Will We Remember Not to Forget?

There is so much intentional division at the moment, all of it is deliberate policy from extreme right politicians. There seems to be no depths to which the American President will not sink and just as you think his administration cannot get any worse, they defy reason again. The evident truth is then gaslit, denied or simply reinvented to suit his twisted narratives.

The right wing is “rising” here in the UK, or at least that is what the BBC Board (Robbie Gibb, who ought to be removed) and directed News programmes would have us believe; with further platforming of failed and corrupt former Tories jumping right. These same people who all push nationalist lines and wax lyrical about our Armed services, don poppies each November, yet seem irredeemably unable to learn from the past.

Over the Christmas break I read In Search of Meaning by Viktor Frankl who survived the holocaust concentration camps. He eventually became a therapist and died in 1997, nearly three decades ago – I wonder what he would make of things now. Today, 27^th January 2026, is International Holocaust Day and we are encouraged to light a candle to ensure that this sort of monstrous inhumanity never happens again. Over six million people were murdered by the Nazis.

I cannot really fathom what it would have been like to have been in a concentration camp. I can only admire Frankl’s ability to survive. He wrote “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances”.

We can choose our attitude towards those who are determined to discriminate and perpetuate hatred, but I think it requires more than an attitude. Waiting for things to improve doesn’t inspire confidence in me and as far as I can tell, doesn’t prevent evil from thriving.

So whilst we may endure market swings and I will encourage you to be patient, waiting for the inevitable recovery, I do think that this is an active state, not a passive one. There is certainly a lot going on behind the scenes here at Solomon’s, despite activity on your portfolio seemingly appearing to be “not a lot”. Similarly, we cannot simply wait and hope that history does not repeat itself, we all have to ensure that it doesn’t, which I think means being actively engaged in defeating racism. As Frankl said:

“In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible”