Just hours after a horrifying attack at a Jewish school in
Toulouse, the whole region has been put on the highest level of terror alert
possible. The reason for the high alert level is because the gun used to kill
three children and a rabbi was the same gun involved in the murder of three
French soldiers in two separate incidents last week. The authorities believe
him to be an ex-army officer who was discharged recently due to links with the
far right. Authorities believe his next attack may occur on Friday, as each of
the attacks occur four days after the previous one, let’s hope it’s just
coincidence and he carries out no more shootings.
The attacks come nine months since the terrifying killing of
77 people in Norway by Anders Breivik, the right wing extremist; this displays
a worrying trend to me. Europe prides itself in tolerance when compared with
other continents, but tolerance is slowly being ebbed away. Over the past
decade, there has been an increase in racist talk and even racist laws, the
banning of the face veil in France and the ban on building minarets in
Switzerland are very dangerous to European culture. Although the vast majority
of people who voted for these laws would oppose the ideology of these men,
these laws legitimise their attacks in a way. The murderers see a general move
in society to be anti-immigrant from this they convince themselves that this
means that society would support the ideas and so carry out these attacks. I
understand if my argument lacks logic, but that’s the point, find me a
right-wing extremist whose logic makes sense and I’ll find you a pig that can
fly.
We must tackle racism head on in Europe and not allow racist
people dictate policy to the majority of people who are good, decent and
tolerant.
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