BBESW Podcast EP5: PEGIDA 2015 is EPP 2026

I would say it means meanness.

It's a very nasty, mean kind of approach to people who come from a different religion.

And sometimes it's not even Muslims, it's people who look like Muslims, which is really interesting, isn't it? It's a nastiness and it's a kind of a collective suspicion, which is always there.

So And it creates, I think for many European Muslims, a feeling of unease, a feeling of being foreign and never really belonging.

never really being accepted.

And, you know, as you said, William, it changes shape, it mutates, it never goes away.

And then it steps forward at the most amazing moments, you know, when you least expect it, at dinner table,

you know,

conferences, coffees, you're having, somebody will say something which really makes me think, this guy this person is a friend and has these so it's very subtle sometimes very open other times it's violent it's merge you know leads to murders and violence but it's always there i think And I think it needs to have a closer kind of scrutiny, a forensic kind of scrutiny of what's going on.

We'll get into that later.

It's easy to say, and I often say it myself, that 9-11 really brought it to the fore.

For me, it did, because that's what happened when I was a young reporter and it sort of struck me as how quickly the conversation changed to Islamophobic conversations.

But it's just something that I think Europeans need to be more honest about and recognize that it exists.

And it's as toxic, as nasty as anti-Semitism because there's a discrepancy.

We go into that later as well.

I mean, you know, anti-Semitism is seen as a huge problem, rightly so it is.

And anti-Muslim hatred or Islamophobia is not really taken very seriously.

And when it's taken seriously as a problem, it's soon turned into a security challenge for Europe.

So there's a lot to be said about it.

Yeah, it's interesting.

and and and frightening how normalized i think of all the different kinds of racism it's it feels like it's the most normalized kind like there are things you can't say in polite company about other kinds of groups that seem okay to say about muslims why do you think that is

Because I think, you know, Emmanuel will come in on this as well, because it is so prevalent, because, as you said, it's been normalized and because Muslims are the quintessential other.

You know, that's been through through the centuries.

It's not something new.

You know, during the Crusades, I mean, during the Ottoman Empire, colonialism, you know, Muslims, Islam was the quintessential, the perfect other foil.