The world is facing enormous challenges, and the Holocaust reminds us that the strengthening of anti-Semitism, the radical right and hate speech leads to the incitement of racial, national and religious hatred, which can have immeasurable consequences, said the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality, Brankica Janković, on the occasion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The Commissioner pointed to the ability of neo-fascism to integrate into social flows in a subtle way, through various forms of social mimicry, which is why we must be very careful not to be deceived by these new sophisticated forms of fascism, anti-Semitism and racism. Special attention should be paid to the increasingly frequent relativization of the Holocaust, sometimes through negation, sometimes through the use of inappropriate comparisons with various social processes and phenomena.
We, from the institutions for protection against discrimination, are facing this problem, which is also increasingly present in the digital sphere, and this requires knowledge, skills and capacities to act and understand the phenomenon, which must be treated seriously, added the Commissioner. She said that she is concerned about the frequent display of Nazi symbols, as well as attacks on citizens who declare themselves anti-fascists. Such individual incidents must be treated seriously, and not characterized as violent behavior or disturbance of public peace and order, as it used to happen in our legal practice, the Commissioner pointed out.
Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer living witnesses who survived the Holocaust and who can talk about that darkest period of humanity, which is why it is our duty to remember it and pass that memory on to new generations. It is important that young people, within their school education, become familiar with historical facts and understand that there is nothing in Nazism and fascism that deserves anything but contempt and every kind of condemnation, as well as that it is the moral and legal obligation of each of us to oppose both anti-Semitism and all ideologies that threaten human rights and freedoms, Janković pointed out.
