During the Age of Enlightenment, the French Revolution gave rights to the serfs turning them into citizens. For the first time, the European Jewish community had the same legal status that the rest of people. However, the social prejudices prevailed as, historically, social processes haven’t been and still aren’t connected to the collective mentality. Not all values, just for the fact of being popular, are acceptable.
As it is happening today in the old continent with Muslim citizens, at that time, many of the Jewish citizens were easily recognized for their clothing, while others had lost their specific cultural features, integrating into the collective majority.
As it is happening today, those Jews had a language and a religion of their own. Those people were French and European citizens, that is, as it is happening today, they were not foreigners but compatriots.
As it is happening today, in the 19th century, there was a trend of though on the rise that defended the fight among the different races for the world’s supremacy –Social Darwinism. Today, in the age of the politically correct, we find firm supporters of the clash of civilizations in whose arguments one can find many common points, such as the idea of Western supremacy with regard to barbarism, resulting in a Manichean and xenophobic eurocentrism.
As it is happening today, those who spread hate used to cover themselves in national ensigns, and confronted the contamination of Europe by the Jewish, whose only purpose was the weakening and destruction of the European civilization.
As it is happening today, novels like Le grand remplacement (Renard Camus) were published, aiming to incite the citizens’ irrational and ignorant fears. We used to talk about the Jewish domination, now we speak of Islamization.
As it is happening today, at that time it was easy to find fundamentalist Christian groups openly confronting them, fueling the fire of prejudices at every chance they had. In this sense, last week has been prolific in delusional statements. On January 11, an allegedly expert assured in Fox News “…there are cities like Birmingham which are completely Muslim, to which non-Muslims just can’t enter (no-go zones). And in some parts of London there is a religious police corps that attacks everyone who doesn’t dress according to the Muslim tradition…” Some days before, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo had publish an opinion piece that offered jewels such as “Islamism is terrorism and many mosques just preach the destruction of the Western civilization”. And of course, I can’t continue without mentioning that big Spanish newspaper ABC, which could ironically be considered a symbol of Spanish cosmopolitanism, and that stated: “laicism is a delusion of reason that will just achieve for Islamism to erect its cult over the debris of the Christian civilization”. Just like in the old days.
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