Men, said the Devil, are good to their brothers:
they don’t want to mend their own ways, but each other’s.
— Piet Hein
Remember Darwin’s finches? From the ancestral finch population, Galapagos forged seven distinct species that provided for Darwin the impetus for his evolutionary theories. Out of one, seven. Greater diversity, as each group adapted to a different geographical and ecological niche. Greater richness and resilience for the living world, and a delight for human observers. [Actually, the web says there are 10 or more of these finch species out on those islands. And they are related to tanagers.]
Galapagos finches
Now, maybe these new finch groups are not altogether species, maybe they are more like wild landraces. After all, they can and do interbreed when thrown together. But who would argue against the notion that the finch world of the Galapagos grew more diverse and interesting than formerly? Who would argue that importing finches from, say, North America would be a good thing for the finches of the Galapagos, or for the diversity of the global finch family? Wouldn’t the “diversity of the melting pot” cause them to lose their distinct adaptations?
Similarly, we tend to believe that tribal societies, say the Mbuti or the Cree, ought to have protection from the western civilization at large, so they can maintain their culture and way of life, self-determined, rather than other-determined by the logic of modernity or conquest.
Yet when it comes to the societies of Europe or the local communities of the western world, another logic seems to apply. Apparently, if you have a “white European”-derived culture not protected by the aura of exotic ethnicity somewhere far away, your culture actually needs to import diversity from parts half way across the globe! Your culture is accused of being too uniform, too homogeneous, too close-minded, and paying no heed to the need for “diversity.” But what kind of diversity is this, that argues for giving up your own culture – a culture which contributes to a more diverse human world – for some abstract ideal of mixing people from a variety of cultures and ethnicities into a mishmash where nobody feels at home?
I have been following, aghast, the invasion of Europe by people whom the PC crowd insist on calling refugees, and others call migrants. Aghast, not because Syrian refugees don’t deserve the support of their neighbors. They do. (They are a minority among the incomers.) But because the crisis has been insanely politicized to a point where anyone who disagrees with the official “welcome refugees” line is pilloried as a racist and a xenophobe, and a discussion of the issues has become near impossible.
Baffled, I turned to exploring the one society in Europe – widely known for its very inclusive and generous social safety net and rather egalitarian and progressive society – which decided in the mid-70s to implement a multiracial experiment. Feel free to pitch in, as I’ve never lived in Scandinavia and my understanding is imperfect. The Swedes, wishing to further improve their already outstanding society, and having been told in no uncertain way that to do so they must open their border and begin to take in people from a variety of far-flung countries in Africa and Asia because anything less would be churlish and mean, not to mention racist and discriminatory. As far as I can tell, they have brought on a disaster that is perhaps unique in the history of Europe.
The Swedes were told, and may have believed, that their culture was way too stale, pale, prejudiced, and in need of a drastic overhaul. At the urging of people who grew more shrill as the years passed, the multicultural vision began to be officially implemented from 1975 on. People of mixed racial parentage were celebrated, white Swedes were denigrated; those who wanted to craft a whole new society in Sweden and be done forever with the “old Sweden” prevailed. The influx of immigrants looking to partake of what Sweden had to offer grew until today it’s a flood. The result? In the city of Malmő, indigenous Swedes are now a minority. There are no-go zones all over the country, controlled by immigrant gangs. Police cars are the targets of grenades. There has been a housing shortage for quite some time, and Swedes are being told to house newly come asylum seekers in their garages. There are no jobs for most of these newcomers. Sweden is now contemplating borrowing large sums from abroad so that it can feed and house the influx, and its politicians are being slowly forced to admit that the ideology of compulsory anti-racism and anti-discrimination has turned the country into something that horrifies many of the immigrants themselves, not to even mention the feelings of the original inhabitants. Corruption is rampant; politicians live in wealthy neighborhoods with other ethnic Swedes while pontificating on racism to their less fortunate countrymen and women.
To add insult to injury, the country is under some sort of a McCarthyite spell so that the actual situation cannot be discussed openly; anyone who questions the status quo is accused of racism and bloggers, youtubers and facebook users are the only ones who dare to speak out against the monomaniacal, politically correct “party line”. And Sweden has long since stopped collecting and publishing the ethnic background of people committing the wave of crimes sweeping over the land.
Racist!
