The UK held a referendum on June 23, 2016 to ask its public whether they would like to remain as a member state of the European Union (EU) or leave it. As the sun rose the next day, it was apparently clear that the majority of the kingdom had voted to leave (apart from Gibraltar, Scotland, Northern Ireland and London) winning by 52 percent to 48 percent. It was the highest turnout since the 1992 general election with 71.8 percent voter turnout. Both Leave and Remain sides made the plea for their cause, and to some extent were able to make a reasonable case respectively. What was most surprising was the language and sloganeering used by the leave campaign, which not only reflected of xenophobia but also scare-mongering, focused mainly at immigration and immigrants. In the post-Brexit Britain the report of hate crime rose more than 300 percent. Earlier, the London mayoral candidate, Zac Goldsmith used similar xenophobic tactics against his main opponent Sadiq Khan who won the election. Election campaigns have seldom been so divisive in the UK, but once politicians felt it was appropriate for them to scapegoat a specific group of people — in this case, immigrants, both EU and non-EU — for political leverage, somehow people thought it was acceptable to verbally and physically express their opinion. We see the same happening across the pond in America. The divisive presidential campaign led by Donald Trump has seen an increase in hate crime on the rise there. This phenomenon is not new and if we look close enough, we can learn so much from history. The Nazi Germany and the breakup of Yugoslavia is rife with examples of how, very quickly, hate transpired from slogans into actual events of extermination in a matter of years. Political campaigns in Pakistan have always played on the fears of the masses. Sometimes the left, just for the political appeasement of the right, has given space to extreme views, only to be subsumed by it in coming years. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was the victim of his own making, and for short-term political gain, he allowed extremism to take roots in Pakistan. What followed was a gradual decline and decay of society. More recently, you see Imran Khan following the same trend: refusing to condemn extremists, giving space and funds to extremist viewpoints, and shrugging most responsibility of our problems to some global conspiracy, not realising that extremism and target killing of minorities in Pakistan existed even before drones were invented. Knowingly or unknowingly, Khan and his followers, and many other politicians, are giving space for hatred to breed, not realising that once that happens, it spreads like jungle fire and consumes all that are within it. There is no turning back now; once the genie is out of the bottle, it cannot be captured again. This form of extremism will continue to exist and, most probably morph into other forms when once is eradicated. It is easier for people to conform to prevalent behaviour rather than go against it. Once it is acceptable for us to openly become racist towards others, or unflinchingly call someone “kafir” (infidel) and then demand their death, it is only a matter of time before society is engulfed by anarchy and death, and destruction becomes mainstream. There are numerous examples in psychology how ordinary, average, or even good people can become perpetrators of evil. The most famous of this was the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Professor Philip Zimbardo and the details of which are in his book The Lucifer Effect — How Good People Turn Evil. He recruited former healthy and mentally stable individuals for the experiment, and divided them into two groups; one group was to be inmates, whilst the other one would be prison guards. He then associated some tasks with rewards for the acting prison guards. With time the guards became more and more brutal with their punishments, ending up torturing the inmates if they did anything out of order. The professor himself got so embroiled in the experiment that he couldn’t see what it was turning out to be. Not until an independent friend visited the experiment was this pointed out, and the experiment had to be terminated prematurely, as it was felt the inmates were at an “increasing risk” of harm. Although we see that most people succumb to the power of situational forces, but not all do. And this is where there is still some hope. We need to vocally challenge hate and bigotry wherever we see these being practised, for not doing so makes us complicit. Everybody is entitled to their opinion, but when this opinion is openly propagating hate and leading to the harm of society, we can no longer remain silent. When the incidence of hate crime skyrocketed in the UK after Brexit, what did the government do? Hide it from the media and the world worrying about their “image?” No, it was splashed all over the print and electronic media, and the police set up a special cell and encouraged people to register all hate and alleged hate-related events. Why? So that they could nip it all in the bud, and people do not think it is all right to do these things. And what do we do? We ridicule the people like Perevz Hoodbhoy, Malala Yousufzai and Jibran Nasir who have the courage to stand up to this madness. The writer is a clinical director, consultant psychiatrist, and honorary senior lecturer in the UK