THE ROMA PEOPLE

Euroview: Trump’s re-election will test Europe’s democratic integrity and its treatment of minorities

Copyright AP Photo/Euronews

By Mensur Haliti, vice president for democracy and network development, Roma Foundation for Europe

Published on 18/11/2024 -

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.

The moment calls for bold action — securing a future where Roma and other marginalised groups actively contribute to a resilient, democratic Europe, Mensur Haliti writes.


Donald Trump’s re-election doesn’t just shake American politics; it's also intensifying threats to Europe’s democratic foundations. Nowhere is this pressure felt more acutely than by the Roma, Europe’s largest and most disenfranchised minority, whose already fragile protections hang by a thread.

With the United States stepping back from its historic role as a global defender of democracy under Trump, Europe faces a defining choice: defend inclusivity or yield to the rising tide of far-right extremism and authoritarianism threatening to unravel its core values.

For decades, the transatlantic alliance has bolstered democratic norms across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Balkans—regions where over 12 million Roma rely on EU frameworks like the Rule of Law Mechanism and the Anti-Racism Action Plan for protection against systemic exclusion.

Yet, with democracy in decline in America and BRICS-aligned powers such as Russia and China asserting greater influence over Europe and pushing “stability” over civil liberties narrative, the cracks in these Western alliances have become more evident.

In this shifting global landscape, Roma politics have become both a gauge and a battleground for Europe’s democratic resilience. Trump’s re-election, signalling renewed American isolationism, leaves Europe more vulnerable to authoritarian currents.

Without US’ support for democratic norms, Roma protections risk unravelling under ethno-nationalist leaders who use disinformation, clientelism, and scapegoating to consolidate power.

This is not just a moral crisis — it is a strategic threat to Europe’s democratic architecture. How Europe responds will shape not only the future of Roma political inclusion but also the strength of its democratic institutions.

Fragile foundations of European democracy

The US-European alliance has long been a cornerstone of post-war European democracy, especially in vulnerable regions like CEE and the Balkans.

After World War II, Washington pushed beyond economic recovery, advocating for governance rooted in democratic principles. This alliance laid the foundation for inclusivity, crucially supporting minority and Roma rights through Cold War-era reforms.

Trump’s 'America First' approach emboldens nationalist leaders in Europe. In such a climate, institutions like the Helsinki Commission, which once spotlighted anti-Roma violence, and USAID, known for resilience programmes, lose their influence.

Supporters of President-elect Donald Trump participate in a victory parade in West Palm Beach, FL, November 2024AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Trump’s “America First” approach emboldens nationalist leaders in Europe. In such a climate, institutions like the Helsinki Commission, which once spotlighted anti-Roma violence, and USAID, known for resilience programmes, lose their influence.

As US engagement wanes, Roma risk falling into patronage systems that stifle political autonomy and democratic engagement.


Across Europe, populist leaders weaponise anti-Roma sentiment to secure power. Viktor Orbán in Hungary uses exclusionary rhetoric, casting Roma as threats to society. In Western Europe, migration from CEE countries fuels hostility, deepening political divides.

Related

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While EU frameworks like the Rule of Law Mechanism and the Anti-Racism Action Plan exist, they struggle against nationalist pushback, revealing the urgent need for consistent enforcement.

What are the pathways to building a European shield?

To address these challenges, the EU must act decisively. First, it must prioritise measures that strengthen its democratic framework and protect its most vulnerable communities.

Second, it should empower institutions like the European Court of Justice and the Fundamental Rights Agency to issue binding recommendations on minority protections. Further, by linking these to financial incentives, the EU can enforce rule-of-law mechanisms more effectively, ensuring member states uphold democratic principles and bolstering trust in EU governance.

The EU’s approach to Roma inclusion will reveal its ability to defend democratic values in the face of extremism and authoritarianism. With Trump’s re-election shifting US priorities, Europe must step up to fortify its foundations.

Soprano Isabela Stanescu walks by honour guard to perform the Romani anthem Djelem, Djelem during a commemoration of the Roma Holocaust Memorial Day in Bucharest, August 2023

AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru

Third, investing in Roma-led civil society is essential. Programmes such as the Citizens, Equality, Rights, and Values (CERV) initiative and the European Social Fund+ offer opportunities to empower Roma communities, helping them build resilience and independence from clientelist networks.

These investments can foster grassroots engagement, counter nationalist rhetoric, and amplify Roma voices in local and EU-level decision-making processes.

Fourth, tackling the growing threat of digital disinformation is equally vital. The European Democracy Action Plan must expand to include Roma-specific digital literacy initiatives, equipping communities with tools to navigate and resist manipulative online campaigns.

By partnering with resources like the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), the EU can protect Roma from harmful narratives and promote more informed, active civic participation.

A defining test for Europe

In addition, strengthening transatlantic and global alliances is crucial. Establishing an EU-US Taskforce on Roma Inclusion, supported by NATO and allied democracies like Canada and Australia, would signal a united commitment to defending minority rights and countering authoritarian influence. This collaboration can amplify Roma inclusion efforts and reinforce Europe’s stance as a global champion of democracy.

Finally, institutionalising Roma representation within EU governance would embed their voices where they matter most.

Creating pathways for Roma leaders to serve in the European Parliament and other key bodies would not only highlight the EU’s dedication to diversity but also ensure that policymaking reflects the experiences and needs of one of Europe’s most marginalised communities.

The EU’s approach to Roma inclusion will reveal its ability to defend democratic values in the face of extremism and authoritarianism. With Trump’s re-election shifting US priorities, Europe must step up to fortify its foundations.

By protecting Roma rights, the EU can establish itself as a global democratic leader. The moment calls for bold action — securing a future where Roma and other marginalised groups actively contribute to a resilient, democratic Europe.

Mexico City youth grapple with growing housing crisis

By AFP
November 14, 2024


Mexican student Saul Lara's journey to university takes him two hours by motorcycle taxi and metro - Copyright AFP ZINA DESMAZES

Eliott Nail

Political science student Saul Lara awakes around 4:00 am to begin his long journey — over two hours by motorcycle taxi and crowded metro — from the outskirts of Mexico City to school.

