The pink star is now well known
in the small constellation of coloured stars
that social and racial minorities in Nazi Germany
were labelled with, as whatever the colour
they were packed into trains and despatched
from that country's civil society to the work
/death camps that dotted the German countryside.
Camps that the local population knew about,
but had to deny for the sake of their liberty and sanity.
Pink stood for 'gay', the choice of sexuality
that only in the late twentieth century
in wealthy liberal countries has been accepted
as nearer normal. But what of the other colours?
The yellow (the Jews), the brown (the Roma),
the purple (Jehovah's Witnesses) the blue (emigrants)
the red (political prisoners and the Freemasons)
the green (ordinary criminals), and last
and far from least the black star (the vagrants,
drug addicts, the indolent, and the prostitutes).
What is a society without these choices?
And where are they all in my society?
Why don't they join us in recognition
of their previous loss? Is it still 'too dangerous',
for them to make themselves known
through the commemoration
of their absent forbearers?
Perhaps many in those groups prefer to side
with the quiet majority and quietly add to the gaiety
of the country they belong to, and let their losses be.
Or let other people account for their history.
Job done, for this year at least.
*Majoritarianism means majority rule, or a majority monoculture,
in societies where the undeclared aim is a consensus that both
makes minorities vital to the economy and socially invisible,
and does it in ways that said minorities can't resist.
Example; The Jim Crow laws in the USA .
Fascists both appropriate and dislike majoritarianism.
They will use it for the cover it gives them with the majority
of a given population, but they also know that by definition
they are a minority who should never be naturally popular.
Easy acceptance is against their nature, which is to divide others.
But still they feel that they are a minority whose destiny
is the right to rule, and majoritarianism is part of the path to power.
