Xenophobia

Xenophobia is a very actual and diffused problem all over the world. The dictionary defines it as a "phobic attitude towards strangers or of the unknown, a xenophobe is a person who is unduly fearful or contemptuous of anything foreign, such as of strangers or foreign peoples". This term is typically used to describe fear or dislike of foreigners or in general of people different from one's self. For example, racism is sometimes described as a form of xenophobia, but in most cases racism has nothing to do with a real phobia^. Xenophobia implies a belief that the target is in some way foreign.

This definition help us to understand how xenophobia can develop into society. In fact this genre of phobia begin when some different cultures and ethnical groups  meet themselves and have to cohabit in the same geographical territory.

In not so rare cases people tend to fear or distrust those who are not like themselves. When we convince ourselves that our way is the 'right' way, we are more likely to strike out at those people or ideas that are different. Intolerance of differences can result in prejudices, segregation, jingoism, colonial subjugation, exploitation, vandalism, persecution, and ultimately genocide (ethnic cleansing). Xenophobia is indeed one of the principal causes of violence around the world.

Xenophobia has increased with the growth of various fundamentalist religious movements and with the birth of extremist political movements like for example Nazism. In order to avoid the unstoppable social growth of the Jews in the 30's, the National Socialism party founded by Hadolf Hitler began a total discrimination against all the Jews living on German countries, first avoiding them all the fundamental rights and in war period deporting them into concentration camp . About six million Jews but also gipsy, homosexuals and disables were executed for the only reason that they were different from the Aryan race desiderated by the Fuhrer.

This example demonstrate that xenophobia can be the most violent form of discrimination and persecution against another race or population.

Unfortunately also today xenophobia is still diffused all over the word. Although integration is now part of the civilized society of the advanced nations after some hard fight to obtain that (we can remember the exemplary case of Nelson Mandela's fight against apartheid in the early '90 in South Africa) , there are still a lot of cases of discrimination all over the world everyday. These form of intolerance are very often made by small extremists groups which follow a violent politic against ethnic minorities. Discrimination against immigrates, blacks or Tibet's minorities proof that xenophobia is still very deep-seated in society and it's a very hard problem to solve.

The fear or hatred of anything foreign or unfamiliar make this behavior stronger and more violent. Groups of  young boys unified for the same passion, for example for football, are influenced and conditioned by the extremist political attitude of this ultras groups and they soon develop an bad attitude towards some minorities. Prejudice and frequent vandalism are the consequence of this way of thinking and behave.

This is a real problem because it's on this field that the future generation can develop a bad attitude toward ethnical groups and this will cause an unstoppable rising of discrimination, follow in some cases by a real persecution against them. Governments applied a lot of hard laws against this behavior making it a real crime punished in some cases with process and imprisonment. Some racist flags and slogans seen in stadiums all around the world were punished with disqualification and penalties. But this is not enough.

Racism and discrimination cannot be stop by penalties. Xenophobia is a way of thinking and it's deep-seated in peoples mind. This attitude made them thinking that whenever they will be punished for this action, they will have the conviction that they are not in fault and it's a duty for them to discriminate and subjugate this people.

Governments had to promote the culture of integration and tolerance, explaining especially to children at school , how many crimes and murders caused racism and xenophobia in history (for example organizing tour at concentration camp  in order not to forget the past and make them conscious that discrimination isn't the right way to build a better world and that is a duty for all the people to contribute to this change to avoid world-shaking episodes like Nazism but also to overwhelm the fear of the unknown and that sound us strange at first, but can be a resource or a interesting newness for our life.