Morning Star letter on "divide and rule"

Saturday`s editorial included many valid points, but none more so than the fact that there is a "delusion among too many people" that the welfare state is "unaffordable", with so many social security payments (Morning Star,12/03/16). This explains the huge number of false accusations of so-called "benefit cheats" over the past five years, encouraged by the disgraceful Sun newspaper setting up its own benefit fraud hotline; almost 900,000 reports out of more than a million cases were proved to be innaccurate. What people are not encouraged to remember is that fraudulent claims account for a mere 0.7% of total benefit expenditure.

     It is, of course, reminiscent of another country whose government relied on its vicious propaganda machine for popular support, spurred on by the right-wing press.

     In 1930s Germany, Gestapo numbers were much smaller than suggested in most films and television programmes, which tend to show secret police on every street corner. Detailed research, by historians such as Gellately, has shown how in large towns like Wurzburg in pre-war Germany, only 22 Gestapo officials were employed, with only 11 on non-administrative duty, to cover a population of over 130,000. Their work was done for them, of course, by the brainwashed people, eager to show their loyalty with their accusations and allegations!

    Just as the benefit cheat is the perfect excuse for Tories to impose austerity in this country, so the Jews and left-wingers were the excuses for Nazism! This tactic is basically one of divide and rule, and is used by governments which realise that their policies are indefensible, and that economy with the truth is the real "long-term plan"!