IRISH President Michael D Higgins has warned of the rise of extremists whose rhetoric contains the ‘poison of anti-Semitism’.
The President made the comments during his keynote speech at the Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration in Dublin’s Mansion House.
President Higgins warned against making the ‘inexcusable mistake’ of forgetting the lessons of the Holocaust now that anti-Semitism is again evident in the ‘extreme rhetoric of those seeking to scapegoat the vulnerable’.
“Countries across Europe have seen a rise in electoral support for political parties declaiming an extreme, exclusionary message,” he said.
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“Refugees, immigrant communities and other minority groups are increasingly viewed as a threat to the rights of the majority, and many achievements by those who have fought tirelessly for human rights are under threat by a new generation of extremists who view those universal rights as a threat to their own individual rights.
“The poison of anti-Semitism is not absent from their rhetoric.
“Those forms of strident nationalism and populism, not to be confused with the emancipatory popular movements of the past that sought universal provision, continue to spread across Europe and other parts of the world.”
The President said the memory of Holocaust victims must be preserved, likewise the physical reminders of the genocide, so that ‘we do not become passive observers of discrimination or inequality’.
“So, on this Holocaust Memorial Day and at a time when democracy is once again being challenged by populist leaders, let us commit to remembering the atrocities of the Holocaust and the intolerance, prejudice and denial of the dignity and rights of the ‘other’ which had led to it,” said the President.
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