Brendan Cox: Carrying On Jo’s Work Against Hate

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/24/opinion/brendan-cox-carrying-on-jos-work-against-hate.html

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All our lives, Jo and I had been optimists. Almost by instinct, we both believed that the world was getting better and that it would continue to do so.

Jo, in particular, was positivity personified. With a warm smile and a ready laugh, she was a woman who constantly looked for the best in people and situations. Almost every week, I’d get a call from her apologizing for missing her train home because a constituent in trouble had come into her office and she wouldn’t leave until she had helped them find a way forward.

It wasn’t that either of us felt progress was inevitable — far from it — but we did believe that the world had entered an era when reason was on the march and tolerance and diversity were ascendant.

Earlier this year, for the first time, she and I started to doubt that. We lived on a houseboat on the Thames, by Tower Bridge in London. There, over dinners with friends, we talked at length about our fears of growing populism, a coarsening of political debate and the stoking of hatred against minority groups. Since Jo was a member of Parliament, the forces that were exploiting the Brexit referendum to sow fear were uppermost in her mind; for me, the rise in anti-migrant sentiment in Europe was at the center of my work.

We both began to worry — not about some catastrophic event that would change everything, but that a series of events, driven by feelings of insecurity and fueled by demagogues, could create a downward spiral that might soon get out of control. She particularly felt stung by the growing anti-politics mood and the violence with which people expressed themselves on social media.

A few weeks before the referendum, as we chopped wood for the stove in our houseboat, we talked about our worries for the world our two young children were growing up in. We wondered what more we could do to help prevent a slide toward extremism, but not for a moment did we imagine that political violence would hurt us.

Then, on June 16, Jo was killed. At a subsequent court appearance, the suspect said, “My name is death to traitors, freedom for Britain.” All of a sudden, a theoretical concern became all too real.

Members of Parliament don’t get murdered in Britain; this horrific event was surely an aberration. Yet it happened in a context that makes such aberrations more likely — one in which pro-Brexit posters featuring a picture of Syrian families seeking safety claimed the country was at “breaking point” and in which parts of the media routinely demonize migrants and refugees. After the referendum, there was a 42 percent increase in hate crimes. Last month, two Polish men were set upon by a gang of youths in Harlow, Essex, and one was beaten to death.

This is not just a British problem. The rise of the populists and extremists — who tell people that the problems they face are because of some other group — is a global phenomenon. In France, the National Front leader, Marine Le Pen, smears Muslims. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban peddles hatred of refugees. In Britain, the former leader of the U.K. Independence Party, Nigel Farage, spreads prejudice toward Romanians. And in the United States, the Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, insults Mexicans and Muslims.

Of course, it’s facile to suggest that all these instances are the same; they aren’t. Or that any of these individuals was responsible for Jo’s death; none were. But they share a strategy based on exploiting divisions between people, promoting fear and hatred on the basis of identity.

In the months since Jo’s murder, I’ve been focused on two things: first, on loving our children and giving them the security, support and reassurance they need to survive what happened. They are doing better than I could have hoped — they have their mother’s resilience and spirit.

Second, I’ve thought about what we can do to advance Jo’s beliefs. While she worried about the direction of politics in many countries, she was never despondent. She knew from a lifetime of activism that most people are good, and that human empathy is a powerful force for change.

That mission, of bringing communities together and advancing mutual understanding, is what I’m now focused on: It is the good that must come out of the horror. This week, I am attending the president’s summit meeting on refugees in New York, a much-needed effort to provide sanctuary to those in need and to challenge the demonization refugees so often endure. This meeting cannot change the world overnight, but I hope it can encourage other elected officials, many of whom have been too passive, to step up and emulate the president’s leadership.

The scapegoating of refugees is just one example of a wider problem. Elsewhere, the populists target Jews and Muslims, migrants and Mexicans, black people and gay people. Even when demagogues lose elections, the hatred they have kindled still smolders. There are no quick fixes; we need a long-term plan.

Political leaders, and people generally, must embrace the responsibility to speak out against bigotry. Unless the center holds against the insidious creep of extremism, history shows how quickly hatred is normalized. What begins with biting your tongue for political expediency, or out of social awkwardness, soon becomes complicity with something far worse. Before you know it, it’s already too late.

Campaigners like me need to get better at engaging the silent majority who deplore the incitement of hatred, but who may have real concerns about immigration, security or the pace of change in their communities. The last article that Jo wrote was about why politicians needed to engage with people’s worries about immigration, not ignore them, even as they confronted prejudice. She felt that well-meaning liberals, including in her own party, too often excluded this audience, rather than reaching out to it.

The fight against hatred and division is a defining issue of our time; no institution can afford to sit it out and hope for the best. We have powerful support, but much of it is too passive; we must build stronger coalitions. Activists need to work more effectively — whether with labor unions or the big businesses, religious groups or sports people — to unite institutions that stand for tolerance and diversity into a cohesive block.

Jo would have maintained her optimism despite all that has happened. Not out of blind faith, but because she believed that what we hold in common is more significant than our differences. It is our job to realize her vision.