Sunday Serial, 280x 70,by Gill James, 62. Propaganda, sparkling water

 Introduction

This collection is a collection of seventy stories, each 280 words. They were inspired by the first picture seen on my Twitter feed on a given day.

62.  Propaganda 

 Someone had made those words into a poster and put them Instagram. He would see them all as an enemy and make them so uncomfortable he would make them want to leave? Yes, well, he'd probably said those words but he hadn't yet turned them into propaganda. Was that about to come?

Tom knew of course that the racism and the xenophobia had always been there and had bubbled away under the surface. He remembered the kids he'd taught. "Why should I want to go to Frogland? They stink and eat snails." The finger under the nose and the raised arm that accompanied "Pickled cabbage? Yuk." Well they wouldn't do that in Lancashire.  But even the adult had said without shame: "Maňana, Maňana. They're a lazy lot aren't they?" Oh hadn't he done his best - and often succeeded - to get them out of all of that?

It had stayed there though. Ready to be resurrected.

And here it all was now, out in the open. Did that mean, though that they could at least deal with it?

He did not get one thing though. The man was married to a German. Why hadn't she left him? Did he have too much money? Was she hanging on, trying to persuade him otherwise?

The he remembered the work he'd been doing on trying to find out why ordinary decent Germans had become Nazis. The glorious Hitler Youth.  Kinder, Küche, Kirche. The beautiful BDM girls. Lebensborn. The master race. Aryan blood. Was that it?

He looked again at the document he'd been studying earlier. Too many people recently had been trying to fiddle with Human Rights. Was the beast rising again?    

About the author

Gill James is published by The Red Telephone, Butterfly and Chapeltown.  

She edits CafeLit and writes for the online community news magazine: Talking About My Generation.

She teaches Creative Writing and has an MA in Writing for Children and PhD in Creative and Critical Writing.    

http://www.gilljameswriter.com  

https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B001KMQRKE

https://www.facebook.com/gilljameswriter

 

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