The tiring commute illustrates the hardships brought by a crippling housing crisis in the Mexican capital, which has particularly impacted young people.

As well as studying, 20-year-old Lara works 30 hours a week in a pharmacy for a monthly salary of just 7,600 pesos, equivalent to around $370.

“Due to poor sleep, waking up early, and not getting enough rest, I started noticing my hair falling out in the shower,” he said.

Lara tried to find somewhere to live closer to his school, the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

“But the cost of rent would be my entire salary,” he says.

It is far from being an isolated case in Mexico City and its sprawling metropolitan area, home to 20 million people.

The capital’s new mayor Clara Brugada has vowed to address the housing crisis, and promised to open up rental housing to young people with the option to buy.

But the challenge is enormous.

The capital faces a “serious situation” that “forces 100,000 people to leave each year because they cannot afford housing,” says Federico Taboada, head of the city’s urban planning institute.

“Mexico City has a shortage of 800,000 homes,” says Leopoldo Hirschhorn of the National Chamber of the Housing Development and Promotion Industry.

In addition, house prices in the Mexico City metropolitan area rose 6.6 percent in the first half of the year, according to official figures.



– Rising rents –



In recent decades, officials have considered housing “only as an economic good,” leading to an “excessive increase in rents,” says Daniela Sanchez, a lawyer specialized in housing.

The average rent for an apartment in the hip central neighborhoods of Roma and Condesa exceeds $1,000 a month, according to the website propiedades.com — four times more than the average salary in the capital.

“The pandemic, gentrification and touristification” have played a role in the rise in rents, Sanchez says.

Mexico City recently capped rent increases at the level of inflation, and put a limit of 182 days a year on renting accommodation on the Airbnb platform.

Whether it will be enough is an open question.

“We need a subsidized housing market for the less fortunate in addition to the traditional market,” says Marcela Heredia of the Mexican Chamber of Construction Industry.

Hirschhorn thinks the problem is also caused by the lower density of the earthquake-prone city compared with some other world capitals.

“Forty percent of Mexico City buildings have one or two floors. We need to build taller buildings to increase the housing supply,” he says.

The capital’s City Hall wants to be inspired by cities like Paris or New York, building rental properties for people “that the market will never serve,” according to Taboada.

This year, authorities began construction of the first 270 social housing units for students, in two central districts that are usually too expensive for people on low incomes.

“In this case, rents will not exceed 30 percent of students’ income,” Taboada says.

“There will be others in which housing is fully subsidized,” he adds.

Given the level of rents, “I’m starting to understand why so many young people resort to shared accommodation,” says graphic designer Ale Razo.

A small room in the city center can cost 10,000 pesos (nearly $500), “as if it were Harry Potter’s attic,” the 28-year-old adds.

For young Mexicans, according to Raxo, the plan for more affordable housing at least offers a “ray of hope.”

Maccabi Tel Aviv Hooligans Terrorize Amsterdam and are Painted as Victims

Michael Leonardi

 November 13, 2024
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Photograph Source: Michael Leonardi

The ridiculous and twisted western government and media propaganda that is painting the zionist, ethnonationalist, racist and terroristic (many IDF soldiers and reservists and even mossad agents) Maccabi Tel Aviv football hooligans as somehow victims of antisemitic attacks is beyond the pale of hasbara manipulations of an ever increasingly ignorant and reactionary populace in both the United States and western Europe. This comes with a backdrop of growing repression throughout Europe fueled by the US government’s full and unyielding support for the genocide of Palestinians and its cooperation with the state of Israel in spreading flat out lies to the international community in unison with many of its western European allies.

These so-called “fans” rampaged through the streets of Amsterdam shouting and singing racist slogans and violently attacking local citizens. Eyewitness and video accounts demonstrate that they destroyed property across the historic center, as a violent mob indicative of the vile, genocidal and terroristic country that they represent. They ripped Palestinian flags from buildings and chanted and sang “Death to all Arabs”, “Fuck Palestine”, and “There are no schools in Gaza because all the kids are dead”, as they terrorised the central canal district of this historic port city.

The reaction of western governments and their western media counterparts to the intentionally created mayhem by the Tel Aviv hooligans depicts the very stark reality that any of us hoping for justice for Palestinians or freedom to dissent are up against. Just last week the German Bundestag reaffirmed its recognition of the The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s contorted zionist interpretation of “anti-semitism” as a tool for weaponizing the ongoing crackdown and repression of any voices speaking out against the incredibly well documented genocide that has been unleashed by Israel over the course of the last year.

In a visit to Amsterdam at the beginning of 2024 we witnessed Palestinian solidarity in levels unrivaled by most of the rest of Europe. There were Palestinian flags, literally, everywhere we looked and we witnessed and took part in demonstrations every day starting on New Year’s eve at the city’s official ringing in of  2024. Amsterdam has a diverse population despite it’s right wing and reactionary leadership and many from the Palestiian diaspora that reside here have helped create a culture of solidarity that is unique and strong.

Holland’s political leadership is guided by a band of extreme right wing islamaphobic fascists led by Geert Wilders, one of Europe’s equivalents to the exceptionalist racism embued by the US empire and zionist Israel. As if reading from the script provided them by the criminal Netanyahu government,  the condemnation of the residents of Amsterdam for what were painted as “anti-semetic” attacks agaisnt these rampaging zionist ultras rang out like a chorus from across the western world starting with the Dutch king and prime minister. Netanyahu decried the attacks on the “fans” as reminiscent of the pograms of 1938 and warned that it was time to crack down on the “antisemitism” sweeping Eurpoe and his words were echoed incessantly from the whitehouse on down.

President Biden:

“The Antisemitic attacks on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam are despicable and echo dark moments in history when Jews were persecuted. We’ve been in touch with Israeli and Dutch officials and appreciate Dutch authorities’ commitment to holding the perpetrators accountable. We must relentlessly fight Antisemitism, wherever it emerges.”

