Opinion: Return of the Ghosts
I have a lot of tolerance for intolerance. When the Dutch media put Polish truck drivers in the spotlight, I thought it wasn’t any more discriminatory than inspecting young drivers’ statistics is ageist, or investigating male driving skills is sexist. But the PVV website that calls for reporting Central and East European immigrants is the border of my tolerance. I feel personally offended and discriminated.
It is natural that with open borders the labor force migrates from the less developed countries to those more prosperous. This is the price of European integration. Either be a part of it with all its consequences or become a closed-border island in the blue sea of integrated Europe.
I’m afraid the Nobel Prize winner Mario Vergas Llosa was right saying in his masterclass that contemporary Europe witnesses the return of the ghosts from the past. I was sure that extreme nationalism and socialism are a history, but the actions like the one of Geert Wilders proves that the monsters are back.
Sonia Kolasinska is a 3rd year student (liberal arts and sciences) at Tilburg University and is an intern at Univers.