The other day I saw a video filmed in London. I saw hundreds of young people on the street, Iranian and Israeli flags together, joy, excitement and cries of hope. I saw a deeply human reaction to the idea that a regime based for decades on fear, terror and murder, could collapse.
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The context is dramatic. The death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced after the military strikes on the Iranian regime, sponsor of terrorism around the world. In Britain, especially in North London, Iranian and Jewish communities took to the streets with a mixture of hope and dream for freedom and peace.
But the image that remains for me is that of people whom propaganda has taught them to hate, now choosing to rejoice together. That is the power of freedom. I don't want to say that it forces you to love, but surely freedom frees you from lies and allows you to breathe without invented enemies everywhere and without conditioning your existence on the disappearance of the other!
Dictatorships do not live by competence and results for citizens. They feed on fear and an endlessly repeated story: “We are good, others are evil.” And, very often, the “others” become the Jews.
Anti-Semitism is not an accident, nor is it something new. It is a tool that, after the crimes of the Holocaust, we believed, or hoped, to be gone. In the case of the Iranian regime, anti-Semitism was from the beginning, and is, a cheap, disgusting binder for a regime that can provide neither prosperity, nor justice, nor truth. When you need absolute control over society, you always need scapegoats.
That's why, for me, the London video is not just about the situation in Iran. I see it linked to Europe, to Romania, to what kind of people we want to grow and what kind of life they will live.
We talk too much about democracy somehow in the abstract: elections, institutions or procedures. All are vital, of course. But democracy is, above all, an education of mind and character, it is a permanent training of the state of freedom. It is a 'muscle' that, if left unused, quickly atrophies. If you don't start early, you will pay dearly later in polarization, hatred, violence and manipulation.
I believe that education about freedom must start in the primary grades. Not “at the end”, not “when they grow up”, not “when they will understand”. Children understand much more than we think; keep track of. They also understand injustice and fear and abuse. I understand what it means to be excluded. I understand what it means to be made an “enemy” for no reason. That's exactly why I think it's time to give them powerful tools for life. Under the permanent siege of social media, with all that entails, positive or negative, we must admit that we cannot leave the growth of new citizens to the will of the Internet!
Children need to know what democracy means, what freedom means, they need to understand what dictatorship is, what propaganda looks like and how repeated lies work. They need to know what anti-Semitism is and what the Holocaust was, what war really is. And, yes, what did Hitlerism mean in Europe and what did Legionnaires' mean in Romania, as a local form of hatred, violence and fascination for a form of “purification” that could only come through crime and genocide!
I think that, through education, we have to give children an intellectual 'vaccine', so that they know how to recognize evil when it comes dressed in all kinds of nonsense played online, which have nothing to do with the truth or, of course, with the idea of a better society and life. If you are always hunting imaginary enemies and truths that only a 'guru' knows, when do you have time to live better, to work, to build, to enjoy?
Because, in my opinion, that's the problem these years: evil no longer walks in the door with Soviet or Nazi boots. Enter through the screen! Enter through short clips, through the conspirators who tell you that “nothing is real”, that “everyone is the same”, that “rights and freedoms are a sign of weakness”. And if you have not educated the child to ask questions, to check, to distinguish between criticism and hatred, between freedom and chaos, you will lose him!
When I see Iranians and Jews together on the streets of London, I see that people are not condemned to eternal enmity. Enmity is built, learned. It is a fact in all toxic regimes.
But, I say, if hate can be learned, then respect can be learned. And freedom can be taught at school.
What I want from us, from the parents, but also from the teachers, is not to leave moral education to chance. In every European country, including Romania, we need an educational red thread. He means the truth about totalitarianism, about anti-Semitism, about war, about manipulation. Children (as well as us, many adults) should know how to argue without yelling, how to argue without humiliating, how to live freedom without trampling the freedom of another. Think about it.
And there is something else. Freedom is not just about toppling a dictator. It means to build something after. This is where Europe can be extremely helpful. The EU does not have military intervention in its DNA (although it should be discussed here, especially for the future), but the EU can support civil society, education, democratic culture. Real hope, based on facts and not on manipulation (which is not hope but vain illusion), is sustained by institutions, by education, by results. The euphoria quickly disappears in contact with reality… I know, what I'm writing now doesn't sound very attractive, but it's the only way. And the other option is too terrible to leave as an option. If we look closely at recent history (grandparents and great-grandparents, no further), we know well that we have no other choice.
Finally, the London video was for me a rare snapshot of a possible world, a world where people refuse to inherit hate. That should obsess over us as decision makers. How do we make this possible world the norm, not the exception?
If we want a strong Romania not only in the EU, but strong for itself, we cannot treat education about freedom and democracy as a secondary chapter. It is, quite simply, our human, intellectual infrastructure for the future! It is, quite literally, the difference between a society that keeps its mind clear and one that falls prey to both its own delusions and very real enemies. It's complex, I know, but it's the reality.
Democracy, we know well, does not die in a day. It is slowly being eroded by ignorance, cynicism and moral relativism. Clear. It likewise defends itself, slowly, through education, through cherished memory, through truth, and through respect.
That's why I believe and ask that we start today, both in the family and in the school.