Antony Blinken:

“There is no place is our world for antisemitic attacks like those against Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam yesterday.  The United States stands with tye Dutch and Israeli governments …”

But this nonsensical propaganda doesn’t stop with the US state department, Netanyahu’s war cabinet and the Knesset, it permeates all western media where an alliance of zionist spokespeople are well positioned and at the beck and call of the genocidal elite to spread disinformation with false cries of antisemitism and the victimhood of the oppressors in a macbre circus of deceit. While Russia has been banned from International sporting events for its invasion of Ukraine, the western world leaders and International sporting bodies have turned a hypocritcal and blind eye to Israel’s genocide, despite growing calls from BDS and others to ban Israel from all international sporting events. https://bdsmovement.net/ban-apartheid-israel-from-sports

In Italy these parasitic excuses for journalists have names, like Enrico Mentana director of national TV station LA 7;  Maurizio Molinari former director of La Repubblica who is now a tv pundit constantly on the Italian airwaves and who compared the defense by Amsterdam residents of their city from this zionist mob as the equivalent of  “October 7th  attacks coming to Europe” as he went so far as to spread  lies on national TV about Israeli hostages in the canal district; Davide Parenzo, talk show host and proud member of the Jewish Brigades of Roma which has evolved from its anti-fascist past into a zionist hate group now aligned with neo fascists;  and Paolo Mieli former director of Corriere Della Sera who spouts that Gaza was an independent country  and independent of Israeli occupation, and a list of others.  These ridiculous pillars of the fourth estate in Italy control the reigns of a mass media that is forever retelling the Israeli narrative however Netenyahu wants them to, while glossing over and distracting the masses from the well documented genocide that continues to intensify every single day.

These journalists have names all over the western world and can be found in every NATO and European country, with seemingly more allegiance to upholding the myths and lies of the zionist project and its “final solution” than the interests of their own countries, and just stating this fact is a direct violation of the The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s absurd guidelines on antisemitism. CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, the NYTimes, and the Washington Post all repeated the Netanyahu and US government’s lies on this latest orchestrated distraction to the real story that they refuse to address – over a year of the most brutal genocide of the 21st century paid for and weaponised  by the United States and with the full cooperation and help from western countries like Germany, Britain, and Italy, and in the face of the complete impotence of the United Nations and International institutions to do a damn thing to stop it.

Michael Leonardi lives in Italy and can be reached at michaeleleonardi@gmail.com

 

The West Buries A Genocide – By Making Victims Of Israel’s Football Thugs

By Jonathan Cook

November 14, 2024

Source: Middle East Eye


Source: Wikimedia - Maccabi Fans Derbi 2

There has never been a harder time to do political and media analysis than right now. Each day, the western establishment unmoors itself further from reality. Its priorities are so inverted, so obscene, that the most appropriate response is ridicule.

The latest example was the reaction late last week to violent clashes in Amsterdam before and after a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and the local team Ajax.

The ridiculous framing from western politicians, assisted by mainstream media outlets, was that the visiting Israelis were “hunted down” in what supposedly amounted to a “pogrom” by Dutch street gangs, comprising mainly youths of Arab and Muslim heritage.

According to this official narrative, the violence on Amsterdam’s streets was further proof of a rising tide of antisemitism sweeping Europe and imported from the Middle East. More, the attacks were presented as having disturbing echoes of Europe’s Nazi past.

Outgoing US President Joe Biden claimed the Israeli fans faced “despicable” attacks that “echo dark moments in history when Jews were persecuted”.

Israel, of course, helpfully stoked this idea by promising “emergency flights” to “rescue” its football fans – seeking to evoke memories of its airlifts in the 1980s of Ethiopian Jews to escape famine and reports of persecution, or possibly of the 1975 airlift of US embassy staff from Saigon.
Nazi comparisons

Dutch politicians with their own ugly, racist agendas, as well as the country’s king, rushed to join Israel in fuelling the hysteria. Geert Wilders, the racist, far-right leader of the largest party in the Dutch parliament, said “multicultural scum” had carried out a “Jew hunt”.

Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, gave her country’s official stamp of approval to portray events in Amsterdam as a potential “second Holocaust”, calling the scenes “horrific and deeply shameful”.

She added: “The outbreak of such violence against Jews crosses all boundaries. There is no justification whatsoever for such violence. Jews must be safe in Europe.”

This is the same Germany where videosdaily show Arab and Muslim demonstrators – in fact, anyone waving a Palestinian flag – being brutally assaulted by German police officers for protesting against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Baerbock seems just fine with crossing those kinds of boundaries – whether it be eradicating the right to protest or fostering a political climate that authorises Islamophobic violence, not from random football hooligans but from functionaries of the German state.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exploited the opening offered by Baerbock to compare the violence in Amsterdam to the Nazi pogroms against Jews in 1938 known as Kristallnacht.

And, of course, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy took his cue from Washington, declaring he was “horrified”. He wrote on X: “I utterly condemn these abhorrent acts of violence and stand with Israeli and Jewish people across the world.”
Celebrating genocide

It is not support for violence, let alone for antisemitism, to point out that this portrayal of events was utterly divorced from reality.

Videos on social media showed the visiting Israeli fans wilfully provoking confrontation as soon as they arrived in Amsterdam.

In the days leading up to the match, they had torn down and burned Palestinian flags in the city centre. They had hunted down Dutch taxi drivers and passers-by suspected of being Arab or Muslim. They had chanted genocidal death threats against Arabs.

At the game itself, they raucously disturbed a minute’s silence in the stadium for the victims of Spain’s floods by singing, “There are no more schools in Gaza because we killed all the kids.”

Spain is apparently reviled by Israeli fans because, in line with international law but against Israel’s wishes, it has recognised Palestine as a state.

Video of the Israeli fans arriving home at Tel Aviv airport showed them unbowed. They chanted the same genocidal songs: “Let the IDF win and fuck the Arabs. Ole ole, ole ole ole. Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there!”

Like Wilders, the Israeli fans had used their time in Amsterdam to vent their bigotry at “multicultural scum”.

Even after the match, when they felt the backlash from incensed local residents, it was clear that Israeli fans were initiating the violent clashes as much as getting caught up in them.

