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.