A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff


Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Mon Nov 09, 2015 9:32 pm

There Are Dangerous Signs of Immigrant Hatred in Every Single EU Country

By Zaid Jilani / AlterNet
November 5, 2015


With the positive news that EU countries are letting in more refugees, comes a backlash from the far-right; there have been tragic violent incidents and rising anti-immigrant vigilante hate and concrete steps taken by governements across the continent.

Here are a few examples from across the EU member nations.

Austria: Austria is requiring refugees to take an “Austrian values [3]” course; one of those values is apparently barbed-wire fences, which it erected [4] to try to keep them from entering the country in the first place.



Belgium: The interior minister has suggested [5] that refugees wear special identity badges, raising the specter of Europe's fascist past.

Bulgaria: As one of the border countries, Bulgaria has militarized its territory to try to stop refugees coming from Turkey. Recently, an Afghan man was shot and killed [6] by border police.

Croatia: Rival political factions have turned the refugees into a political football [7], wiht some criticizing the government for letting them in and others criticizing the refugees' treatment. The country's border with Serbia has been one of the main entry points for refugees.

Cyprus: The government has made clear [8] it prefers “Christian” refugees, drawing a religious line in the sand; it also wants to limit refugee intake to 300.

Czech Republic: Czech police drew gasps [9] worldwide when they started to write identification numbers on the arms of refugees.


Denmark: Known worldwide as a left-leaning social democratic state, Denmark refused to show solidarity by declining [10] Sweden's plea to share some of the refugees it is importing.

Estonia: Estonia's only refugee center can hold about 100 refugees; far-right parties are calling for a referendum [11] to cap the country's number of refugees, even though the government has only agreed to take in an additional 550 people.

Finland: “Finnish extremist organizations have been activated to oppose immigration, and this is the most visible and concrete security threat,” said Interior Minister Petteri Orpo [12] of the growing backlash against the refugees.

France: French police have reportedly abused refugees [13], many of them living in tents in squalid conditions. French far-right leader Marine Le Pen declared [13], with no evidence, that 99 percent of refugees are men.

Germany: Germany has been among the most welcoming countries, choosing to accept as many as half a million [14] refugees a year. Yet there have been beatings and even bombings [15] committed against refugees in the past few weeks as the German far-right reacts to the influx. One German mayor who welcomed the refugees was stabbed [16] in the neck. At least 580 attacks on asylum facilities have occurred this year.



Greece: In Greece, hooded men are hunting refugees arriving by boat. They smash the engines [17], leaving the refugees stranded.

Hungary: The ruling prime minister has seen his political fortunes rebound due to his anti-refugee stance; both tear gas and water cannons [18] were used to repel refugees.

Ireland: The Irish people have rallied to support refugees [19], but the country has been fairly modest in the number of refugees it is taking, slating just 4,000 [20].

Italy: Activists say [21] Italian officials are using refugees' countries of origin to define them as economic migrants, which would give them fewer rights and make it easier for Italy to deport them.

Latvia: Latvia agreed to take just 776 refugees, which set off protests from the far-right. “The refugees are not victims, most of them are here for money,” said one protester holding a picture of Hungary's anti-refugee prime minister.



Lithuania: Lithuania's parliament is trying to wrestle control [22] over where refugees are settled; the country has agreed to bring in just 1,105 people.

Luxembourg: The small but rich EU country has been critical [22] of the harsh response of other countries to refugees, but is only letting in a few dozen itself. One woman who has set up a Facebook page to welcome refugees has to constantly delete [23] hateful comments.

Netherlands: In the Netherlands [24], cars belonging to left-leaning, pro-refugee lawmakers were set on fire, and other politicians received death threats. A refugee center was burned to the ground, and a renowned rabbi has called [24] for refugee camps to be set up away from the country's Jewish neighborhoods because of anti-gay violence within the refugee centers.

Malta: Malta let in 100 refugees this year [25]; the country is harshly punishing [26] those who bring refugees into the country outside the quota.

Poland: Only 8 percent [27] of Polish citizens surveyed said their country should take more than the 20,000 refugees the country is slated to accept.

Portugal:Portugal has seen protests [28] in response to the small number of refugees it is taking in, with some citizens holding signs saying “Protesters NOT Welcome.”



Romania: Romania's president and prime minister have been quarreling [29] as one made a pact with neighboring countries to close borders to refugees.



Slovakia: One small town in Slovakia held a vote on accepting refugees; 97 percent [30] of the residents said no.



