Emílie Žigová: Czech ethnologist's rhetoric reminiscent of the Nazi era

I recently read an article by ethnologist Mnislav Zelený-Atapany in the Lidové noviny daily called "Is a genocide against whites next for Europe?" (Je na řadě genocida bělochů v Evropě?). The peice opens by attempting to describe the feelings of an ordinary person who is both afraid and angry that politicians are not telling people the truth and that the danger posed by terrorist attacks is growing here.

The author emphasizes that he acknowledges the existence of all nations, races and religions, reminds us of the diversity of the world, and comes to the conclusion that such diversity in and of itself is evidence that "we are not all the same" - by which, of course, he rather evidently means that we are not all "equal". According to him, both anthropologists and ethnologists must be dismayed by what he alleges is a "European dictate of sameness".

Zelený then clarifies that immigrants have always come to Europe as mobs who did not assimilate, but who created ghettos in which hatred was cultivated. "Just some of the individuals who have come here have naturally integrated among us. Why not, right? Such people will not destroy our culture but will enhance it, make it special," the ethnologist opines.

He does not go into specifics about these arrivals, but summarily condemns migrants for the creation of ghettos as if it were they themselves who determined where they live during their initial phase of arriving in this or that country. By far the best part of the piece then comes, the paragraph that continues to scare me even now and that forms the point of the whole exercise.

"Mrs Merkel and those like her are basically undertaking an artificial mixing of the races in which the white race will be gradually liquidated and we Europeans will become black or brown. This is a genocide against white people. It is necessary to call things by their proper names and not use [political] correctness," he writes.

That little paragraph, which takes no time at all to read, is probably supposed to make the "white man's" eyes glaze over in fear that all of Europe will suddenly become BLACK, which necessarily involves the worst form of fear the "white man" has ever known! That would be fear about the very preservation and survival of the genes of the white race, of course.

As a Romani woman who takes an interest in our own nation's past, this rhetoric reminds me of the Nazi concept of the so-called "Aryan race". Fantical members of the Nazi Party guaranteed that all persons whose "Aryan" origin was confirmed by the relevant papers would breed only "Aryan" offspring in future, and to make sure that would be the case, they murdered millions of Jewish people, Romani people, and other so-called "undesirable elements".

Even though Mr Zelený's article is ostensibly about immigrants, if you plug his terror over the alleged "genocide of white people" as a result of the mixing of the white race with the "blacks" or the "browns" into the Czech equation, then the "undesirable element" it yields must be that of Romani people, since on the territory of the Czech Republic there are currently only several dozen immigrants of the kind he claims to write about. The idea of banning the mixing of races according to a prescribed model fluorished during Nazi Germany, when specific men (even ones married to other women) were chosen for the purposes of the regulated fertilization of women who were carriers of the "Aryan" genotype.

Understandably, of course, Zelený mentions none of that history in his article. What does he make of the mixed marriages that already exist here?

We Romani people have lived on the territory of Bohemia and Moravia for at least 500 years, according to historical records. Despite this, many Czechs still perceive us as immigrants, and during the anti-Romani demonstrations and pogroms, many of which we have seen during these post-1989 years, we have seen people carrying that frightening slogan "Bohemia for the Czechs", one that freezes the blood of Romani people.

That is why I am calling on all respectable people in the Czech lands - Jewish people, non-Roma, and Roma - to condemn this deformed notion of Mr Zelený's and to thoroughly distance yourselves from any anthropologists or ethnologists who echo such sentiments, and despite all of these terrorist attacks being committed by fanatical individuals, or by the so-called Islamic State, never forget that religious faith and skin color do not determine whether a person is bad or good. Let's never forget that WE ARE ALL HUMAN BEINGS.