By Xhabir Deralla

If you want to believe politicians’ lies, read propaganda packaged as “analysis” or take comfort in the silence of institutions, while facts and reality hold no interest for you – you are not seeking truth, but escaping into the temporary comfort of illusion.

If you want to ride the waves of senseless nationalist hatred, live with delusions about the past, present and future, and watch your own life as though it were someone else’s story on television – then you do not want to think for yourself. You are letting others think and decide for you.

If “others” are your enemies simply because they speak a different language, if you admire distant cultures but despise those you live alongside, and if you believe that rights for some are a threat to others – you are not defending your distinctiveness, but justifying the humiliation of others.

If corruption bothers you only when “their side” is stealing, if you demand justice for yourself and “your own” but remain silent about those unjustly accused because they belong to “the other side”, and if you imagine freedom as a privilege reserved for those who think like you – you are not seeking justice, but privileges.

If you measure courage by the force of threats, if you see someone else’s suffering as deserved punishment, and if your humanity depends on which side the victim is on – then your side has become more important to you than your humanity.

If, to you, the killing of a child is justified in one war but a crime in another – I have nothing to say to you.

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