Xenophobia is the New Black
Xenophobia is the fear of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange.[1][2] Xenophobia can manifest itself in many ways involving the relations and perceptions of an ingroup towards an outgroup, including a fear of losing identity, suspicion of its activities, aggression, and desire to eliminate its presence to secure a presumed purity.[3] Xenophobia can also be exhibited in the form of an “uncritical exaltation of another culture” in which a culture is ascribed “an unreal, stereotyped and exotic quality”.[3]
Art Joly 18 NOV 2015
When I first thought of that acerbic, multiple meaning phrase, I was going to allow it to stand on its own. Then I started thinking. Ingroups versus outgroups. Who is “in” and who is “out” and who gets to decide?
When the members of a political party in Germany needed to justify their existence the good citizens of Germany took a time honored method to hand: Identify someone or something to fear, point and tell your fellow citizens why they should fear “this.” The members of this political party, a party of strength and good health chose a group of people practicing a particular religion as the target of their political need.
In July of 1938 “Fewer than 5 percent of Americans surveyed at the time believed that the United States should raise its immigration quotas or encourage political refugees fleeing fascist states in Europe — the vast majority of whom were Jewish — to voyage across the Atlantic. Two-thirds of the respondents agreed with the proposition that “we should try to keep them out.””