Slovenia: Slovenia's president doesn't want his country to become a “pocket [31]” for refugees, and wants to step up border control to stop them from coming.



Spain: The mayor of Melilla said [32] he “has to defend Melilla and its borders and impose order” in response to protests from the left-wing Podemos party, which is criticizing the country's stance toward refugees.

Sweden: A man donned a sword [33] and attacked a nearby school, killing a student and teacher assistant and injuring others. Witnesses say he attacked only dark-skinned people. The attack came as many in Sweden are trying to stem the flow of refugees.



United Kingdom: UK leader David Cameron infamously referred to refugees as a “swarm [34].” The issue becomes contentious as the new leader of Labour takes a much more pro-refugee stance than his predecessors.

Alongside this violence are rising political victories for Europe's far-right. In Switzerland, the anti-migrant Swiss People's Party alongside another right-wing party now holds nearly half [35] of that country's parliament. The political sands are shifting quickly.

Zaid Jilani is an AlterNet staff writer.


Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/world/there-are ... eu-country
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Tue Nov 10, 2015 9:51 am

A Close Look at the French Far Right

January 9, 2015
by Philip Kleinfeld


Image
Far-right protesters on a "Day of Rage" demonstration last year

Since the shooting of 12 journalists at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday morning, a predictable series of attacks on Muslims have unfolded with a grim inevitability.

In Le Mans, a city just West of Paris, three blank grenades were tossed into the courtyard of a local mosque on the evening of the shooting. In the South, near Narbonne, shots were fired at a group just finishing their evening prayers. On Thursday morning, in the town of Villefranche-sur-Saône, a kebab shop next door to a mosque was firebombed. And yesterday afternoon a Muslim woman who was four months pregnant,lost her child after being attacked on the streets of Paris.


Continues at: http://www.vice.com/read/far-right-fran ... -kleinfeld
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 10, 2015 10:18 am

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)


Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Tue Nov 10, 2015 11:54 pm

Image

Free PDF version of On Utøya available

On July 22, 2011, Anders Breivik, a Right-wing writer and activist, killed more than sixty young members of the Norwegian Labour Party on Utøya island. Captured alive, Breivik was more than willing to explain his actions as a ‘necessary atrocity’ designed to ‘wake up’ Europe to its betrayal by the Left, and its impending destruction through immigration and multiculturalism.

Following these events Guy Rundle, Tad Tietze and I collaborated to edit, within three months of the killings, On Utøya. The ebook was a challenge to anyone who would seek to portray the events in Norway as anything other than what they were – a violent mass assassination, directed against the Left, to terrorise people into silence and submission to a far-right and Islamophobic agenda.

Since this time the essays have been reproduced and expanded on in numerous forms in the Australian and UK media, as well as in academic and psychiatric journals, by the authors.

Here we provide a free open access PDF version of the book for all to read, with essays by Anindya Bhattacharyya, Antony Loewenstein, Lizzie O’Shea, Richard Seymour, Jeff Sparrow and the editors.


View here: http://left-flank.org/2014/07/12/utoya- ... sm-europe/



American Dream » Thu Feb 13, 2014 10:32 pm wrote:Breivik’s 21st Century Fascist Manifesto

By Richard Seymour

http://www.leninology.com/2012/08/ander ... ntury.html

In general, the core ideas of fascism seem to differ little from those of reactionaries of other stripes, leaving it in doubt whether there can be a specifically fascist credo. Arguably, what is distinctive about fascist ideas is less their substance than the contexts in which they are deployed. Moreover, the historian Dave Renton has pointed out the difficulties arising from attempts to identify a fascist ideational core. These tend to take the statements of fascists about themselves at face value, and as a consequence fail to anticipate the actual conduct of fascists when in power, and ultimately suffer from the same incoherence that fascist ideology itself suffers from.[4]

Even so, much recent scholarship on fascism has been concerned, as the sociologist Michael Mann put it, to take fascist ideology seriously. Mann describes fascism as a “movement of high ideals”, able to offer seemingly plausible solutions to social problems. To ignore fascist beliefs, says Mann, is to view fascism “from outside”, and thus gain only a partial understanding of it.[5] Indeed, taking fascist ideology seriously need not mean treating fascist self-descriptions uncritically. For example, Breivik is by his own account a democrat, and an anti-fascist. Taking this claim seriously entails understanding what it means in his world-view, not accepting it at face value. Therefore, despite some reservations about Mann’s approach[6], we shall take his advice and consider in detail the specific articulation of ideas and actions commended by Breivik’s sprawling pronunciamento.

