During WW II the Germans were the bad guys and the French were the good guys, right? Well, some of them certainly were and some of them certainly still are, but if we're looking for another example of the banality -- and universality -- of the hidden but still present nastiness in apparently civilized nations, the examples are everywhere. Examples of the kinds of sentiments that brought us the persecutions, deportations and atrocities my parents' generation went to war over.
No, I'm not talking about the increasingly hostile attitude toward non-aryan immigrants in the American South, but about France and the European Union of which it's part. The Nazis ( and the Inquisition in its time) were less successful in eliminating the Roma, or the Gypsies as it was once more common to call them, then they were in eliminating the Jews or Europe.
Now that travel within the EU has been made so much easier; a basic right of European citizens, France has many Romani camps and that bothers many Frenchmen who are eager to attribute all kinds of mayhem in good old Lou Dobbs fashion. French President Nicolas Sarkozy seems happy to raise his poor ratings by pandering to that good old European Family Value of racism and ethnic prejudice. He plans to break up some 300 camps in the near future and send the Roma back to Romania because of "security problems." As yet, I haven't heard talk about re-establishing them in their ancient homeland in Rajasthan, but maybe that's still too touchy a subject just now.
France isn't the first to expel this wandering group who have appeared as bogey men in a thousand years of European folk lore. Germany Denmark and Italy, for example are instituting similar policies of attributing selected offenses to a group and punishing that group with expulsion rather than individuals actually accused and found guilty. It's doubly disturbing because, of course, Romanian citizens are normally free to reside in EU countries, or so I'm told.
Perhaps enough time has passed that the embarrassment of being caught at the same old Collective Guilt by Ethnicity game isn't enough to make EU member countries circumspect. Certainly that's true in the US where most citizens can't clearly remember as far back as the Bush administration, but equally certain is that looking for ethnic scapegoats in times of economic trouble is not something that died in a Berlin bunker in 1945.
As per usual I learned something.
ReplyDeleteThanks Cap.
Captain - "ethnic scapegoats in times of economic trouble"
ReplyDeleteThis observation certainly describes our country at this moment ... witness the Islamophobia and anti-immigration hysteria whipped up by the GOP. With respect to the Roma, prejudice against them tends to be historical, cultural, and social.
In the 1980s, I saw a caravan of Roma encamped in Eynesford, a small Kentish village about an hour south of London. Again in the early 1990s, there was a Roma caravan encamped in Berlin somewhere near Checkpoint Charlie.
When I was living in Paris, I encountered Roma almost everywhere ... at major Metro stops, intersections, and side streets. In Paris, they were mainly panhandlers and pickpockets.
The prevailing attitude in France, one which I heard from almost everyone on the subject of ex-pats and foreigners living in France: "We have no prejudices as long as you become French." Which means as long as you learn their language and culture and assimilate.
For centuries, the Roma have been one of most insular and enigmatic peoples in Europe. On one hand, we can admire them for maintaining an ancient culture against all odds; on the other hand, they are perceived as 'strange" and regarded with suspicion. Panhandling and littering have not endeared them to Europeans; thus they are always convenient scapegoats for politicians.
Sarkozy is almost as right wing as Jean-Marie Le Pen, the foremost bigot and neo-fascist in France. Sarkozy may also be considered the biggest hypocrite in France since one of his forbearers was a Hungarian Jew.
During WW II the Germans were the bad guys and the French were the good guys, right?
ReplyDeleteDepends on your POV, I guess. One of my wife's voice teachers was German, and during WWII, he was inducted into the German army. Never particularly anti-Semitic, since his options were to join or die, he joined.
And ended up in a French concentration camp (run by the Free French). And when the war ended, the Allies let him loose. He weighed 75 pounds, and still has scars from where the guards would occasionally work off their aggressions.
I'm not saying that the Nazi's were good (far from it) or that the French were bad. Just that there's always three sides to every argument.
Several years ago I read a story in Vanity Fair about anti-Semitism in France: desecration at Jewish cemeteries outside of Paris and attacks on people.
