12 of February 2025
by Cláudia Pedra,
Managing Partner, Stone Soup Consulting
As the extremists of the world rally against diversity and mark it as a forbidden word, it is important to analyse why it brings them so much fear. So much that they prefer to eliminate it.
Recently, I watched the account of a shocked teacher in the USA that showed up to a mandatory training and got her folder stripped away to be shredded. It seems it contained a word that was dangerous. Even seditious. So much it had to be eliminated. The word? You’ve guessed it – diversity.
Photo:
Iam Alex Francis (Pexels)
This anecdote shows how far extremism has gone to persecute diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). There seems to be no other reason that in the fact that DEI is thoroughly embedded in a human rights framework, and thus far too dangerous for them to deal with. DEI issues stem from the concept that human rights are universal and indivisible and every single person on Earth should have full fruition of them. However, extremists like to propose exactly the opposite. If they say that minorities are dominating the space of the majority and refer to people as part of groups, they manage to do something that works as a charm for many – desensitize people until they forget that they are in fact people that were born, have lives, thoughts, needs and hopes, a family and friends. Desensitize them until they cannot feel the most basic human empathy and are ready to vote on self-serving actions plans that are just ok enough for them and that discriminate all the others.
The truth is that people cannot easily relate to the lives and characteristics of people that are not like theirs. They fear what they do not understand, and many tend even to repeal it. It is indeed not easy to understand what is to be queer, black or a woman if you are a white heterosexual man. Maybe you can never truly understand the plight of a refugee, if you are from a stable country with overall security and freedom. But the issue is never if you can relate, understand or fully put yourselves in the shoes of those persons. What we should all be focusing on is that these are human beings with inalienable rights, that are universal irrespective of the place they were born, their gender, sexual orientation or skin colour.
Genuine human empathy – the act of understanding that you will never be in the same situation as another person but still caring about them – gets derailed. Disinformation is used as a tool to make human beings invisible. To make them inhuman. When you spread harmful and malicious stories about trans men attacking women in bathrooms, most migrants being dangerous criminals, or that there are people trying to brainwash our children in schools, people start believing it is true. And here it is important to distinguish between misinformation and disinformation. The first are people sharing non-facts because they believe they are true, and the second is a deliberate action to manipulate and mobilise people in favour of their ideology – in this case against consecrated human rights.
Hannah Arendt spoke in the 1960s about the banality of evil. As populism grows and extreme right parties reach national parliaments, evil seems to be surrounding us a bit all over the world. And it is being banalized.
Civil society organisations are feeling the backlash, seeing unconstitutional laws being approved, and decrees that contradict human rights standards, with their work being gradually marginalized and difficulted. On the other hand, their beneficiaries are increasing dramatically, with urgent needs at a daily level and not enough resources or people to help. And with constant barriers to action, especially from a State or local/ regional government levels of populist regimes.
As individuals we should be pushing against this, trying to find facts and scientific/ rigorous sources of information. As a collective we should be fighting against disinformation – from policy to grassroots. We need to mobilise, to assure that we don’t allow the dystopian scenarios of novels materialize before our eyes. We must change the narratives with a collective call to action. If we stay silent and do nothing just because we are not migrant or black, then we can see ourselves back to a situation that we read about in the history books. Nobody will be left to speak for us or help us. And then what?
“First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
—Martin Niemöller
We are here for you!
If you are an organisation that needs support to develop and thrive in this hostile environment, please reach out to us. At Stone Soup our mission is to help organisations navigate through difficult contexts and fulfil their vision. We will design and co-create with you, strategies that will help you through these dark times. We will do it with a human rights-based approach.
