Listen to Podcast
Xenophobia; it just won’t go away
Was it ever timelier to be discussing xenophobia? Just this morning I woke up to the news about xenophobic attacks against Nigerians in Johannesburg. In fact, my head is spinning, and I don’t know where to begin; what village, town, city, country, continent? And which stories should concern me the most? The local ones or the global ones? And then there’s that disturbing trend of history repeating itself. Am I being a tad dramatic, drawing comparisons between the geopolitical landscape of the nineteen thirties and the geopolitical landscape of 2019?
Of course, social media has taken over from radio, television and newspapers to incite hatred and whip up xenophobia, and I’m not just referring to the Twittersphere inhabited by President Trump. Social media has played no small role in whipping up xenophobia among those who are desperately looking for scapegoats, and many of the posts are from far-right leaders looking for enough support to put them in positions of power. French far-right leader Marine Le Pen knew exactly what she was doing when she tweeted pictures of Isis atrocities, including the beheading of American journalist James Foley. Le Pen has 2.25 million Twitter followers and her party came out on top in France’s European elections earlier this year. A further worrying trend in France was found recently by the Ifop polling institute for the Jean Jaurès foundation. The report published on July 15th, concludes that the far-right vote among French military is rising. The Irish Times Paris Correspondent, Lara Marlowe[1] reported that Ifop studied voting patterns in communities with a strong military or paramilitary presence and found that they all voted in greater percentages for Marine Le Pen and her party, Rassemblement National.
Recently, I just finished watching the three-part BBC documentary, Rise of the Nazis, and it was more than unsettling to hear highly eminent historians express concern about history repeating itself, their concern being very much about the here and now. Indeed, only last night I watched the German film, Sarajevo, portraying how the Austro-Hungarian government allowed the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand to happen in order to have an excuse to declare war on Serbia. The anti-Semitism and anti-Slav feelings were palpable, and any truths that did not lead to war were inconvenient.
But why do xenophobic feelings continue to be a problem? Why do they continue to find expression at this point in history, and why increasingly so in unexpected places? For example, the Community Security Trust, a nongovernmental organization in the United Kingdom, reported 1,652 anti-Semitic incidents in 2018, including 123 involving violence. In the introduction to her book Antisemitism: What it is. What it isn’t. Why it Matters, Julia Neuberger asks, ‘What future do Jews have in Britain, and indeed in Europe, when violence against Jews – both verbal and physical – is on the rise, while all over Europe right-wing nationalists are becoming more and more intolerant, more and more antisemitic and Islamophobic? What does that mean, not just for Jews, but for society as a whole?’
Powerful coteries stage-managing major events to get the results they or their nefarious customers want, are also brought to our attention in The Great Hack, a film that shows how populist, xenophobic governments and political parties can harness data mining in the most reprehensible ways on social media to perpetrate false information and win elections. This is exactly how Cambridge Analytica influenced election results in Trinidad and Tobago, Hungary, Ukraine, Brazil and Turkey, to name but a few. Arguably, Cambridge Analytica’s skills were also employed to swing the US presidential election for Donal Trump, and the passing of Brexit in the United Kingdom, I say ‘arguably’ because it is difficult to ascertain the true impact of Cambridge Analytica’s involvement in these elections. Notwithstanding, much of the racist, populist, xenophobic – especially against Muslims - and downright fearmongering stories were specifically targeted at ‘undecideds’ based on their data profiles. This much is true, global democracy is at the mercy of some clever ‘for hire’ computer analysts who will work for any paying customer.
Of course, xenophobia is as old as history itself. Let’s remind ourselves – the Massacre of the Innocents, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the British, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Belgian and Dutch colonisations of Africa, India, South East Asia, South America, and the West Indies, resulting in the annihilation or subjugation of so many indigenous populations. The direct targeting of ethnic and religious groups is still alive and well – the Kurds in Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria, the Yazidis in Iraq, the Rohingya in Burma (Myanmar), and the Uighur in China. The legacy of the appalling, state-sanctioned crimes committed by white against black in South Africa, Rhodesia[2], and Rwanda among others, is all too apparent in our newsfeeds today with stories of village wipe-outs, famine, mass murder, corruption, and poverty in all its forms.
As an example, let’s look at the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly the Belgian Congo, an extremely wealthy country the size of Western Europe. When Joseph Mobutu seized power from the Belgians in 1965, it would seem that he learnt too well from his colonisers, and the old sins of power and greed flourished. Next door, the xenophobic living hell that was ex-Belgian colony Rwanda in the 1990s, was further example of the festering and barely hidden hatreds among communities who have been subjected to toxic mismanagement by former colonial masters. When the Belgians came to Rwanda in 1916, they introduced identity cards classifying people according to their ethnicity, the two groups being the Tutsis and the Hutus. This reminds us of Hitler’s chilling race classification, placing Aryans or Ubermensch at the top of the racial pyramid, and placing Jews as lower than Untermensch, "Christ-killers" who should be exterminated. I even feel uncomfortable typing that last sentence.
Belgians considered the Tutsis to be superior to the Hutus. Consequently, the Tutsis enjoyed a better status than the Hutus. When Belgium granted Rwanda independence in 1962, the Hutus took charge and henceforth they would blame the Tutsis for every ill in the country, a common tactic used throughout history by populist regimes in many countries around the world. Hitler, for example, blamed the Jews and the German government for Germany's defeat in World War 1. But the mass murder of Tutsis and moderate Hutus that started in the mid-nineteen nineties had its roots in the Belgian colonisers back in 1916. Anyone old enough to have witnessed the television news coverage at the height of the genocide in the mid nineteen-nineties cannot forget one machete wielding ethnic group hell bent on annihilating the other, much of the hatred whipped up by sinister radio propaganda. Radio propaganda is still alive and well in the United States with far-right personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern. Radio is also where US Vice President Mike Pence earned his alt-right credentials.