As we will see, the burden of Breivik’s argument involves a recitation of standard reactionary complaints – multiculturalism, Islam, political correctness, leftists and the European Union all conspire to degrade the nation and abridge its sovereignty. What makes these complaints into a fascist diatribe is their specific articulation. The political theorist Ernesto Laclau argued that the character of an ideology is determined less by its specific contents than by its “articulating principle”. None of the ideas of fascism are distinctive to it – this is why it has been called a “scavenger ideology”, appropriating dis-embedded elements from other ideological traditions. These elements are capable of being appropriated because they possess “certain common nuclei of meaning,” which can be “connotatively linked to diverse ideological-articulatory domains”. Yet, fascism is a distinctive ideology and behaviour. And the “articulating principle” that quilts these heterogeneous elements is precisely that point at which ideology becomes practise: the call for a mass, extra-parliamentary movement of the right to take power through violence against opponents.[7] At any rate, this is the approach I will now take in examining each element in Breivik’s doctrine...

Antisemitism: the National Jew vs the International Jew
A common trope in anti-Semitic ideology plays the ‘good Jew’ off against the ‘bad Jew’. So it is with Breivik who re-states in his own language a distinction notoriously made by Winston Churchill, between the ‘National Jew’ and the ‘International Jew’. In a 1920 article, ‘Zionism vs Bolshevism: A struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People’, Churchill had explained the difference between “Good and Bad Jews”. The good Jews were those ‘National Jews’ who, while practising their faith, exhibited undivided loyalty to their nation of habitat. In contrast, the ‘International Jew’ who showed no such fidelity, or was disloyal, or revolutionary, was a bad Jew. For Churchill, Zionism was to be endorsed, as the creation of a “Jewish homeland” in British Mandate Palestine would serve the interests of both Jews and the British Empire, and siphon Jewish energies away from revolutionary projects.

So it is for Breivik, who distinguishes between “loyal” and “disloyal” Jews. The former are Zionists, and thus nationalists, the latter anti-Zionists and cultural Marxists. In this respect, he poses the question of whether Hitler’s anti-Semitism was rational:

Were the majority of the German and European Jews disloyal? Yes, at least the so called liberal Jews, similar to the liberal Jews today that opposes nationalism/Zionism and supports multiculturalism. Jews that support multiculturalism today are as much of a threat to Israel and Zionism (Israeli nationalism) as they are to us. So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists, against all cultural Marxists/multiculturalists. Conservative Jews were loyal to Europe and should have been rewarded. Instead, [Hitler] just targeted them all.” (p 1167)


Breivik’s objection to Hitler, then, is that he was indiscriminate in his punishment of Jewish disloyalty, when only “the majority” were disloyal. The implication is that only the latter should have been “targeted”. This is not so much Holocaust denial, as Holocaust affirmation. And in Breivik’s treatment, even loyal Jews are better disposed of in some far away land:

“[Hitler] could have easily worked out an agreement with the UK and France to liberate the ancient Jewish Christian lands with the purpose of giving the Jews back their ancestral lands ... The UK and France would perhaps even contribute to such a campaign in an effort to support European reconciliation. The deportation of the Jews from Germany wouldn't be popular but eventually, the Jewish people would regard Hitler as a hero because he returned the Holy land to them.” (p 1167)


The second principle objection to Hitler, then, is that he did not simply ethnically cleanse the Jews from Germany in the cause of Zionism. For Breivik is fanatically pro-Zionist, seeing in them the ‘good Jews’ that nationalists can work with. While most, approximately 75% of European and American Jews are “disloyal” today - being “multiculturalist (nation-wrecking) Jews” – only 50% of Israeli Jews are “disloyal”. This “shows very clearly that we must embrace the remaining loyal Jews as brothers rather than repeating the mistake of the NSDAP.” This is a vital strategic point for Breivik, who maintains that in Western Europe, only the UK and France have a “Jewish problem” – in contrast to the US which, due to its relatively high Jewish population, “actually has a very considerable Jewish problem”. (p 1167)

