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European fascism and communism gave us the propaganda poster - striking images and forceful words meant to inspire patriotism and loyalty amongst the masses.
The tactics of such demagogues helped build the base of support for horrific regimes - Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia rank as the worse in a continental history filled with tyranny. Once they came to power, the propaganda poster took on new meaning: indoctrination.
Propaganda was often used to inspire hatred against a minority and to scapegoat societal ills on that helpless group: the Jews, the bourgeois, the gypsies, the West. Whomever. Such engendered hate often lead to horrific crimes of ethnic cleansing and genocide as the regime sought to extinguish that maligned group.
In post-WW2 Europe, anti-hate laws banned such inflammatory posters. But such vile images are making a comeback in the European far-right, posters that fall just short of violating anti-hate laws, and they have a new target: European Muslims.
Muslims are not maligned in the same manner as Jews were and still are. Jews were accused of being traitors and conspiring against the, say, Germans. Muslims are accused of of plotting to rule the country as their numbers increase, forever change the face of Europe by imposing Sha'ria law (Islamic law) and turn "Western civilization" into an amalgam of "Islam" and the "West" dubbed Eurabia. Such as with blood libels, the new screed is equally grotesque in its lies. The manner in which anti-Semities used to speak about Jews has been appropriated against Muslims: they make one monolithic group, bigoted generalizations can be made against them, and are threatening Western nations and their cultures from the inside, and they are planning on conquering the world. There is no difference between this rhetoric and classical anti-Semitism. And such as then, many people in the media are apologizing, rationalizing and justification such hate. These people will go down alongside the Europeans of the 1930s who make excuses for Hitler.
As just as Jews were targeted in Geobbles' posters, a new pan-European wave of anti-Muslim and anti-Islam posters are being plastered across Europe:
The Swiss anti-Minaret campaign.
A far-right, neo-Nazi Belgium party that portrays its mainstream opponents as monkeys.
An Italian nativist party that is opposed to immigration whose ad states that Italians will be destroyed like Native Americans if they do not stop immigration - apparently no irony over the fact that it was an Italian explorer who lead to the colonization of the Americas and the ruin of American Indians and Italian settlers in the new world who often forcibly planted themselves on Indian land.
The National Front distributed a poster of Charles de Gaulle alongside a remark he once made (in the context of the Algerian occupation) to suggest that true Gaullists today would vote for Le Pen, the far-right National Front Party in France."It is good that there are yellow Frenchmen and black Frenchmen and brown Frenchmen," de Gaulle is quoted as saying. "They prove that France is open to all races, on the condition that they remain a small minority. Otherwise, France will no longer be France."
There may not be a continent more prone to nativism, xenophobia and fascism than Europe - the continent that gave birth to all three. There may not be a continent more prone to far-right hate baiting than Europe.
We are removed from the fascist era by just 65 years and the ideas that Europe promised to swear off forever are heeding new ground. They are not popular now, but neither were many fascists parties in the 1920s. Fortunately the European Union and the international community have strong institutions to guard against extreme prejudice. But that is not enough.
We need to guard against such bigotry. Europe has gone down this path before, and it is not a pretty picture.
