experience
The US resurgence of measles in 2026 serves as a stark, data-driven refutation of the anti-vaccine rhetoric championed by quacks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. For years, vaccine antagonists have framed immunisations as a matter of personal autonomy, minimizing the societal dangers of declining rates. Yet, public health is not governed by ideology, but by biology. The realities of 2026 – marked by over 2,000 confirmed measles cases across 40 US jurisdictions – demonstrate that when charlatans undermine trust in medical science, the real-world consequence is the return of preventable, highly contagious and dangerous diseases.
The core flaw in RFK Jr.’s rhetoric, it seems to me, is the failure to understand that vaccine protection is a collective barrier, not just an individual shield. Measles is one of the most infectious viruses known to humanity, requiring a high community vaccination threshold of 95% to maintain herd immunity. When coverage drops below this line, the virus easily finds pathways to spread. Because of sustained anti-vaccine sentiment, US kindergarten MMR coverage dropped from 95.2% in 2019–2020 to a dangerous 92.5% by the 2024–2025 school year. This decline left roughly 286,000 children unprotected, effectively dismantling the wall that kept measles at bay for decades.
Furthermore, public health crises thrive on localized vulnerability. While national averages can mask the severity of the issue, anti-vaccine messaging often clusters within specific communities, creating relatively dense pockets of under-vaccinated populations. When measles enters these communities, it does not remain isolated; it triggers rapid, localized outbreaks where almost all of cases are tied directly to these transmission clusters.
Beyond its well-known immediate dangers, a measles infection inflicts severe, long-term damage on the human body by causing a phenomenon known as immune amnesia. The measles virus actively targets and destroys memory T and B cells, the specialized white blood cells responsible for remembering past pathogens. A single measles infection can wipe out 11% to 73% of a person’s preexisting antibodies, effectively erasing the body’s immunological memory. While the patient develops immunity to measles itself, their defense system is left “flying blind” against other entirely unrelated viruses and bacteria they had previously beaten or been vaccinated against. This induced state of generalized immunosuppression typically lasts from two to five years, leaving recovered individuals dramatically more vulnerable to secondary, life-threatening infections long after the initial measles rash has cleared.
Ultimately, the current measles spikein the US illustrates that US public health control is being sabotaged. When prominent morons like RFK Jr. weaponize anti-vax delusions and distort clinical data, they do not simply foster debate, they actively erode the herd immunity threshold. The current US outbreak proves that the protection wall has thinned below the critical margin of safety. Far from being under control, measles has found a resurgence precisely because the rhetoric of figures like RFK Jr. has opened the door for a dangerous, preventable virus to reclaim its ground in and beyond the US.
When – about 14 years ago – it was my turn, I looked forward to retirement: endless sleep-ins, zero airport security lines for lectures at distant places, no more struggling to keep awake at boring meeting, and a calendar so beautifully blank it belongs in a modern art museum. I looked forward to the complete absence of so-called peers – mostly people who had no idea about my research – criticising or trying to influence my work. And even more I rejoiced in the prospect of having no university administrators needlessly complicating my life, while taking a big chunk of my research funding for the benefit.
When you retire as an academic, you genuinely believe you’ve escaped the university rat race – only to soon realize you’ve just been traded to a different league with much worse perks. Suddenly, your mornings are dictated not by an alarm clock, but by a relentless, self-imposed to-do list. You’re busier than ever, while operating alone and on a budget that makes your old expense-account days feel like the reign of Louis XIV.
Of course, not all academics keep on working after retirement. Some manage to just drop everything from one day to the next thinking they will now look after the garden, trimm roses, walk the dog, etc. I know many who have chosen this type of approach to retirement. For a few months, it all seems to go fine. Then they realise the increaingly painful emptiness and lack of purpose. More often than not, a low mood creeps in, followed by depression and/or taking to the bottle (perhaps this is why the Exeter medical school gave me a set of huge [and apparently expensive] wine glasses as a leaving present?).
No, staying active and doing what one likes must be the secret of remaining sane after retirement – at least for me. So, I rolled up my sleeves and got on with it. I started this blog (thanks Alan) where I have now published well over 3000 posts. I also began writing colums for newspapers – in English, German and French, to make it a bit more interesting. And then I got into books; this turned out to be more fun (and far less money) than expected. Since retiring I so far managed an average of about one per year – 16 to be precise, and currently three more in the pipeline.
Yes, I do keep myself busy, but this approach does unquestionably have its surprises. The real shocker, is the devastating loss of infrastructure. Yesterday you were a visionary leader; today, you are your own secretary, IT department, mailroom clerk, travel agent, and administrative assistant – and frankly, your staff is frightfully incompetent! There is nobody to filter out annoying requests, meaning you are fully exposed to every crank on the planet. Your former co-workers no longer do the knuckle work of the research, so things get slower and slower. Technical assistance is nowhere to be found; when the printer jams or the Wi-Fi malfunctions, you are on your utterly incompetent own. Every little task takes hours or days. You’ve traded business casual for sweatpants or shorts, but the “hassle” didn’t disappear; if anything, it becomes bigger and bigger. It just rebranded itself as a full-time, unpaid internship where you are both the demanding boss and the disgruntled employee.
But am I not supposed to enjoy life during retirement?
I promise you, I do that too!
Some friends keep asking me whether I don’t want to finally retire for real, relax and be happy.
“What do you mean?”, I respond.
“Well, you know, do what you really like.”
“But that’s what I am doing!”
It is true – honestly.
I am productive because I am content – and not the other way round.
I found an interesting article in the hilarity-prone journal ‘HOMEOPATHY’. I hope it might amuse you:
The concept of antidotes in homeopathy holds a central place in classical doctrine and daily clinical practice, yet remains l argely unexplored in scientific literature. Antidotes are traditionally defined as substances, remedies, environmental factors or physiological and emotional influences capable of suppressing, altering or interrupting the action of a homeopathic medicine. From a classical homeopathic perspective, any factor capable of modifying the totality of symptoms—thereby influencing remedy selection and follow-up—may be regarded as a potential antidoting influence. Unlike conventional pharmacological antidotes, which act through molecular interactions, homeopathic antidoting is conceived as an interference with the organism’s adaptive and regulatory response. This review revisits the historical foundations of antidotes, examines their clinical importance and explores potential scientific re-interpretations grounded in contemporary neurobiology, psychophysiology and systems medicine. Classical authors, including Hahnemann, Kent, Allen and Boericke, are critically reviewed, and the phenomenon of antidoting is discussed in light of stress physiology, placebo–nocebo mechanisms, hormesis and network regulation. We propose that antidotes represent early empirical descriptions of system-level modulation rather than substance antagonism. Finally, research perspectives are outlined to encourage methodological investigation of antidoting using modern biomedical tools.
Homeopaths administer an antidote when they fear a remedy produces too strong a reaction, to moderate the response. According to homeopathic belief, accidental antidoting commonly occurs through exposure to things like:
- coffee,
- camphor,
- mint,
- menthol,
- eucalyptus,
- strong odors.
- essential oils,
- perfumes,
- toothpaste,
- emotional shock,
- physical shock,
- dental work,
- numerous drugs.
An antidote, according to homeopathic teaching, specifically stops the previous remedy’s action. Each remedy has particular antidotes; for example, Natrum muriaticum is antidoted with mint, while Arnica may be antidoted by coffee. I should add that this concept is, of course, not scientifically validated and therefore pure fantasy.
Has anyone seen a reaction to a homeopathic remedy that is too strong and needs moderation?
No?
Me neither!
Hold on, Arsenic D1 perhaps?
But I am sure the author does not refer to this scenario. Homeopathic remedies are understood to be highly diluted; they contain nothing – even if it says Arsenic on the label. Placebos do not need antidotes because they don’t cause strong reactions.
Therefore, antidotes to homeopathy are a nonsense!
Hold on, this might not be correct. I just thought of a powerful antidote to homeopathy:
SCIENCE!
For some time, I had suspected that the stupidity of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. runs deep. Just how deep, is a surprise even to me. Let me give you just two examples from a choice of plenty:
EXAMPLE No 1
In January 2026, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released far-reaching new Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025–2030. They dramatically “flipped the food pyramid” by encouraging Americans to consume red meat and whole milk, sources previously discouraged by public health experts because of their contributios to heart disease and other chronic conditions.
“American households must prioritize whole, nutrient-dense foods—protein, dairy, vegetables, fruits, healthy fats, and whole grains—and dramatically reduce highly processed foods. This is how we Make America Healthy Again”, Kennedy commented. “Thanks to the bold leadership of President Trump, this edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans will reset federal nutrition policy, putting our families and children first as we move towards a healthier nation,” Secretary Rollins said. “At long last, we are realigning our food system to support American farmers, ranchers, and companies that grow and produce real food. Farmers and ranchers are at the forefront of the solution, and that means more protein, dairy, vegetables, fruits, healthy fats, and whole grains on American dinner tables.”
The scientific community responded with outrage, calling it a reckless abandonment of evidence-based nutrition and science. Promoting saturated fats and red meats contradicts decades of medical research and will increase cardiovascular disease rates across the US.
EXAMPLE No 2
In a hilarious revelation Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took to Joe Rogan’s podcast to inform the world that the UK has become a dystopian nightmare. “It’s like the Soviets. It’s like Kafka,” he declared in February 27, 2026.
The trigger for this epiphany? David Lammy, the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister, announced plans to scrap jury trials for offenses carrying less than three years imprisonment. Instead, a judge will decide. Lammy felt that this was necessary because of the backlog that meant cases could not be heard for years. RFK Jr., ever the historian, reminded listeners that the UK was once the “birthplace of Magna Carta”. Now, according to him, the UK is a “dictatorship over speech restrictions”.
Joe Rogan was horrified. “Existential threat to freedom of thought!” he cried, as if the UK had outlawed laughter or something. The pair seemed genuinely shocked that a country with a functioning parliament and a Prime Minister might have different ideas about justice than, say, a certain American podcast audience.
The comparison to Kafka is particularly weird: Kafka’s The Trial features a man arrested by a mysterious bureaucracy for an unspecified crime. Meanwhile, RFK Jr. seems to be arguing that replacing juries with judges in minor cases is the moral equivalent of the Soviet Union. A bold claim, especially from someone whose vis part of a government that checks people’s social media upon arrival – one of several reasons why I would never travel to the US, while these people are in power. But not as bold as Kennedy’s Nazi and Holocaust references in relation to vaccines. In his 2025 HHS confirmation hearing, Senator Raphael Warnock pressed him on statements likening the CDC to a “Nazi death camp,” which RFK Jr. denied, claiming he was comparing injury rates rather than the institution itself.
Perhaps the real dystopia is RFK Jr. spending his time lecturing other countries while the US degrades into a Kafkaesque nightmare of its own?
I am always delighted when I find authors who think in a similarly rational way as I. When it comes to the subject if INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE, this sadly is a rare occasion. I know that most medics would be critical of it, but only few are sufficiently insensed to publish a paper on their criticism. Here is the abstract of a recent article that is a rare exception:
The term integrative medicine claims to describe a third category in clinical practice, somewhere between conventional evidence-based medicine and alternative therapies. This article argues that this category is conceptually confused and often misleading. If an intervention is supported by good evidence, is safe in practice, clinically useful and cost-effective, it should simply become part of regular medicine. If an intervention does not have such evidence, it does not become stronger by being called integrative. The article examines how the language of integrative medicine works. It shows how one attractive label can bring together two very different things: evidence-based supportive care on the one hand, and weakly supported or unproven interventions on the other. This creates the impression that both have the same clinical status, even when they do not. The article also discusses the possible consequences for patients, including confusion about evidence, false confidence in unproven treatments, and reduced adherence to effective care. Drawing on more than a decade of experience evaluating complementary medical claims through foundation IOCOB (a foundation to study complementary medicine) , it argues for a simpler and more honest approach. Proven interventions should be called medicine. Unproven interventions should be called unproven. Disproven interventions should be called disproven. There are not two equal medicines waiting to be synthesised. There is only medicine that has earned its place, and medicine that has not.tive medic ine m
True words well expressed!
