However frightened we might be right now - and many people are, and justifiably so - we need to speak out to prevent evil from happening by simply saying we care for each other, which is the opposite of everything Trump and those like him believe in.
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
Why should we be silent in the face of evil?
Trump is a face of evil. Look at his Easter message that he posted on Truth Social, or whatever it is that he calls his own Twitter media account. It was full of hate. He is a face of evil.
I would suggest that Keir Starmer in the UK is another face of evil. His indifference to children who are living in poverty, of which there are record numbers in this country, and about which his government is going to do absolutely nothing because they say key voters like leaving them in poverty, makes him a face of evil in my opinion. Nobody who can consciously choose for the sake of their own electoral advantage to leave children in poverty can be described in any other way.
And around the world, there are very many faces of evil at present in very many governments and even more opposition parties, and everywhere, what we are seeing are the faces of the politics of evil.
It's always based on self-interest.
It's always based on hate.
It's always based on a lack of empathy.
There's always managerialism at its core the - claim that I can only do this because that is all that is possible, because I'm constrained by the finances of the government or whatever else it is.
But those are just excuses for not caring, and for me, that is wrong.
It's wrong, most particularly in the case of Donald Trump, where it is so obvious that what is happening is plain, straightforwardly beyond the limits of anything that we are used to, but everywhere this is a conviction-free politics.
It's politics based upon greed and indifference - an intellectual void if you like.
So why speak now? Well, because we need to.
We need to say we care.
We need to say that we have conviction.
We need to say we have compassion.
We need to say that we are empathic.
We need to say that we must address the imbalances in society.
We need to promote the policies of wellbeing for everyone, and I mean everyone.
We need, at this moment, to have a politics that heals and does not divide.
This is the moment when we need to speak. The moment when, in the face of fear - and I suspect very many people will be feeling fear right now, most especially in the USA, where it is obvious that Trump is out get people - we need to say we will not be beaten by the callous, the cruel, the indifferent, the unkind, those who hate, those who promote discord, and those who will exploit. We will not put up with that.
We need to speak out now simply because we care, and that means all of us, whether that is to the person next to you on the bus.
Whether that is when you call into the local radio station.
Whether that is when writing to your MP, if there's an issue of concern to you.
Whether that is simply to your friends, and colleagues, and family, wherever and whenever it is, we need to say we care because care has never mattered as much as it does now.
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100% agree.
Our rulers need waking up. They seem to think highly of themselves, they don’t like being told that they are being cruel, callous and criminal.
They don’t want their children asking them at night, “mummy, why do the other boys and girl call you evil?”
They don’t like being accused of doing nothing to prevent genocide.
They don’t like being reminded about 4.8m UK children in poverty, with their only excuse for supporting that, being, “I was obeying orders”.
They don’t want us talking about murdered Gazan medics, or deliberate starvation of a whole population while we sell their oppressors weapons.
There is a moral dimension to politics, because we are human beings, and, however we explain it, we have a moral sense. Our rulers are denying their conscieces, and thus, denying their basic humanity. They are slowly killing themselves, from the inside out. Some of them are already morally lifeless.
They don’t like being called evil. No one does.
But they ARE evil. Because they can’t claim ignorance.
Don’t be polite when you write to your MP. There is a time to point the finger. They are complicit in evil. They have no excuse.
It’s time for them to repent, and rebel. They have the power to change things, to remove evil people from their places.
As for ourselves, no matter how powerless we feel, we can be kind today. We can show compassion, we can fight back by caring and seeing one another as human beings.
Thank you Richard. Evil was the right word to use.
Thanks
The biggest evil for me is the subterfuge that is our ‘democracy’.
We live in an elective oligarchy, where elections are essentially used to codify the dominance of the rich and their political funding to get the politics THEY want.
Whatever additional evils there are to contend with, stem from that as far as I am concerned.
Figure 15 here shows the proportion of children in relative low income
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/households-below-average-income-for-financial-years-ending-1995-to-2024/households-below-average-income-an-analysis-of-the-uk-income-distribution-fye-1995-to-fye-2024
We really do need to increase the supply of non-social housing as pretty much all other ways of engineering housing availability haven’t worked.
And anyone using immigration as an argument for the cause of the gap in inequality when housing costs are added needs to have a good hard look at themselves. The gap was just as high in the early 2000s before mass legal immigration and mass illegal immigration came on the scene.
Noted
“We really do need to increase the supply of non-social housing as pretty much all other ways of engineering housing availability haven’t worked.”
Increasing the availability of non-social housing merely increases the power of private landlords to exploit the poor. Unless I am missing something?
Surely it is social housing that needs to be made more available, including by local authorities to have the power to buy empty properties.
I misread that original post
It is social housing we need to increase the supply of
That is the only thing proven to work
We do need more social housing for sure – no arguments there – but do we need to have social housing rents at 80% market rent against the lower target/social rents? People who need affordable housing are being made to pay for it, as government support is withdrawn in favour of bail outs for rich people playing with derivatives.
Do we need Homes England with their low affordable housing grant rates for newbuild to insist on councils/HAs converting their existing target rent/social properties (rent conversions) to 80% market rent as part of deal? No, I don’t think so. But we do.
Also, as far as I am aware, the housing benefit portion of universal credit is subject to a cap since the Tories in 2010 – as well as the bedroom tax – and these caps will reduce payments, making social housing really expensive even for working people, starting with the bigger units.
Housing provision in this country is totally FUBAR, if not despicable, even demonic.
Thank you Richard. I could not agree more. My wife and I discussed this only a couple of days ago whilst watching the latest BBC series “Pilgrimage”. There were some very subtle but important acts of kindness shown by each of the ‘pilgrims’ to each other (about which I have more to say below). This was, of course, at the same time as Pope Francis passed. We were struggling to find an explanation as to why the word `’evil” is so underused these days when there is an abundance of evidence that there are some really evil politicians across the globe – Trump, Putin, Modi, Netanyahu, Musk, Farage to name but a few.
Returning to the topic of the BBC programme ‘Pilgrimage’ we were stuck at the way Harry from the Traitors, a former soldier, without prompting looked out for the older and weaker pilgrims and often, without being asked, carried their rucksacks for them when they we struggling. Now I know that it could be clever editing but I thought Harry was a better role model for young men these days than that evil loudmouth Andrew Tate will ever be.
On another point – is it coincidence that the word ‘evil’ contains the same letters as the word ‘vile’? Its time to call out both evil and vile politicians for what they truly are.
it also contains the letters of live
We must rid ourselves of evil to live
Richard, with your permission can I use the above in my refection at Church this Sunday. We are a small congregation on an Island in Scotland and we collaborate together to put on DO IT YOURSELF services several times a month as our minister preaches once every three weeks. Your response to caring is everything that each of us should strive towards. Thanks for caring enough about others and to go against what the world and authorities tell us and for seeking the truth.
Please do!
I write to share ideas.
And I appreicate that you think it is worth sharing further.
I am reminded about C S Lewis’s comment about evil (in the Introduction to The Screwtape Letters):
“The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.”
Or, as Hannah Arendt observed, it is banal rather than monstrous.
Agreed
The fact that Labour did not campaign for an end to food banks or bedroom tax in the last election, and has since not even mentioned those symbols of Tory malignancy, whilst, incredibly, targeting disability payments, seems to indicate that either Starmer is a closet Tory, or more likely that we are still governed by right-wing powers higher than government.
I suspect both are true.