Nationalism and xenophobia on the rise in Europe?

[telee.kom]

So I'm talking from Central European point of view and I'm guessing this varies throughout different countries, but the hostility towards immigrants and refugees in my country is now on a level that is really quite alarming to me and since there are some people from Europe, I'd like to know your thoughts on this.

I think it started when EU tried to push immigration quotas on its member states, because of huge refugee waves from Africa, that ended up on the coast of Italy. To nobody's surprise, Italy couldn't handle it alone, so EU thought it would be a good idea to put up mandatory quotas; for Czech Rep it was about 1500 people I think. This idea was met with great deal of disagreement both from general public and our government. This idea was meanwhile dropped by EU and replaced by compulsory intake of refugees. But something happened in our society in last few months.

There are so many people that completely radicalized towards immigrants lately. There were protests on biggest Prague's square where people brought mock ups of gallows poles for immigrants, far right extremists on podium were cheered by the crowd, police did absolutely nothing. More and more frequently I read about verbal and physical attacks towards Muslims specifically, just yesterday some skins (literally) kicked out a woman from a bus because she was dark colored while her child watched. Some of my college educated friends have no problems with sharing Hitler jokes in regards of refugees (something along the lines "let them come, we have space where to put them" -> concentration camps). I'm really just fucking sick of this, what happened to us? Is this how people thought of Jews before WW2 kicked off? This is rhetoric of my primary school classmate who is a neonazi. And this is like a norm now or what?

I don't care what is your opinion on immigration policy, but where is all the hate coming from? I don't get it. It's like people think that refugee from Africa equals member of ISIS or something. And I lost my pink glasses long time ago, I get that we can't accept and help everybody, I get that there are risks bound to immigration, but honestly, right now I'm more worried what has happened to us. People are so afraid of Islamic fanatics that they are failing to see how much they are start to act like them.

[Sallos]

Europeans hate each other, always have and always will. It was no accident that both world wars took place here. In regarding to the immigrants coming in, most of them are not intregrating well, speacily when they get confined to ghettos. In portugal we used to put black people coming from the ex-colonies in housing projects along with other minorities like gypsies, care to guess how that turned out? Not good.

Since then we've been demolishing and ending the housing projects (ghettos) and replacing/spreading these minorities across the urban areas get the whole melting pot going. But unlike most countries, our people are very welcoming of forgeirners (although we haven't been flooded with as many as others have) they are very well intregrated mostly because they also come from our ex-colonies, is not unusual for someone to have a relative from an ex colony, be it in Africa, Brazil, India or China. We're a very miscelaneous people (racewise), we had to in order to populate our colonies that's why in Brazil most people are a mix of races, raging from dutch to amazonian indian.

Another bonus is that most imigrants that come here already know the language and that certantly helps. I guess we have been very furtunated in that way, that we get quality imigrants, those that don't speak the language, (chinese and eartern european, ukranians mostly) are highly educated and learn it quite fast.

So like you said i think this phenomenon is more common in central europe and maybe Britain.

[telee.kom]

I'm quite amazed that somebody finally understood that building ghettos is the worst possible thing that can be done. But knowing our government, that's probably exactly what will happen here, because it's the cheapest way to deal with immigrants. This is what the conversation should be about, but instead it's just irrational hate and calling for closing our borders, leaving the EU and whatnot. Ugh

[Alexandros]

@Sallos (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=776) come on, Europeans don't hate each other, let's not be overly dramatic. With the exception of the Balkans, things have really moved on since the two world wars, no matter what the resurgence of euroscepticism may have you think.

As for nationalism and xenophobia, coming from Greece I can tell you this has been a serious issue here for at least a decade now, especially worsened by the financial crisis. Combine that with the fact that Greece is a major entry point to Europe for immigrants/refugees coming in from pretty much anywhere apart from Northern Africa and you can imagine the situation. All the usual arguments have been put to the table and sadly the most vocal parties from around the spectrum usually play on sentiment (either fear or pity) and mostly follow a make-it-up-as-we-go policy that probably makes things worse for everyone. Obviously the lack of resources right now doesn't help things either.

On the curious side of the matter (but speaking through my personal experience which may not be accurate), it appears that xenophobia is not at its peak now, when society is at its lowest point in these last 5 years of austerity, at least not the overtly visible/violent stuff. This may have something to do with the fact that our neonazi party Golden Dawn has been under (underwhelming/badly handled in my opinion) legal scrutiny for some time now and limited the violent actions of their lackeys. But even so I have sadly come to accept that there is (and has been) a strong racist streak in many of my countrymen, even those who do not embrace extremist ideals.

[Khrz]

Europeans hate each other, always have and always will. It was no accident that both world wars took place here.

Le who das huh did what now ? Europeans don't hate each other any more than americans, or any other continent. There are dissenting views and cultural gaps that span centuries, but hate ?

[Sallos]

@Sallos (http://www.echoingthesound.org/community/member.php?u=776) come on, Europeans don't hate each other, let's not be overly dramatic. With the exception of the Balkans, things have really moved on since the two world wars, no matter what the resurgence of euroscepticism may have you think.



Le who das huh did what now ? Europeans don't hate each other any more than americans, or any other continent. There are dissenting views and cultural gaps that span centuries, but hate ?

In the last 70 years or so, after the WWII we have been getting along and have enjoyed the longest peace period ever since europe was europe. But the moment shit hits the fans, like right now with the debt crisis we immideatly start turning our back to each other and there clearly is a division from northern european countries and southern. Even though and despite the many Greece faults concerning their financial crisis, the way they were and are being treated is not proper for a union that was based on solidarity and coesion.

Germany is doing to Greece what was done to Germany after the First World War. Hate was probably a strong word, but the reality is we don't get along as many think we do. Profe is we're a tiny continent and yet we're about 51 (if you count vatican) countries or so while Africa has 54 or 57. And in the near future we might have more, such as Scotland, Catalunia, Basque country, and a split ukraine and belgium.

[Sallos]

I'm quite amazed that somebody finally understood that building ghettos is the worst possible thing that can be done. But knowing our government, that's probably exactly what will happen here, because it's the cheapest way to deal with immigrants.

They are nothing more than crime factories.

[Nyx]

Any crisis makes people look for scapegoats and they are usually groups of people (minorities) with no social power/position who then get accused of stealing jobs, stealing benefits, stealing children, stealing women, stealing money, stealing [insert random shit here], etc. Sometimes things escalate, sometimes they simmer down. I'm hoping things will simmer down but I have to admit that on some days it doesn't look so good...especially since left wing parties are usually being all reasonable and calm and "let's discuss this, let's compromise, let's not alienate anyone" while right wingers are extreme, loud and rabid. They are dragging public discourse down to new levels which has a strong effect on regular people in the sense of what is and isn't acceptable to say. An idea that would be considered unreasonable and radical just a few years prior becomes, after you hear it from politicians over and over again, normalized. I mean, hey, what could be extreme about referring to whole groups of people as vermin or terrorists, right?