But to return to the Democratic Republic of Congo. After the war with the collapse of the Hutu government, many Hutu rebels fled to DR Congo to escape answering for their crimes of xenophobia and ethnic cleansing. This Hutu presence has led to years of conflict, causing up to five million deaths. On two occasions, Rwanda's now Tutsi-led government has invaded DR Congo with the intention of wiping out the Hutu forces. To further complicate matters, a Congolese Tutsi rebel group remains active, to prevent, it says, further genocide of its people. The colonisation and xenophobia started by the Belgians more than one hundred years ago is still making stories today.
Moving on then, fixed elections, marginalisation, and victimisation on a global scale, all satisfy the xenophobic tendencies of far-right, populist types, whether they be racist elements in America’s southern states engaged in vote rigging to prevent black people from practicing their democratic rights, or groups in Ireland preventing members of the Travelling community or asylum seekers from taking up residence in their neighbourhoods. Xenophobia through the ages, committed by those full of the self-belief of being better and being right, has left a bitter aftertaste across swathes of the globe. Just look at any country that was colonised and what do you see? Hatred and suspicion among communities even after hundreds of years, because the scars of xenophobia run deep and are carried through the generations. Some old bugbears never die, and their growl increases in intensity at any provocation. Take the genuinely justified fears about the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland triggered by Brexit, or the anti-immigrant feelings in Britain aroused by the populist politics of Brexit.
As a teacher of both history and journalism, I have tried my best over the years to educate myself about the past and to keep myself informed about the present. It’s bloody difficult, and the more I read, the more I realise how little I know. And yet, many commenters on current events who have little or no knowledge of history are being given airtime, screen time, cyber time and print space, and they are being quoted as experts. Why is it so often the case that those with the least background knowledge on a given topic, express their opinions with an alarming level of self-belief. Of course, they no longer need the high stool with a bored barman and a bunch of old lads sucking on pints. Now they have a smart phone, a Twitter or Facebook account, and loads of friends. They’ve gone viral; the rubbish they espoused from the high stool can now be accessed by an international audience. This situation has created the perfect environment for unedited, unadulterated populism, one of xenophobia’s best buddies.
As I write this, my phone pings. It’s a story from the Irish Times by Kitty Holland, Couple in ad campaign left ‘shaking and fearful’ after online abuse[3]. The mixed-race couple from County Meath, Fiona Ryan and Jon Mathis, who feature in a television and billboard ad campaign for Lidl supermarket chain, were subjected to the most appalling racist tirade on Twitter. It’s the type of story that’s becoming all too common and in the main, the antagonists are invisible, but disturbingly have a power of sorts and are gaining traction at a worrying pace.
Staying at home then, let’s look at the small Irish town of Oughterard on Ireland’s west coast where there is a proposal to open a direct provision centre in a former hotel. It is probably important to mention that prior to this, hotels earmarked for direct provision centres in Moville, Co Donegal and Roosky, Co Roscommon, suffered arson attacks and plans were abandoned, but a centre did successfully go ahead in Lisdoonvara, Co Clare.
In response to the proposal to open the direct provision centre in Oughterard, Independent TD[4], Noel Grealish said that ‘people of African origin’ are only coming here to ‘sponge off the system’. Add to this, a group called ‘Oughterard Says No to Inhumane Direct Provision Centres’ who oppose the location of a Direct Provision centre in the hotel. When populist elements – like the Grealish comment - weave their toxic threads through the rural tapestries of discontent and feelings of abandonment, they always succeed in garnering some support, just enough to change the atmosphere of genuine concern about capacity to something more febrile and unsubstantiated. Indeed, Noel Grealish claimed that the creation of a direct-provision centre in the town would “destroy the fabric of Oughterard”.
But let’s try to understand what ‘Oughterard Says No to Inhumane Direct Provision Centres’ thinks before we judge them. Solicitor, Wendy Lyon, in an Irish Times article entitled Noel Grealish’s views of asylum seekers are based on myth[5], describes the delicate balance between genuine fears and concerns and something more sinister. She writes, ‘The protesters in Oughterard, and their supporters, insist that they are not racist or xenophobic. Some are (justifiably) taking the position that both the centre’s residents and the local community would be ill-served by relocating so many people to inadequate accommodation in this remote and under-resourced town. Others say they are simply calling for more debate. But misinformation is a toxic ingredient in debate and these myths, if left unchallenged, will only contribute to misinformed public policy.’
So how do Irish people really feel about immigrants? Attitudes to Diversity in Ireland[6] was published by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) in March 2018. This report draws on a survey of attitudes from the European Social Survey collected since 2002, and monitors attitudes between 2002 and 2014. Seventeen per cent of respondents believe that some races are ‘born less intelligent.’ Forty-five per cent believe some races “are born harder working,” and almost fifty per cent of Irish adults believe “some cultures are better than others”.
Interestingly, when you consider how the economy really does matter when it comes to anger at the ballot box – just look at rust belt voters in the United States, and Stoke on Trent voters in Brexit Britain - Attitudes to Diversity in Ireland found a more positive attitude to immigrants in the boom years 2002 to 2006. The positive attitude decreased after the 2008 crash, reaching a peak of negativity in 2010, and improved again as the economy improved. This pattern of negativity towards ‘other’ during economic downturns is important to remember, the Weimar Republic being a prime example. So, let’s move on to mainland Europe then, and Poland in particular, whose economy is doing very well at the moment, but like so many European countries, Poland desperately needs workers from abroad to augment its falling population.
In August 2019, Claudia Ciobanu of Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), wrote about a leaked draft of a new Polish migration policy[7] which discriminates against Muslims, and more worryingly, ranks foreigners, outside the EU, according to ethnicity. It puts Poles who emigrated after the fall of communism in 1989 and have the right to return to Poland, at the top of the pyramid. Next come the ethnic Poles seeking repatriation, especially from families who found themselves outside Poland’s new borders at the end of World War II. Third in the pecking order are migrants from Ukraine (where most immigrants currently come from), Belarus and other former Soviet countries. At the bottom of the pile are long-term immigrants from elsewhere who, because they are seen as a threat, would be forced into a policy of integration and assimilation, which rejects multiculturism.
