A kind of Game - A video interview by Jim Kroft

Jim Kroft ha aggiunto un nuovo video: A KIND OF GAME

"A Kind of Game" - a quotation from my friend, maverick Italian journalist Claudio Gherardini. 

When I listen to Claudio's words, they sound out of context. They can't be true, can they? 

But when I walk through Idomeni, the words seem not just fitting, but even somehow too temperate. 

There are moments in history when certain things seem to become relative. Society starts to make little distinctions, little evaluations how one thing is greater, or more important than another. Before and during the Nazi regime, Jewish people started losing certain rights, certain "allowances". 

They were somehow separated into a different classification system of human. Of course that can't be happening again, can it? Not us, not our society, not this version of Europe. But then again, are we really in tune with developments? Are we listening? Are we seeing with our own eyes? 

When I walk through Idomeni, when I watch out to sea from a shore in Lesvos, when I get hate Tweets from White Supremacists on Twitter, I realise that my previous assumptions about our culture, our way of life, really are just that, assumptions - a comfort zone. 

I believe that to be European really does represent something. 

The "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" as reflective of not just a high point in our civilisation, but something to be consistently aspired to. 

The beauty of the idea that some things belong to us all. That we all deserve to be safe, to be happy, to be free from persecution. If we forget someone else's right to those simple things, we forget our own right to them. And then society is in a free fall of relativity. I know that we can't perfect the world. I know that we can't solve the suffering that each of us faces. But what we can do is be conscientious about what makes us US. 

We can remember that to remember who we are is not just a Right, but a responsibility. In that, the "refugee" isn't something "other" - but is you. Is me. Is us. 

Thank you Claudio Gherardini for having the courage to call this situation what it is: 

A Kind of Game.