We have discussed interated medicine on this blog more often than I care to mention. The response of proponents usually is that INTEGRATED MEDICINE is so much more than just using alternative treatments. If we look at this claim, we quickly realise that the “so much more” are things stolen from conventional medicine (which proponents denounce by their claim of neglecting these things). If they feel that important bits of healthcare are being neglected, the proper reaction would be to reform medicine and rectify the situation. Instead the proponents put their money on INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE which undeniably is at least partly an attempt to smuggle unproven treatments into healthcare.
I wrote “at least partly” which is, in fact, generous to the extreme! If we look up what the clinics of INTEGRATED MEDICNE actually offer, we quickly realise that it is much more that “partly” – it is their main and lucrative business.
Sorry, but to me this is deeply dishonest!
This AI-verdict made me wonder: Who is for and who against the critical evaluation of so-called alternative medicine? And I asked a follow-up question:
Can you try to quantify this and give me % figures who is against a critical evaluation of alternative medicine, who is for it, and who is neutral. Can you do this for 1. the general population, 2. proponents of alternative medicine and 3. skeptics?
Here is the reply I got from Gemini:
To quantify these dynamics accurately, we have to look at large-scale sociological data on public attitudes toward science, peer-reviewed medical data (such as surveys by Pew Research, YouGov, and the European Commission), and the behavioral patterns of online discourse.
When it comes to a “critical evaluation” (meaning scientific testing to prove if a therapy works beyond a placebo), the groups break down along very distinct ideological lines. Here is how the percentages estimate across your three requested demographics:
Breakdown of Attitudes Toward Critical Evaluation
1. The General Population
The broader public is largely pragmatic, but a major chunk is passively open to alternative therapies without strictly demanding clinical trial proof.
- Against Critical Evaluation (~15% – 20%): These individuals hold a strong distrust of mainstream pharmaceutical companies and medical institutions. They believe alternative medicine operates on a different “energy” or “holistic paradigm” that standard science is fundamentally incapable of or biased against measuring.
- For Critical Evaluation (~35% – 45%): This group highly values evidence-based medicine, expects consumer safety protection, and agrees that if a therapy claims to cure an illness, it should prove it under a microscope or in a randomized controlled trial.
- Neutral / Passive Consumers (~40% – 50%): This is the massive middle. They don’t track clinical trials, but they will try acupuncture for back pain or take turmeric if a friend recommends it. They view alternative medicine through a lens of “well, it can’t hurt to try,” evaluating it based on personal anecdotes rather than scientific data.
2. Proponents of Alternative Medicine
This group includes dedicated practitioners, wellness influencers, and avid consumers of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM).
- Against Critical Evaluation (~70% – 80%): The vast majority actively resist standard scientific evaluation, often viewing figures like Edzard Ernst as hostile prosecutors rather than objective evaluators. They argue that randomized controlled trials are “too reductionist” to capture holistic healing or claim that clinical science is rigged by corporate interests.
- For Critical Evaluation (~5% – 10%): A small minority of CAM practitioners (often in fields like medical acupuncture or osteopathy) welcome rigorous trials, hoping to find a mechanism of action that will grant them mainstream medical legitimacy and insurance coverage.
- Neutral (~10% – 15%): These are individuals who focus strictly on the individual client experience. They don’t care about data or institutional pushback either way; their attitude is simply “if my client says they feel better, that is the only science I need.”
3. Skeptics & Pro-Science Advocates
This demographic comprises secular organizations, evidence-based medical professionals, and science communicators who actively follow work like Ernst’s.
- Against Critical Evaluation (<1%): Virtually non-existent in this group, as evaluation is their core tenet. The only micro-fraction here might be extreme fringe elements who feel certain alternative therapies are so fundamentally absurd (like breatharianism) that evaluating them is a waste of scientific funding.