A video shot by a young Dutch Ajax fan following the Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans as they rampaged through Amsterdam after the match went viral on social media. It shows a large gang of Israelis prowling through Amsterdam armed with batons, throwing stones and aggressively confronting local police.

Astonishingly, Dutch police are shown either absent or keeping their distance for much of the time as the Israelis look for trouble. Notably, not one Israeli fan has been arrested.
Islamophobic bile

The western media’s coverage of these events was as strangely deferential to these genocide-inciting thugs as the Dutch police’s handling of their violence.

Had visiting British fans behaved this way in Amsterdam, the police would have made mass arrests immediately.

Similarly, had British hooligans found themselves on the receiving end of violence in such circumstances, the British media would have shown little sympathy.

The clashes would rightly have been understood as ugly tribalism, a not-unfamiliar sight at football matches.

The difference here was that the clashes unleashed by the Israeli fans’ provocations had a much larger context than simple antipathy between rival teams. It was fuelled by tensions surrounding horrifying events taking place on the international stage.

There is nothing shocking or especially sinister about Dutch fans, especially those with Arab or Muslim heritage, responding with their own violence to Israeli youths – some of them presumably fresh from military service in Gaza – trying to export their own genocidal anti-Arab and anti-Muslim incitement to Amsterdam.

All the more so when the Israeli fans were amplifying the bigoted, Islamophobic bile of leading Dutch politicians.

It should have been even less surprising given the wider context: that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were celebrating in someone else’s city the Israeli military’s genocide in Gaza, among Dutch citizens who don’t view Arab life as worthless or Muslims as “human animals”.

Sadly, that is exactly how the western establishment has viewed Palestinians over the past 13 months, as Israel has slaughtered them in the ever-shrinking concentration camp that is Gaza.

Paradoxically, it was left to an Israeli politician, Ofer Cassif, who belongs to the tiny Hadash party, the only joint Jewish-Arab party in the Israeli parliament, to bring some perspective.

He wrote on X: “[Israeli] fans go on a violent rampage, carry out beatings, tear up Palestinian flags in the streets as if they were an occupying force, and shout Nazi slogans in favour of the extermination of a nation [Palestinians], and then whine when the situation degenerates into complete chaos and violence returns to them like a boomerang.”
‘Victims of pogroms’

As ever, the establishment media dutifully regurgitated the official presentation of events in Amsterdam. Its reporting is best characterised as industrial-scale trolling.

Headlines like this one from the New York Times took it as read that the Israeli fans were victims of antisemitism who needed saving: “Antisemitic attacks prompt emergency flights for Israeli soccer fans.”

Other outlets uncritically reported unhinged statements from Dutch officials: “We failed Jewish community during football fan attacks as we did under the Nazis, says Dutch king.”

Or, as with this Reuters headline, the media used quotation marks to justify peddling disinformation: “Amsterdam bans protests after ‘antisemitic squads’ attack Israeli soccer fans.”

The BBC, which trumpets its dedication to accurate reporting with its Verify service, didn’t bother to verify images from Amsterdam it used to supposedly illustrate attacks on Israeli fans.

In fact, as the Dutch photographer who shot an image used by the BBC pointed out, it showed the exact opposite: Israeli youths beating up a local Dutch resident.

The misuse of these images – disinformation – was repeated by CNN, the Guardian, the New York Times and other major outlets, as all raced to bolster the fake news narrative being imposed by the western political class.

The photographer has since demanded apologies and corrections from media organisations that used her footage incorrectly and without authorisation. By Saturday, she had received only one – from the German news programme Tagesschau.
Wellspring of thuggery

The degree to which the establishment media intentionally sought to deceive audiences to promote a distorted official narrative was illustrated by Sky News’ coverage.

Initially, before the politicians had had a chance to frame events more conveniently for their agenda, Sky’s journalist in Amsterdam reported the violence as being initiated by the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans – a club already notorious for the aggressive anti-Arab racism of its supporters.

Her report was soon pulled, however, as Israel, Wilders, Baerbock, Biden and Lammy reformulated the narrative in terms of antisemitism and pogroms. A note from the channel’s editors claimed the video “didn’t meet Sky News’ standards for balance and impartiality”.

A new, heavily re-edited video was posted that played down the Israeli fans’ violence and foregrounded Dutch politicians claiming the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were victims of unprovoked, antisemitic attacks. A Maccabi fan was even given space to suggest the clashes recalled Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

In fact, there was a parallel with 7 October but not in the sense suggested by the Israeli fan or western politicians.

Media coverage of Hamas’ attack 13 months ago has consistently scrubbed out any of the preceding context: decades of illegal, violent Israeli military occupation of Gaza; a 17-year Israeli siege that denied the Palestinian population there the essentials of life; and many months of Israeli snipers executing and crippling Palestinians who tried to protest against their imprisonment.

The Amsterdam violence was similarly decontextualised.

The media’s uncritical acceptance of this new, overtly politicised narrative paved the way for Amsterdam’s mayor to then impose a martial law-style crackdown on protest.

Predictably, the city’s police then used the ban as a pretext to arrest anti-genocide protesters en masse in Amsterdam on Sunday when residents came out to denounce the provocations and genocidal incitement by Israeli fans over the preceding days.

Conveniently for western politicians and their accomplices in the establishment media, they have provided themselves with yet another opportunity to present protests in the West against Israel’s genocide as inherently dangerous to the safety of Jews.

European antisemitism can be snuffed out, so their logic goes, only by stamping out the right to protest against Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian children.

There is a double deception being perpetrated here. That Jews were attacked in Amsterdam for being Jews rather than for being Israeli football thugs all too visibly trying to provoke confrontation.

And that the only proper response is to further accommodate not just Israeli football fans’ thuggery but the wellspring of that thuggery: Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza.
Israelis, not Jews

Western politicians and the establishment media, meanwhile, have made it all too evident that they share the racist sentiments of Israel and its proudly racist, thuggish football emissaries.

