The United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights has likened Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and several European politicians to the Islamic State (ISIS).
In a speech at The Hague, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said U.S. and European leaders who create "an atmosphere thick with hate" must be confronted or their rhetoric could "descend into violence," The Independent reports.
He began his criticism with a blast at conservative Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who has endorsed Trump and has called for a banning of mosques and Islamic schools.
"What Mr. Wilders shares in common with Mr. Trump, Mr. Orban, Mr. Zeman, Mr. Hofer, Mr Fico, Madame Le Pen, Mr. Farage, he also shares with Daesh, [another name for ISIS]," said al-Hussein, referring to the Hungarian prime minister, the Czech president, the Austrian politician, the Slovakian prime minister, France's National Front president and the former leader of the UK Independence Party.
"All seek in varying degrees to recover a past, halcyon and so pure in form, where sunlit fields are settled by peoples united by ethnicity or religion — living peacefully in isolation, pilots of their fate, free of crime, foreign influence and war.
"The formula is therefore simple: make people, already nervous, feel terrible, and then emphasize it's all because of a group, lying within, foreign and menacing."
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