Critics have described this Polish migration policy of rejecting multiculturism in favour of integration and assimilation, as xenophobic. Immigrants will be expected to attend and successfully complete, at their own expense, assimilation programmes to adopt Polish values in relation to worldview, religion, politics, culture, and habits among others, in order to obtain Polish citizenship. This policy is specifically designed to maintain Poland’s homogeneity. Muslims are singled out in the document as being incapable of integration and are seen more as the next step to creating a global Islamic culture, and this fear is palpable in Sweden also.
When the anti-immigrant party, the Swedish Democrats (SD), reached 17.5 per cent of the votes in 2018, our image of that all-embracing country took a knocking. How, we wondered, could such a party gain such traction in this seemingly benign of countries? From receiving just 160,000 votes in 2006 to over 1.1m votes in 2018, SD is now the third largest party in the country. How did it happen? According to Bo Rothstein and Sven Steinmo[8] there are two common explanations. ‘The first points to an underlying racism in Swedish culture. The second argues that globalization has led to increased inequality and a more insecure jobs market’. But they believe it is not that simple.
There is no escaping one big change - the massive increase in the number of immigrants and refugees entering Sweden in very recent years. This relatively small country with fewer than ten million inhabitants has accepted over 300,000 refugees since 2014, far more than their neighbours in Norway and Denmark, who admitted 49,000 and 45,000 respectively. This, Rothstein and Steinmo say, would be equivalent to Britain taking in 1.8 million, or the United States’ taking in nine million.
Instead, Rothstein and Steinmo explain the surge in SD support as signalling a deeper and more fundamental issue in modern Swedish democratic politics – a democratic deficit, meaning that the established parties have been deaf to the preferences of their own citizens, who did not want ‘open door’ immigration at this level. Indeed, they say, anyone who challenged this policy was accused of racism. Swedish voters who wanted a more moderate refugee policy had no party to turn to – except the Sweden Democrats. These voters are angered by broad-based policies being usurped by the rights of minority groups, a development that does not sit well with traditional, middle and working-class citizens, and this has resulted in ‘backlash identity politics.’ Rothstein and Steinmo describe today’s Swedish political, social and economic elite as comfortable in a multi-cultural milieu, unlike the average voting citizens who see their wishes being trampled on by this political elite. Voters in the United States and the United Kingdom also felt that they were being ignored by an out of touch elite, hence the election of President Trump and the passing of Brexit.
Hungary, it would seem, is another story, perhaps more hard-line. President Viktor Orbán does not regard immigration as a solution to the falling population of Hungary. Instead, along with many Central European right-wing leaders, Orbán has bought into the sinister far-right ‘great replacement’ theory, which encourages and supports pro-creation by implementing ‘family first’ policies to incentivise childbearing. In May 2019 a report from the Council of Europe accused Hungary’s government of violating people’s rights and using anti-migrant rhetoric that fuels ‘xenophobic attitudes, fear and hatred’ saying that these human rights violations must be urgently addressed. Violations include wholesale rejections of asylum applications, excessive police violence in removing foreign nationals, and even denying food to those refused asylum. Remember that Orbán’s government built a fence topped by razor wire along the country’s southern border with Serbia.
Many of us might remember the scene on television of a Hungarian police officer deliberately tripping up a refugee father carrying a toddler, and these, along with all the other refugees, were merely passing through Hungary on their way to western Europe. Those who stayed in Hungary now live in detention camps constructed from converted shipping containers, chillingly appropriate when you learn that Orbán, has described migration as a ‘Trojan horse for terrorism.’ More threatening though, is Hungary’s treatment of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working with asylum seekers who risk a one-year prison sentence for providing information.
Similar patterns of xenophobic behaviour when dealing with immigrants can be seen in Brazil’s[9] treatment of thousands of refugees fleeing a broken Venezuela. The figures speak for themselves. UNHCR data shows that from January 2014 to July 2018, 57,575 Venezuelans requested asylum. Incredibly, Brazil granted asylum to 14 in 2016 and denied it to 28. No asylum has been granted since then. More than 5,500 Venezuelans are living in thirteen shelters[10] along the border in Roraima State, but the Brazilian government has been slow to integrate them and most children in shelters do not go to school. As has happened so often throughout history, angry mobs do what angry mobs do. In 2018, a mob expelled Venezuelans from a shelter in Roraima, and burned their belongings; in August, a mob pushed about 1,200 Venezuelans back across the border while police looked on, making no arrests. Police looking on and making no arrests reminds us of the treatment of the black Civil Rights activists in Mississippi in the 1960s, or of civil rights demonstrators in Northern Ireland in the 1960s.
Even the trendy, liberal Netherlands has its murky xenophobic side. An article by Ben Marguiles in the New Statesman entitled Why Europe should worry about rising Dutch populist Thierry Baudet[11] argues that Baudet dresses a ‘xenophobic, authoritarian project in centre-right and middle-class clothing’. Since 2007, the far right was primarily represented by Geert Wilders’ Partij voor der Vrijheid (PVV), a fiercely xenophobic party, especially towards Muslims. PVV commonly masques its true agenda by claiming to defend liberal Dutch values like women’s rights and LGBT rights, against Islamic ‘tyranny’. As with so many far-right parties, the PVV electorate is strongly working class, older and less-well educated than other voters. But now a new, harder hitting party, the Forum voor Democratie (FvD) led by Thierry Baudet, has stolen PVV’s crown.