Breivik’s embrace of Zionism puts him at odds with many fascists and neo-Nazis, but he is not out on a limb among his fraternity. For several years now, far right groups in Europe have been gravitating toward a pro-Israel position. Geert Wilders, though not a fascist, represents a strain of radical right opinion that is pro-Israel. Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean Marie Le Pen and leader of the fascist Front National (FN) in France, argues that the FN has always been “Zionistic”. The BNP’s legal officer, Lee Barnes, gave full-throated supported to Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon: “I support Israel 100% in their dispute with Hezbollah ... I hope they wipe Hezbollah off the Lebanese map and bomb them until they leave large greasy craters in the cities where their Islamic extremist cantons of terror once stood.” The BNP declared itself “prudently” on Israel’s side, for reasons of “national interest”: Israel was part of a “Western, if not European” civilization whose opponents were “trying to conquer the world and subject it to their religion”. An article on the BNP’s website explained that the party had cast off “the leg-irons of conspiracy theories and the thinly veiled anti-Semitism which has held this party back for two decades”.[10]

This realignment reflects a geopolitical reality in which the ‘war on terror’ has revived colonial discourses and designated Islam as the eternal Other of the ‘West’. In this situation, Israel is seen as an ally against the Muslim peril. Thus, it is quite logical that anti-Semitism should take the form of embracing the ‘good Jew’, and Zionism.[11] Yet history, and the thrust of Breivik’s argument, suggests that even the ‘good Jew’ would not be safe from a reconstituted European fascism.,,


Conclusion
Breivik’s 2083 is a fascist manifesto not because it apes the language of fuhrers and duces past, but because it has absorbed the elements of contemporary reactionary discourse and articulated them in an agenda of mass rightist insurrection. He has eschewed many of the obsessions and talking points of much white supremacist discourse, which has been concerned with reviving the prospects of fascism by restoring the reputation of the Nazi regime. He does not need Holocaust denial to articulate his agenda, any more than he needs the hard biological racism of the colonial period to express his supremacism. His vituperations about ‘cultural Marxism’ have, by placing crypto-communists in senior positions of authority, provided the conspiracy that he needs to explain the nation’s parlous circumstances. The nefarious ‘Jew’ of anti-Semitic discourse is not rejected, but is qualified, allied to a Zionist posture, and is at any rate secondary to his wider schema.

There are other respects in which Breivik’s manifesto is very different from classical fascist discourse. For example, there is nothing about trade unions, very little about traditional revolutionary socialism, and also nothing on the global economic crisis, in 2083. It is hard to imagine a Mein Kampf without some reference to the trade unions, to winning the German workers from the reds, and so on. To put it another way, there is very little that is specifically addressed to the problems of the working class, or even the insecure petty bourgeoisie. Unlike most fascist parties and intellectuals in Europe, Breivik has no orientation toward winning over masses. In politics, he worked as part of a milieu, but ultimately set out to make his most significant contribution to the fascist struggle on his own. Yet, Breivik aspires to trigger a mass movement, even if he does not attempt to offer plausible solutions to popular problems. And in defining a ‘revolutionary’ rightist creed that is more informed by this conjuncture than the interwar period, 2083 outlines some of the contours of what we can expect from fascist movements of the future.
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Wed Nov 11, 2015 5:22 pm

Polish defence minister condemned over Jewish conspiracy theory

Newly appointed Antoni Macierewicz criticised for saying hoax document about plan for world domination could be real


Image
Antoni Macierewicz is one of a number of controversial appointments made by the Law and Justice party.

Rajeev Syal
Tuesday 10 November 2015


Poland’s newly appointed defence minister has been condemned for entertaining the possibility that a fraudulent document claiming to show there is a Jewish plan for world domination may be real.

Antoni Macierewicz is one of a number of controversial appointments the rightwing Law and Justice party made on Monday after securing an absolute majority for the first time in the country’s general election.

His appointment could complicate Poland’s relations with Nato and EU allies as they seek to contain Russia. It could also prove difficult for David Cameron, whose European Conservatives and Reformists group is propped up by Law and Justice.

Macierewicz told listeners to Radio Maryja in 2002 that he had read Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a pamphlet that purports to be a Jewish plan to control the global economy and media, but which has been exposed as a hoax.

He acknowledged there was debate about the pamphlet’s authenticity, but told a listener: “Experience shows that there are such groups in Jewish circles.”

His words have been widely condemned by anti-racist campaigners in Poland. Rafał Pankowski, who wrote about Macierewicz’s appearance on the radio show in a book about Poland’s far right, said: “He is well known for his divisive, radical style of politics, which is rooted in the nationalist identity discourse of Radio Maryja.

