Publications
Discrimination, Radical Right and Islamism in the Federal Republic of Germany 2018-2020
Dr. Dmitri Stratievski, political scientist, historian, member of the Board of Commission "Strategies against the Right" (since 2014), author of numerous publications on radicalism in German society. His last Report made for ECD considers the three-year time period 2018-2020. This is due to both the inertial trends in German society, the somewhat lengthy reaction of society and representatives of the legislative and executive branches to certain events, and the considerable time required for cases in German courts, bills in national and regional parliaments, and the development of individual bylaws to implement the decisions made.
XENOPHOBIA, RADICAL NATIONALISM, AND EXPRESSIONS OF HATRED IN ITALY (2018-2020)
The Italian Police, as Dr. Anna Castriota claims, recorded circa over one-thousands of hate crimes in 2019 (data not available yet for the 2020). Of these hate crimes, 310 were inciting to violence; 241 were physical assault, and only one case was homicide. The cases recorded were hate crimes having ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation as well as bias against Roma and Sinti, and people with disability. The targeted group was immigrants and, more generally, foreigners, this is why most of the known hate crimes were related to racism and xenophobia. In 2019, 805 police reports concerned bias. Among these crimes, the most frequent ones were incitement to violence, desecration of graves, physical assaults, and threats. People with disabilities were the second most targeted group. Although in the last two years (2018-2020) in Italy the number of hate crime rose, a survey conducted in 2019, demonstrated that the Italian believed that the measures taken by the Italian authorities to fight discrimination were necessary.
MINORITIES, HATE AND RADICALISM IN SPAIN (2018-2020)
This report aims to explain the changes in several areas affecting minorities in Spain, such as legislation, law enforcement practices, hate crime, or radicalism among others, during the period from 2018 to 2020. This work builds on a previous report entitled “The Problems of Tolerance in Spain (2017)”
Russia 2018-2020. Situation of Minorities, Combating Extremism and Xenophobia.
We present a Report on Xenophobia and Hate crime in Russia prepared by Senior Fellow of the Russian Institute for Ethnic Policy and Interethnic Relations Studies Dr. Semyon Charny.
The Rights of Minorities and Hate Crime in Greece, 2018-2020
Dr. Pranvera Tika is a political scientist. Her main academic and research interests include the broad spectrum of the processes of democratization in the Balkans, right-wing extremism in Europe and in the Balkans, populism, comparative politics, euroscepticism, antisemitism, conspiracy theories, social movements, political parties, and globalization. She is completing her Ph.D. thesis at Panteion University in Athens with an emphasis on the process of democratization in the Balkan area after the fall of communism, i.e. particularly in Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania.
This report was prepared as part of a comprehensive study on xenophobia and radicalism in Europe in 2018-20. In it, the author analyzes in detail the legislation, law enforcement practice and statistics of crimes on the basis of ennavist in Greece of this time period.
Democracy, Radicalism, and Hate Crime in the United States, 2016-2020
The author describes in her article the changes that affected, first of all, the rights of minorities that took place in the United States during the period under review, when President D. Trump was in the White House. The latest upsurge of xenophobic anxieties became the keystone of Trump’s presidential election in 2016. From demonizing Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and “criminals” and pledging to build a wall along the entirety of the U.S.-Mexico border, to branding Syrian refugees as a “Trojan horse” and ISIL supporters, The Trump administration has helped radicalize American political discourse that has benefited extremists across the ideological specter, ranging from proponents of the radical right to Islamists to the representatives of the radical left.
Xenophobia, Radicalism and Expressions of Hatred in the UK (2018-20)
There is the Report of Dr. William Allchorn, Associate Director of the Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR) and Post-Doctoral Researcher based at the University of Leeds. Recent events in the UK relating to xenophobia, radicalism and radical right extremism suggest that racial and societal tensions are not going away any time soon. At the time of this report’s completion in December of 2020, expressions of polarisation, stigmatisation and racialisation emerged in the UK’s public life that have emboldened xenophobic, radical movements. First, and during the last week of January 2020, UK cultural nationalists targeted mosques, taxi ranks and hotels in the South Yorkshire town of Rotherham in an attempt to inflame racial tensions, telling Muslim residents of the city to “get ready and watch what we do to you”. Secondly, and in reaction to the police’s killing of George Floyd in the USA in May 2020, a wider campaign by UK radical right extremists was sparked in response to Black Lives Matters protests in the UK.
Xenophobia and human rights violations (especially of minorities) in Ukraine in 2020.
This report was prepared by the Ukrainian Institute of Politics, headed by well-known analyst Ruslan Bortnik, even before the war. Therefore, the authors does not take into account the changes in attitudes that have taken place in that country since the outbreak of the conflict, especially in the eastern part of the country. However, it will be all the more interesting to compare the situation that has developed in Ukraine in the year it began with the situation, those values and the relationship between the minority and the majority that developed after February 2022.
