Earlier this month, the Hungarian government distributed a pamphlet claiming there are more than 900 areas in Europe that, as stated in the document, are considered “no-go zones.” These “no-go zones” include London, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Marseilles in their entirety.

The pamphlet also displays a map of Western Europe with large blotches of red in place of these cities and smaller red “no-go zone” signs emanating from them, as if something infectious was spreading or some disease failing to be contained.

What is the cause for concern, the frantic aversion, the need for isolation? Apparently it’s human beings, or a specific type at least. According to the Independent, these are sites “which are overrun by migrants whom ‘the authorities cannot keep under control.’ In these neighborhoods, [the pamphlet] warns: ‘the norms of the host society … barely prevail.’ ”

According to the Hungarian xenophobic propaganda machine, refugees cause the very structure of law and order to break down to the point where it is downright dangerous to exist there as humans. Of course, we’re sure some of the 8.6 million people who live in London may have something else to say about that.

First and foremost, to make the grandiose claim that authorities cannot keep migrants “under control” not only invalidates the competence of these foreign governments in terms of policing, it also invokes the notion that these migrants are some wild form of human. It creates an image of the refugee as a desperate animal, rather than as an individual fleeing political turmoil or economic devastation. This, of course, is problematic and ignorant.

Second, to claim that there is some effective way to measure something as fickle as the potential for civil unrest in a foreign country (read: a country that is not Hungary) is just plain arrogance. It is impossible to qualify such things without blunt assumption.

Now, what ugly flower blossoms when the conditions of arrogance and ignorance are met? Bigotry. This bigotry is being used as a tool to manipulate Hungarian citizens into a position of opposition to accepting mandatory European Union quotas for relocating migrants.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, in a moment of divine eloquence, spoke of the matter in a BBC interview: “There are no-go zone in Europe, and we don’t want no-go zones in Hungary.”

There is the logic, with all of its support. The Daily Iowan Editorial Board believes this rhetoric to be exactly what it is: empty xenophobic blather.

Iowa has had its own experience in the matter. According to a Des Moines Register report, Iowa’s first Syrian refugee family was reported to have said “that they know little … of the political rhetoric swirling around the issue, which may have prolonged their journey here. They were hoping only for a better future for their children.”

It seems that the only thing that must be contained or controlled is the xenophobic bigotry perpetuated by reckless propaganda akin to the Hungarian pamphlet.