“The political culture of Law and Justice seems strongly influenced by such discourse. It is a sad time for Polish and European democracy if the promotion of conspiracy theories is rewarded with high-level appointments.”

A former member of Poland’s anti-communist opposition movement and deputy defence minister, Macierewicz is known for his efforts to purge the country’s military intelligence services of communist and Russian influence.

In the early 1990s, he led a search for communists among former Solidarity leaders, accusing them of having worked for the secret police. He even accused the union’s founder, Lech Wałęsa, of being a spy known as Agent Bolek, but his claims could not be proven.

More recently, he has been the main champion of a theory that a plane crash that killed 96 Poles in 2010, including the Polish president, was assassination orchestrated by Russia, rather than an accident as official investigations found.

“The government headed by [Russia’s then prime minister Vladimir] Putin is fully responsible for this tragedy,” he told the European parliament in March.

“It may be said that it was the first salvo in a war which today is going on in the east of Europe, and which is ever more dramatically nearing EU and Nato borders.”

The Russian government blamed pilot error, and Polish investigators have said airport crew were also responsible.

Macierewicz’s incendiary language may concern diplomats in Brussels already wary about the victory of the nationalist and Eurosceptic Law and Justice.

Protocols of the Elders of Zion was supposed to have been first published in Russia in the 1900s, translated into various languages and disseminated internationally in the early 20th century.

It claimed to be the minutes of a late 19th-century meeting of Jewish leaders, in which they discussed their goal of a global plan to subvert the morals of gentiles and control the press and the global economy.

Journalists and historians exposed it as a fraud in the 1920s, showing it to contain chunks of text lifted from other books. It was nonetheless studied in German classrooms after the Nazis came to power in 1933.

Law and Justice became the first party in post-communist Poland to win an absolute majority in parliament, giving it unprecedented control over policy.

Its return to power brings back the former prime minister Jarosław Kaczyński, whose government annoyed European allies with anti-EU rhetoric between 2005 and 2007.

Law and Justice did not respond to the Guardian’s request for a comment.



http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/n ... acy-theory
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Wed Nov 11, 2015 11:27 pm

PEGIDA Canada and Islamophobia: The Path of Dehumanization


What is concerning about PEGIDA Canada is the mainstreaming of extremist rhetoric. To look at most of the PEGIDA Canada supporters one would be hard pressed to point out any outward indications of extremism. Most don't shave their heads, wear Dr, Martens with red laces, or sew swastika patches on bomber jackets. Many of the supporters of PEGIDA Canada appear middle aged or elderly. Many hold down middle-class jobs, both white and blue collar. In short, many could truly be the neighbor that doesn't stand out other than the friendly, "good morning" that you both exchange with each other when going to your car to drive to work or check for mail.

But make no mistake, the rhetoric one finds when one looks at PEGIDA Canada's Facebook page is as violent and vitriolic as any you would find coming from groups like Blood & Honour or the Aryan Guard.

ImageNot long after the German occupation of Poland, Nazi propagandists produced the film, "The Eternal Jew." The film, presented as a documentary, was an especially pernicious and sadly effective piece of propaganda that aimed at normalizing hatred towards the Jews of Europe by presenting them as sub-human deviants and liars who fed off their hosts like parasites. The film was an attempt by Nazi propagandists to justify to the German people what was soon to come. It dehumanized Jews to the point that extermination was reasonable in order to maintain the racial integrity of the state and which was no worse than killing rats. "Patriotic" Germans could watch this film filled with blood libels and feel perfectly justified in viewing the Jews as somehow lesser. Worse than "lesser" in fact.

The themes of, "The Eternal Jew" examined such areas as Jewish religious practices, Jewish manipulation, Jewish degeneracy, Jews as not being truly human, and the Jews as "parasitic." Though claimed as a documentary, most of the subjects were forced to participate under duress by the occupying power and much of the footage was actually cut from pre-existing feature films and presented as real footage. The only documentary footage in the film was shot in the ghettos of Krakow, Warswa, Lodz, and Lublin.

As a student of history, this writer was well acquainted with this propaganda film and the language of dehumanization that was used to justify hatred. This writer was also troubled by the parallels that exist in the rhetoric used in the propaganda film and that which is currently being used to describe Muslims in Canada by PEGIDA Canada supporters.


More at http://anti-racistcanada.blogspot.com/2 ... th-of.html
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby kool maudit » Thu Nov 12, 2015 6:08 am

American Dream: Did you really think that a migrant movement of this scale wouldn't be met with pushback? It seems naive to report about the far right in this context. Merkel is a politician, so she should have known that this policy move – and it was a policy move with regard to the Dublin laws – would prompt an upsurge among the right.