Marguiles believes that we should be concerned about the rise of the FvD, especially because of its flirtation with white nationalism in the form of American white supremacist Jared Taylor, and its calling for the banning of the Qur’an, while claiming to be doing it all in the name of defending liberal Dutch values. But for Marguiles, what is most worrisome about the FvD is that it targets the voters still within the liberal consensus. According to Marguiles, ‘the more success Baudet obtains among this target group, the weaker the democratic coalition at the heart of Dutch politics, and the longer the shadow Hungarian and Italian populists will cast over Northern Europe.’ One leader who continues to have an uphill battle with anti-immigrant populists, is Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Last year, at a ceremony to mark the 25th anniversary of a neo-Nazi arson attack on an apartment block in Solingen, where five Turkish-German women and girls died, Merkel expressed her concern over growing intolerance and violence towards asylum seekers, immigrants and German citizens with migrant roots. There is no doubt that the unprecedented influx of refugees, especially Muslims, to Germany in recent years has provided fuel for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). ‘Even today,’ Merkel said, ‘people in our country face hostility and are attacked because they are asylum seekers or refugees or are considered such because of their skin colour, regardless of how long they’ve lived with us.’ But anti-Semitic crimes are also on the rise in Germany. According to government data for 2018, hate speech increased by twenty per cent, and there were sixty-two violent anti-Semitic attacks, compared to thirty-seven in 2017.
Xenophobia is also on the rise in Russia according to a survey conducted by Levada Centre and discussed by Igor Serebryany in an article Xenophobia is on a Steep Rise in Russia[12]. Seventy- one percent of survey respondents say they support the ultra-nationalistic slogan ‘Russia for Russians.’ Romas, Chinese, Vietnamese, people of Central Asian and North Caucasian origin, Jews and even Ukrainians, are regarded by fifty-four per cent of respondents as the least desirable ethnic minorities. Poor people in Russia are looking for someone to blame, and predictably, ethnic minorities are the most convenient target, despite the Russian federal authorities' policy of encouraging economic migrants from anywhere in the world to come to Russia.
But there is some good news. Just last month in Italy, a new left-leaning pro-European coalition government replaced far-right leader Matteo Salvini, who held the position of Italy’s interior minister, with Luciana Lamorgese, who is known for promoting integration events and policies for immigrants. Salvini’s hard-line immigration measures included the closure of Italian ports to NGO rescue vessels. For now, at any rate, immigrants are not at the mercy of Salvini’s populist League party.
The brand of xenophobia called Islamophobia, that is, fear of, and discrimination against Muslims, has been gaining traction in the United States especially since 9/11. More recently it was given extra welly with President Trump telling four minority congresswomen - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts to ‘go back’ to the countries they came from. The social media rhetoric of President Trump has intensified this xenophobia among the many millions who are looking for scapegoats to blame for their fall in fortunes, whether those scapegoats be Mexicans on the other side of that ‘wall’ or Muslims with ‘evil intent’. The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU)[13] report American Muslim Poll 2019: Predicting and Preventing Islamophobia, includes the Islamophobia Index (II), created in partnership with Georgetown University. It shows that negative public opinion of Muslims has increased in the United States in the past year; but bear in mind that it is increasing year on year anyway.
Furthermore, the report highlights some interesting findings about the relationships between ethnic and religious groups in the United States. It found that Jewish and Hispanic Americans are most favourable toward Muslims, while about forty-four per cent of white evangelicals hold unfavourable views about Muslims. Interestingly, the report shows that those who scored higher on the Islamophobia Index were least likely to know a Muslim person, while those who knew a Muslim scored lower on the Islamophobia Index. Respondents with positive views of other minorities and who had a knowledge of other religions also scored lower on the Islamophobia Index. This fits in with what Negin Farsad, the Iranian-American comedian, actor, writer and filmmaker, writes in her chapter entitled My Own People in the wonderfully clever and witty Don’t Panic I’m Islamic. She describes the Southerners and the Mormons she met while travelling with Muslim comedians around the deep south and in Utah, as open and welcoming. ‘They had honest questions about us – questions like why don’t we denounce terrorism, or would goldfish constitute halal food. I didn’t find them particularly racist, I didn’t think they were trying to run me out of town, and I generally had a great time.’
So, let’s move from Islamophobia in America to anti-Semitism in Europe. In a December 2018 survey on anti-Semitism in Europe, the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency found that a worryingly high eighty-nine per cent of Jews living in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK, feel anti-Semitism has increased in their country over the past decade. In tandem with this, eighty-five per cent of respondents said they believe anti-Semitism to be a serious problem[14] with almost half of respondents reporting worries about being insulted or harassed in public and more than a third fearing being physically attacked.
The problem of xenophobia is so widespread and multi-faceted that it is impossible to keep abreast of it. Life is short; nobody lives forever. I’d like to think that most of us couldn’t care less about peoples’ ethnic origins, colour, or religion, so why then, are they being harnessed by a minority of alt-right, populist, nationalist, white supremacist, xenophobic bully boys to arouse fear and suspicion in susceptible or undecided voters? Where is this road leading? Its destination does not look good for anyone.
[1] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/french-military-nails-its-colours-to-marine-le-pen-s-mast-1.3971126
[2] Now Zimbabwe
[3] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/couple-in-ad-campaign-left-shaking-and-fearful-after-online-abuse-1.4031549
[4] Member of parliament in Ireland
[5] https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/noel-grealish-s-views-of-asylum-seekers-are-based-on-myth-1.4021292
[6] https://www.esri.ie/publications/attitudes-to-diversity-in-ireland
[7] A leaked copy of the draft policy was published in full (in Polish) in June by the Association for Legal Intervention rights group.
[8] https://www.socialeurope.eu/me-too-the-rise-of-middle-class-populism-in-sweden-and-beyond
This article was originally published in Swedish by Dagens Nyheter
[9] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/brazil
[10] Opened by the federal government and the UNHCR
[11] https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2019/05/why-europe-should-worry-about-rising-dutch-populist-thierry
[12] https://www.fairplanet.org/editors-pick/xenophobia-on-the-steep-rise-in-russia/
[13] https://www.ispu.org/public-policy/american-muslim-poll/
[14] https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/06/04/alarming-rise-anti-semitism-europe
Xenophobia; it just won’t go away
Was it ever timelier to be discussing xenophobia? Just this morning I woke up to the news about xenophobic attacks against Nigerians in Johannesburg. In fact, my head is spinning, and I don’t know where to begin; what village, town, city, country, continent? And which stories should concern me the most? The local ones or the global ones? And then there’s that disturbing trend of history repeating itself. Am I being a tad dramatic, drawing comparisons between the geopolitical landscape of the nineteen thirties and the geopolitical landscape of 2019?
