Posts Tagged: Europe

European Islamophobia Report: Finland

The European Islamophobia Report 2020 was published on December 29. Below is the Finland chapter of the report. The editors for the report are Dr. Enes Bayrakli and Dr. Farid Hafez. While the government of Prime Minister Sanna Marin has tried to roll back some of the draconian immigration law measures of the previous government,

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: Stop debating with fascists and racists

Migrant Tales insight: Aleksander Hemon states in his eloquent article about fascism that we should not waste any time debating but that “it is a set of actions to fight.” In the essay, he admits feeling guilty and ashamed of his cowardice and naivety that just talking to a fascist might bring him back.  In

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Migrants’ Rights Network: Walls and borders

Are walls and tighter border controls the answer to the big questions on immigration? Do they achieve what their advocates set out to do? Or should the world aim to return to a time when less xenophobia and more trust in people was the order of the day?

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Finland Bridge: What threatens us?

Everything that puts Europe in harm’s way today is in some cases more challenging to Finland: geopolitical uncertainty in Russia ranks high on the list as does populism, anti-immigration sentiment, near-flat economic growth, high unemployment, rising poverty and nationalism.

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Migrant Tales (January 26, 2013): Making torture and hate acceptable

Even if the media in the United States speaks of torture as something recent, the truth is that it has been going on for a very long time. These type of barbaric interrogation techniques were widely used in the last century in regions like Latin America. The CIA and the United States trained and promoted torture and state-sponsored terrorism in places like the School of the Americas.

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Migrant Tales Literary: Peep show

Leo Honka Folks! We’re not going to visit a traditional peep show with women or men but one where all your bigotry, hate, and racism undress before you. Social media peep show sites like Hommaforum* are such places. People visit them anonymously and get all excited by their lewd thoughts. They too undress but with

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Racism Review: #JeSuisCharlie? Maybe if you’re white!

Raul Perez Now that some of the dust has settled following the shooting of 12 cartoonists from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, the numbers are in. According to a recent Pew survey  (n=1,003), 3 in 4 Americans heard about the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and 60% supported the magazine’s depiction of the Prophet

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Institute of Race Relations: ‘Apologists for terrorism:’ dissent and the limits of free expression

Frances Webber Freedom of thought, expression and inquiry is under renewed threat from governments which, paradoxically, claim to be fighting to preserve freedom of expression in Europe. The ongoing case of a Belgian prison teacher issued with a work ban on national security grounds, and other disturbing cases of exclusion and criminalisation that have occurred

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Social media Frankensteins

Ever wondered how a wannabe becomes a social media hit by spreading hatred and racism? There are a lot of these types of politicians and characters around who with low budgets become famous and even get elected thanks to social media. They are called #SocialMediaFrankensteins.  With the help of social media and many blind followers, some

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Racism Review: Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie: A Critical View

To be frank, the magazine Charlie Hebdo deserves criticism, not praise—despite the horrific events that have unfolded. While I am certainly not condoning the murder of its staff members, I do find them guilty of Islam-bashing and inconsiderately expressing religious intolerance, cultural ethnocentrism, and extremely poor human judgment, issues that should be important to antiracists

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European Network Against Racism first hate speech report

In March, the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) and European Region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans & Intersex Association (ILGA-Europe) launched an Appeal for an election campaign free from discrimination and intolerance, urging European parties to condemn discriminatory or intolerant remarks during the European Parliament election campaign. An online form was launched, enabling

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Cultural and ethnic diversity are who we are

When you do everything possible to undermine diversity you end up letting out the genie out of the bottle.         If we look at the political climate in Finland today with the rise of an anti-EU, anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) in 2011, it’s clear that the genie

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Burst the hate bubble of anti-immigration groups

When you listen to anti-immigration politicians and groups, there’s one matter that exposes them to the tee: Constant whining without any solutions. They don’t give you the solution to the problem because they simply have none to offer. Read full story here. The Nazis were questionably pro-active on ethnic issues. As we saw from 1933,

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Why do we still hesitate to challenge intolerance in Finland?