It is as if a Republican government were to scrap all EPA protections and then have Fox News do reports on "loony environmentalists gaining ground" or whatever.
kool maudit
 
Posts: 608
Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 4:48 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Thu Nov 12, 2015 9:23 am

I question the stark juxtaposition of supposed "bad" migrants vs. "good" citizens. I think our common humanity is very, very important- and our shared interest in fighting the Power. Imperialism and Profit are not really the center- our lives are.

I reject the bigotry, fascism and other misguided solutions which the far right seeks to attach on ordinary people's anxieties about their own status in the present and future world.

I reject the far right.
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Thu Nov 12, 2015 9:50 pm

THURSDAY, OCT 15, 2015

Hungary’s anti-migrant steps aid Orban’s right-wing shift

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary’s use of razor wire, tear gas and arrests in response to migrants seeking refuge in Europe has shocked many people across the world. But the crackdown comes as little surprise to those who have been watching a political transformation underway since Prime Minister Viktor Orban won power in 2010 — building a state that puts national interests over civil liberties.

Orban’s hard-line approach is testing Europe as the continent struggles to remain true to its values of solidarity and unity in the face of the worst refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. It is also proving a tempting model to other leaders, particularly in ex-communist Central and Eastern Europe, where a dislike of Muslims and multiculturalism runs high.

Orban’s critics accuse him of escalating the immigration crisis to pander to xenophobic elements among Hungarian voters who have been moving toward Jobbik, a far-right party that is openly anti-Semitic and anti-Roma. Orban’s government imposed a state of emergency last month that allows the military to deploy armed soldiers to the border and also allows for the temporary suspension of some civil rights.

“It’s a very good tool in his hands in order to make the government more powerful in the future,” said Mate Daniel Szabo, a constitutional lawyer with the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union.

Hungary’s new razor-wire fence and national direction mark a sharp reversal for a country that played a historic role in crumbling of the Berlin Wall — by opening a border fence with Austria in 1989 that triggered a sudden exodus of East Germans to the West.

Orban, 52, made his political debut in those days of upheaval with a fiery speech in which he called for free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Even as Germany marked the 25th anniversary of its reunification earlier this month, some Europeans leaders were appealing to Orban to stop creating a new Iron Curtain in Europe.

Western leaders and human rights groups have expressed alarm for years at the developments in Hungary, which have included the harassment of civil rights activists and independent media; an erosion of courts’ independence; and a celebration of World War II-era fascists and Holocaust revisionism that has created unease for Hungary’s Roma and Jews. Over the past five years, representatives of the ruling Fidesz party have cooperated with Jobbik to name public squares after people linked with Hungary’s fascist World War II-era government.

With Europe’s current refugee crisis, Orban’s right-wing politics have made their international debut.

Along with tough legal measures, Orban depicts the Muslim arrivals as invaders who threaten Europe’s Christian traditions and vows to defend Christian Europe in the same way that Hungary held back the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century. He denounces Europe’s “liberal blah blah” and speaks of the futility of ever integrating Muslims.

“Up to this point, we have not been able to integrate them into the European-Christian cultural community, and parallel societies are being created in numerous European countries with a declining ratio of Christians and a rising ratio of Muslims,” he told parliament in late September. “Some people think it’s good! Some people think it’s excellent! It’s an opportunity! We, however, who presently represent Hungary’s interests based upon the will of the nation, we think that whether it’s good or bad, we don’t want it.”

Central to Orban’s strategy is a message repeated often by him and his allies that outside forces are attacking Hungary and that only Orban can protect the nation. Sometimes they blame socialist or capitalist forces, often in the same breath, language widely considered a coded attack on Jews.

In an interview published this month in Magyar Hirlap, Parliament Speaker Laszlo Kover spoke of the threat of the “crypto-communists who rule over half of Europe.”

Orban himself called the prime minister of Croatia, the neighboring nation that has been sending migrants over the border into Hungary, “an emissary of the Socialist International whose job is to attack Hungary.”