Of course, social media has taken over from radio, television and newspapers to incite hatred and whip up xenophobia, and I’m not just referring to the Twittersphere inhabited by President Trump. Social media has played no small role in whipping up xenophobia among those who are desperately looking for scapegoats, and many of the posts are from far-right leaders looking for enough support to put them in positions of power. French far-right leader Marine Le Pen knew exactly what she was doing when she tweeted pictures of Isis atrocities, including the beheading of American journalist James Foley. Le Pen has 2.25 million Twitter followers and her party came out on top in France’s European elections earlier this year. A further worrying trend in France was found recently by the Ifop polling institute for the Jean Jaurès foundation. The report published on July 15th, concludes that the far-right vote among French military is rising. The Irish Times Paris Correspondent, Lara Marlowe[1] reported that Ifop studied voting patterns in communities with a strong military or paramilitary presence and found that they all voted in greater percentages for Marine Le Pen and her party, Rassemblement National.
Recently, I just finished watching the three-part BBC documentary, Rise of the Nazis, and it was more than unsettling to hear highly eminent historians express concern about history repeating itself, their concern being very much about the here and now. Indeed, only last night I watched the German film, Sarajevo, portraying how the Austro-Hungarian government allowed the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand to happen in order to have an excuse to declare war on Serbia. The anti-Semitism and anti-Slav feelings were palpable, and any truths that did not lead to war were inconvenient.
But why do xenophobic feelings continue to be a problem? Why do they continue to find expression at this point in history, and why increasingly so in unexpected places? For example, the Community Security Trust, a nongovernmental organization in the United Kingdom, reported 1,652 anti-Semitic incidents in 2018, including 123 involving violence. In the introduction to her book Antisemitism: What it is. What it isn’t. Why it Matters, Julia Neuberger asks, ‘What future do Jews have in Britain, and indeed in Europe, when violence against Jews – both verbal and physical – is on the rise, while all over Europe right-wing nationalists are becoming more and more intolerant, more and more antisemitic and Islamophobic? What does that mean, not just for Jews, but for society as a whole?’
Powerful coteries stage-managing major events to get the results they or their nefarious customers want, are also brought to our attention in The Great Hack, a film that shows how populist, xenophobic governments and political parties can harness data mining in the most reprehensible ways on social media to perpetrate false information and win elections. This is exactly how Cambridge Analytica influenced election results in Trinidad and Tobago, Hungary, Ukraine, Brazil and Turkey, to name but a few. Arguably, Cambridge Analytica’s skills were also employed to swing the US presidential election for Donal Trump, and the passing of Brexit in the United Kingdom, I say ‘arguably’ because it is difficult to ascertain the true impact of Cambridge Analytica’s involvement in these elections. Notwithstanding, much of the racist, populist, xenophobic – especially against Muslims - and downright fearmongering stories were specifically targeted at ‘undecideds’ based on their data profiles. This much is true, global democracy is at the mercy of some clever ‘for hire’ computer analysts who will work for any paying customer.
Of course, xenophobia is as old as history itself. Let’s remind ourselves – the Massacre of the Innocents, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the British, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Belgian and Dutch colonisations of Africa, India, South East Asia, South America, and the West Indies, resulting in the annihilation or subjugation of so many indigenous populations. The direct targeting of ethnic and religious groups is still alive and well – the Kurds in Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria, the Yazidis in Iraq, the Rohingya in Burma (Myanmar), and the Uighur in China. The legacy of the appalling, state-sanctioned crimes committed by white against black in South Africa, Rhodesia[2], and Rwanda among others, is all too apparent in our newsfeeds today with stories of village wipe-outs, famine, mass murder, corruption, and poverty in all its forms.
As an example, let’s look at the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly the Belgian Congo, an extremely wealthy country the size of Western Europe. When Joseph Mobutu seized power from the Belgians in 1965, it would seem that he learnt too well from his colonisers, and the old sins of power and greed flourished. Next door, the xenophobic living hell that was ex-Belgian colony Rwanda in the 1990s, was further example of the festering and barely hidden hatreds among communities who have been subjected to toxic mismanagement by former colonial masters. When the Belgians came to Rwanda in 1916, they introduced identity cards classifying people according to their ethnicity, the two groups being the Tutsis and the Hutus. This reminds us of Hitler’s chilling race classification, placing Aryans or Ubermensch at the top of the racial pyramid, and placing Jews as lower than Untermensch, "Christ-killers" who should be exterminated. I even feel uncomfortable typing that last sentence.
Belgians considered the Tutsis to be superior to the Hutus. Consequently, the Tutsis enjoyed a better status than the Hutus. When Belgium granted Rwanda independence in 1962, the Hutus took charge and henceforth they would blame the Tutsis for every ill in the country, a common tactic used throughout history by populist regimes in many countries around the world. Hitler, for example, blamed the Jews and the German government for Germany's defeat in World War 1. But the mass murder of Tutsis and moderate Hutus that started in the mid-nineteen nineties had its roots in the Belgian colonisers back in 1916. Anyone old enough to have witnessed the television news coverage at the height of the genocide in the mid nineteen-nineties cannot forget one machete wielding ethnic group hell bent on annihilating the other, much of the hatred whipped up by sinister radio propaganda. Radio propaganda is still alive and well in the United States with far-right personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern. Radio is also where US Vice President Mike Pence earned his alt-right credentials.