I had an interesting chat yesterday with an old friend about racism in Finland. One of the matters we agreed was that Finland hasn’t reached that stage where we accept that racism exists and that concrete steps must be taken to challenge it. This fact leads us to a second important question: Why?  The answer

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ENAR condemns racism against blacks in Europe

MT comment:  The statement by the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) was published five days before the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” speech, and the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and of its Abolition. Millions of black Europeans are still victims of racism and discrimination

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Why aren’t we outraged enough by intolerance?

Finnish department store J. Kärkkäinen’s Magneettimedia writings are a disturbing sign of how anti-Semitism, like anti-immigration and anti-Islam sentiment, have gained a foothold in Finland. And why shouldn’t it find fertile ground to grow in this country? During the past years, the genie of intolerance has been let out of the bottle and it shows.  We’re

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Why we must challenge anti-immigration parties across Europe

A political party that bases its popularity on anti-immigration and populist rhetoric is like playing a risky political game of Russian roulette. The game continues until the only bullet in the revolver goes off in your head. Higher bets are placed each time that the revolver doesn’t fire: more xenophobia, more hate speech, more racist

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Dissecting Finnish racism and bigotry

“Racism is like a Cadillac, they bring out a new model every year.”  Malcolm X (1925-65) The quote by one of the most powerful voices to emerge from the U.S. Civil Rights Movements, reveals how racism survived in the 1960s to see another day. Even though the quote by Malcolm X was made about a

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The biggest threat to Europe are those who claim to be afraid on our behalf

I’m neither afraid of cultural diversity nor terrorism. Being against different cultures in a globalized world is like being against sex. Cultural diversity, interculturalism and sex are part of the human condition. You cannot make them illegal in any way, shape or form.    If we’d embrace far right and mainstream anti-immigration ideologies so common in today’s

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ENAR press statement: British soldier’s murder is unacceptable but should not result in a racist backlash

Comment: This statement by the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) says that all types of violence should be condemned. We strongly condemn the murder committed against a member of the British armed forces.  _______ Brussels, 23 May 2013 – The European Network Against Racism (ENAR) strongly condemns the hateful murder committed against a British member

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Statement by the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner: “Europe must combat racist extremism and uphold human rights”

Migrant Tales comment: This statement by the  the Council of Europe’s Human Rights commissioner, Nils Muižnieks, is a good example of  how racist anti-immigration groups are gaining more power in Europe. In Finland we saw the spectacular rise of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party in 2011. Finland’s anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-Islam voice got stronger in parliament.  Matters

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Whiteness and white privilege speak European languages

As we hold our collective breaths and await to know the identity of the bombings in Boston Monday, too many don’t see a suspect but a whole ethnicity or religious group. Tim Wise put it very well in an opinion piece where he makes some distributing revelations about the power of whiteness. If we understand

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Julian Abagond: The term “illegal immigrant”

By Julian Abagond The term “illegal immigrant” (1930s- ) means an undocumented immigrant, one without papers to stay in the country. The older term was ”illegal alien”, common in English in the 1970s and 1980s, rare in American news stories since 2003. An illegal immigrant can mean someone who: crossed the border illegally, overstayed a student or

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Three news stories that expose the challenges facing Europe: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-Roma and official approval of the latter

Three stories this week spoke volumes about the challenges facing Europe during these times: discrimination against Muslims is widespread in many European countries; a string of anti-Semitic attacks have been reported in Eastern Europe; and Hungary’s top journalism prize is awarded to an anti-Semitic and Roma basher.  Despite their geographic differences, all three stories are related shedding light on

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ENAR announcement: Recycling hatred – racism(s) in Europe today

The European Network Against Racism (ENAR) will organize a policy forum at the Institute for European Studies (IES),  Vrije Universiteit Brussel, on 7th March 2013 in order to launch the ENAR publication, entitled “Recylcing hatred: racism(s) in Europe today.” For more information go to the following link. Recyling hatred #1 Recyling hatred #2

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Making torture and hate acceptable

Even if the media in the United States speaks of torture as something recent, the truth is that it has been going on for a very long time. These type of barbaric interrogation techniques were widely used in the last century in regions like Latin America. The CIA and the United States trained and promoted torture and state-sponsored terrorism in places like the School of the Americas.

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Rule number one about racism: Don’t generalize!

