Kristallnacht

 A tyrannical ruler practices extortion, but one who hates ill-gotten gain will enjoy a long reign. (Proverbs 28:16)

          As I read this proverb, I can’t help thinking of a video of young folks with fists raised screaming in the face of people in a restaurant, or of the various Black Kristallnachts that have been taking place across the nation in recent months. For those who aren’t really aware of what Kristallnach was, it was a night in which Germans destroyed property owned by Jews. According to Wikipedia, “The pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew living in Paris.”

          True, the people involved in the extortion aren’t the actual tyrannical ruler, but they are acting on behalf of one, and as with the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s, it wasn’t so much the tyranny of a person as it was the tyranny of an ideology, and those who serve the ideology tend to practice extortion.

          The Socialists of Russia also participated in pogroms over the course of 50 years. It seems the major difference between the politics of the fascists and the politics of the socialists comes down to nationalism v internationalism. Either way, the tyrant ideology practiced extortion.

          These aren’t the only ideologies that have used extortion. Even some digressions from Christianity have done so. That doesn’t make it OK. Those forced into an ideology will escape as soon as they can. Those who reject that idea, and convince someone doesn’t tend to need to worry about the loyalty of their converts.