Human frailty is the inescapable backdrop to the rape-gang scandal. Whether it be the perpetrators driven by racism and the sordid desire for sado-sexual gratification, the bystanders intimidated into terrified silence, or the enablers willing to sacrifice children for the good of ‘community relations’ and the survival of their multicultural, identitarian fairytale, human frailty is the ever-present leitmotif.
But what are these human frailties and how can we militate against them? A national inquiry will not only tell us what happened and who was responsible, it will also explain why – and, in doing so, reveal the deep-rooted moral weakness that made such sadistic depravity possible.
Holocaust studies should inspire its approach. They have yielded insights into human nature of incalculable value. Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men revealed the circumstances in which unexceptional individuals committed unspeakable acts of violence against Polish Jews during the Second World War.
Raul Hilberg, in The Destruction of the European Jews, explored the bureaucratic machinations that made the industrialised slaughter of European Jewry possible, exposing the mundanity of the preoccupations that motivated those responsible for the genocide’s organization and implementation. After witnessing Adolf Eichmann’s trial in 1961, Hannah Arendt named such diligent and unthinking acquiescence to the execution of orders, the ‘banality of evil’.
As a survivor, Primo Levi considered the victims, and, in particular, the trade-offs and morally ambiguous actions that survival demanded in the camps of eastern Europe. One could go on. The point is that inquiry has uncovered – and continues to uncover – the immutable human frailties that, given the right circumstances and pressures, can lead to the most destructive behaviours imaginable.
We can then guard against them. If humans engage in evil acts to further their careers, please their superiors, ingratiate themselves with peers, or demonstrate a commitment to a dogmatic philosophical position after being exposed to systematic, state-sponsored indoctrination, we can endeavour to create the moral and cultural conditions in which such acts become unthinkable. Indeed, that’s what the post-war international order, with its emphasis on universal human rights, has strived to do.
That’s why we need a national inquiry into the rape-gang scandal. We need to know what motivated the gangs and the enablers who shielded them from scrutiny. We can then construct an effective society-wide response that tackles the problem, much like the international response to the horrors uncovered during the Nuremberg Trials.
Were the perpetrators driven by religious precepts, racial and cultural contempt for their victims, the pressure to conform to community practices imported from rural Pakistan or the desire for sexual gratification?
We know from court transcripts and local inquiries carried out in places like Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford, that racial hatred, clannishness and a visceral contempt for western, non-Muslim women were and are the key drivers. But we need to know more, and that can only be achieved through a national inquiry that investigates every town and city affected – according to the GB News reporter Charlie Peters, there are 50. Such an inquiry will have the power to subpoena both perpetrators and witnesses, the scope to analyse similarities and links between rape-gangs in different areas of the country, and the resources to rigorously examine the communities and cultural environments in which these predators emerged – and continue to emerge.
A nationwide inquiry will also expose the cover-ups and those responsible for them. From local politicians to social workers, police officers to prosecutors, those guilty of deliberately keeping a lid on the truth will be publicly investigated, questioned, and, if found culpable, tried and punished accordingly. There hasn’t been one person arrested in connection with the rape-gangs cover-up. It is indeed a stain on the conscience of Britain – a scandal without precedence. And only a country-wide investigation can provide some kind of atonement.
It will also reveal why public servants turned a blind eye and, in many cases, deliberately drew a veil over these appalling crimes, enabling them to go unpunished and unimpeded for so long. Was it to defend an ideological commitment to multiculturalism and identitarianism, the fear of being accused of racism, or the impulse to conform to the ‘anti-racist’ zeitgeist so suffocatingly prevalent and ruthlessly imposed by our liberal-elites? From the evidence gathered so far, all three of these factors appear to have played a part.
But, again, we need to know more. Most of the towns affected remain uninvestigated. We don’t know the motives behind the cover-ups, and, as a result, can’t effectively respond to them.
Beginning with the Nuremberg Trials, Holocaust studies have revealed – and continue to reveal – the human frailties responsible for the Nazi genocide. Consequently, the post-war international order endures, with human rights at its core. We need a similar reckoning with the rape-gangs and their concealment. What motivated the rapists, their enablers and those willing to hide their crimes? We need to know. Only then can we say ‘never again’.
Joe Baron is a teacher and a writer, published in The Spectator, The Sun, the TES, Breitbart, Conservative Home, The Conservative Woman and The Daily Telegraph. His blog can be found here.
This piece was first published in Joe’s Substack, and is reproduced by kind permission.
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Absolute piffle, human frailty is no reason for, or excuse for, anything as serious as lack of regard for the life and bodily autonomy of other human beings. An inquiry in our era will not uncover nor explain the reasons for this industrial sized rape outrage – everyone already knows but most don’t dare to vocalise it and neither would an inquiry.