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MSNBC’s Chris Hayes says Hungary, Poland racist for taking in Ukraine war refugees but not Syrians

March 16, 2022 | | Print Article

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MSNBC’s Chris Hayes has accused the European countries who’d refused Syrian refugees but are now accepting Ukrainian refugees of being racist.

In a monologue delivered Wednesday, the far-left host even managed to link all this alleged racism to the network’s favorite nemesis, former President Donald Trump.

The Syrian refugee crisis “was a major factor enabling Donald Trump’s rise to power. You might not remember this now, but during the campaign, Trump’s son Don Jr. tweeted out this disgusting racist meme comparing refugees from Syria to poison candy,” Hayes began.

Donald Trump Jr.’s tweet may be seen below:

While the meme was decried as racist by the establishment left, the fact remains that the administration then in power — the Obama administration — wasn’t properly vetting incoming Syrian refugees.

This led to terrorists making it inside the United States. Not until the Trump administration took control were some of these terrorists apprehended.

Continuing his screed, Hayes also noted that “one of Trump’s key campaign promises was quote, of course, a total and complete shut down of Muslims and entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

This too is a sign of racism, the host claimed. Note that the former president made the remark five days after an Islamic terrorist attack in San Bernardino and two days after a terrorist attack in London.

Hayes then praised former German Chancellor Angela Merkel for accepting one million Syrian refugees. He neglected to mention the litany of problems this mass migration caused for her and the German people.

He then contrasted Merkel’s willingness to accept Syrian refugees with the lack of interest by other countries and further noted that these same countries have all of a sudden become eager to accept Ukrainian refugees.

“Many of those same countries which quite explicitly refuse to accept refugees that Russia created in Syria are, to their credit, opening their borders and opening their arms to the refugees Russia is creating in Ukraine. In fact, just today Poland’s right-wing prime minister, along with the PMs from Slovenia and the Czech Republic, met with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in Kyiv … in a sign of solidarity,” he complained.

“Hungary and Poland, the same countries whose defining political nature, at least under their governing parties, was control of their borders — strong borders, and their opposition to Syrian refugees — are together accepting millions of people displaced from Ukraine.”

According to Hayes, this contrast is the result of “racism, anti-Muslim bigotry, the paranoia of post-911 war on terror.”

To be clear, both Poland and the Czech Republic did accept some Syrian refugees. However, they accepted fewer than Germany out of security concerns. Poland in particular stopped accepting refugees in 2015 after an Islamic terrorist attack in Paris, France.

“The attacks mean the necessity of an even deeper revision of the European policy towards the migrant crisis,” Poland’s then-European affairs minister Konrad Szymanski said at the time, as reported at the time by Deutsche Welle.

“We’ll accept (refugees only) if we have security guarantees. This is a key condition, and today a question mark has been put next to it all around Europe.”

Hayes isn’t the first public figure to dubiously tie the ongoing situation to racism, and he likely won’t be the last.

Over the weekend, CBS News ran a report suggesting that white Ukrainian refugees benefit from so-called “white privilege.” To back up the claim, they trotted out Kimberly St. Julian Varnon, a researcher who studies the “black experience.”

Like Hayes, Varnon also complained about the difference between Ukrainian refugees and Syrian refugees. She specifically zeroed in on a recent incident involving Syrian refugees at the Poland/Belarus border.

“So I tried to point out this crisis we saw in December because it is very much the same situation of people fleeing a war and needing protection and care, but they’re not getting that,” she said.

“What is the difference, and why is there a difference?” a CBS News interviewer asked.

“I think the key difference is race and ethnicity. I mean, we’ve seen it in reporting and how people have said this, but also like the Bulgarian prime minister saying these aren’t the refugees we’re used to. These are educated refugees,” Varnon replied.

Not mentioned by Varnon was that the Syrians have been fleeing their war-torn nation for over a decade, whereas the crisis in Ukraine erupted just weeks ago.

Vivek Saxena
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