ReplyDeleteHere at home we have our rallies against Muslim houses of worship, the rise of newo-Nazi groups and KKK-style organizations.
These things will always be with us because it is human nature and we have yet to find a way to completely eliminate bigotry.
Where we have to be alarmed is when bigotry becomes official government policy, as appears to be the case here.
Once upon a time America had moral standing in the world. But with the way we treat our own immigrant populations, we must remove the log from our own eye before we have any standing to criticize the French.
SB,
ReplyDeleteWe've always had a thing about immigrants. The 14th amendment was opposed because of "the yellow peril" and chinese immigrants were burned out of their homes and deported and were mostly illegal until we were embarrassed by Hitler and changed our policies after WW II. The Irish, Catholics in general had the Know Nothing Party -- it's bred in the bone. We've really never had any moral standing - we're just too damned stupid to know it.
NC,
Does TAO know you're using his name? ;-) I also know some Germans who were in the same boat, so to speak. Others were true heroes and that's my point - things are never clear cut that way.
章魚,
I saw a lot of them in Italy back in the day. Places that tourists frequented were full of small, doe eyed children begging. Everyone told me not to give them money. I always did anyway.
I don't pretend I'd want 100 people camping next door to me either, but the issue of deporting thousands because of some pickpockets and petty thievery when they have the legal right to be there is a troublesome matter even if you don't remember Europe's traditionally evil nature.
“Everyone told me not to give them money. I always did anyway.
ReplyDeleteI did too until one day ... I was walking near the Pantheon where I saw a panhandler crouched in a doorway. When I dropped a 10 franc note into his tin cup, the man became irate and spat out epithets. Apparently the 10 franc note was unsatisfactory in his estimation. He demanded more. I stopped giving money after that.
One day I was passing through Paris on the Central Line (Metro station Palais Royal) when an American woman approached me, frantic and distraught. “Excuse me! Do you speak English?” she asked. “That man just grabbed a pack of tissues from my purse.” There was a blur of a man melting into the crowd.
“Vous ete un connarde!” I replied. Thereafter, I made this resolution: Never admit to being an American in Paris, and never speak English in public. In retrospect, it would have been funnier if I had pinched her wallet.
People too lazy and too stupid to see reality will always look for scapegoats to transfer their own inadequacies.
ReplyDeleteSince they too lazy to trouble themselves working out who to hate, they turn to their leaders to find a scapegoat(s) for them.
There are examples of this since the beginning of recorded history. The human race never learns.
Our only defense is to NOT stand silently by and watch it happen.
"I did too until one day ... I was walking near the Pantheon where I saw a panhandler crouched in a doorway. When I dropped a 10 franc note into his tin cup, the man became irate and spat out epithets. Apparently the 10 franc note was unsatisfactory in his estimation. He demanded more. I stopped giving money after that."
ReplyDeleteCome now Octo, the man was rude, How does that drive you to conclude to stop giving money to anyone, except perhaps the man who was rude? The slippery slope to regarding people as other is having negative experiences with some members of a group and from that experience drawing negative conclusions about the entire group. It's the foundation of bigotry.
I've done a lot of work in conducting workshops on matters of race over the years. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is that there is always at least one white participant who confesses to being uncomfortable around blacks or Latinos because of some negative encounter he or she once had with that group. As a 55 year old southern black woman, half my life consisted of negative encounters with white people every time I ventured out into the world. Still, it never crossed my mind to conclude that all white people were to be feared or judged based on the bad behavior of some. We humans have such a long way to go.
Sheria said:
ReplyDelete"One thing that never ceases to amaze me is that there is always at least one white participant who confesses to being uncomfortable around blacks or Latinos because of some negative encounter he or she once had with that group"
I run into those too. The worst was a co-worker who used such an "negative encounter" to launch into a big defense of apartheid in South Africa.
"Vous ete un connarde"
ReplyDeleteYou forgot to say "pardon my French"
in recent years I've become uncomfortable around white people. Too many are fatuous Fox followers ready to launch into some ignorant rage - and honestly, I hate killing people, so I avoid them.
I still hand out money and sometimes food to panhandlers, not always, but often.