But to return to the Democratic Republic of Congo. After the war with the collapse of the Hutu government, many Hutu rebels fled to DR Congo to escape answering for their crimes of xenophobia and ethnic cleansing. This Hutu presence has led to years of conflict, causing up to five million deaths. On two occasions, Rwanda's now Tutsi-led government has invaded DR Congo with the intention of wiping out the Hutu forces. To further complicate matters, a Congolese Tutsi rebel group remains active, to prevent, it says, further genocide of its people. The colonisation and xenophobia started by the Belgians more than one hundred years ago is still making stories today.
Moving on then, fixed elections, marginalisation, and victimisation on a global scale, all satisfy the xenophobic tendencies of far-right, populist types, whether they be racist elements in America’s southern states engaged in vote rigging to prevent black people from practicing their democratic rights, or groups in Ireland preventing members of the Travelling community or asylum seekers from taking up residence in their neighbourhoods. Xenophobia through the ages, committed by those full of the self-belief of being better and being right, has left a bitter aftertaste across swathes of the globe. Just look at any country that was colonised and what do you see? Hatred and suspicion among communities even after hundreds of years, because the scars of xenophobia run deep and are carried through the generations. Some old bugbears never die, and their growl increases in intensity at any provocation. Take the genuinely justified fears about the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland triggered by Brexit, or the anti-immigrant feelings in Britain aroused by the populist politics of Brexit.
As a teacher of both history and journalism, I have tried my best over the years to educate myself about the past and to keep myself informed about the present. It’s bloody difficult, and the more I read, the more I realise how little I know. And yet, many commenters on current events who have little or no knowledge of history are being given airtime, screen time, cyber time and print space, and they are being quoted as experts. Why is it so often the case that those with the least background knowledge on a given topic, express their opinions with an alarming level of self-belief. Of course, they no longer need the high stool with a bored barman and a bunch of old lads sucking on pints. Now they have a smart phone, a Twitter or Facebook account, and loads of friends. They’ve gone viral; the rubbish they espoused from the high stool can now be accessed by an international audience. This situation has created the perfect environment for unedited, unadulterated populism, one of xenophobia’s best buddies.
As I write this, my phone pings. It’s a story from the Irish Times by Kitty Holland, Couple in ad campaign left ‘shaking and fearful’ after online abuse[3]. The mixed-race couple from County Meath, Fiona Ryan and Jon Mathis, who feature in a television and billboard ad campaign for Lidl supermarket chain, were subjected to the most appalling racist tirade on Twitter. It’s the type of story that’s becoming all too common and in the main, the antagonists are invisible, but disturbingly have a power of sorts and are gaining traction at a worrying pace.
Staying at home then, let’s look at the small Irish town of Oughterard on Ireland’s west coast where there is a proposal to open a direct provision centre in a former hotel. It is probably important to mention that prior to this, hotels earmarked for direct provision centres in Moville, Co Donegal and Roosky, Co Roscommon, suffered arson attacks and plans were abandoned, but a centre did successfully go ahead in Lisdoonvara, Co Clare.
In response to the proposal to open the direct provision centre in Oughterard, Independent TD[4], Noel Grealish said that ‘people of African origin’ are only coming here to ‘sponge off the system’. Add to this, a group called ‘Oughterard Says No to Inhumane Direct Provision Centres’ who oppose the location of a Direct Provision centre in the hotel. When populist elements – like the Grealish comment - weave their toxic threads through the rural tapestries of discontent and feelings of abandonment, they always succeed in garnering some support, just enough to change the atmosphere of genuine concern about capacity to something more febrile and unsubstantiated. Indeed, Noel Grealish claimed that the creation of a direct-provision centre in the town would “destroy the fabric of Oughterard”.
But let’s try to understand what ‘Oughterard Says No to Inhumane Direct Provision Centres’ thinks before we judge them. Solicitor, Wendy Lyon, in an Irish Times article entitled Noel Grealish’s views of asylum seekers are based on myth[5], describes the delicate balance between genuine fears and concerns and something more sinister. She writes, ‘The protesters in Oughterard, and their supporters, insist that they are not racist or xenophobic. Some are (justifiably) taking the position that both the centre’s residents and the local community would be ill-served by relocating so many people to inadequate accommodation in this remote and under-resourced town. Others say they are simply calling for more debate. But misinformation is a toxic ingredient in debate and these myths, if left unchallenged, will only contribute to misinformed public policy.’
So how do Irish people really feel about immigrants? Attitudes to Diversity in Ireland[6] was published by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) in March 2018. This report draws on a survey of attitudes from the European Social Survey collected since 2002, and monitors attitudes between 2002 and 2014. Seventeen per cent of respondents believe that some races are ‘born less intelligent.’ Forty-five per cent believe some races “are born harder working,” and almost fifty per cent of Irish adults believe “some cultures are better than others”.
Interestingly, when you consider how the economy really does matter when it comes to anger at the ballot box – just look at rust belt voters in the United States, and Stoke on Trent voters in Brexit Britain - Attitudes to Diversity in Ireland found a more positive attitude to immigrants in the boom years 2002 to 2006. The positive attitude decreased after the 2008 crash, reaching a peak of negativity in 2010, and improved again as the economy improved. This pattern of negativity towards ‘other’ during economic downturns is important to remember, the Weimar Republic being a prime example. So, let’s move on to mainland Europe then, and Poland in particular, whose economy is doing very well at the moment, but like so many European countries, Poland desperately needs workers from abroad to augment its falling population.
In August 2019, Claudia Ciobanu of Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), wrote about a leaked draft of a new Polish migration policy[7] which discriminates against Muslims, and more worryingly, ranks foreigners, outside the EU, according to ethnicity. It puts Poles who emigrated after the fall of communism in 1989 and have the right to return to Poland, at the top of the pyramid. Next come the ethnic Poles seeking repatriation, especially from families who found themselves outside Poland’s new borders at the end of World War II. Third in the pecking order are migrants from Ukraine (where most immigrants currently come from), Belarus and other former Soviet countries. At the bottom of the pile are long-term immigrants from elsewhere who, because they are seen as a threat, would be forced into a policy of integration and assimilation, which rejects multiculturism.
