Comment: The power of racism together with a lynch-mob’s blind rage can be a devastating combination. Only opportunist politicians believe that they can tame a social beast like racism and let it out of the cage. As Anders Breivik proved over and over again, racism can turn on its supposed master.
Those that feel the brunt of racism in Europe today are the most deprived and helpless members of our society. In this most recent case in northern Italy, hundreds of residents from a suburb of Turn took to the streets protesting an alleged rape on an Italian woman by two men of the Romany minority.
Writes the guardian.co.uk: “A splinter group of around 50 residents then marched towards a nearby camp where they reportedly called for all women and children to leave before throwing firecrackers and setting fire to caravans, shacks and cars.”
The cause? According to Rome-based daily La Reppublica, the “victim” had promised her father that she’d remain a virgin until she married but lied about the rape. She was sleeping with her boyfriend.
This lynch mob in northern Italy is further proof of the rise of racism in Italy and Europe.
The story that was published in the guardian.co.uk is only the tip of the iceberg.
Thank you JusticeDemon for the heads up!
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Allegra Stratton
A 16-year-old Italian girl whose claim that she was raped by Gypsies prompted a furious mob to launch an arson attack on a Turin Roma camp has admitted to police that she invented her story.
I suppose that we should consider this was an individual’s decision, albeit she was young and conniving. If we are to blame all of Italy or all of the Roma for anything, that would deny your steady-drumbeat argument, Enrique, that each individual immigrant must be considered for him or herself alone, not all lumped together as one bad lot.
Let’s face it: most Italian women are educated and reasonable. This girl was afraid of her father and made up a lie that led to violence. She should pay for the damage she caused the rest of her life. But blame all Italian women, or their parents, or their boyfriends? Note that the attack was very specifically against the male Roma’s, not the women and children. If true race hatred were involved, all would have been attacked at once. This action was to attack all potential rapists, in the minds of this lynch mob, not to attack the Roma as a whole. This was a very sexist crime, aimed only at men. As such, I condemn it.
The police should also be investigated. Why not insist that she identify the rapist? If a black man is harassing me in San Francisco, and they surely have, I don’t condemn them all; some are very reasonable, kind and nonviolent. The police provide line-ups in all countries.
Note also that she herself did not seek revenge on her putated attacker. Imagine that an Somali boy is raped in Finland, tells his parents, who tell the police, who then publish it. What if the Somalian people then started a riot against all Finnish men as potential rapists, yet later the boy retracts his statements since he’s hiding the fact that he’s homosexual and has a lover? If he’d really been raped, he could have tracked down the perp and killed him.
Would Enrique condemn the Somalians for their anger? I don’t think so. You would understand it, the boy’s fear of his parents, his culture’s intolerance of homosexuality, etc. You would say, a boy in that position felt trapped.
Well, so did this Italian girl. And by the way, was she Italian ethnic, or of foreign parents herself? Enrique, you insist that anyone born in Finland’s a Finn. Many born in Italy are not Italian descent; their parents are immigrants.