Tag freedom vs safety

Never Again, Until Again

Black-and-white photograph of a barbed-wire fence and concrete wall with a warning sign reading “Halt! Stoj!” marked with a skull and crossbones.

I grew up in Austria with the bassline of “never again” humming through every lesson, every warning, every civic ritual. We thought we had inoculated ourselves against tyranny. Yet when fear came wrapped in the language of safety, it was the respectable middle who snapped on the jackboots—and the majority who clapped.