Contrary to what western politicians and the media would have us believe, “taking offence” isn’t something reserved only for Israelis and for Zionist Jews. Other groups have sensitivities, too, even if western politicians and media systematically denigrate those sensitivities.

Lost once again in the political and media frenzy is the fact that people can feel angry towards Israel and its citizens, especially when they glorify the mass slaughter of Palestinian children, without hating Jews.

Israel, after all, has been carrying out a live-streamed genocide for 13 months, backed by almost its entire population. Anyone opposed to genocide – sadly, not enough of us, it seems – probably isn’t feeling too warmly towards Israel right now. That is a moral position. Confusing it with antisemitism is pure sophistry.

The sophistry is dangerous, to boot. It creates the very reality it claims to be trying to stop. It suggests there is some connection between being Jewish and supporting genocide. That truly is antisemitism.

In echoing Israel’s own mischievous conflations of Israeliness and Jewishness, western politicians and the establishment media have helped to intensify tribalisms that can only lead to damaging polarisation, violence and repression.

Some Europeans fete Israel, and are willing to indulge its genocide, because they wrongly imagine that this is the best way to protect Jews. Other Europeans, though small in number, end up blaming Jews for Israel’s genocidal actions.

Both of those sides are living in an entirely false and anti-democratic reality, one created for them by the deceptions of western politicians and the establishment media.

Those who reject either position – a sane, embattled majority – suffer constant gaslighting and find themselves lumped in with the genuine antisemites.

The BBC’s reporter in Amsterdam replicated precisely this type of confused narrative on Friday night, arguing that Israeli fans had been attacked for their “nationality”, while also echoing her colleagues in arguing that this amounted to antisemitism.

But “Jewish” is very obviously not a nationality (whatever Israel may claim), and loudly cheering on Israel’s Zionist ideology of Jewish supremacism over Middle Eastern, Arab populations is a political act – and at the moment, complicity in a monstrous genocide. It is not victimhood or “innocence”.
Burying the story

There are two, related reasons why the media have been so ready to whip up yet another antisemitism furore out of thin air.

The media have blown up this football hooliganism story into a major international scandal, with front pages concerned for the welfare of violent Israeli football fans, at the same time as they ignore the latest chapter in Israel’s horrifying, 13-month genocide in Gaza.

Israel is currently carrying out the so-called “Generals’ Plan“: bombing and starving Palestinian men, women and children in northern Gaza to force out the 400,000 of them who have been living amid its ruins.

Israel has said this population will never be allowed to return home. In other words, it is formally announcing that these Palestinians are being ethnically cleansed.

Any Palestinian who refuses to move into the concentration camp Israel has made of southern Gaza – one constantly bombed too – faces being executed as a “terrorist”.

One might imagine these horrors upon horrors would be a major news story. Not so. Nowadays, there is always some other story, however unimportant, to take precedence.

On Friday night the BBC dedicated not one second to the genocide in Gaza because the corporation, like the rest of the media, was too busy focusing on the suffering in Amsterdam of Israeli football hooligans. Those fans, remember, had threatened to murder Arabs and Muslims in Europe, to replicate what has been happening in Gaza.

The media’s priorities here are beyond obscene.
Stoking hatred

What the coverage is seeking to do is not just bury the Gaza genocide and turn Israel and Israelis into the victims even as they commit genocide.

It is also intended to stoke Islamophobic hatred towards Arabs and Muslims for being present in Europe, and for insisting that we not forget about Gaza. It is to import into the West the same racist assumptions and discourse that led to Israel’s genocide.

Western establishments have willed this outcome. They are enabling it through their rhetoric and actions.

What possible justification can there be for banning Russian teams and sportspeople from international competitions the moment Moscow invaded Ukraine, when Israeli teams like Tel Aviv Maccabi are still being welcomed in Europe after 13 months of genocide?

How is it possible that fans of Israeli teams not only find themselves embraced by western leaders but treated as victims when they parade their anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bigotry – and their glorification of genocide – in European cities?

The Israeli national team is due to play France in a Uefa Nations League match in Paris on 14 November. Clashes are all too predictable. They could be easily averted by imposing a ban – similar to the Russian one – on Israeli involvement in international competitions.

What the coverage demonstrates so clearly is that the aim of leading western politicians, aided by the establishment media, is to recast Europe’s Arab and Muslim populations as a threat, as barbaric, as antisemitic, as impossible to integrate into a supposed western “civilisation”.

In other words, the transparent goal is to turn Europe’s Arab and Muslim communities into Europe’s Jews of the 1930s – reviled, distrusted and seen as a menace.

By supporting every monstrous Israeli crime, by pandering to Israel’s genocide-inciting football hooligans, western politicians and the media know they are bound to inflame tensions, especially with domestic populations of Arab and Muslim heritage. That is what they wish to do.

The aim is to promote the demonisation of Europe’s Arab and Muslim minorities.
Worthless lives

We know where European bigotry towards Jews led. To the gas chambers.

And increasingly we can see precisely where western politicians and the establishment media want to take their publics in endlessly promoting Israeli-style bigotry towards Arabs and Muslims.

Already western establishments have rationalised their active complicity in the genocidal murder of Palestinians in Gaza, and the destruction of south Lebanon, by supplying weapons and diplomatic immunity.

Already they have cast Israel’s blockade of aid and the mass starvation of the 2.3 million people of Gaza as “self-defence”, and as a “legitimate war” to eliminate Hamas.

Already they have insisted that the lives of Palestinians are so worthless, so insignificant, that they can be butchered in their tens of thousands – or, more likely, hundreds of thousands – in revenge for the deaths of just over 1,000 Israelis on 7 October 2023.

Already they have inverted reality to depict genocidal Israel as the innocent victim and the tens of thousands of Palestinian children killed and maimed in its slaughterous rampage as the guilty party.

None of this has happened by accident. A mood is being cynically cultivated in the West, just as it was in parts of Europe in the 1930s, to suggest that some groups are sub-human, that some minorities must be expelled, or rounded up and disappeared.

That is the proper context for understanding what really happened in Amsterdam last week, as the police treated violent Israeli hooligans with kid gloves and the politicians and media recast the villains as victims.

