Scapegoating On the Road to Nowhere?

The latest post from ‘The Academy of Ideas’ site and accompanying You Tube video does seem to sum up the collective underlying fears of the modern world right now.

“While we cannot create a heaven on earth, we can create a hell and history is full of examples. Many of these man-made hells are the result of war and conquest, but many others are the result of governments persecuting their own people. Be it the Gulags of the Soviet Union, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Nazi concentration camps, the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, or the Cultural Revolution in China, power-hungry political leaders are responsible for the deaths of millions of people in the 20th century.

How much have we learned from these recent horrors? Could a modern democratic government commit a political persecution and kill a portion of its own population? In this video we are going to explore how this risk is high in any society that is naïve and sheepish enough to permit the rise of totalitarian rule.”