Europe as a whole really doesn't have a huge non Caucasian population. Right wing hate groups, nationalist xenophobes and populist politicians just love to fear monger about foreigners or minorities. They exploit people's insecurity for their own purposes.
White people really aren't going to be a minority in Europe anytime soon.
A lot of Hispanic people are white. It's bizarre that they make Spaniards like actor Antonio banderas tick a box that says he is a person of colour in the U.S . The criteria of whiteness is like a hangover from the white Anglo Saxon protestant dominated era in which Europeans from (mostly) Catholic countries were deemed a lower tier or separate type of whiteness.
While there is a lot of propoganda out there radicalising people, most of Europe's younger population is liberal. A lot of young folks are out on the street protesting authoritarian stuff in places like Poland, Hungary and turkey. It's mostly scared of change older generations that help get these authoritarians into power.
I would say heightened vigilance is still the word of the day. From the leadership in Poland and Hungary to the triumph of Brexit it is clear the reactionary elements that lead to regimes like the German Nazi Party assuming power are still forces in European society generally speaking.
Immigration as a way to scare people was for sure a big part in both Trump's 2016 win as much as Brexit.
No one thought after the fall of Eastern European Communism that ethnic cleansing and death camps would come back either but the break up of Yugoslavia proved that to be naive.
I have a female friend in Sweden.
Nice woman. Lovely personality, kind, funny and very empathetic who pretty much towed the general social and policy consensus of Liberal/Left leaning Europe when she lived in the U.S.
She was very impacted by 9/11, the economic down turn immediately after as well as the building she lived in not far from ground zero getting damaged and forcing her to apartment hop for a few years. She was also getting older and had to think about things like healthcare which at the time was out of her reach financially in America. She moved back to Stockholm ironically right before Obama was elected but I still keep in touch and about once a year since then she would come back to visit NYC because she loves it and the USA.
She was and is ardently anti-Trump and never had a kind word about him. At the same time in corresponding with her the last 5-6 years creeping into our conversations was always some problematic view on immigrants, legal or otherwise in Europe. You try not to be too confrontational with friends you are on good terms with so I let a lot slide and kept my mouth shut. I didn't want to say she was sounding a lot like Trump and his supporters here in the States.
Then Covid hit and... I would say she at the start was for sure imbibing some really dumb and egregiously vapid reactionary talking points and I had to tell her that on Covid and immigrants she sounded like she was falling victim to some propaganda.
She was and is a true Nordic "Free Spirit" type with a big heart. She literally works for a homeless outreach service in Stockhom and even published Photo book about her experience doing that.
But she got caught in the talking points and reactionary propaganda of Sweden's pretty active racist and reactionary forces.
I mean I don't think European countries have the same level of social issues as here and they have many that aren't analogous to America at all really so I think there is less fertile soil for the Authoritarian impulse to take root as deeply as it seems to be in the U.S. but there are signs there are plenty in Europe that can be swayed by the Reactionary arguments.
