On Holocaust Memorial Day, we are called not only to remember, but to reflect on our responsibility in the present.
As the Founding Chair of the Police Pagan Association, as a practicing Heathen, and as someone working at the intersection of interfaith equity, EDI, and policing, I am acutely aware of how belief systems, identities, and symbols can be distorted and weaponised.
Heathen and Pagan traditions are frequently appropriated by the contemporary radical right in the furtherance of racist, antisemitic, misogynistic, and homophobic ideologies. Many of our sacred symbols have been deliberately misrepresented by those who share nothing with the values of reciprocity, honour, hospitality, and right relationship that sit at the heart of our faiths. That appropriation is not accidental, and it is rooted in ideological threads that draw directly from Nazi worldviews.
Because of this, silence is not a neutral position.
As Heathen community leaders, groups, and practitioners, we have a moral duty to speak up and to speak out unequivocally against antisemitism, and against any attempt to tie our living faiths to the persecution and murder of Jewish people, Roma communities, disabled people, LGBTQ+ people, political dissidents, and so many others affected by the Holocaust.
Racism and hatred do not always end in genocide, but every genocide begins with familiar and insidious stages. Propaganda, othering, dehumanisation, and the normalisation of exclusion. Professor Gregory Stanton’s model of the ten stages of genocide reminds us that these processes are predictable, but not inevitable. At every stage, intervention is possible, if people are willing to act.
For those of us in policing, public service, and community leadership, remembrance must go hand in hand with vigilance. Holocaust Memorial Day is not only about honouring the dead, it is about protecting the living, and challenging ideologies that seek to erase, diminish, or divide.
In contemporary Heathenry, we must be clear, there are no Nazis in Valhalla, and no place for hatred in our halls.
#HolocaustMemorialDay #NeverAgain #NoNazisInValhalla #Interfaith #EDI #Paganism #Heathenry #SpeakUp