It's not the Nazis that loom over U.S. but 'The Troubles'

Many on the political left in this country have indicated parallels between the rise of the National Socialist Party in Germany in the first half of the 20th century and the behavior of the extremists currently in power in the White House and the U.S. Senate. But my thoughts are not about pre-World War II Germany. I'm seeing parallels in a different direction - which is with the so-called Troubles of Northern Ireland.

The Troubles, primarily between Protestants and Catholics, lasted roughly from the early 1970s until the Belfast Agreement on Good Friday of 1998 and included paramilitary organizations on both sides, using murder, bombings, threats and intimidation to express differing political opinions.

I studied in Northern Ireland in the fall of '98, right after the Good Friday Agreement had begun to take effect. I also lived in Belfast for a year between 2000 and 2001. During the latter period, I lived and worked in a working class Protestant neighborhood in East Belfast, just down the road from the Free Presbyterian Church where the infamous Ian Paisley preached on Sunday mornings, railing as he had for years, against Catholicism and the Irish state.

Since Northern Ireland was created by partitioning the island in 1921, it has been a compromise that made no one happy. Protestants, who largely identify as British, wanted the whole of Ireland to remain with the United Kingdom. Catholics, who largely identify as Irish, wanted the whole island to be independent.

Catholics felt betrayed and fought against British rule, sometimes violently, through paramilitary organizations such as the Irish Republican Army and various iterations thereof. Protestants in Northern Ireland felt that the Catholic resistance was illegitimate, trying to take over from the legal sovereignty of the United Kingdom. And they formed their own paramilitary organizations, though they were also assisted by the British Army and at times, the police.

Catholics and Protestants divided further and further through the 20th century, until they were born in separate hospitals, lived in separate neighborhoods (often separated by a wall), educated in separate schools, worked in separate places and buried in separate cemeteries. And, critically, they also developed their own newspapers, telling the news from different and often conflicting, points of view.

The British government, through most of the Troubles, did as much to inflame passions as the IRA. Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's famous pronouncement that, "a crime is a crime is a crime," stiff-armed legitimate political complaints underneath the IRA's motives. The IRA's violent actions were of course reprehensible, but their political motivations were unquestionably legitimate.

For comparison, we now have a situation in our own country where many on the right are making the claim that undocumented immigrants have committed a crime and should be punished. The argument sounds just like Thatcher's dismissive, "a crime is a crime is a crime." First of all, seeking asylum is not actually illegal, but whether immigrants are seeking legal asylum or not, the question should not be "how" they immigrate, the question should be "why." This makes all the difference as to how we should treat these individuals.

It was wrong for Thatcher to dismiss IRA radicals' legitimate motivations - and they were bombing people. Immigrating without documentation, in comparison, is a misdemeanor and the vast majority of those coming into the U.S have entirely legitimate economic, social, or political reasons for doing so.

Once they arrive, immigrants commit crimes at a far lower rate than U.S. citizens. They should not be jailed and deported simply for being undocumented. They should not be separated from their families. Latino citizens of the U.S. should not have their citizenship questioned.

I am not worried about us becoming Nazi Germany. Not yet. But I do fear us becoming Northern Ireland. I fear that thoughtfulness and compassion are being left by the wayside in favor of rigid, black-and-white thinking, which fails to hear any nuance or empathy for diverse human experience.

I fear a powerful government getting increasingly hostile to different points of view and using their power to silence critics with a different opinion or different values.

I fear a government that oversimplifies complex problems and reacts with force, which will only serve to make those problems worse.

I fear our troubles are just beginning.

The Rev. Mark Winters, of Naperville, is pastor for the First Congregational United Church of Christ of Naperville.