Schedium

United States Capitol (image by kmccoy  via Wikimedia Commons) On April 16 media reported that a group of far-right House Republicans, including Qanon conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene , were organizing the launch of an " America First Caucus ". A seven-page manifesto, first made public by Punchbowl News, contains nationalist, white supremacist and nativist themes. The document states: "America is a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions . History has shown that societal trust and political unity are threatened when foreign citizens are imported en-masse into a country, particularly without institutional support for assimilation and an expansive welfare state to bail them out should they fail to contribute positively to the country ... [T]he reality of large segments of our society as well as the long-term existential future of America as a unique country with a unique culture and a u...

Donald Trump 2016 RNC speech (By Voice of America via Wikimedia Commons ) Immigration has always been a thorny issue in American society. Demographic changes have oftentimes resulted in the emergence of nativist movements opposed to the arrival of new people who were deemed dangerous and "unassimilable". In 1840 the US population was a little over 17 million. The largest city, New York, had but 312,000 people. In that decade, however, a new wave of immigration, mainly from Ireland and Germany, led to a rapid increase in the US population, which by 1860 had reached 31.4 million. Those immigrants, despite being white and Christian, were often met with suspicion and hostility. An anti-immigrant movement arose among native-born English-speaking protestants, who viewed the newcomers as a threat to the identity and the political system of the country. Associations spreading xenophobic ideas were formed, the most influential of which was the Know-Nothing Party . ...

European Parliament (photo by David Iliff. CC-BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons) Austrian EU lawmaker Claudia Schmidt has apologized for publishing a racist Facebook post  claiming that "African and Muslim culture" are incompatible with European culture, and calling for a complete ban on African immigrants. Schmidt is a member of the ruling Austrian People's Party (Österreichische Volkspartei; ÖVP) and a lawmaker in the European Union parliament.  In the controversial post, which has now been deleted, Schmidt wrote : "One can read it daily in the press, and I have experienced it myself in refugee camps and while monitoring elections. Neither African nor Muslim culture are compatible with our culture." Schmidt argued that "Africans" and "Muslims" cannot be integrated into European societies and their immigration must be stopped altogether. "I view arbitrary mass migration from places that have alien cultures (kulturfremden ...

A survey shows that the majority of white Europeans associate faces of black people with negative ideas.  According to a study by Harvard's Project Implicit , based on scores for 288,076 white Europeans, collected between 2002 and 2015, most white people in European countries have an implicit racial bias towards black individuals.  The above map illustrates the average Implicit Association Test (IAT) score for each country. The redder the colour, the more widespread is racial bias.  The test shows that white Europeans are faster to associate Blackness with negative concepts such as "Bad" and "Evil", and slower to associate it with positive ideas such as "Good" and "Nice", revealing implicit attitudes and automatic associations in people's minds.  Although the levels of racial bias vary across the continent, no European country received a score below zero, which indicates a positive attitude towards black people.