- For Critical Evaluation (~90% – 95%): The overwhelming majority. They strongly defend the stance that there is no such thing as “alternative” medicine—there is only medicine that has been proven to work and medicine that hasn’t. They view critical evaluation as an ethical necessity for patient safety.
- Neutral (~5%): A tiny sliver who may agree with the premise of science but feel indifferent about fighting the cultural battle against wellness trends, preferring to let people believe what they want as long as it isn’t directly killing them.
The Reality of the “Viral Sharing Power”
The Disparity: While alternative health advocates outnumber skeptics in raw volume and content creation—churning out high-yield, emotionally comforting narratives—the pro-science corrections achieve highly concentrated “viral bursts.”
When a prominent alternative health claim is cleanly and definitively debunked by data, it provides a highly shareable, “gotcha” piece of content for the large, silent neutral majority and the highly active skeptic network. A data-driven correction acts as a high-utility intellectual tool, allowing regular people to cut through multi-million dollar wellness marketing, which is why a single well-structured critique can match or outpace the reach of thousands of individual wellness posts.
______________________
I know, there are good reasons for being cautious about such AI analyses. Yet, unless someone can point me to more reliable data, I will go with this one – not least because it coincides with my own experience and also because I quite like its findings.
I came across an interesting paper entitled “The Ethics of Tawas and Other Rituals in Medical Practices“. Here is its abstract:
Rituals in medical practice have either been seen as an anthropological aspect of current biomedical processes or as a pre-scientific aspect of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). In either tendency, the literature has since failed to account for these rituals as rituals—conveyors of meaning, expressions of identity, and even as a rite of passage from illness to wellness. As an alternative to current discussions, this paper presents the case study of tawas, a diagnostic ritual from Philippine traditional medicine that determines personalistic and mystical causes of illnesses. As a non-intrusive procedure, tawas involves incantations and some ritual objects, e.g., rice, candle, axe, etc., that do not pose any direct harm nor benefit to the patient. While complete reliance on tawas at the expense of proper medical procedures could harm patients, the very ritual of tawas itself occupies a limbo within non-beneficence and non-maleficence. Following a Wittgensteinian perspective of treating rituals as meaning-laden human activities, this paper argues that rituals like tawas, much like other rituals embedded in biomedical practices, should be understood as rituals and not as empirical cures, thereby allowing their tolerance in medical practice in general.
The author seems to advocate for the cultural integration of traditional practices like tawas into a broader medical framework. They categorize tawas not as a physiological intervention, but define it as a conveyor of meaning. By addressing the “meaning-laden” aspect of illness, the ritual may address the psychological and social dimensions of a patient’s health, even if it has no effect on their physical pathology.
It is claimed that, since tawas involves non-intrusive objects (candles, rice), it is physically benign. At the same time it is acknowledged that “complete reliance” on tawas could harm patients. From a clinical safety standpoint, the “limbo” is only maintained if the ritual is strictly adjunctive rather than alternative.
The text uses a Wittgensteinian perspective, focusing on rituals as expressions rather than theories. Modern neuroscience suggests that the “ritual” of care—the white coat, the focused attention, the diagnostic process—triggers real neurobiological changes (e.g., dopamine and endorphin release). Aacknowledging the symbolic healing power that rituals have on patient anxiety and the “meaning response,” which can objectively improve health outcomes by reducing cortisol and stress.
The author identifies tawas as a diagnostic ritual which might well be the most contentious point. In science, a “diagnosis” must be reliable and valid. Tawas clearly fails the scientific criteria for validity. The author’s defence is that tawas shouldn’t be judged by those criteria at all. While this might be philosophically sound, in a clinical setting, a “mystical diagnosis” must conflict with a biological one, potentially leading to patient non-compliance with life-saving treatments.
I just published another book. It is almost entirely unrelated to medicine; it’s about my mother, her past, and her relationship to (and at times entanglement with) Nazi ideologies. For a long time, I avoided this undertaking – perhaps because it compels me to link personal memories with historical abysses, or perhaps because it raises questions to which no simple answers exist. The title, “A Young Woman from a Good Family: In the Shadow of the Third Reich) already indicates that this is not a light or untroubled narrative, but rather an attempt to interweave an individual life history with a broader collective destiny. As my book is in German, allow me to give you a very brief description.
My mother was born 1911 in Breslau (today Wroclaw, Poland) and had an eventful, often dangerous life during and after the Third Reich. In the memoir that she left us children, she articulated a question frequently heard in Germany: “What could we possibly have done to oppose the Nazi crimes? Moral indignation was of no avail.” This assessment contains an element of truth, of course. Within a totalitarian system, the scope for individual resistance is severely constrained. At the same time, however, such a stance points to a significant problem: if resistance is only recognized as necessary once a system has already been transformed into a fascist regime, it is generally too late.
Injustice does not begin with its most extreme manifestations. Fascism, racism, and ultranationalism are not sudden events but gradual processes. They evolve incrementally – through exclusion, dehumanization, and the progressive normalization of violence against those defined as “other.” The extermination camps represent the most radical culmination of this process, not its point of origin.
For this very reason, the deliberate remembrance of the German past appears to me of particular importance today. The story of the “young woman from a good family” has been replicated in similar forms countless times – not only in Germany, but also in other countries and historical contexts. It should serve as a cautionary reminder to remain vigilant about ideologies that offer simplistic answers while eroding fundamental human values.
The book is therefore intended not merely as an account of my family’s past, but foremost as a warning. It opposes the temptation to relativize or consign historical atrocities to oblivion and advocates resolutely for resisting their earliest manifestations. Yes, the book centers on my mother, but only in the sense that it employs her story as a lens through which to examine events in the Third Reich and how her generation of Germans responded to them.
Exactly ninety-three years ago, on May 10, 1933, Nazi Germany staged one of its earliest and most symbolic assaults on intellectual freedom. Presented as a spontaneous outburst of student zeal, the book burnings were in fact a carefully orchestrated campaign to “purify” German culture and bring it into line with National Socialist ideology.
The initiative was led by the Deutsche Studentenschaft (DSt), the German Student Union, which by May 1933 had fallen firmly under Nazi control. The ideological direction and media amplification came from Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. At the Berlin bonfire, Goebbels proclaimed that “the era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end,” framing the event as a cultural turning point.
Operationally, the campaign was coordinated by the DSt’s Main Office for Press and Propaganda, under student leader Hans Karl Leistritz (often misattributed in some accounts), while members of the SA and SS ensured order and visibility at the rallies. What unfolded was not a single evening of spectacle but the culmination of a structured four-week programme titled the “Action against the Un-German Spirit.”
The campaign began on April 12 with the publication of twelve theses—deliberately echoing Martin Luther, denouncing “Jewish intellectualism” and calling for a racially defined German literature. Central to the effort were blacklists compiled by librarian Wolfgang Herrmann, identifying works deemed “un-German,” including those classified as “asphalt literature,” a derogatory term for modern, urban, and socially critical writing.
During the burnings, students ritualised the destruction by reciting “fire oaths” (Feuersprüche), each tailored to the author being condemned. When works by Sigmund Freud were thrown into the flames, for example, they denounced the “overvaluation of sexual life,” illustrating how ideological messaging accompanied the physical annihilation of texts.
The targets spanned a wide intellectual spectrum, uniting literary, scientific, and political figures under the label of cultural subversion. Among them were Erich Maria Remarque, condemned for his pacifism; Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburg, for their political thought; and writers such as Heinrich Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Tucholsky, Alfred Döblin, and Stefan Zweig, whose works challenged nationalism or authoritarianism. Even figures like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud were attacked as representatives of “Jewish science,” while international authors such as Ernest Hemingway and Jack London were included for their perceived ideological nonconformity. The inclusion of Helen Keller, whose social justice writings provoked particular hostility, underscored the breadth and arbitrariness of the purge.
