Trump talk ‘racist’

President draws fire after wading into Europe migrant debate

PRESIDENT Donald Trump’s lament this week that immigration is “changing the culture” of Europe echoed rising anti-immigrant feelings on both sides of the Atlantic.

Historians and advocates immediately denounced Mr Trump’s comments, saying such talk would encourage white nationalists.

“The way he put this argument about changing our culture ... about Europe becoming less nice than it is, in other words, these people are here and they are making the place lesser, that’s straight out of the white supremacist/white nationalist playbook,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project.

Mr Trump, in an interview with the British newspaper The

Sun, blamed immigration for a changing culture in Europe: “I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad. I think you are losing your culture. Look around. You go through certain areas that didn’t exist 10 or 15 years ago.”

Mr Trump, the grandson of a German immigrant and the son of a Scottish immigrant to the US, repeated his contention at a news conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May: “I just think it’s changing the culture. I think it’s a very negative thing for Europe,” he said.

“And I know it’s politically not necessarily correct to say that, but I’ll say it and I’ll say it loud.” Ms Beirich called those comments “racist”.

Claire M. Massey, a scholar at the Institute for British and North American Studies at Ernst-Moritz-Arndt Universitat in Greifswald, Germany, said Mr Trump’s comments were “awfully painful”, especially for the United Kingdom, where immigration has played a key role in rebuilding the country after World War II.

“England and the United Kingdom wouldn’t be what it is today without immigrants,” she said.