If our politicians and media are really worried about Europe’s not-too-distant Nazi past, they would be far better advised to stop stoking an all-too-real new antisemitism: incitement against Arab and Muslim minorities.

The darkest days in Europe’s history are indeed back with us. But not because a bunch of Israeli football hooligans ended up receiving as much violence as they tried to dish out.

It is back because the West is all too ready to embrace Israel’s anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bigotry. Day by day we inch ever closer to renewed pogroms.

Not against Jews or Israelis, who enjoy the support and protection of western politicians, media and police. Rather those in most danger are the “new Jews”, the Middle Eastern populations those same politicians, media and police constantly vilify, insult, incite against and assault.

Western racism never went away. Europe’s ruling class just found a new target, and a new scapegoat.

The dark clouds from Amsterdam are gathering across Europe. Authoritarianism and fascism are once again in the ascendant. It is those trying to keep us tethered to reality who will be first in the firing line.

Jonathan Cook
British writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His books are Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (Pluto, 2006); Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto, 2008); and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed, 2008).

Dear Mormons, our history of worrying about 'impure blood' doesn't end well

(RNS) — Latter-day Saints are once again on the wrong side of justice, the wrong side of the gospel and the wrong side of history.

Migrants seeking asylum line up while waiting to be processed after crossing the border Wednesday, June 5, 2024, near San Diego, Calif. (AP Photo/Eugene Garcia)

Jana Riess
November 8, 2024


(RNS) — Last month, the Public Religion Research Institute released its annual American Values Survey, just in time for the presidential election. One finding in particular jumped out at me: Nearly a third of U.S. Latter-day Saints agree that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the nation.

PRRI likely added this question because President-elect Donald Trump used the phrase in his political campaign speeches at least once. “They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump said in December 2023 at a rally in New Hampshire. “That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”

This idea of undesirable people “poisoning” the blood of a nation dates back nearly a century to another populist leader, a guy by the name of Adolf Hitler, as President Biden pointed out in response to Trump’s comment.

The comparison is worth examining now that we are awaiting a second Trump administration. Ordinary Germans who viewed themselves as good people — people who took casseroles to sick neighbors and attended church regularly — voted for Hitler in large numbers. They did so because he promised an end to their economic woes and vowed to make their nation one the world would have to respect again.

Not coincidentally, he also gave them convenient scapegoats for all the things that were wrong with their country — Jews, Roma people, sexual minorities, people of color. Anyone with “impure” blood. Anyone who did not belong in his vision, anyone with “poison” in their veins.


The “selection” of Hungarian Jews on the ramp at the death camp Auschwitz-II (Birkenau), in Nazi-occupied Poland, in May/June 1944. Jewish arrivals were sent either to work or to the gas chamber. Photo from the Auschwitz Album/Creative Commons

Last winter, when I was in Germany, I visited the vast site of the Nazi Party Rally grounds outside the city of Nuremberg, where Nazi Party leaders were tried in the years after the war ended and sentenced for war crimes.

What I did not realize is that Nuremberg was strategically selected to be the site of those trials because the city had been such a stronghold of Nazism in the 1930s. The sprawling grounds and enormous stadia attest to that. This was where thousands of Nazis convened each summer for party rallies, Hitler Youth competitions and events, family camps and military parades.

It’s a chilling place to see, and remember.

It’s likely that there were eager Latter-day Saints at those rallies. According to historian David Conley Nelson, most German Mormons were accommodationists of the Hitler regime, to varying degrees. The one German Mormon we have chosen to remember is one who resisted: teenage martyr Helmuth Hübener, the youngest resistance fighter to be executed for opposing the Nazi regime. We love his story, the fact that he sacrificed everything to be on the right side of justice, living out the gospel with everything he had.

But the LDS Church in Germany did not support him; in fact, his Nazi branch president excommunicated him for standing up to Hitler.

Again: Most church members in Germany were accommodationists. In fact, two of the saddest episodes that emerge in Nelson’s historical research relate to how obsequiously German Latter-day Saints sought to make themselves useful to the Nazi regime by helping Nazis with two things Mormons were very good at: basketball and genealogy.

In 1935 and 1936, Mormon missionaries helped teach the German national team how to play basketball so they could compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, the first to include basketball as a medal competition. They were apparently delighted to share their knowledge.

Throughout the 1930s, German church members employed their talents at genealogical research to assist fellow Germans in finding their ancestors — not for the usual reason of linking families together forever in the eternities, but for the much darker purpose of proving their Aryan ancestry. Germans living under Hitler’s regime had to demonstrate their “biological purity, free of ‘racial pollution’ or the ‘corrupting blood’ of Jews or others Hitler considered to be inferior,” Nelson writes. And Latter-day Saints, with their expertise in family history, were only too happy to help Germans verify their racial superiority.

Which brings us back to blood poisoning. I don’t think a majority of U.S. Latter-day Saints who voted for Trump this week did so because they were hoping to rid the nation of impure blood. Most likely did it because they believed Trump’s rhetoric about the economy.

But in doing so, they have nonetheless accommodated the other elements of Trump’s platform. That includes the scapegoating of immigrants, comparing them to animals (with animal and insect comparisons being step one in the dehumanization process necessary for their removal).

Our people are once again on the wrong side of justice, the wrong side of the gospel and the wrong side of history.


Related:

German Mormons: New book uncovers LDS support for the Third Reich

UK

A century of sensationalism and misinformation: The legacy of the Daily Mail

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

2 November, 2024

LEFT FOOT FORWARD


For its devoted readers, the Mail serves as a bastion of traditional British values. For its critics, the Daily Fail or the Daily Wail as it’s known, presents the worse curtain-twitching paranoia

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As the right-wing media uproar continues over the first Labour budget in 14 years, it’s a timely moment to reflect on how a century ago, the first-ever Labour government was toppled with the help of a forged letter sensationalised by the press.

What we now recognise as ‘fake news’ effectively originated on October 29, 1924, when the Daily Mail published the Zinoviev letter. The document, allegedly from the head of the Communist International in Moscow, purported to extend support to the Labour Party, triggering a political crisis that would change the course of history.