Critics have described this Polish migration policy of rejecting multiculturism in favour of integration and assimilation, as xenophobic. Immigrants will be expected to attend and successfully complete, at their own expense, assimilation programmes to adopt Polish values in relation to worldview, religion, politics, culture, and habits among others, in order to obtain Polish citizenship. This policy is specifically designed to maintain Poland’s homogeneity. Muslims are singled out in the document as being incapable of integration and are seen more as the next step to creating a global Islamic culture, and this fear is palpable in Sweden also.
When the anti-immigrant party, the Swedish Democrats (SD), reached 17.5 per cent of the votes in 2018, our image of that all-embracing country took a knocking. How, we wondered, could such a party gain such traction in this seemingly benign of countries? From receiving just 160,000 votes in 2006 to over 1.1m votes in 2018, SD is now the third largest party in the country. How did it happen? According to Bo Rothstein and Sven Steinmo[8] there are two common explanations. ‘The first points to an underlying racism in Swedish culture. The second argues that globalization has led to increased inequality and a more insecure jobs market’. But they believe it is not that simple.
There is no escaping one big change - the massive increase in the number of immigrants and refugees entering Sweden in very recent years. This relatively small country with fewer than ten million inhabitants has accepted over 300,000 refugees since 2014, far more than their neighbours in Norway and Denmark, who admitted 49,000 and 45,000 respectively. This, Rothstein and Steinmo say, would be equivalent to Britain taking in 1.8 million, or the United States’ taking in nine million.
Instead, Rothstein and Steinmo explain the surge in SD support as signalling a deeper and more fundamental issue in modern Swedish democratic politics – a democratic deficit, meaning that the established parties have been deaf to the preferences of their own citizens, who did not want ‘open door’ immigration at this level. Indeed, they say, anyone who challenged this policy was accused of racism. Swedish voters who wanted a more moderate refugee policy had no party to turn to – except the Sweden Democrats. These voters are angered by broad-based policies being usurped by the rights of minority groups, a development that does not sit well with traditional, middle and working-class citizens, and this has resulted in ‘backlash identity politics.’ Rothstein and Steinmo describe today’s Swedish political, social and economic elite as comfortable in a multi-cultural milieu, unlike the average voting citizens who see their wishes being trampled on by this political elite. Voters in the United States and the United Kingdom also felt that they were being ignored by an out of touch elite, hence the election of President Trump and the passing of Brexit.
Hungary, it would seem, is another story, perhaps more hard-line. President Viktor Orbán does not regard immigration as a solution to the falling population of Hungary. Instead, along with many Central European right-wing leaders, Orbán has bought into the sinister far-right ‘great replacement’ theory, which encourages and supports pro-creation by implementing ‘family first’ policies to incentivise childbearing. In May 2019 a report from the Council of Europe accused Hungary’s government of violating people’s rights and using anti-migrant rhetoric that fuels ‘xenophobic attitudes, fear and hatred’ saying that these human rights violations must be urgently addressed. Violations include wholesale rejections of asylum applications, excessive police violence in removing foreign nationals, and even denying food to those refused asylum. Remember that Orbán’s government built a fence topped by razor wire along the country’s southern border with Serbia.
Many of us might remember the scene on television of a Hungarian police officer deliberately tripping up a refugee father carrying a toddler, and these, along with all the other refugees, were merely passing through Hungary on their way to western Europe. Those who stayed in Hungary now live in detention camps constructed from converted shipping containers, chillingly appropriate when you learn that Orbán, has described migration as a ‘Trojan horse for terrorism.’ More threatening though, is Hungary’s treatment of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working with asylum seekers who risk a one-year prison sentence for providing information.
Similar patterns of xenophobic behaviour when dealing with immigrants can be seen in Brazil’s[9] treatment of thousands of refugees fleeing a broken Venezuela. The figures speak for themselves. UNHCR data shows that from January 2014 to July 2018, 57,575 Venezuelans requested asylum. Incredibly, Brazil granted asylum to 14 in 2016 and denied it to 28. No asylum has been granted since then. More than 5,500 Venezuelans are living in thirteen shelters[10] along the border in Roraima State, but the Brazilian government has been slow to integrate them and most children in shelters do not go to school. As has happened so often throughout history, angry mobs do what angry mobs do. In 2018, a mob expelled Venezuelans from a shelter in Roraima, and burned their belongings; in August, a mob pushed about 1,200 Venezuelans back across the border while police looked on, making no arrests. Police looking on and making no arrests reminds us of the treatment of the black Civil Rights activists in Mississippi in the 1960s, or of civil rights demonstrators in Northern Ireland in the 1960s.
Even the trendy, liberal Netherlands has its murky xenophobic side. An article by Ben Marguiles in the New Statesman entitled Why Europe should worry about rising Dutch populist Thierry Baudet[11] argues that Baudet dresses a ‘xenophobic, authoritarian project in centre-right and middle-class clothing’. Since 2007, the far right was primarily represented by Geert Wilders’ Partij voor der Vrijheid (PVV), a fiercely xenophobic party, especially towards Muslims. PVV commonly masques its true agenda by claiming to defend liberal Dutch values like women’s rights and LGBT rights, against Islamic ‘tyranny’. As with so many far-right parties, the PVV electorate is strongly working class, older and less-well educated than other voters. But now a new, harder hitting party, the Forum voor Democratie (FvD) led by Thierry Baudet, has stolen PVV’s crown.
