Polish Magazine wSieci's 'Islamic Rape Of Europe' Compared To Nazi And Fascist Propaganda

Magazine Invokes 'Nazi-Era Imagery' For Shocking Anti-Refugee Front Cover

A Polish magazine's cover describing the "Islamic rape of Europe" and showing a white woman being grabbed by dark-skinned hands has been compared to Nazi propaganda.

The cover shows the woman draped in the flag of the European Union and the article is the latest in a series from the right-wing press opposing taking in refugees and migrants who are coming to Europe in the hundreds of thousands.

The picture by the right-wing current affairs weekly magazine wSieci (The Network), which has a circulation of nearly 200,000 was quickly compared to racist images from the 1930s.

Anti-Muslim attacks monitors TellMama called the front cover "appalling" and Andrew Stroehlein, from Human Rights Watch, said it was "outstanding fear-mongering".

The article in the magazine claims to reveal "what the media and Brussels elite are hiding from the citizens of the European Union" and refers to the sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year's Eve, which were blamed on migrants and fuelled a backlash against them across Europe.

“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 article's author writes.

“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.”

One person said the cover was "no different" to Nazi propaganda about African Americans.

The cover's resemblance to an Italian fascist poster from the 1930s, showing a black man attacking a white woman, was remarkable.

Journalist Annia Ciezadlo agreed that it was reminiscent of racist imagery used by the Ku Klux Klan, saying: "Racist iconography knows no national boundaries".

The weekly magazine has not commented on the backlash to its cover.

The imagery reflects a growing clash between right wing and left wing over the migration crisis and the potential results, though even right-wing news site Breitbart said the cover "may be one of the most politically incorrect illustrations of the migrant crisis to date".

The nationalities of people arrested for the Cologne attacks - mainly, Algerians and Moroccans - sparked a fresh round of argument between opponents and supporters of allowing refugees to settle here.

The attacks fuelled a backlash in Germany against taking in more people, after its welcoming policy made it a prime destination for refugees.

Poland has been reluctant to take in migrants and refugees. In the wake of November's Paris attacks, carried out by Islamic extremists, new prime minister Beata Szydlo said the country would not accept a quota for accepting a certain number of them, saying "the situation has changed".

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