As the Far Right is gaining ground in Europe, many people now want to put racism, white slavery and intergalactic terrorism back on the agenda again. But before we wage war against racism, let's just acknowledge a few things.

• Things don't stop to exist just because we don't talk about them in public. In Sweden you're willing to acknowledge that the Earth is flat as long as you're not called a racist. In public. In private we're currently giving the patriotic Sweden Democrats more than 5 percent of our votes. The host nations of Europe are no longer honest about their intentions toward immigrants.
• Immigrants are the worst racists. You won't really understand why until you begin to actually hang out with immigrants from all kinds of places. Assyrians hate Turks, Bosnians hate Serbs, Serbs hate Bosnians, Kurds hate fundamentalist Arabs, fundamentalist Arabs hate Jews, fundamentalist Jews hate the fundamentalist Middle East, Swedes hate Russians, Cubans hate Negroes etc. etc. I haven't heard so much racism since I began to socialize multiculturally, but I also realize that much of it is tongue-in-cheek and that the rest is based on historic facts. If my people were thrown in mass graves and it never received international recognition (like the Assyrian genocide), I'd be pretty pissed off, too.
• What's the opposite of racism? Total tolerance for everyone. Yeah, it's not possible. Just as we don't like all individuals, we don't like all ethnic groups either. If you did, you wouldn't have much for preference. Over time you learn what people and what groups you get along with the best. Everyone wants to end racism, but forgets that without a small dose of racism you're unlikely to be able to get along with any group in reality. And, rest assure, you won't be liked by everyone. Some forms of racism are simply not going to go away any time soon thanks to what is happening today and what has happened in the past, like the war in Gaza or the Armenian genocide.
• Racism is a product of something else. In every day life it's mostly a product of personal problems. If you have hate inside and you channelize it towards an ethnic minority, you commit an act of racism. The problem is not the racism itself though, it's a person with emotional problems. If you look at it from this perspective, it's laughable that the government should spend millions of tax money to domesticate racism. The more the government intervenes, the more these individuals feel they're treated badly by their own country. This fuels more problems. Racism is not really threatening multiculturalism per se--public distrust and lack of cultural cohesion are the real problems. Since multiculturalism as defined is against cohesion ("our core values is that we lack core values"), you kind of see the problem facing Europe here.
• If Europe wants to combat its racism, it assumes it can solve the racism between ethnic minorities. That's a challenge not even the countries of the immigrants have been able to do. Look at Eastern Europe. Look at Italy. Look at Iraq. Look at Israel. Do you really want to play God in these conflicts, which essentially have become forefronts for civil wars in many European suburbs? Most civilizations die from within due to exhaustion, but is it in Europe's case perhaps more possible that we'll simply import other regional problems, make them our own, and then collapse?

In short, I don't think "European" racism is a big problem right now. The real problem is what direction Europe wants to take in the future. If we don't address inconveniences made possible thanks to multiculturalism, we'll essentially vote in the Far Right, which although more realistic than our current governments on this issue, hardly sensible enough to be able to steer Europe into a better future. I'm taking a step back, don't like what I see, but will remain a wholehearted European, for better or worse.