White Supremacists: The Ghost of Hitler

In London, in April 1999, a bomb exploded in a predominantly black area. 39 were injured. A white supremacist group claimed responsibility for the attack, causing fear among minority groups in Britain.

In the US, in the same month, two American teenagers shot dead 12 of their peers and a teacher in a school in Colorado. It was said that the two boys gunned down blacks and Hispanics before shooting at other students. Then they committed suicide.

This happened on Hitler's 110th birthday, April 20, 1999.

A white supremacist group, two boys, Adolf Hitler…They may come from different times and countries. But they have one common belief -- white people are superior to all others.

Hatred is partly responsible for violence against other minorities.

Just because their skin color is not white, minority groups like Asians, blacks, Jews, Hispanics, gypsies etc, are hated. Many African and Asian citizens have done well in business in Britain, and this has fuelled hatred against the minorities.

Similarly, there are large numbers of Turks, Kurds and Sri Lankans in Germany, which displeased many white supremacists.

Because these Asians live, dress, eat and talk differently, it makes them easy targets for white supremacists.

In the USA, the Ku Klux Klan is not new to anti-black rhetoric. Today, it has widened to hate Jews, Hispanics and Asians as well.

In a world that is shrinking due to the advances in information technology and transportation, it is no longer possible to segregate the various cultures from each other.

And it is vital that peoples start understanding their differences and learn to co-exist together. Hitler had appealed to an entire generation of Germans based on his doctrine of a superior German race.

We need to prevent a recurrence of white supremacy. Education is a good tool to spread the message of goodwill among all races.

Fellow geographers, what do you think?

The need for inter-cultural understanding