US diplomat sparks outrage after calling refugees ‘barbarian rapist hordes’
A top American diplomat has sparked public outrage after calling refugees “barbarian rapist hordes.”
Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah B Rogers posted comments on X on Thursday that were widely condemned as racist and Islamophobic.
In her comments, she referred to Nazi Germany’s history of Jews’ expulsion and recent migration patterns in inflammatory terms. She said, “Germany infamously retains very few Jews, yet imported barbarian rapist hordes.”
The “hordes” of refugees she was referring to were the predominantly Syrian Muslim asylum-seekers received more than a decade ago in 2014-2015 under former Chancellor Angela Merkel after Daesh (ISIS) terrorists attacked the country, forcing many families to flee for their lives.
Rogers’ divisive comments met with fierce backlash on social media for openly using racist and Islamophobic language online.
Social activists and politicians said Rogers’s remarks were not only offensive but also antithetical to core democratic values.
One pointed out that portraying entire groups of refugees or religious communities as criminals or invaders is a classic tactic of racial and religious scapegoating.
Another one noted that the US diplomat’s use of overtly ideological or divisive language and getting involved in social media feuds online “says a lot about the current political situation in the US right.”
Critics said Rogers’s comments reflect US politics and foreign policy, as well as a broader normalization of hate in official political discourse, during the presidency of Donald Trump.
Wherever government officials amplify or fail to repudiate Islamophobic or racist content through their social media, this behavior by them desensitizes such discourse and emboldens extremist voices worldwide, critics argued.
Rogers’ language reflects the essence of the very extremist and conspiratorial rhetoric US diplomats routinely claim to oppose but in practice still pursue, critics argued.
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