Guy Verhofstadt
Project Syndicate
4 September 2017
BRUSSELS – After a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which anti-fascist campaigner Heather Heyer was killed, and many others injured, US President Donald Trump notoriously blamed “both
sides” for the violence. By equating neo-Nazis with those who stood
against them, Trump (further) sullied his presidency. And by describing
some of the participants in the Charlottesville rally as “very fine
people,” he gave a nod to far-right bigots worldwide.
A few weeks thereafter, just as Hurricane Harvey was bearing down on Texas, Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio,
the former sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona. Arpaio had been
convicted of contempt of court in July for defying a federal judge’s
order to stop racially profiling Latinos. But the way Trump sees it, Arpaio was “convicted for doing his job.”
Arpaio once boasted
that the outdoor jail where he held undocumented immigrants was akin to a
concentration camp. And he is now a leading exponent of the Tea Party
and other xenophobic right-wing movements that rallied behind Trump in
last year’s election. By pardoning Arpaio, Trump was, once again,
implicitly embracing white supremacists and nativists worldwide.
Sadly, many of
Trump’s allies in the Republican Party have barely raised an eyebrow in
response to his latest words and actions. And according to a recent ABC News-Washington Postpoll,
9% of respondents – “equivalent to about 22 million Americans” – find
it “acceptable to hold neo-Nazi or white supremacist views.”
This is a shocking
finding. But it is not limited to the United States. Europe, too, is
witnessing a worrying surge of racism, nationalism, anti-Semitism, and
xenophobia. In a recent poll conducted
for Chatham House, 55% of European respondents agreed that “all further
migration from mainly Muslim countries” should be stopped. That is
higher than the 48% of Americans who, in February, supported Trump’s executive order barring travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
It is time for
Europeans who would prefer to dismiss white supremacy as an American
phenomenon to mind their own backyards. Since Trump’s election in the US
and the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, hate speech and crimes
against ethnic minorities and foreign nationals have started to become
normalized in many Western countries.
Most worryingly, intolerance may be on the rise among young people. The British magazine TES reports that
“hate crimes and hate incidents in British schools” increased by 48% in
the summer and fall terms of 2016, compared to the same period of the
previous year. As the report notes, this coincides precisely with the
Brexit referendum and Trump’s election.
In today’s information landscape, social media have become the primary means for spreading hatred.
The largest social-media platforms are now host to countless fake and
anonymous accounts that spew xenophobic, nationalistic, and racist
messages. These accounts are polluting a medium that many young people
enjoy, and exposing impressionable minds to dangerous falsehoods and
conspiracy theories.
But it is not just
online trolls who are empowering people to be racist, anti-Semitic, and
homophobic. Many world leaders and prominent opinion makers are doing
it, too. Although mainstream European leaders offered a clear rebuke to
the Charlottesville violence and Trump’s reaction to it, they need to go
further. Now more than ever, the European Union must demonstrate its
commitment to upholding core values of equality and tolerance.
The fact that the
current Hungarian and Polish governments are intentionally undermining
democratic institutions in those countries should be evidence enough
that we cannot take freedom, liberty, and the rule of law for granted.
It took many years to build democratic institutions in Central and
Eastern Europe, but it has taken just a few parliamentary elections to
reverse that progress. For the sake of European democracy, the other
members of the EU must take collective action now to sanction these increasingly authoritarian governments for their transgressions.
After an increase in
anti-Semitic incidents in 2004, when I was the prime minister of
Belgium, I launched an initiative to remind young people of the costs of
World War II. During their history lessons, Belgian students would
learn about the implications and negative consequences of certain
ideologies.
With hatred on the
march again today, we must remember that education is crucial in the
fight against authoritarianism, which can thrive on generational
complacency. To ensure that democratic values prevail, we must encourage
all people to reflect on the lessons of the past, when grotesque abuses
were perpetrated against millions.
We owe it to all of
those who suffered under past authoritarian regimes to stand up now for
democratic values. We can start by pushing back, as Heather Heyer did,
against the right-wing populists who are openly fomenting hatred across
the West.
Guy Verhofstadt,
a former Belgian prime minister, is President of the Alliance of
Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group (ALDE) in the European
Parliament and the author of Europe’s Last Chance: Why the European States Must Form a More Perfect Union.
Source: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/hate-speech-in-us-and-europe-by-guy-verhofstadt-2017-09
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