RUSSIAN NEO-PAGAN MYTHS AND ANTISEMITISM
An article of the well-known Russian anthropologist, Senior Fellow of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences Victor A. Shnirelman, is devoted to an interesting and little-studied problem of modern Russian Neo-paganism. Russian Neo-paganism is one branch of contemporary Russian nationalism which emerged and developed in the 1970s - 1990s. Its ideology is based on the glorification of the pre-Christian Russian past and accuses Christianity of the brutal destruction of the legacy of the Great Ancestors. At the same time, Christianity is treated as an evil ideology created by Jews in order to establish their own dominance in the world and the subjugation of all peoples. Russian Neo-paganism is in fact rooted in Nazi-style rhetoric full of latent or open antisemitism. This paper discusses the ideology and its political implications. The article was first published in 1998 (Russian Neo-pagan Myths and Antisemitism. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (ACTA № 13), 1998), but it does not lose its relevance today.
What Will Happen To Belarus After Lukashenko Falls?
Even with Vladimir Putin backing Belarusian Dictator Lukashenko, his position looking increasingly unsustainable. The future is uncertain.
MOLDOVA: NEVER ENDING ROAD TO A NEVER ACHIEVED DEMOCRACY
Igor Kotler, President and Executive Director of the Museum of Human Rights, Freedom, and Tolerance, Visiting Senior Research Fellow and Head of the US-Russia-Former Soviet Union Dialogue Project at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at the Rutgers University (USA).Today he presents the article about the situation in Republic of Moldova, post-soviet State solving the serious Problems of creation of the new Democratic Nation.
Can Volodymyr Zelensky Bring Peace to Eastern Ukraine?
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky continues to make efforts to deploy forces and establish peace in the Ukrainian region - Donbass. Despite opposition from nationalist armed groups, he managed to ensure a separation of forces in several sectors, and holding a meeting in the Norman format on December 9, 2019 in Paris gave a new impetus in the search for solutions to stabilize the situation in the region.
How serious are his intentions and, most importantly, does he have political will and are there objective conditions for him to fulfill his campaign promises? This is discussed by the author, director of the European Center for Democracy Development Valery Engel, PhD.
GEORGIAN POLITICS AND THE LACK OF FREEDOM: FROM ONE COSMETIC CHANGE TO THE NEXT
The current Georgian president, Salome Zurabishvili, continues the politics of the predecessor Georgi Margvelashvili and his Georgian Dream Party. According to Bloomberg, she was elected to continue the policies of the old guard, after a rancorous vote that triggered allegations of election fraud from the losing candidate...
It leads to the conclusion that the political situation will not change in Georgia and the current president and her government has no intention of changing the authorities’ attitude toward those who were mistreated before the new elections in November 2018. In fact, the regime has many tools to shut the opponents up. The entire state apparatus is designed to protect the interests of the government and is managed by corrupt politicians. Those who raise their voices are dismissed from their positions, harassed by police and put in prisons without due process. The regime sees a threat in any voice of criticism and any leak of information. It showed its brutal nature in the crackdown on peaceful demonstrations and in cases of those who criticized the government from inside, confirming the fact that the government in Georgia remains repressive, corrupt and authoritarian.
POLITICAL SITUATION IN ARMENIA
Igor Kotler, President and Executive Director of the Museum of Human Rights, Freedom, and Tolerance, Visiting Senior Research Fellow and Head of the US-Russia-Former Soviet Union Dialogue Project at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at the Rutgers University (USA).
Zelensky struggles to contain Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Problem
Militiamen of Ukraine's nationalist movement are espousing white supremacist views. This is one of the challenges Ukrainian President Zelensky is facing.
Putin’s Amendments To Russia’s Constitution Sparks Debate About Russian Nationalism
Amendments expanding Putin's power and language about the "state-forming role" of the Russian national majority, raises ethno-nationalism concerns.
Belarusian Dictatorship: Unending Drama
Located in the center of Europe, Belarus is considered an outlier of the civilized world because President Alexander Lukashenko’s political regime. Sadly, this is not the first time this county finds itself in a tight grip of dictatorship. Belarus actually has the highest ratio in the world of the number of years under dictatorship or foreign invasion to the number of years of its total existence.
KYRGYZSTAN: POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS
Dr. Kotler presents an article on the political development of Kyrgyzstan, a small state in Central Asia that was previously part of the USSR. Talking about the history of the formation of this state and its political system, Igor Kotler dwells in detail on the issue of respect for human rights in this country.
Europe is caught in a Wheel of Xenophobia
The assimilation policy of integration, actively practiced across Europe, is one of the main prerequisites of Xenophobia.
Can Multiculturalism Triumph in Europe?
Is it possible to achieve a triumph of multiculturalism and social cohesion in democratic societies?
