Europe is haunted by a ghost, the ghost of “the population”. In particular, (extreme) right-wing politicians and activists, from Martin Bosma to Eva Vlaardingerbroek, promote the idea that “globalist elites” are busy behind the scenes secretly allowing mass immigration from Africa and the Middle East, especially Muslims, into Europe, with the express purpose of imposing their intolerant culture on “us” (read Islamization) and make the inhabitants of this continent a demographic minority.
This idea, also suggested by editors such as Wierd Duk van De Telegraph and many others spread through social media, it has deep historical roots, but has had tailwinds, especially since 9/11, through best-selling books such as Eurabia (2005) van Bat Ye’or en The Great Compensation (The Great Replacement) by French writer Renaud Camus from 2011.
To the end from the author
Leo Lucassen is the director of the International Institute of Social History and a professor at Leiden University.
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The fact that there is absolutely no evidence for this racist conspiracy theory and that demographic facts are behind it has not prevented successful progress and normalization. Even the terrorist attack in the summer of 2011 by the Norwegian extremist Anders Behring Breivik, taken over by population change ideas, proved to be futile. wake up calland they were not followed by many attacks. Even outright anti-Semitic interpretations could do little. This became particularly clear when, during the “refugee crisis” in 2015, Jewish philanthropist George Soros and his Open Society Foundations were targeted by populists.
In a perfectly classic anti-Semitic argument that wealthy Jews were trying to destroy Christian societies behind the scenes, Soros was blamed for flooding Europe with millions of Muslim asylum seekers. The fact that Open Society Foundations defends human rights was enough to hold him responsible for “mass immigration”. So it’s no surprise that in August 2017, American white supremacists in Charlottesville chanted “the Jews will not replace us.” Nor is it the fact that in the United States, in addition to Africans, Hispanics and Muslims, Jews and synagogues were also affected in several population terrorist attacks, such as in Pittsburgh on October 27, 2018.
You’d think these facts would be enough to consign repopulation thinking to the dustbin of history, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. The repeated declaration that “we” are becoming a minority in our own country did not prevent the appointment of Martin Bosma as Speaker of the House of Representatives.
And what about the fact that the leader of his party, Geert Wilders, has been talking and tweeting about Muslims and immigration for nearly 20 years, papally attending far-right conferences and broadcasting a message about population change through the far-right’s anonymous X-account ‘Radio’. Genoa spread? All apparently not enough to break Van der Plas, Yesilgöz and Omtzigt with PVV.
Given the anti-Semitic undercurrent of depopulation thinking, it can be said that in this context it is somewhat perverse that Wilders and other radical right-wing politicians frame protests against Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza as “anti-Semitism” whenever possible. and Palestinians are collectively labeled as anti-Semitic Hamas supporters. It fits their anti-Islam and anti-immigration agenda perfectly.
But even if politicians like Wilders are right to point out the anti-Semitic mote in someone else’s eye, it should still be noticeable that they fail to see the racist beam in their own eye, including anti-Semitic elements like the Soros enemy. picture .
To make us aware of the disturbing and rapidly increasing normalization of racist ideas in society and politics, it would not hurt to (again) draw inspiration from largely Jewish social and political scientists such as Theodor Adorno, Hanna Ahrendt, Max Horkheimer and Gordon. Allport and Stanley Milgram, who, deeply disturbed by Auschwitz, began to do basic research after the war on how things could have gotten to this point.
Although they emphasized that what we have come to call since the 1960s the “Holocaust” was the most horrific consequence of human enemy thinking, the massacre of six million European Jews provided them with a starting point for tracing the mechanisms of general prejudice. racism and dehumanization. Thanks in part to their research, we know the consequences of collective and indiscriminate labeling of people, whether Jewish, Muslim, immigrant, LGBTQ, or “class enemy” (think Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot).
In particular, it is high time for politicians, just like after World War II, to draw a line in the sand and stop normalizing what should not be normal.