Back to the Future

This is the latest edition of Poland's wSieci (The Network) magazine, and it is provoking no small amount of controversy. The headline reads "Islamic Rape of Europe", but I question whether a translation is even necessary. The girl is obviously supposed to represent white Christian Europe, and those swarthy hands groping her are presumably attached to Muslim men. There is nothing even remotely subtle about this imagery, and the accompanying articles are titled "Does Europe Want to Commit Suicide" and "The Hell of Europe". In the opening article, Aleksandra Rybinska writes, “The people of old Europe after the events of New Year’s Eve in Cologne painfully realised the problems arising from the massive influx of immigrants. The first signs that things were going wrong, however, were there a lot earlier. They were still ignored or were minimised in significance in the name of tolerance and political correctness.”

The European far right, which this magazine represents, is sounding the alarm. They argue that Europe is being overrun by hordes of Muslim migrants who are responsible for a rape epidemic, as evidenced by the multiple sexual assaults that took place in Cologne, Germany on New Year's Eve. Obviously, a potentially severe backlash is shaping up in Europe. A number of commentators are putting this sort of imagery in historic context by comparing it to similar images created by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. And a quick google search quickly yielded a number of relevant examples, such as this one: