XENOPHOBIA
Xenophobia is the distrust and rejection of “foreigners”; it is directed at different ethnic groups or towards people of an unfamiliar culture, religion or language. Based on these differences, xenophobia advocates total and obligatory separation between different ethnic groups, with the alleged purpose of maintaining the “own identity” of those who practice it. Although it proclaims cultural segregation, xenophobia differs from racism in that it accepts foreigners and immigrants through their socio-cultural assimilation.
The term “race” has been used in western culture since the first meeting between peoples of different physical characters. Since then, until the second half of the 20th century, a hierarchy has continued to exist between “races” based on differences like skin or hair colour and physical structure.
National Socialism, or Nazism, founded in Germany around 1920, was one of Europe’s major racist movements. This ideology proclaimed not only superiority of the Aryan race, but also of the white European race in general. It identifies the Aryan “man” with the concept of “man” as a creator and a warrior. As a result, Aryans recognise themselves as having been responsible for all of the triumphs and progress made by the human species, while they directly relate defeat and “decadence” to the mixing of races.
Nazism pinpoints the Jewish community as the antithesis of the Aryan man and found in this collective the perfect target for its ire upon which to offload all of its frustration at the abominable economic situation following the defeat of World War I.
The USA of the late 19th century saw the birth of the Ku Klux Klan, an organisation that went as far as to back Nazi Germany, given that it also preached supremacy of the white race, anti-Semitism, racism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Communism, etc. It grew to around 4-5 million members in the early 20th century. The Ku Klux Klan still exists, but in the shape of isolated nuclei who act alone and are labelled as “extreme hate” groups.The term “neo-Nazi” is now used to refer to groups who continue to support the racist, anti-Semitic and nationalist ideas of Adolph Hitler. In many countries, including today’s Germany, legislation considers Nazism to be a crime. However, the German authorities are finding that ultra-right-wing groups are increasingly more organised and consider over 10,000 of their members to be “potentially violent”.
But ultra-right-wing groups don’t only operate in Germany. SOS Racism qualified 2006 as the year in which xenophobic violence exploded throughout the European Union, perpetrated by the said organised groups. The European Union and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) denounced the intensification of racist acts in European countries. In Russia, local charities estimate that extreme-right-wing ultra groups murdered 40 people of foreign origin and injured another 300. According to these sources, there are around 50,000 Nazi activists in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In France, opinion polls revealed that quarter of the population tends to agree with the xenophobic political programme of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front, which announced in 2006 that it had gained another 12,000 members.
Regarding the situation in Spain, Movement against Intolerance calculates that around 4,000 xenophobic aggressions take place each year in over 200 municipalities. The communities of Madrid, Catalonia and Valencia and the city of Zaragoza are the places in which most neo-Nazi aggressions were registered in 2007.
One particularly worrying factor is the presence of pages with xenophobic and racist content on the Internet. This is a highly accessible media, with an enormous potential for diffusion which, in this case, is extremely dangerous. In the last year they have experienced a notable increase in number. Thus, over 100 pages with racist content and around 70 fascist groups have been classified in Spain.
As far as ultra-ideologists are concerned, according to figures issued by the National Police in early 2006, between 11,000 and 15,000 youths belong to ultra-right-wing groups (ultras and neo-Nazis), a figure which is rising in comparison to previous years. Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” The reality, however, shows a never-ending list of examples of rejection and exclusion, which in no way respect that stated in the text. Xenophobic attacks and figures of aggressions and manifestations demonstrate not only that the phenomenon remains highly present, but also that it is on the rise.
Giza Eskubideen Aldarrikapena
http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/bsq.htm
Euskadiko GGKEen Koordinakundea
http://www.ongdeuskadi.org/principal_e.asp
Movimiento Contra la Intolerancia
http://www.movimientocontralaintolerancia.com/
Informe RAXEN – Crímenes de odio en España
http://www.movimientocontralaintolerancia.com/html/Admin/verNoticia.asp?cod=1260&esBusq=True
SOS RACISMO
http://www.sosracismo.org/
Centro de Estudios y Documentación – SOS ARRAZAKERIA
http://www.mugak.eu/gunea/
Informe Anual de SOS RACISMO
http://www.sosracismomadrid.es/informe-anual.html
Sobre Racismo y Xenofobia
http://www.sodepaz.org/construyendolapaz/Construyendo%20la%20paz/Racismo%20y%20Xenofobia.html
Amnistía Internacional
http://www.es.amnesty.org/
Amnesty: inmigración, racismo, xenofobia
http://www.es.amnesty.org/paises/espana/inmigracion-racismo-xenofobia/
Observatorio Español del Racismo y la Xenofobia
http://www.tt.mtas.es/periodico/inmigracion/200603/observatorio.pdf