*This was given as Keynote Speech at the 2nd Meeting of the Working Group on the Implementation of the Council Declaration on the Fight against Antisemitism European Commission to the Working Group on Antisemitism & European Jewish Congress December 2019, Brussels.* Antisemitism is not just one form of discrimination among others. It is not just… Continue reading “Antisemitism in Schools”
While the bodies of victims from the Christchurch shooting last Friday were still warm, including those of 3 and 4-year-old children, social media platforms were busily taking down livestreamed footage from the alleged killer. Due to morbid curiosity and maddening algorithms that saw the terrorist propaganda ‘trending’, Facebook alone removed the video 1.5 million times in 24 hours.… Continue reading “On lone wolf terrorism: past, present, and future”
In Latvia, the Russian linguistic minority is faced with a choice — either accept the rules of the nationalist game or emigrate. On April 2, 2018, Latvian President Raimonds Vējonis signed amendments to the education law that would effectively put an end to all Russian-language schooling in the country by 2021. The law is aimed specifically against Russian schools, rather than… Continue reading “Is the Latvian Government About to Settle the “Russian Issue”?”
What does the rise of a radical-right party like the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) have to do with anti-discrimination policy in Europe? In the year 2000, after the FPÖ became part of the government in Austria, the EU passed the Racial Equality Directive (RED) as a response to the party’s anti-immigrant position. In 2015, I… Continue reading “Legislating Equality: Anti-Discrimination Policy in Europe”
The assimilation policy of integration, actively practiced across Europe, is one of the main prerequisites of xenophobia. The latest measurements in Europe show that after a sharp spike in xenophobia and radicalism in 2015 caused by the migration crisis, the situation has improved slightly, but in some respects it has become even worse. In 2017, for… Continue reading “Europe Is Caught in a Wheel of Xenophobia”