Despite a “Never Again” after Auschwitz for the last 71 Years, the Current Climate in Europe is turn
71 years ago today, the Red Army liberated the concentration camp Auschwitz. Since 1996, January 27th is legally consolidated in Germany as the ‘Day of Commemoration for the Victims of National Socialism’, and the United Nations established the ‘International Holocaust Remembrance Day’ in 2005 to remind the world of the cruel and unprecedented crimes committed under the Nazi regime.
It seems it is more relevant than ever to underline the aim of the remembrance and commemoration days – to prevent these events from ever happening again. While all European countries are still struggling to find sustainable long-term solutions to the refugee crisis, the Dutch right-wing populist Geert Wilders has once again drawn attention to himself. His Islamophobic party PVV recently published a video message on its YouTube channel, where he shares his views on asylum seekers in Europe following the widely covered events on New Year’s Eve.
In a little over three minutes, he calls for the borders to be closed and for all male asylum-seekers to be “locked up” in asylum centres (in “closed institutions”); his rhetoric chillingly reminding the audience of the hate-speech and scapegoating used by Hitler and the Nazis 80 years ago.
He accuses male asylum-seekers to be “testosterone bombs”, claims that their behaviour is “sexual terrorism, a sexual jihad”. He claims, Europe is witnessing a “rape epidemic”. Wilders blames German Chancellor Merkel and Dutch Prime Minister Rutte for their ‘open-door-policy’, attacking them for “rolling out a red carpet”, and accuses them for “abandoning (…) women”.
Alike to other populists and nationalists, he abused the events taking place during the night of New Year’s Eve in Cologne and other cities by wrongly accusing, exaggerating (“thousands of Arab men (…) raped hundreds of women”) and generalising that the perpetrators’ behaviour would mirror the behaviour of all refugees and asylum-seekers, thereby claiming to be fighting for women’s protection and their interests. However, his statements and interests are in reality nothing but blunt racism rather than opposition towards sexism.
The Nl-Times reported that Wilders is planning on distributing a ‘resistance-spray’, containing dye, for women to protect themselves from potential attackers.
However, hope remains for the Netherlands. Despite Wilders’ popularity and his party’s attempts to prevent her candidature and election, on January 14th the Dutch parliament voted for Khadija Arib to become the first parliament president with a migratory background. One can only hope that the parliamentary majority mirrors the people’s will to counter the harsh climate propagated by a mere minority, and that all of Europe remembers its history and does not forget about the danger of generalising, scapegoating and calling for certain groups of humans to be locked up.
Video Credit: YouTube