Several of Orban’s critics accuse him of harnessing widespread xenophobia in Hungary to regain popularity that had been dwindling earlier this year. If that is his aim, it seems to be working: A recent poll showed that support for Fidesz rose from 20 to 24 percent between June and September. The poll, by Ipsos, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

“Over Orban’s political career, his main method of gaining support has been to stoke conflict and then pose as the defender of Hungarians,” said Miklos Haraszti, a prominent human rights activist. “But after many abstract foes such as the IMF or the EU, this is the first time he can point to a real human enemy. He depicts the migrants as invaders, and fuels hatred against them.”

On Sept. 15, Hungary sealed off its southern border with Serbia with a razor-wire fence, while a new law came into effect making it a crime for asylum-seekers to breach the fence. Dozens have already been convicted and criminal proceedings are now underway against some 480 more people.

A day after the border was closed, clashes also broke out between migrants and baton-wielding police officers who used tear gas, water cannons and pepper spray on hundreds of migrants, among them small children who screamed as gas stung their eyes. The government has pointed to the incident to argue that the migrants are violent and says some are “terrorists.”


Continues at: http://www.salon.com/2015/10/15/hungary ... ing_shift/
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Mon Nov 16, 2015 4:50 pm

http://roarmag.org/2015/11/paris-attack ... ee-crisis/

Don’t make refugees pay for the terror they’re fleeing

By Jerome Roos On November 16, 2015

Image
Refugees arriving in Europe in the wake of the Paris terror attacks


Shutting down borders and blaming Muslim immigrants for the Paris attacks would give ISIS precisely the type of “civilizational conflict” it craves.


The recovery of a Syrian passport at the site of one of the Paris terror attacks has the European press and the continent’s right-wing politicians in an uproar.

The document, found near the remains of one of the suicide bombers, had been registered by Greek authorities on the island of Leros on October 3, 2015, leading to speculation that some of the assailants may have been jihadists traveling from the Syrian battlefields to Europe posing as refugees.

Even as the identity of the actual assailant remains unknown (the document could have been stolen or forged in Syria or Turkey), the xenophobic right is already seeking to capitalize on the news for political gain.

On Saturday, Poland’s new right-wing government slammed EU plans to deal with the ongoing refugee crisis by redistributing asylum-seekers among member states. The country’s Minister for European Affairs stated that “Poland must retain full control over its borders, asylum and immigration.”

Horst Seehofer, the conservative Prime Minister of Bavaria and a key ally of Angela Merkel, similarly declared that “we need to know who is traveling through our country. As well as more security measures, we need tighter control of the European borders, but also of the national borders.”

Giving in to such fear-mongering would be the biggest mistake Europe could make right now. It would give the attackers precisely what they were after: the intensification of nationalistic tensions, the framing of the attacks as part of a wider religious conflict, and the closure of Europe’s borders to the hundreds of thousands trying to escape from ISIS’ so-called “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq.

The truth is that the terror attacks play straight into the hands of Europe’s xenophobic right, whose stereotypical over-reaction in turn reinforces the resolve of the jihadists, in a vicious cycle that will only lead to further bloodshed. Every time there is a terror attack, there is a rise in support for anti-immigrant parties; and wherever the right feels emboldened to attack or rail against Muslims, the jihadists present it as yet another justification and recruiting tool for their holy war against the infidels and crusaders.

The only thing that can break this vicious cycle is to step out of it: by refusing to give in to the fear, the binary narratives, the calls to close borders, to further abrogate civil liberties and militarize society.

Solidarity remains our single greatest weapon against terror in all its varieties. As the Arab Spring activist Iyad El-Baghdadi – who actively follows the chatter among hundreds of jihadist and Islamist accounts on Twitter – has noted: “nothing pissed off Islamist extremists” more than “watching [Europe's] very humane, moral response to the refugee crisis.”

This observation makes sense. Many of the Syrian families that recently found refuge in Europe are directly fleeing ISIS’ terror. Others, of course, are escaping the state terror of the Assad regime, while a handful, undoubtedly, are foreign jihadists returning to Europe. And yet large parts of European society (not its states) welcomed the refugees with open arms, fundamentally undermining the “class of civilizations” narrative on which both the European far-right and the jihadists depend for their political survival and success.

In this sense, the #RefugeesWelcome mobilizations of September were a thorn in the side of extremists on both sides of the supposed civilizational divide – precisely because they actively broke down the false binary that sustains the divide in this first place. Friday’s attacks seemed to reflect this fact.

Unlike the last round of attacks in January, this time the jihadists struck neither the symbols of the French state (like its police, army or national monuments), not its Jewish community or its public intellectuals with a reputation for criticizing Islam (like the Charlie Hebdo editors or the Kosher supermarket).