Ramsay MacDonald had led a minority Labour government for just nine months, proving that his party could be a responsible and formidable left-wing force. Yet, his Conservative opponents and their allies in the right-wing press sought to paint the Labour government as a dire threat to civilisation, alleging ties to the Soviet Union.

The closing stages of the general election 100 years ago was dominated by one of the most controversial letters of all time.

A history of misinformation

The infamous Zinoviev Letter, addressed to the British Communist Party’s central committee, was leaked to and sensationalised by the Daily Mail. Allegedly signed by Grigori Zinoviev, a prominent Bolshevik, the letter urged British and Irish communists to intensify their revolutionary activities, claiming that the Labour Party’s rise would strengthen relations with the Soviet Union. It suggested that a Labour government would radicalise the working class, positioning the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) favourably for a Bolshevik-style revolution.

On October 25, just four days before the election, the Mail plastered its front page with a headline, claiming: Civil War Plot by Socialists’ Masters: Moscow Orders to Our Reds; Great Plot Disclosed.

The sensationalism proved effective, as Labour suffered a crushing defeat.

The headlines surrounding the Zinoviev Letter were the climax of `a relentless onslaught of inflammatory articles targeting the Labour government throughout the 1924 election campaign. Readers were led to believe that MacDonald’s government intended “to use British taxpayer’s credit and cash for the purpose of financing a gang of thieves and murderers who have usurped power in Russia [and] wish to destroy the British empire and our civilised system of credit.”

No accusation was too outrageous. One article even claimed that six cabinet ministers had been persuaded to accept Russian jewels hidden in chocolates.

Each day, the newspaper featured “an outstanding Conservative campaign poster released today from that party’s headquarters.”

But it was Zinoviev letter scandal that delivered the decisive blow to the Labour Party, creating one of the greatest sensations in the history of British election campaigns. Known as the “Red Letter,” it became the centre of intense speculation and controversy for years to come.

In 1999, new light was shed on the scandal, when an official report claimed that the letter was forged by an MI6 agent’s source and almost certainly leaked by MI6 or MI5 officers to the Conservative Party. The study by Gill Bennett, chief historian at the Foreign Office, and commissioned by Robin Cook, points the finger at Desmond Morton, an MI6 officer and close friend of Churchill who appointed him personal assistant during the second world war, and at Major Joseph Ball, an MI5 officer who joined Conservative Central Office in 1926.

The exact route of the forged letter to the Daily Mail will never be known, Bennett said, adding “in electoral terms, the impact of the Zinoviev letter on Labour was more psychological than measurable.”

Its route aside, the infamous letter paved the way for the Mail’s deplorable antics in the 1930s, another era of extreme political intervention by the newspaper.

Hurrah for the blackshirts

The Daily Mail was founded in 1896 by Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere, and his brother Alfred. The Harmsworth family has a long history of supporting right-wing political parties, including the fascists in the 1930s.

In January 1934, the newspaper published what became one of its most infamous articles. Entitled ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’, the article celebrated Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. The piece was penned by Lord Rothermere. In it, he praised Mosley and the Blackshirts, seeing them as the correct party to “take over responsibility for [British] national affairs.”

Harold Harmsworth had met and admired both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and encouraged positive depictions of their regimes in the Mail and the Daily Mirror, of which he was a major shareholder.

A move to ‘distinguished discrimination’

The Mail may have changed its editorial line and moved away from explicitly supporting fascists and their regimes, but, as Global Justice Now notes in an op-ed about the Horrible history of the Daily Mail, the “racism and xenophobia remained a key part of their ‘journalism’ and has continued through to this day.”

During this summer’s far-right riots in Britain, the Mail was accused of hypocrisy for criticising Tommy Robinson, given the newspaper’s long history of sowing division and hatred. Images of past anti-migrant frontpages resurfaced online. Among them was an article from 2013, when the Daily Mail led with a story headlined “4,000 foreign criminals including murdered and rapists we can’t throw out… and, yes, you can blame human rights again.’ The article claimed that nearly 4,000 foreign murderers, rapists, and other criminals were roaming the streets, free to commit new crimes.

Another was from 2022, when the newspaper faced criticism from the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which accused it of exacerbating hatred by attacking Conservative leadership hopeful Penny Mordaunt for meeting the MCB’s secretary general, Zara Mohammed. The MCB accused the paper of peddling negative stereotypes against Muslims.

Hasan Patel, a strategic communications expert and former journalist, criticised the Daily Mail’s “Summer of Discontent” frontpage. He argued that the paper has significantly contributed to the climate of hate that fuelled the recent riots. “You have the @DailyMailUK acting like the #FarRight #FarageRiots was due to the Labour government, yet they as a media under Dacre have a lot to answer for in the way they have whipped up hate,” Patel wrote on X.

In 2016, the Daily Mail, together with the Sun, were singled out in a report on “hate speech” and discrimination in the UK. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) specifically criticised some UK media outlets, particularly tabloid newspapers, for “offensive, discriminatory and provocative terminology.”

Its report said hate speech was a serious problem, including against Roma, gypsies and travellers, as well as “unscrupulous press reporting” targeting the LGBT community.

The Mail’s long history of campaigning against the interests of the working people while claiming to be for them, also remains at play today. One example of this is how the paper’s current owner, Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere, has the tax-avoiding ‘non-dom’ status and owns his media businesses through a complex structure of offshore holdings and trusts.

In 2015, the newspaper ran a smear campaign against Ed Miliband, in a bid to destroy his chances of becoming prime minister. Miliband had promised to remove non-domicile tax status. Little surprise there then.

The newspaper’s role as a propagandist for the Conservatives is even recognised abroad. In 2012, the New Yorker, wrote that the Daily Mail is more than just a newspaper, it is a “middlebrow juggernaut capable of slaying knights and swaying prime ministers.”

Representative of Britain’s deep sociopolitical divide

While its readership has declined from the two million copies sold in the 2000s, the Daily Mail still manages to sell approximately 800,000 copies per day . The MailOnline meanwhile attracts around 22 million unique browsers every month, making it the biggest and most engaged English-language newspaper website in the world.