Marguiles believes that we should be concerned about the rise of the FvD, especially because of its flirtation with white nationalism in the form of American white supremacist Jared Taylor, and its calling for the banning of the Qur’an, while claiming to be doing it all in the name of defending liberal Dutch values. But for Marguiles, what is most worrisome about the FvD is that it targets the voters still within the liberal consensus. According to Marguiles, ‘the more success Baudet obtains among this target group, the weaker the democratic coalition at the heart of Dutch politics, and the longer the shadow Hungarian and Italian populists will cast over Northern Europe.’ One leader who continues to have an uphill battle with anti-immigrant populists, is Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Last year, at a ceremony to mark the 25th anniversary of a neo-Nazi arson attack on an apartment block in Solingen, where five Turkish-German women and girls died, Merkel expressed her concern over growing intolerance and violence towards asylum seekers, immigrants and German citizens with migrant roots. There is no doubt that the unprecedented influx of refugees, especially Muslims, to Germany in recent years has provided fuel for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). ‘Even today,’ Merkel said, ‘people in our country face hostility and are attacked because they are asylum seekers or refugees or are considered such because of their skin colour, regardless of how long they’ve lived with us.’ But anti-Semitic crimes are also on the rise in Germany. According to government data for 2018, hate speech increased by twenty per cent, and there were sixty-two violent anti-Semitic attacks, compared to thirty-seven in 2017.
Xenophobia is also on the rise in Russia according to a survey conducted by Levada Centre and discussed by Igor Serebryany in an article Xenophobia is on a Steep Rise in Russia[12]. Seventy- one percent of survey respondents say they support the ultra-nationalistic slogan ‘Russia for Russians.’ Romas, Chinese, Vietnamese, people of Central Asian and North Caucasian origin, Jews and even Ukrainians, are regarded by fifty-four per cent of respondents as the least desirable ethnic minorities. Poor people in Russia are looking for someone to blame, and predictably, ethnic minorities are the most convenient target, despite the Russian federal authorities' policy of encouraging economic migrants from anywhere in the world to come to Russia.
But there is some good news. Just last month in Italy, a new left-leaning pro-European coalition government replaced far-right leader Matteo Salvini, who held the position of Italy’s interior minister, with Luciana Lamorgese, who is known for promoting integration events and policies for immigrants. Salvini’s hard-line immigration measures included the closure of Italian ports to NGO rescue vessels. For now, at any rate, immigrants are not at the mercy of Salvini’s populist League party.
The brand of xenophobia called Islamophobia, that is, fear of, and discrimination against Muslims, has been gaining traction in the United States especially since 9/11. More recently it was given extra welly with President Trump telling four minority congresswomen - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts to ‘go back’ to the countries they came from. The social media rhetoric of President Trump has intensified this xenophobia among the many millions who are looking for scapegoats to blame for their fall in fortunes, whether those scapegoats be Mexicans on the other side of that ‘wall’ or Muslims with ‘evil intent’. The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU)[13] report American Muslim Poll 2019: Predicting and Preventing Islamophobia, includes the Islamophobia Index (II), created in partnership with Georgetown University. It shows that negative public opinion of Muslims has increased in the United States in the past year; but bear in mind that it is increasing year on year anyway.
Furthermore, the report highlights some interesting findings about the relationships between ethnic and religious groups in the United States. It found that Jewish and Hispanic Americans are most favourable toward Muslims, while about forty-four per cent of white evangelicals hold unfavourable views about Muslims. Interestingly, the report shows that those who scored higher on the Islamophobia Index were least likely to know a Muslim person, while those who knew a Muslim scored lower on the Islamophobia Index. Respondents with positive views of other minorities and who had a knowledge of other religions also scored lower on the Islamophobia Index. This fits in with what Negin Farsad, the Iranian-American comedian, actor, writer and filmmaker, writes in her chapter entitled My Own People in the wonderfully clever and witty Don’t Panic I’m Islamic. She describes the Southerners and the Mormons she met while travelling with Muslim comedians around the deep south and in Utah, as open and welcoming. ‘They had honest questions about us – questions like why don’t we denounce terrorism, or would goldfish constitute halal food. I didn’t find them particularly racist, I didn’t think they were trying to run me out of town, and I generally had a great time.’
So, let’s move from Islamophobia in America to anti-Semitism in Europe. In a December 2018 survey on anti-Semitism in Europe, the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency found that a worryingly high eighty-nine per cent of Jews living in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK, feel anti-Semitism has increased in their country over the past decade. In tandem with this, eighty-five per cent of respondents said they believe anti-Semitism to be a serious problem[14] with almost half of respondents reporting worries about being insulted or harassed in public and more than a third fearing being physically attacked.
The problem of xenophobia is so widespread and multi-faceted that it is impossible to keep abreast of it. Life is short; nobody lives forever. I’d like to think that most of us couldn’t care less about peoples’ ethnic origins, colour, or religion, so why then, are they being harnessed by a minority of alt-right, populist, nationalist, white supremacist, xenophobic bully boys to arouse fear and suspicion in susceptible or undecided voters? Where is this road leading? Its destination does not look good for anyone.
[1] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/french-military-nails-its-colours-to-marine-le-pen-s-mast-1.3971126
[2] Now Zimbabwe
[3] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/couple-in-ad-campaign-left-shaking-and-fearful-after-online-abuse-1.4031549
[4] Member of parliament in Ireland
[5] https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/noel-grealish-s-views-of-asylum-seekers-are-based-on-myth-1.4021292
[6] https://www.esri.ie/publications/attitudes-to-diversity-in-ireland
[7] A leaked copy of the draft policy was published in full (in Polish) in June by the Association for Legal Intervention rights group.
[8] https://www.socialeurope.eu/me-too-the-rise-of-middle-class-populism-in-sweden-and-beyond
This article was originally published in Swedish by Dagens Nyheter
[9] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/brazil
[10] Opened by the federal government and the UNHCR
[11] https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2019/05/why-europe-should-worry-about-rising-dutch-populist-thierry
[12] https://www.fairplanet.org/editors-pick/xenophobia-on-the-steep-rise-in-russia/
[13] https://www.ispu.org/public-policy/american-muslim-poll/
[14] https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/06/04/alarming-rise-anti-semitism-europe