The international response was immediate and forceful. In New York City, more than 100,000 people demonstrated against what was widely described as the “death of the mind,” while organisations such as the American Jewish Congress organised protests and boycotts. In exile, German intellectuals sought to preserve what had been destroyed: in 1934, the Deutsche Freiheitsbibliothek in Paris began collecting copies of banned works to ensure their survival.
The events of May 10 quickly assumed a grim symbolic significance. Heinrich Heine’s earlier warning – “Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people” – proved to be less a metaphor than a prophecy, foreshadowing the far greater crimes that would follow.
Violence and abuse are no longer confined to the margins of society; they have permeated workplaces, public services, streets, homes, schools, online forums, places of worship, and even political discourse. From retail staff and healthcare workers to religious minorities and women trapped in abusive relationships, aggression has become disturbingly commonplace.
The evidence is difficult to dismiss. Retail workers are subjected to abuse in unprecedented numbers, NHS staff face rising levels of physical assault, and antisemitic incidents have reached alarming levels. The Community Security Trust has documented record levels of antisemitism in recent years, underscoring that hatred of Jews is not merely a relic of the Nazi past but a resurgent and escalating threat. Domestic abuse remains equally pervasive: while some forms of physical violence may have declined, coercive control, stalking, economic abuse, and digitally enabled harassment have proliferated.
A growing body of research points to broader social and political drivers. A decade of austerity under Conservative governments, coupled with institutional erosion, strained public services, ongoing geopolitical conflicts, and the pressures of the cost-of-living crisis, has generated widespread frustration. When people feel neglected or abandoned, that frustration can readily turn into aggression directed at those closest at hand: a nurse, a shop assistant, a neighbour, a partner, or a stranger who looks like a “foreigner”
An additional—and perhaps even more troubling—factor is the brutalisation of public discourse. Donald Trump’s rhetoric has normalised cruelty, humiliation, racism, and dehumanisation. It does not merely tolerate aggression; it performs and rewards it, thereby encouraging its replication. This erosion of basic norms of decency matters because language does not simply describe violence—it facilitates it. When political leaders frame opponents as enemies, casually invoke the destruction of entire societies, or treat facts as optional, they lower the threshold for violence well beyond the political arena. To assume that such influences remain confined to the United States is both naïve and demonstrably false; they reverberate globally.
This dynamic is particularly dangerous in relation to racism and its most virulent form, antisemitism. The recent rise in antisemitic abuse in the UK has not occurred in a vacuum. It has been fuelled by conspiratorial thinking, online radicalisation, the trivialisation of antisemitic rhetoric as mere “banter” by public figures such as Nigel Farage, and a broader climate in which prejudice is normalised, disseminated, and converted into aggression. The language of quasi-fascist politics echoes familiar racist tropes, weaponizing grievance and casting minorities as threats. The result is not only an increase in hatred but also a social environment in which violence becomes a logical extension of that rhetoric.
The persistence of this problem is exacerbated by our tendency to compartmentalise it, thereby obscuring its systemic nature. Antisemitism and racism are treated as “community issues,” retail abuse as an occupational hazard, and domestic violence as a private tragedy. Such fragmentation diminishes the perceived scale of the crisis and encourages piecemeal responses that fail to address its underlying causes. Governments may introduce targeted legislation, create new offences, or publish strategies for individual sectors, yet neglect the broader social conditions from which violence emerges. In reality, violence is not a collection of discrete pathologies but part of a continuum that often begins with discontent and culminates in aggression.
A culture that tolerates aggressive rhetoric, routine incivility, and online abuse fosters an emotional climate in which more serious forms of violence become easier to justify, excuse, and ultimately perpetrate. For this reason, the rise in racial and antisemitic attacks, the abuse of frontline workers, and the persistence of domestic violence should not be viewed as separate phenomena. They are manifestations of the same underlying pathology.
What we are witnessing is not a series of isolated epidemics of violence but a broader crisis of social cohesion. If that diagnosis is correct, then the response cannot be limited to stricter laws alone. It must also include education, the rebuilding of social institutions, a renewed emphasis on mutual responsibility, and a cultural shift that rejects the normalisation of aggression as a marker of strength.