It is amazing that people who should know better have never learned one very important fact: Don’t generalize about ethnic groups.  We’d avoid a lot of harm to ourselves (living in the narrow world of hate and racism) and others (labeling and victimizing) if we stopped generalizing about ethnic groups. The suggestion by Kai Haavisto,

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A cartoon that reveals a truth about integration and diversity in Europe

Sometimes when I read about how immigrants, their children and grandchildren are treated in some European countries, this cartoon comes to mind.  After the first warning and after you understand fully the but after the ” we’re a very tolerant society…” line,  many will encounter the wall of  institutional racism, the final icing of your integration cake

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Promoting tolerance now and tomorrow

In Migrant Tales’ Finland & Cultural Diversity 2012 review, it’s clear that a lot more work needs to be done to promote tolerance. Thanks to Umayya Abu-Hanna’s column on Sunday’s Helsingin Sanomat,* our collective complacency was once again shamefully revealed. Racism, or the lack of acceptance of other ethnic groups as equals in our society,

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Timo Soini on racism: See no evil, hear no evil

It is surprising how a politician like Timo Soini of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party can argue anything he wants on television about immigrants and visible minorities. His objection to positive discrimination on a debate on MTV3 Wednesday is a case in point.  Migrant Tales has  written in the past about colorblind racism, which is one of the most common

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New World Finn: Open the doors

Twenty-five years ago, when I worked briefly for the Buenos Aires Herald as a young reporter, I wrote a column about how Argentina’s past could come to haunt it in the future. The last military regime (1976-83) that ruled the country was one of the most ruthless that Latin America had seen during the last

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Race and intelligence

A BBC documentary, Race and Intelligence, asks if there is a racial* pecking order where white people are more intelligent than blacks. It seems unbelievable that this question continues to be asked in the twenty-first century, according to Rageh Omar of the BBC.  One of the matters that has amazed me personally in Finland and

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Julian Abagond: human zoos

Julian Abagond  Human zoos (1500s- ), also known as ethnological exhibits, peoples shows (Völkerschau) or Negro villages, showed native peoples at zoos and fairs. They have been common in the West since the time of Columbus, butreached their height from the 1870s to the 1930s – back in the days of Joseph Conrad, Gauguin, minstrel shows and

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Business Insider: Timo Soini’s “threat” to the world economy

Not only must have Perussuomalaiset (PS) party chairman Timo Soini been swept off his feet with delight for being named by Business Insider  as the seventh-most dangerous person to the global economy, but Finland as well for such a dubious recognition. Who ever heard of Business Insider anyway? For starters, somebody could inform the online publication that the official

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Finland’s and Japan’s demographic and economic decline

You don’t have to be an expert to understand that Europe and especially Finland are speeding towards a demographic and economic decline of untold proportions. The calamity we face will not come from outside our borders per se but will have the “Made in Finland” label on it.   There’s an interesting story on the

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Finland’s interior minister wants to make begging illegal

Christian Democrat (KD) Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen was quoted as saying on MTV3 that she is in favor of making begging illegal in Finland. Just like many past suggestions by the conservative Räsänen, like her provocative views on homosexuality that caused last year an exodus from the Lutheran Church, her views on begging and how to deal with a group like the Roma of Eastern Europe doesn’t come as a surprise.

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Our Finnish national identity in the new century

Glancing through a pile of documents and certificates my late grandfather (1892-1979) had is like entering a time machine. Two certificates catch my attention: a Finnish-language test in 1925 and another one when he changed his surname from Hantwargh to Harvo. Both documents offer us a glimpse of how a social construct like Finnish national identity was forged in the last century.

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The "us"-and-"them" smoking-gun statement that once justified mass murder in Europe

One of the matters that surprises me about some Finnish politicians is how they continue to flirt with ideologies that led Europe to its destruction in the 1940s. The younger they are, and the further they are in time from fascism, the more some flirt and idolize this ideology. To them I would like to give them a quote by Rudolf Hoess, the notorious commandant of the Aushcwitz concentration camp during 1940-43.

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The Migrant Tales Manifesto (for Finland and Europe)

Thanks to the growing number of supporters, Migrant Tales has become that “voice for those whose views and situation are understood poorly and heard faintly by the media, politicians and public.” During these past years we have read and debated many points of views and have complied them on a list below.

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A good immigration integration policy for Finland and Europe

One of the biggest challenges to Finland’s new integration program is how well it promotes what it set out to do. How passionate are we Finns about ethnic and minority equality in this country if the most important piece of the puzzle is still missing: the big picture and what place new Finns and their children have in our society.

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Uncovering the tree of hatred

If we could draw a tree that bares these fruits of hatred how would it look like? Would our surprise be to discover that it’s the same-looking tree that continues to cast its shadow on all of our societies for centuries? It still stands mighty and tall because we continue to feed and protect it.

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Argentina’s dirty war: A couple I never met but always knew

It’s a long story how I ended up conscripted in the Argentinean army during the dirty war (1976-83). Being part of a country that was at war with itself was like taking a one-way stroll down the ally of hatred with a sack over your head. Even if no sack was placed over your head your eyes couldn’t see nor your ears hear what was happening. Terror has a way of numbing your senses.

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Fairy tale worlds with the help of hate speech in Finland and elsewhere

The recent anti-immigration killings in Norway at the hands of Anders Breivik and this week in Italy by Gianluca Casseri show how xenophobic fairy tales can turn a person into a killer. As populist and far-right parties in Europe continue to throw petrol at the flames of their hate speech, it is only a question of time when new Breiviks and Casseris will appear on the scene.

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Making racism shameful in Finland and Europe

While the US Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. did not eradicate racism in the United States, it was singled out as a threat to society and challenged. Landmark laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were not the only matters that changed things. Racism became shameful in many parts of the United States.

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Multilingual Mania: Dehumanizing Immigrants-Lies and More Distorted Lies

It’s a classic trick of the racists to paint a portrait of a people so horrible that it makes anything that is done to them to be justifiable. It’s quite a brilliant idea, really, to be able to paint such a nasty picture of someone in the mind of the public without many people hardly even catching on to the trick. This strategy serves to dehumanize people, stripping them of their humanity and making them into objects that deserve to be tamed, oppressed, and controlled.

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The meaning of the veil and why some want to ban it

Switzerland’s lower house of parliament voted Wednesday 101-77 to outlaw veils like the burqa when using public transport or visiting authorities, reports AP. The measure, which is being spearheaded by the Swiss People’s Party, will go for a vote in the upper house before federal elections next month.

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Le Monde Diplomatique: Lessons from Norway

What do the tragic events in Utoya and Oslo tell us about the status of far-right, anti-immigrant or Islamophobic politics in Norway, Scandinavia and the rest of Europe? Commentators and “security experts” — many of whom were initially convinced of the Islamic nature of the attacks — have spent the past month speculating.

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PS stands for perkele saatanas – damn everything!

The biggest shock on April 17 was that Finns woke up to the reality that a large minority (19.1%) had radical views on issues like the EU, immigration and nationalism. A poll published on Friday showed that the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party continues to be the biggest in Finland. What does it say about the present state of Finland?

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The New York Review of Books: Toleration and the Future of Europe

In Anders Breivik’s manifesto, the ostensibly Christian defeat of the Ottoman armies at Vienna in 1683 is the central historical event. He imagines a European rebirth in 2083, four hundred years later, and names the Polish king Jan Sobieski, whose troops were crucial to raising the Ottoman siege, as one of his heroes: “John III Sobieski and the Holy League successfully defended Europe against an army of more than 150,000 Muslims.” Breivik thinks Europe today is again under siege from Muslims, and that Europeans must resort to “atrocious, but necessary” violence to defend it. It is unsurprising that what Breivik has to say about European history is trivial. The plagiarism of his manifesto recalls Hannah Arendt’s point that those who do great evil may themselves be incapable of cultural creation. The superficiality of his worldview recalls her notion that the greatest of evils has no roots, and therefore has no bounds. But since the reference to Vienna has largely passed without criticism, it is worth recalling for a moment what actually happened in 1683.

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Spiegel Online International: Can Europe’s Populists Be Blamed for Anders Breivik’s Crusade?