Instead, as Manu Saadia has noted, the attacks directly targeted the symbols of cosmopolitan Paris: the bustling nightlife on the multicultural rive droite (“the land of hipster socialists”); the young people attending a concert by a Californian rock band; and the national stadium – the very epitome of the black, blanc, beur ideal of the Republic’s “successful” integration of immigrant minorities.

Friday’s cowardly attacks, in other words, deliberately avoided targeting the agents of imperialism and Islamophobia – rather, they directly targeted the progressive elements in French society, not just because they constituted an easy-to-hit “soft target”, but precisely because they represent such an elementary threat to the various ideologies of hatred.

As for the Syrian passport, we still do not know who the document really belongs to, but one thing is clear: whoever brought it with them wanted it to be found. Why else carry a passport on a suicide mission? Taking the document was clearly intended to send a political message to the French people: “You bombed us and provided refugee to our enemies. Now we have penetrated your borders and infiltrated your society. You are not safe.”

If this sounds uncannily like the type of statement right-wing politicians like Marine Le Pen have been making in recent days, that is because it essentially reflects the same belligerent worldview – which is precisely why we must reject it. Europe must welcome refugees not in spite but precisely because of what just happened in Paris.

The vast majority of refugees who have been arriving on Europe’s shores these past months are people fleeing from precisely the type of murderous violence that has now struck at the heart of the continent, and that already struck countries like Turkey, Lebanon and Russia before. Instead of setting us apart with ever higher walls and fences, Friday’s attacks should bring us closer to the victims of terror everywhere; Islamist terror as much as imperialist terror.

As human beings, we have a moral obligation to continue welcoming those fleeing conflict, wherever they may come from – just as we, as European citizens, have a strong political obligation to continue the fight against terror and fascism in all its forms and guises.


Jerome Roos is a PhD researcher at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute, and the founding editor of ROAR Magazine. Follow him on Twitter at @JeromeRoos. This article was originally written for teleSUR English.
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Tue Nov 17, 2015 9:30 pm

The Borders Won’t Protect You

Nov 17th, 2015
by b. traven


Image

In Paris, on November 13, 129 people were killed in coordinated bombings and shootings for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility. European nationalists lost no time seeking to tie the attacks in Paris to the so-called migrant crisis, even though many of the refugees are fleeing similar attacks orchestrated by ISIS.

Tighter border controls won’t protect us from attacks like the one in Paris, though they will go on causing migrant deaths. Airstrikes won’t stop suicide bombers, but they will produce new generations that nurse a grudge against the West. Government surveillance won’t catch every bomb plot, but it will target the social movements that offer an alternative to nationalism and war. If the proponents of Fortress Europe succeed in suppressing and segregating us, we will surely end up fighting each other: divide and rule. Our only hope is to establish common cause against our rulers, building bridges across the boundaries of citizenship and religion before the whole world is carved up on the butcher’s block of war.

Read the complete editorial.
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby solace » Wed Nov 18, 2015 8:12 pm

Dozens of demonstrators in the western Polish city of Wroclaw participated in burning effigies of Jews fully equipped with peot (side-curls) and black hats, Polish tabloid Gazeta Wyborcza reported on Wednesday.

The demonstration was part of a larger protest against admitting refugees of the civil war in Syria into Poland. Demonstrators warned that many of the refugees were actually economic migrants and terrorists, according to the report.

The demonstration took place on a portable stage in front of the Wroclaw city hall. Police contained the demonstration but allowed it to happen, with no formal complaints.


http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/11/18/po ... est-video/
solace
 
Posts: 392
Joined: Fri May 27, 2011 11:38 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: A New Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Nation-State

Postby American Dream » Mon Nov 23, 2015 11:33 am

22 November 2015

Turd Polishing During Topham Trial: Paulie Interviews David Lindsay

During the Topham hate crimes trial the ended in Arthur Topham's conviction, Paulie provided nearly daily updates, both written and video, though it should also be noted that these same updates also carried a wee bit of spin. In one of the write-ups and video, he suggested the ceiling lights were proof of a vast Jewish conspiracy controlling the court system because... reasons.

He had planned on taking a photo of the ceiling as proof, but when he wasn't permitted to do so he threw a self-entitled temper tantrum in which he also complained about the court security.


http://anti-racistcanada.blogspot.com/2 ... trial.html
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

PreviousNext

Return to Data & Research Compilations

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 8 guests