.<\/p>\n

Worse was to follow when after another of my exposes, the NF retaliated by publishing my name and home address along with a photo of me in its hatesheet, National Front News.<\/p>\n

The Front did its homework well, carrying precise details of my employment, university career, trade union role and details of my dad’s political activities.<\/p>\n

The RUC gave me lectures on personal security, but eventually I knew I would have to leave home as the NF shoved a copy of the hatesheet with this ‘expose’ on me through my home letterbox.<\/p>\n

Then a Klan source from the Knights of the Invisible Empire took great exception to an article I wrote entitled ‘The Orange Swastika \u2013 the rise of new millennium Loyalist Nazism.’<\/p>\n

This so-called Grand Dragon arrived at my doorstep, issuing the immortal words: “You don’t blow my cover, and we won’t blow up your house!”<\/p>\n

My message to politicians, church and community leaders is simple \u2013 I have personally suffered for my stand against racism, so please do not bore me with pious words of condemnation.<\/p>\n

Take positive action and get those tougher laws I want against hate crime. I don’t want racism to become Ireland’s new sectarianism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

January 28, 2015<\/span><\/p>\n

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