Norway and the world are still struggling to understand the ghastly deeds of Anders Breivik, who was driven to kill by his hatred of Muslims. His confused worldview, which Breivik describes in a 1,500-word manifesto, was influenced by European right-wing populists. Do politicians and writers share some of the blame for his terrible crimes? By SPIEGEL Staff.

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Living in post-22/7 Europe: The tide has turned

One of the biggest blows to the far right and right-wing populist parties in Europe and the Nordic Region after the horrific events in Norway has been to seriously question their raison d’être: their provocative anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam discourse.

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guardian.co.uk: Anders Behring Breivik had no legitimate grievance

Despite the fact that Anders Behring Breivik was not permitted to publicly justify his actions in public on Monday, a scrambling defence of his repertoire of prejudice is already in full swing. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Bruce Bawer, who is quoted by Breivik in his manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, emphasises his repeated warnings that a rightwing extremist may use violence to address “legitimate concerns about genuine problems”. Bawer blames mainstream politics for failing to address the corrosion of Europe by Islamicisation and multiculturalism, meanwhile The Jerusalem Post cautions that “Oslo’s devastating tragedy should not be allowed to be manipulated by those who would cover up the abject failure of multiculturalism”.

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Suomen Kuvalehti.fi: Terrorismintutkija: Breivik selittää tekonsa vasta-jihadilla – tästä on kyse

Kun uhrit on laskettu, alkaa syiden pohdinta. Millaisella ajatusmaailmalla Anders Behring Breivik perusteli tekonsa itselleen ja yrittää tehdä niin myös muille?

Breivik julkaisi perjantaina noin 1500-sivuisen manifestin, jossa hän muun muassa kuvailee valmistautumista terrori-iskuun. Hän kertoo vastustavansa islamia ja marxismia. Terrorismintutkija Toby Archer sanoo, että Breivik ei ole vain hullu. Hän on selvästi mielenvikainen, mutta hänellä on myös poliittinen viesti.

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guardian.co.uk: North Carolina’s reparation for the dark past of American eugenics

North Carolina’s compensation to victims of forced sterilisation is a chance to illuminate a gruesome US tradition of racial ‘science.’

Twenty-seven American states joined a decades-long pseudo-scientific crusade to create a white, blond, blue-eyed, biologically superior “master race”. Their misguided utopian quest was called eugenics. But only one state, North Carolina, is now readying a massive plan of financial repatriations to its survivying victims. Just how much North Carolina should pay is now the subject of a historically wrenching debate.

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HS: Ihmisrotuja ei voi perustella biologialla

Mitä pidemmälle ihmiskunnan geneettisen muuntelun tutkimus on edennyt, sitä selvemmäksi on käynyt, että mitään selviä ihmisrotuja ei ole olemassa.Antropologian historian aikana ihmiskunnassa on erotettu kymmeniä eri rotuja. Ihmisbiologiassa ollaan kuitenkin nykyään luopumassa tai on jo luovuttu rodun käsitteestä.

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Am I a carrier of European right-wing populist rhetoric?

We all know that right-wing populism is on the rise in Europe. By the same token, many us without knowing it, may carry the same seeds of intolerance that these groups spread without ever knowing it. Certainly our democratic society must be able to debate a wide range of issues that affect us like immigration. We must, however, be able to distinguish what are inaccurate claims and facts.

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The New York Review of Books: A New Approach to the Holocaust

It is fruitless to reduce the manifold evil of the Holocaust to a single cause. Ideology, charisma, conformism, hatred, greed, and war were all very important, but each was related to the others and all mattered within rapidly changing historical circumstances. In his profound study Holocaust, Peter Longerich puts forward an analysis that includes all these factors and shows how politics or, as he puts it, Politik, set them all in motion. In this amplified English edition of his Politik der Vernichtung (1998), Longerich preserves the German term Judenpolitik, and with good reason. In German Politik means both “politics” and “policy,” and the compound noun (Juden + Politik) gives a sense of a joining of concepts that English cannot quite convey.

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The multicultural society of the future

It seems odd that in today’s technilogically advanced societies in Europe and elsewhere our views of other groups continues to pose major challenges. If I had to picture the sitaution in a cartoon, I would draw a picture of one of our first primates, Australopithecus africanus, which existed 2-3 million years before present sitting in front of a computer and speaking to the future with a Skype time machine.

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