Europe’s walls are going back up – it’s like 1989 in reverse | Timothy Garton Ash

Once they tumbled down. Now barriers are being rebuilt literally, psychologically and metaphorically. And not just because of Paris and the refugee crisis

The walls are going up all over Europe. In Hungary, they take the physical form of razor and barbed wire fences, like much of the old iron curtain. In France, Germany, Austria and Sweden, they are border controls temporarily reimposed, within the border-free Schengen area.

And everywhere in Europe there are the mind walls, growing higher by the day. Their psychological mortar mixes totally understandable fears – after massacres perpetrated in Paris by people who could skip freely to and fro across the frontier to Belgium – with gross prejudice, stirred up by xenophobic politicians and irresponsible journalists.

Related: When Sweden shut its doors it killed the dream of European sanctuary | Andrew Brown

Related: To turn on refugees because of Paris is weak and absurd | Ian Birrell

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