It could be argued that opinions on the paper reflect the deep sociopolitical divide in Britain. For its devoted readers, it serves as a bastion of traditional British values, effectively voicing their concerns about issues such as the EU, immigration, and ‘benefit cheats.’

For its critics, the Daily Fail or the Daily Wail as it’s known, presents the worse curtain-twitching paranoia. ‘Pure xenophobia’ was how it was described in response to its outlandish outrage about England daring to appoint a foreign manager for the men’s football team

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Throughout its 128-year history, the Mail has established itself at the centre of Britain’s political landscape. But its reputation has been marred by a legacy of sensationalism and misinformation, with its most notorious episode occurring a century ago when it played a crucial role in undermining the Labour Party during a fiercely contested general election.

Today, many recognise the newspaper for what it truly represents, and its influence has waned compared to 1924. The relationship between any newspaper and its readership is complex, yet millions of ‘ordinary’ people still read it, doubtless finding that it shares and amplifies their concerns more effectively than other newspapers. Perhaps most alarming is the sway the Mail still holds over politicians. Many ministers find themselves asking, “What would the Mail say?” when contemplating any ‘liberal’ policy that might provoke backlash from the paper.

Former Labour MP David Blunkett summed the threat of media power well when writing about the budget in the Guardian this week, “[the Zinoviev letter] did enormous damage at the time, and is a reminder of just how fragile our democracy can be.”

Right-wing media watch – the budget under siege

I got a new laptop this week, and to my dismay, the default homepage was MSN, complete with a relentless promotion of right-wing articles.

All week, I’ve been bombarded with hysterical headlines about the autumn budget, with right-wing sources hogging the spotlight. It felt less like a news feed and more like a right-wing propaganda machine.

The Daily Mail took centre stage on the news carousel on the eve of the budget with the headline: “Backlash over budget plan to take national minimum wage past £12ph.”

The Express had a top spot too: “Labour slammed for ‘threatening British holidays’ with latest proposed stealth tax.” It’s quite the stretch to frame tax discussions as a holiday crisis, even for the Express

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But it was perhaps City AM that won the absurdity prize, declaring, “London jobs market hit hard due to ‘frenzy budget speculation.’” Ironically, their own sensationalism seemed to mirror the very panic they were criticising.

With such alarming headlines vying for users’ attention every time they log on, it’s no wonder that Keir Starmer’s approval rating has reportedly hit a “shocking record low,” as trumpeted by the Express.

I wasn’t alone in my contempt of the Tory media’s budget attacks. The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee highlighted some gems, like the Telegraph’s claim that “Starmer has put the final nail in the coffin for British aspiration,” and the Daily Mail’s assertion of a “class war” against “middle Britain.”

Toynbee aptly noted that this is the same right-wing press that misled the Tories into picking another ‘small state’ and with zero self-reflection on their party’s worst ever defeat, ignores the curious fact that a majority of Sun, Express, Mail, Telegraph and Times readers voted Labour rather than Tory.

And on the contentious issue of national insurance contributions, the chastising Tory press conveniently neglected to mention a YouGov poll showing that a small majority oppose such tax increases.

As I navigated this landscape of sensationalism, I couldn’t help but question whether the true concern lay in the budget itself or in the media circus that surrounded it.

Either way, I hastily changed my default news feed, it now features a healthier mix of left-wing sources, providing a welcome escape from the right-wing clangour. As for Reeves’ budget, regardless of its content, the Tory press would have portrayed it as if Britain were on the brink of an apocalyptic abyss.

Smear of the Week – Tory press in a tizzy as Reeves ditches Nigel Lawson

In a week filled with media scrutiny aimed at the chancellor, it was no surprise that Rachel Reeves made the headlines for replacing the portrait of Nigel Lawson in No. 11. Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor was taken down and Ellen Wilkinson, a notable Labour politician and one of the first women to serve as a Labour MP, took his place.

This media outrage bore familiarity to the earlier backlash Keir Starmer faced for removing a portrait of Thatcher herself from No. 10.

The Telegraph reacted strongly, with a headline labelling Wilkinson as one of the founding members of the Communist Party of Great Britain without referencing the fact that she resigned from the Party in 1924 because of its rejection of a parliamentary route to socialism.

The Daily Mail, which, as we know, has of history of linking Labour to Soviet sympathies, derisively dubbed Reeves “Red Rachel,” criticising her decision to replace “tax-cutting Tory Nigel Lawson” with an “image of ex-Communist education minister from 1940s.”

Wilkinson, who represented Middlesbrough East and later Jarrow, was a pioneering advocate for trade unionism, social justice, women’s rights, and educational reform. In her all too brief time as education minister in the post-war Labour government, (she died aged 55, her poor health aggravated by unremitting hard work) she raised the school leaving age to 15, established the Emergency Training Colleges to train more teachers, improved grants for further education, and introduced school meals and free milk.

She also contributed to the establishment of UNESCO, and was instrumental in organising the ‘Jarrow Crusade,’ a march from Jarrow to London in protest of the economic hardships faced by the North East community.

Despite these notable achievements, the Tory press jumped on the chance to undermine Reeves, by framing her choice as a nod to communism, as Wilkinson was briefly communist.

Surely, for Britain’s first female chancellor, the choice reflects her commitment to replacing all the portraits in No. 11 with pictures either of a woman or by a woman. Why on earth would Reeves want Nigel Lawson staring down at her, who was hung there by Rishi Sunak during his time at No. 11, especially as his famous tax cutting budget also triggered a sharp rise in inflation just as the Thatcher government seemed to have got it under control?

Perhaps the right-wing media could use a refresher on girl power. Why let a male tax-cutting Tory overshadow her vision for a more inclusive future? Which brings us to another point. As I write this, we don’t know who will win the Tory leadership contest, but even if Kemi Badenoch wins, it’s hard to see her promoting feminism. As the late Jill Tweedie, a respected feminist writer said about Margaret Thatcher, “She might be a woman, but she ain’t no sister.”



Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch