One week to the day
since Donald Trump’s historic election victory, President Obama warned Tuesday
that the world must guard against the rise of “crude” nationalism and
politicians who try to divide people along lines of race or religion.
“I do believe, separate and apart from any particular election or
movement, that we are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of
nationalism, or ethnic identity, or tribalism that is built around an ‘us’ and
a ‘them,’” Obama said in Greece, the first stop of what he called his final
foreign trip as president.
His comments came after the president-elect announced that he was
naming Steve
Bannon, a leading figure in the alt-right movement, as a senior White House
adviser. Anti-discrimination groups slammed
the hire, pointing to incendiary articles published by Breitbart News while
Bannon was an executive at the right-wing news outlet.
Obama warned against drawing parallels between Trump’s election,
Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and the renewed attention being paid
to France’s far-right National Front party, but he seemed to be referring to
the “Brexit” referendum in his remarks about European cooperation.
“We know what happens when Europeans start dividing themselves up, and
emphasizing their differences, and seeing a competition between various
countries in a zero-sum way,” Obama continued. “The 20th century was a
bloodbath, and for all the frustrations and failures of the project to unify
Europe, the last five decades have been periods of unprecedented peace, growth
and prosperity in Europe.”
In the United States, the president continued, “We know what happens when
we start dividing ourselves along lines of race or religion or ethnicity. It’s
dangerous — not just for the minority groups that are subjected to that kind of
discrimination or, in some cases in the past, violence.”
Olivier Knox.
Full story at Yahoo News.
No comments:
Post a Comment