In
The Netherlands, a formerly fringe far-right party won more seats in the
Dutch general election than
any other political group.
اضافة اعلان
In
Dublin, a knife attack outside a school triggers
rioting and looting by right-wing thugs.
In
the UK, the latest YouGov poll reveals
rising support for the right-wing Reform party.
The
common theme in each of these recent news stories is immigration, a topic that
has risen to the top of political agendas across Europe, threatening to
transform liberal democracies into illiberal bastions of intolerance.
Make
no mistake. This isn’t about “illegal” immigration. It is about racism, pure
and simple.
For
instance, it suits the UK government to make an issue out of “
stopping the boats” crossing the English Channel.
But
the numbers involved are tiny
compared with the number of migrants
coming to the UK legally, to work as doctors, nurses and care-home
assistants, or to study as students.
And
even those students are coming under fire.
The
UK is seeing a
record number of students coming from overseas to study. Worth millions
to universities, which charge foreign students far higher fees than their
British counterparts, they
contribute significantly to the nation’s GDP.
Some
stay on in the country after completing their course. If they do, it’s because
they’ve got a job and are paying taxes to the treasury.
Regardless,
right-wing politicians are now demanding that such students should not be
allowed to
bring family to live with
them.
Europe
is walking, eyes tight shut, into a new dark age that makes a mockery of the
70-million-plus lives lost during the Second World War in the effort to rid the
world of the cancerous, supremacist ideology of the Nazis.
A
fundamental misunderstanding underpins Europe’s rising tide of immigration
hysteria: Europe, with birth rates declining, needs immigration.
In
the UK in particular, migrants form a large part of the workforce, including
doctors and nurses, but also carry out many of the low-paid jobs.
But
at the same time, right-wing politicians are peddling the false trope that
migrants are taking “our” jobs and housing, clogging up “our” health system and
– most sinister of all – “changing the shape of our country before our very
eyes.”
That
last incendiary quote comes from Richard Tice, a wealthy British property
developer who founded the UK Brexit party and is now the leader of its
successor Reform party, which says Britain is “broken” and “needs net zero
immigration.”
The
Conservative government, he said, had “
totally betrayed” the British people because immigration to the UK was at
a record high.
It
is, but only because if it wasn’t, Britain’s economy would collapse.
Regardless,
traditional, more reasonable political parties across Europe are in a bind. If
they ignore the rising tide of racist hysteria, they will be swept away, and so
they are pandering to the mob.
In
the UK, the Conservative government is fragmenting, torn apart by the competing
narratives of the beleaguered party’s few remaining centrist MPs, and the
extremists like the recently sacked Home Secretary Suella Braverman, architect
of the bizarre policy of dispatching
boat people to Rwanda.
In
The Netherlands, a four-party coalition government collapsed in July after
failing to reach agreement over measures to control the flow of migrants.
Into
the moral vacuum stepped radical right-winger
Geert Wilders, a preposterous man who rants about the “tsunami of
asylum and immigration” and who has pledged to “ban” the Quran, close the
country’s borders and deliver “Nexit,” a Dutch version of Brexit.
On
one level, this growing distaste for non-European foreigners is hilarious,
given that it is a direct consequence of the colonialism that European states
such as the UK, and Holland imposed on the world for centuries.
But
such truths cast no shadows on the fantasy landscapes occupied by the likes of
Wilders.
The
advantages of cultural diversity are obvious, and too numerous to list, and in
choosing to present multiculturalism as a threat rather than an asset,
right-wing politicians expose themselves for what they are – racists.
In
Ireland last week, anti-migrant mobs gathered following an incident in which
five people, including a five-year-old girl, were stabbed outside a primary
school in Dublin.
In
the words of the police, "hateful assumptions" that the attacker was
a foreign national spread quickly, and mobs took to the streets, expressing
their disdain for foreigners by, oddly, vandalizing and looting Irish shops.
Ironically,
the man who
risked his own life to save the wounded victims, was himself a migrant, a
fast-food courier and a father of two, originally from Brazil.
Unfortunately,
Europe is increasingly under the spell of those who would highlight our
differences rather than our similarities, in a cynical bid to seize power.
The
roots of all the disruptions in the Middle East and North Africa that have, to
a significant extent, contributed to Europe’s migrant problems, can be traced
to European intervention in the region dating back to the First World War.
The
challenge now for Europe’s moderate, mainstream politicians, is to recognize
and own this history, to hold the line of decency, and to combat, rather than
pander to, the false narratives of the extremists.
So
far, however, none has appeared capable of rising to this challenge, and Europe
is slipping inexorably into a moral dark age.
Jonathan Gornall is a British journalist,
formerly with The Times, who has lived and worked in the Middle East and is now
based in the UK.
Disclaimer:
Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Jordan News' point of view.
Read more Opinion and Analysis
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
