In the current news cycle, the issue of immigration is drawing more attention than usual. This is partly due to what is going on in our own country, namely, our upcoming presidential election. It doesn’t help that the current GOP frontrunner is the most explicitly nativist public figure since Daniel Day-Lewis’ character in "Gangs of New York."
Despite Americans’ woes, the real immigration crisis is taking place in Europe. Many of these refugees flooding Europe are fleeing Syria, which is four years deep into a civil war that has killed more than 70,000 civilians and has reduced the country to apocalyptic levels of destruction. So far, it’s estimated that 4 million Syrians have left their homes and become refugees, their fates at the mercy of foreign governments. Between President Assad — who literally drops barrels full of explosives on suburbs — and the Islamic State, can you blame them? Many individuals in potential host countries have no problem with the idea of taking in a few refugees from the nastiest war of the 21st century.
With the rise in immigrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa, there has come a response in the form of strong, vitriolic anti-immigrant sentiment in all countries affected. This general anti-immigrant sentiment has inspired acts of violence and spawned populist right-wing hate groups all across the continent.
Their hatred has manifested in rather nasty ways, like when a Hungarian news camerawoman was filmed tripping refugees and their children.
The anti-immigrant/refugee rhetoric that fuels these actions is blatantly hateful. Charges that immigrants don’t assimilate, or that they’re criminals stealing jobs from native citizens, are plainly misguided. Assimilation is a matter of time; it wasn’t that long ago when Americans did not consider the Irish, Germans, Italians or Poles to be white.
What makes all of this disturbing is the potential a large group of such motivated people has. Far-right populist groups and political parties have been popping up all over Europe recently, with the issue of immigration acting as the driving motor in their rhetoric and recruitment.
These are groups like Pegida in Germany and Generation Identitaire in France. I’d prefer not to call them Nazis, and I would refrain from doing so if they didn’t so gleefully make that association themselves. All of these groups have resurrected the old-fashioned Nazi salute. Pegida’s leader, Lutz Bachmann, was caught playing dress up as Adolf Hitler and had to resign the group. He has since been readmitted. The arsonists in Germany chanted "foreigners out" and "heil Hitler" while the asylum centers burned. All of them love to talk about national purity and how it is being threatened by a sinister, conniving and dangerous ethnic intruder. Sound familiar?
Fortunately, these remain extreme elements. Counter-protesters at their demonstrations far outnumber the Nazis themselves. But what will happen if their views gain momentum?
As for us, we’re not immune.
Anti-immigrant rhetoric and attitudes are not uncommon among our own countrymen. I’m not implying that anyone wary of immigrants is a Nazi, but the sentiment is dangerous and is one economic collapse away from morphing into something truly foul. Hell, most of the Trumpster’s campaign is stoking our deep-seated fears, molding himself into something akin to a sans-uniform Mussolini.
And while protesters spew with their rhetoric and torch buildings, millions more suffer in conditions unimaginable to most. The least we should do is offer them a place to stay.
Alec Carver is a UF history junior. His column appears on Fridays.
