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The
phenomenon that has assailed Europe may be due to a defensive reaction
against wild immigration rather than to a revival of old theories about
superiority of whites.
“Racism?
Today, we could define it as the extreme form of resistence displayed
by endangered peoples”: this was the rather provocative comment made
by the famous Spanish demographer Juan Salgado, at the last report of
the United Nations, according to which the Europeans, who in 1950 represented
22% of the world population, will be reduced to 9% by the year 2050.
“It is quite natural for Italians, Spanish, French, English and Germans,
who with their ridiculously low birth rates are doomed to quickly decrease
in numbers, to have started to fear the ethnic groups who are bound
to displace them, and to consequently be hostile to them. Even though
today immigrants arrive from the Third World hat in hand, and provide
a substantial contribution in supporting our economy, it is written
in the stars that, unless we change our tune, within one or two centuries
they will remain masters of the field. In addition to the fear of crime
and ordinary coexistence problems, it is this still subconscious premonition
that foments in many people hostility and diffidence towards non-EC
immigrants. No wonder that - based on this very UN survey - these feelings
are particularly strong in the two European countries with the lowest
birth rate, namely Italy and Spain”. Salgado’s theory is undoubtedly
intriguing, since it is innovative compared to the traditional definition
of racism as a display of contempt by an ethnic group that conceives
itself as superior towards another one that is considered inferior.
This theory suggests that the rebellion of the Europeans against the
Third World destitute represents a substantially different reaction
compared to that of the Afrikaners who considered the blacks of South
Africa as inferior creatures, to be held in a state of subjugation,
the American Southerners who have never stopped regarding the black
citizens as the slaves’ descendants, or the Japanese who still consider
the Koreans as a second-class people. In other words, according to this
theory, we are not dealing with “racism” in the traditional sense of
the word, but rather with a form of defensive xenophobia, a degenerative
and unjustified - even though actually much milder - form of the same
instinct of self-preservation which, over the last few weeks, has led
the Borneo Dayak head-hunters to slaughter about a thousand Java immigrants
and has recently aroused the insurrection of the Kossovarian against
the Serbians.
Although
the “fear” component undoubtedly plays a leading role in the racist
revival we have been recently witnessing in Europe, it would prove arbitrary
and simplistic to ascribe to fear every aspect of this phenomenon.
For
instance, we have this absurd terrace racism, to which the “International
Herald Tribune” has dedicated an extensive survey. What is the point
of whistling for a coloured player whom our clubs have dearly bought
and who contributes to improving the quality of our soccer (or of our
basketball) and who certainly does not represent a threat for citizens’
safety and welfare? Maybe the “ultras” view these as the invasion élite
patrol, some sort of advance guard of the army which, according to demographers’
forecasts, will colonize Europe during the 21st century, by reversing
to our detriment the trend prevailing over the last five hundred years.
Or
maybe it is just a form of foolishness, an anonymous and rather cowardly
manner of giving free rein to primitive instincts, in the wake of old
theories of which the hooligans of the Curva Nord even ignore the existence?
IHT, which has collected an incredible number of opinions on the subject,
has been unable to find a convincing explanation. According to Lennart
Johannson, chairman of UEFA, this could be an extremely dangerous phenomenon
which could even lead to a new form of racism, going hand in hand with
the increase in the acts of violence against foreigners reported in
many European countries.
According
to others, we are only dealing with a variant of the traditional intolerance
of football supporters, who from time immemorial have always needed
a butt against which to release their tribal instincts.
However
that may be, it is a fact that terrace racism exists throughout Europe,
from Greece to Norway, Spain and Hungary but, according to the American
daily newspaper, it has its epicentre in Italy, where as early as ten
years ago, supporters of the Lazio football team displayed racist notices
against the “Black Jew” Aron Winter and recently the chairman of the
Verona football team candidly admitted that he cannot buy a coloured
player because his supporters would not tolerate it.
Any
investigation should in any case take into account the basic distinction
between racism and xenophobia.
The
former, theorised during the 19th century by Gobineau and Chamberlain,
originates from evolutionist theories and draws inspiration from the
principle of white race superiority over all the others, and the need
to preserve its “purity”.
Even
before its scientific formulation, this principle inspired black-slave
trade in Africa, the massacre of American Indians and of Australian
aborigines, and subsequently racial discrimination in the United States
of America, the apartheid regime in South Africa and above all the Nazi
legislation against the Jews and their horrible slaughter. However,
in this case we cannot rule out the possibility that a “fear” component
might have interfered: far from being inferior, German Jews represented
in fact an influential élite in many sectors of society and economy,
with an average education level and a per capita income which were distinctly
higher than those of the Germanic population.
For
true racists it is necessary to prevent any mingling of different ethnic
groups, from mixed marriages to plain fornication, and the ideal objective
is a “separate development”, which is what was scientifically pursued
in South Africa up to just a few years ago, but which in actual fact
also takes place in other countries. Some time ago, a scanty majority
of developing countries even managed to obtain from the UN General Meeting
approval of a resolution which equalised Zionism and racism: the excuse
was that Israel has come into existence as the Jewish state, as a homeland
for the Jews all over the world, and therefore does not take into account
the possibility of a multiethnic society.
The
scientific foundation of racism, as theorised during the 19th century,
has proven fragile because, according to the latest researches, among
the various human races there are no genetic differences which can account
for their different level of development. However, this discovery has
had little impact in terms of people’s feelings. Indeed, nobody can
deny that between Indo-Europeans (and possibly to an even larger extent
the Jews) on one side and the Papua-New Guinea indigenes, the Congo
Bantus or the Amazonian Amerindians, there is in terms of intelligence
quotient a gap of thousands of years, and also between Spanish and Moroccans,
who are quite near and have been interacting for many centuries, there
is a great difference. As long as the whites ruled the world and laid
down the law in all respects, racism often intertwined with colonialism,
the relationship between the race which considered itself superior and
the other ones which were considered inferior took the form of a master-subject
relationship.
But
with the end of colonialism and, above all with globalisation, which
has led to much larger shifts of peoples and has transformed Europe
from an emigration to an immigration area, the situation has radically
changed; and somebody such as Salgado has had the opportunity to state,
without exposing himself to ridicule, the metamorphosis of white people
racism from an aggressive to a defensive ideology.
If
this evolution has actually taken place, it has probably contributed
to soften the boundaries between racism itself and xenophobia, meant
as hostility towards what is “different”.
Unlike
racism, which as such has made its appearance in relatively recent times,
xenophobia has always existed in all five continents and, in some respects,
it is part of human nature. It is a dormant aspect we all share, but
in order to reveal itself it usually requires trigger factors, which
may be economical, religious, political, historical, social, etc. and
can combine together into more or less explosive forms. Xenophobia often
mixes with ethnic (and reciprocal) hatred between different peoples
who history events have forced to live together on the same territory,
but who are separated by age-old rivalries that often verge on feud.
Even if we keep to our days, we have innumerable examples: we range
from the historical conflict between the Watutsis and the Hutus in central
Africa to the deep-rooted hatred for Chinese expatriates in many countries
of South-East Asia, to the triangular fight among Croatians, Serbians
and Bosnians in ex-Yugoslavia, to the ferocious struggle between Turkish
and Armenians, to the fight between Israelis and Arabs for Palestine,
to the innumerable tribal and religious conflicts which are currently
causing bloodshed in Africa and Asia, to the impossible cohabitation
of Malaysian indigenes and Indian immigrants in the Fiji Islands and
the intermittent rebellions by Central and Southern America Indians
against hegemonic classes of European extraction. As a matter of fact,
in our country xenophobia does not have racist features in the classical
sense of the word. In fact, public opinion polls show that the Italian
population displays a much stronger diffidence towards Slavs and Albanians,
who are as European as we are, and towards Rumanians who are also Latin,
rather than towards the Senegalese or the Cingalese. This means that
the “rejection rate” is not proportioned to the diversity degree, to
the cultural or ethnic distance between ourselves and the immigrants,
but to the strength of the threat which, in the collective imaginary,
they represent for civil coexistence. That is to say that we are not
hostile to Albanians because they are “different” but because among
them there is a particularly high percentage of criminals, or in any
case of people who reject our rules and give themselves over to violence.
On the other hand Filipinos, even though they come from the other end
of the world, are approved of, not only because they help us in our
work and assist our elderly people but because they cause very little
nuisance and rarely get into trouble with the law. Even our diffidence
towards Muslims is not due to the fact that they follow the Koran rather
than the Gospel, but rather to their “alien” customs, to their tendency
to organise into criminal clans, to the difficult relationship with
our women and, above all, to the fear that they may become the advance
guard of an Islamic assault on Europe. In our subconscious, the memories
of the Saracen raids on our costs and of the Lepanto and Vienna battles
are still alive. If we then investigate the areas where the intolerance
phenomena are more powerful, we find that this is where the presence
of foreigners is at the same time more massive and unsettling for local
equilibriums, as well as being less able to contribute to a balanced
economic and social development: such as in the Esquiline quarter in
Rome, in the San Salvario quarter in Turin, and in certain areas of
the Milan suburbs. In North-East Italy, where non-EC immigrants have
become indispensable for industry, or at Mazzara del Vallo where they
run the fishing-fleet, the situation is on the whole much better. In
other words, in Italy and in other countries that are in the same situation,
rather than congenital forms of racism or xenophobia, we are facing
compatibility problems. In the light of all these considerations, the
daily proclamations against racism and xenophobia, and the calls by
the church and by the liberal-internationalist establishment to fraternity
and tolerance, run the risk of having a rather limited effect. Of course,
the Naziskin phenomenon should arouse maximum alarm and the frequent
resurgence of anti-Semitism (also fuelled, to be honest, by rash benevolent
feelings for Palestinians within the European public opinion) must be
rigorously fought; a coexistence education campaign may also prove useful.
However, the main objective must be the elimination, to the highest
possible degree, of what we have described as the trigger factors, which
are usually collective but may also be individual. A community may become
xenophobic if threatened by foreigners as regards its safety, or job,
and an individual may feel threatened because a non-EC immigrant has
seduced his daughter. An entire people may be sucked into this frenzy,
at least according to Salgado, if it perceives a threat for its own
identity or, even worse, for its survival. In Europe in general, and
in Italy in particular, we are going through a delicate transition phase,
which will become even more delicate when the broadening of the European
Union towards the East will fling a door open to the Slav immigration
and the demographic pressure on the Southern coasts of the Mediterranean
Sea will become really unsettling. Those who cry out for more rigorous
laws against illicit immigration and for a cautious curtailing of legal
immigration, are in fact trying to prevent excessive indulgence and
an unacceptable permissiveness four our territory situation, from adding
fuel to the fire of xenophobia beyond any possibility of control. (traduzione
Interpres sas-Giussano)
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