Why is it that indigenous Europeans are denied their own culture going back thousands of years? Why is it that these various distinct regional cultures for which Europe has become famous, and which have fueled its tourism, have been under attack? The Hopi or !Kung deserve to be their own, but the Finns or the Slovaks do not? Why? It seems clear to me that turning Europe into a melting pot serves those who are enemies of diversity, in the global sense, and not the other way around.
And to bring the discussion to America, why is it when whites verbally attack blacks they are racist, but when blacks likewise attack whites, that’s ok? Why is it that American communities were long ago shorn of their local self-determination? Must the only vision be a forced integration pioneered by the school-busing fanatics of years gone by? What is wrong with communities that would rather be white, or black, or Latino, or green, hanging with their own kind? If these communities did not drain resources from others, what’s wrong with it in principle? In America, the only communities where people are allowed to hang with their own kind are the rich, in their gated neighborhoods, and the artsy-craftsy tourist traps like New Hope, PA or Sugarloaf, NY, where the locals determine together to sell or rent only to fellow craftspeople. Nobody else is allowed to choose their neighbors.
I come from a nation (a group unified by history, language, culture and its own unique relationship to the land) that nearly disappeared in the conquering wave of germanization. It took a hundred and fifty years of massive effort on the part of the dreamers who wished to record and encourage the vanishing Czech culture. Even the dreamers did not believe it could be done. And yet, the dream swept the land with a reawakening that gives me shivers to this day. (Knowing that was possible, I know that a crunchy green awakening is possible too.) And now, all that – in its many European permutations — is being swept away by millions of displaced people from as far as Bangladesh, as far as western and central Africa. The Europe I knew is vanishing before my eyes, not only because of the intentional chaos caused by global elites permanently at war, but also because a fifth column of aggressive ideologues have turned their backs on the cultures of their birth in their quest for some crazy rainbow utopia. And we all know how much success radical utopians have had forging viable new sociopolitical systems.
This is a contentious topic, and last thing I want is for bullies to pile in here, abusing other commenters. Keep in mind the fundamental rule of engagement on Leaving Babylon: argue with passion by all means, but attack the argument, not the person. Thank you, and thank you for listening to my bewilderment and grief. Let’s help one another think through these difficult issues. Oh, and check out the animation (10 minutes) below. When exactly does “multiculturalism” morph into “genocide”?
Leaving Babylon 
December 23, 2015 at 9:07 am
Okay, I’m appalled. Especially by the video. I await comment by my niece who lives in Sweden, but meanwhile–seems to me there is something HUGE you’re leaving out. Namely, that white Europeans have largely overrun the Earth, setting up colonies and wealth pumps everywhere to funnel wealth back home (including home to the colonies taken over by the Europeans’ descendants, like the US, where the way for their takeover was cleared by the kind of genocide that DOES involve killing people). They have used the power they had due to technical superiority and partial immunity to certain diseases to set up situations from which they have continued to hold the whip hand ever since. And their economic arrangements have created a crisis of climate change and other environmental destruction, which is beginning to result in refugees heading north; of course, there have long been refugees for political reasons (the US government uses the CIA to install and maintain dictatorships, so it holds some responsibility for this, as well as war refugees. And NAFTA has resulted in a million Mexican small farmers being unable to compete with subsidized US crops, and ending up in maquiladoras or crossing the border).
Blacks in the US are not the result of voluntary immigration. But you think whites and Europeans are now entitled to close the borders, allowing their only own kind in–along with, presumably, the wealth continuing to trickle in? As for the video, the point not faced is that it’s really all about whether Israel should have to let Arabs in, or allow the Palestinians to have rights. Israel was uniquely formed to allow this particular ethnic/religious group to have a homeland–but there was inconveniently already a people in that land, which Israel dealt with by denying first their existence and then their rights. Maybe they, or any other group, should be entitled to enclaves reserved for their own kind–but if it comes via appropriating the land and homes of others, it doesn’t take a Hitler to suggest the arrangement is unfair.Especially when US aid guarantees this little enclave lives in first-world splendor while much of the surrounding world continues in poverty.
December 23, 2015 at 11:36 am
Heh, Mary, thank you. I was worried that people’s eyes would just glaze over, and nobody would be willing to be appalled.
You are right; another part of me knows that what is happening is chickens coming home to root, bad karma. Europeans for centuries flung out hordes of its own people to various parts of the world, exterminating and marginalizing other cultures. Now it’s happening to them. Yes, but that does not help when your own birthland is so attacked, and facing obliteration in a few generations. And I would have to be blind not to recognize that some of the values Europeans have promoted, and sometimes lived by, are far preferable to the values the newcomers are bringing: they are bringing with them the very ethnic conflicts and contempt of “certain other folks” and so on that they fled. How will it help anyone if they ruin what’s good in Europe of today?
As for Israel, that whole set up makes me crazy. Yes, the Zionists who began to move in in late 19th century had little heed for the original inhabitants, and it got worse when they began to build up clout. It is a horrible arrangement. But how would multiculturalism help?
Perhaps you would enjoy more a couple of vids made by the same people but not feeding the Israel conundrum, rather looking at our “land of the free” and its original inhabitants.
How whites took over America (part one and part two):
As for entitlement to close borders: boundaries are essential for localism. They are essential for the maintenance of ones home. And they are essential to sane psychological functioning. No boundaries is a prescription for disaster, whether at home or globally. How else could it be?
December 23, 2015 at 11:59 am
I got most of the way through the first one, that was all I could take. It’s absurd to conflate “Indians” wanting to preserve their homeland and culture from marauding violent whites, and blacks objecting to cops killing them. Well, much of this is about Europe and I’ve never even been there so I guess I’ll bow out at this point. I will point out that Czechs were not the colonizers…
December 23, 2015 at 12:47 pm
Mary, be fair. I never said anything about blacks objecting to cops killing them. Why would I? I do object to blacks speaking of whites with open contempt, but when whites do it, it’s racism.
No, Czechs were not the colonizers. More often the colonized. Still though, we profited, as all of Europe profited by the plunder of the new world, and the depredation in the old.
Would you be interested in responding to this, since this is very apropos our own shared culture, the localists? viz: As for entitlement to close borders: boundaries are essential for localism. They are essential for the maintenance of ones home. And they are essential to sane psychological functioning. ‘No boundaries’ is a prescription for disaster, whether at home or globally. How could it not be?
December 23, 2015 at 2:25 pm
I thought the video clip implied a critique of antiracist rhetoric such as the Black Lives Matter movement.
As for closing borders, the problem is that this is done by nation-states, and currently virtually all governments are owned by corporations–so borders are open or closed according to their needs. The “free trade” agreements–which have the force of law, unlike international environmental or social justice agreements–guarantee that goods can cross borders any time a profit can be thus made, but people who are left the short end of the economic stick can be excluded–that way wages can be kept down (yes I figure it’s also true that allowing poor people, for example from Mexico into the US, can lower wages in the incoming country). If Chinese could enter the EU or US at will, millions would have migrated long ago and Chinese wages would no longer be so low. Can the Basques or Catalonians withdraw from Spain because they feel like a distinct cultural group under siege, and they don’t like government policies? Spain is certainly trying to prevent it. Texans often talk about secession, as do Vermonters and even West Virginians but nothing ever comes of it (I say let Texas withdraw, as long as they take Florida, Alabama and Mississippi with them). I think we are likely to have some sort of collapse soon, whether a gradual one as John Michael Greer predicts, or something more cataclysmic; however it happens, we are likely to be left with a much more localized world. On the whole, I think that’s a good thing. As long as we have a global economy, I don’t like the idea of those in the comfortable countries slamming the door after themselves (this especially pertains to the US, where the dominant ethnicities’ ancestors immigrated here a few generations ago…and where it could be argued that we don’t have a genuine culture to be threatened).
December 23, 2015 at 3:18 pm
Okay, I want to be slow and careful. This is dangerous territory.
You are saying something important here but it is mixed in with a bunch of things that I think are generally not true. For example I think that there could be such a thing as ‘idiot diversity’ (similar to ‘idiot compassion’, see http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/idiot-compassion-and-mindfulness ), where someone wants so much for a group to be multicultural that they don’t consider the effect it will have on the group, whether the group has the resources to deal with what arises, etc. For example, a small group that had people of color and Klansmen and Jewish folk and neo-nazis would certainly be diverse, but I wouldn’t want to be a part of it. Similarly your stories about Sweden seem to point out a well meaning society that took on more than it had the resources for. (I also don’t know enough about Sweden to verify whether the stories are accurate or not.)
But, for example, I would say that your cartoon about the black person calling the white person ‘racist’ for being proud of being white, itself verges on racism. I’m not saying that this has never happened, but I know very few people of color that would call a white person racist for being proud of being white. To the contrary. I’ve seen things written by indigenous people asking white folks to stop appropriating their culture and pointing out that there are lots of wonderful things that ‘European’ folks could learn from exploring their own culture. I hear people claiming that everybody should be proud of who they are.
The reason that cartoon verges on being racist is that it plays on the fears that white people often have. This is the big weapon conservatives and right-wingers and racists use, fear. Truth gets lost here. Watch the way Trump comes up with stuff like Moslems in NJ cheering when the twin towers fell. The fear in the cartoon and a lot of similar conservative stuff is that black people are going to treat white people the way that white people have treated black people. When this gets played up enough it leads to ‘white defense’ groups and neo-nazis.
In a like way, I don’t know of many folks that are claiming that Europeans lack culture and need to “import diversity from parts half way across the globe”. What I do know is that multiculturalism scares people and can be used to fan fears. And those fears can lead to some awful things.
It’s interesting that Anders Behring Breivik in defending his massacre of adolescents at a summer camp in Norway, referenced the song “Children of the Rainbow”, which led to a gathering of forty thousand people who then sang the song and listened for pleas for “an open, warm, inclusive, and democratic Norway.” ( http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2012/0426/Breivik-slam-on-Rainbow-song-an-insult-too-far-for-Norwegians-video )
Multiculturalism is about having multiple cultures–not having a ‘melting pot’ where everything is blended into one. So we need to preserve those cultures.
In theory I support “communities that would rather be white, or black, or Latino”–or all female, or all male, or all queer, or whatever. On the other hand if a community wants to be a “crazy rainbow utopia”, why not? I believe in self-determination for communities. The issue for me is access to resources. If a community is hording stuff that other people want and need, there needs to be some way to share–and not accumulate wealth and power and privilege.
This all goes back to my reasons for wanting to support intentional communities, especially a diversity of communities. When whatever experiment we want to try is on a small scale, we can see if it works and if it doesn’t, few people are harmed. When you try massive social experiments of whatever kind, you risk lots of unforeseen side effects. Yes, I believe that small is beautiful.
December 23, 2015 at 3:24 pm
You did? Which part of the vid made you think it aims at Black Lives Matter? Now you have me confused.
What you say about localism and borders makes sense. I am for Vermont seceding too, and Ecotopia out west. 🙂
“I don’t like the idea of those in the comfortable countries slamming the door after themselves”
I don’t like that either… but how do you deal with it then? The U.S. once had a horrible immigration problem, cities were falling apart, people hating each new incoming group, did not even speak the same language in many places, it was a free for all, Kunstler writes about it memorably in one of his urbanism books. Then, when the Depression came, immigration was put on strict and smallish quota, and out of that (in part) came eventual prosperity for the lower and middle classes. I am convinced that those who are behind encouraging the sudden huge influx of people into Europe want to break the welfare state.
It’s kinda like saying, well, I inherited this house from my folks, and I hate to slam the door now against anyone else coming in the door… so I’ll leave the door open and anyone passing in the street can barge in and raid the fridge, sleep in the bedrooms, and so on. Nobody’s resources are infinite, not a household’s, not a small town’s, not a country’s like Sweden. So it’s one thing to say, let’s not slam the door, but quite another to give it some substance that does not imply ruining it for the people already in the house. If you were running things in some small country that others from the outside wanted to come into, what would you do?
December 23, 2015 at 6:11 pm
But what if your grandparents burned out the people who previously lived on that land so they could build that house? What would I do if I were running a small country–well, I very much see this question from a USA perspective. I think what the US should do to end terrorism, and what the EU needs to do about Muslim immigration are the same thing–STOP the drones, the wars, the manipulation of governments. I actually think a couple of key objectives of US policy in the Middle East are to stir up enough terrorism to justify more wars and more surveillance and such–and to prevent the rise or spread of democracy in the Middle East. What the US should do re our immigrants, mostly from Mexico and points south, is also the opposite of current policy: toss the TPP, TTIP. TISA and even NAFTA; stop dumping cheap corn there; stop giving corporations tax breaks to move jobs to maquiladoras. Mostly, people don’t WANT to move thousands of miles and leave their families and friends behind. They do it because of economic desperation, in part the result of deliberate exploitive policies enforced by the CIA. The policies we need on account of climate change might make this country (or the EU) less attractive destinations as well. Most of these things are less true of the EU, and it also is now more densely populated than this country, so closing the door might be more necessary there. It just bothers me to see people made refugees by US actions, then have people refuse to take them in. We could use a lot more diversity here in West Virginia, which has the least of any US state. Way too many damn honkies here.
December 23, 2015 at 10:17 pm
Contentious indeed. What a hopeless morass. I’ve been expecting for some time major disruptions as diasporas from politically and ecologically distressed regions of the world ramp up. Now that it’s beginning to happen — still just beginning — well, it feels very much like barbarians at the gates to those inundated by refugees. As I understand it, the French in particular want to retain their language and culture, meaning that immigrants must assimilate. In the U.S., old world cultures mixed with newer developments and formed something new, with most newcomers assimilating readily. In most of Europe, however, assimilation is not part of the project. And as moonraven points out, the melting pot doesn’t work everywhere, nor should it especially.
I was unaware of Sweden’s ideologically motivated multiculturalism leading to crime waves and cultural self-annihilation. The crap video you embedded makes the same point (sorta, and hypothetically) with Israel, minus the crime, poverty, and housing shortage. However, I wouldn’t conflate the forced mixing mechanism with genocide. Also, I’m afraid that with Germany bending over backwards to take in so many refugees, it’s on the same accelerated demographic path as Sweden. We’re not far behind here in the U.S., though it’s not driven so much by immigration as different birth rates among various groups.
The double standard about who gets to have strong and exclusive racial identity and who doesn’t is confounding in the extreme. We rejected “separate but equal” in the U.S. in the Civil Rights era, but separatism hasn’t gone away, and under some conditions, maybe it makes good sense. But our tawdry history, like Germany’s, makes the issue fundamentally irresolvable. The same is true of Israel and Palestine, though for different reasons, which is all I have to say about that complete clusterfuck.
I’ll get behind Mary Wildfire’s suggestion that we stop messing with other peoples economically and militarily, but globalism has already nixed that idea so long as the profit motive and industrial civilization persist. Since the onset of the Cold War, our default posture in the West has been intervention. Whether we get regional, local, or hyperlocal once social and economic structures go kablooie is a good question, but I daresay the process will involve new tribal and clan formations and thus no small measure of xenophobia.
December 24, 2015 at 10:08 am
Moonraven, I think your link to enabling is spot on.
As for the cartoon, I took it to pillory the society where an attitude to a white person by black is tolerated, while the opposite is labeled racism. But when taking it in the narrower sense you took it in… it seems to be exactly what is happening in Scandinavia. White people are told (by high level politicians, no less!) that their culture is dreck, that only the newcomers have culture. I have seen the vids. And look at Mary’s words, she feels free to disparage her own race by the offhand comment that “there are too many honkies around here.” What if instead she said there were too many chinks in Vancouver, or too many ni….s in Philadelphia? Why is it acceptable to insult white people nowadays?
I support the same communities you outline above, that is exactly what I meant, but I did not mean that it’s enough to choose one’s neighbors on private land. I meant it ought to be part of everybody’s right to local self-determination. The crazy rainbow utopia remark was addressed to those who want to create a societal totality where everybody is goose stepping to the socially sanctioned groupthink. No thanks. I would have thought communism was quite enough, but noooo!
If the Scandinavians tried it in one small area as an experiment, they could have learned from it, as you point out. (That is why local self-determination is so cool — people are free to try their local schemes, so the greater commonwealth is spared from making huge mistakes, and shares in the local successful outcomes.) But utopians, or I should say utopian totalitarians, want to go whole hog. It’s about the imposition of their pet projects, not about learning from feedback. In fact, utopian totalitarians will do almost anything to silence feedback.
December 24, 2015 at 10:14 am
“But what if your grandparents burned out the people who previously lived on that land so they could build that house?”
What if, indeed? Your land was once stolen from the Indians. Should you atone for it by taking in 50 families instead of the 4 you chose to allot, and ruin it for everybody, including the land in question?
I think my challenge to you was unfair — it’s a difficult, difficult puzzle. I agree with the changes you propose. But if you were running a small country, say Greece, and on top of the disaster already on your hands, you are now dealing with gazillions of people pouring out of Turkey, you don’t have the luxury to muse about TTIP and CIA. You have to close the border. If you can. Which… is another problem.
December 24, 2015 at 10:27 am
Brutus, I am behind Mary’s suggestion too. Our politicos are like 10 year old boys, trying to solve problems by hitting them with a big stick. The Spectacle gets more appalling by the day. Collapse porn.
Sorry about the crap video. I thought it would be more watchable than all the vids I have endured of people pouring and pouring in, throwing rocks, yelling insults, assaulting people on the street, on and on, I can’t stand it. Youtube abounds in them. One is called Open the Gates.
“However, I wouldn’t conflate the forced mixing mechanism with genocide.”
Why not? If the forced mixing results in the annihilation of the culture in question?
It’s my considered opinion that “old Europe” is being washed away, just as the Europe of the Celts was once washed away, and the indigenous Europeans will be lucky indeed if they retain some out of the way pockets the way Gaelic remnants did.
December 24, 2015 at 11:23 am
Absolutely true about being washed away. Lots of examples, which is world history, pure and simple. I’ve described its current incarnation as an unstoppable demographic wave washing over people (same metaphor), including white Americans who feel themselves being gradually displaced and replaced (not unlike getting old and becoming irrelevant). But the mechanism is far more passive than actively vilifying and targeting an entire people for extinction.
December 24, 2015 at 11:26 am
Here is a thing that bothers me–I saw years ago, that India was putting up a barbed-wire fence to keep Bangladeshis out. I found that very disturbing because it seems to me that all this “India shining” stuff is about India jumping on the development bandwagon, like China, trying to be more like the US. Which means skyrocketing Indian greenhouse gas emissions (always accompanied by other, localized environmental harm)…so those who retain land fit for farming are the same as those rendering Bangladesh impossible to farm. And then putting up a fence so the Bangladeshis starve or drown rather than overwhelming crowded India as it happily pumps out more ghg. I see the same thing right here: West Virginia, little poor West Virginia, surely contributes WAY more than average, even for a US state, to the problem, with its coal mines, gas fracking, and power plants (and its resultant political efforts to block any policies that could help). Meanwhile, it is impacted by climate change less than most: no ocean frontage, less vulnerable to droughts than the west–it does often flood but only in the “hollers”…it will likely get harder to grow food here with unpredictable weather, and our terrain has recently dictated importing most of our food. In the future we are collectively creating, that will likely no longer be possible, but we’ll still be better off than most places. The immigrants we’re mostly talking about are often the first of the climate refugees, whose numbers can be expected to swell greatly. Then what? We’re collectively working our way toward deciding that it’s too bad and all but we unfortunately need to protect ourselves–we in the countries that are still livable, we in the countries that contributed most to the problems–and so the refugees will just have to drown or starve or be shot.
As for calling my own people “honkies”–I see that as a jokey word, but anyway I really meant not that there are too many whites–WV is not really overpopulated–but that there are too few of anything else. It’s BORING living in a place that 98% white, mostly Scotch-Irish…I want more Hispanics here, and Syrians or whoever would be good too.
December 24, 2015 at 12:42 pm
Brutus, well, the mechanism is more passive, but after seeing vids of “fire and brimstone” Muslim clerics preaching conquest of Europe via refugees and outbreeding them, I am not sure if the difference is that great…
Mary, you can afford to see “honkie” as a joke word, because white people are not supposed to take offense. I used to also… but maybe it’s time to stand up for white people the way other ethnics stand up for their own.
Moonraven said: “This is the big weapon conservatives and right-wingers and racists use, fear. Truth gets lost here. Watch the way Trump comes up with stuff like Moslems in NJ cheering when the twin towers fell. The fear in the cartoon and a lot of similar conservative stuff is that black people are going to treat white people the way that white people have treated black people. When this gets played up enough it leads to ‘white defense’ groups and neo-nazis.”
Two issues I gotta get off my chest. First, I blundered by chance into a discussion of Trump’s claim that Muslims were holding parties in Jersey City to celebrate 9/11. There were some who said they saw that too, but what really caught my eye was someone who debunked the official debunking story in I think the Wash. Post. They fished in the Post’s own archives and came up with a police report referencing being called to such a party. Considering we now know that there are young Americans so drawn to fighting for Daesh they travel over there and train with them, it should not be surprising that there is some truth to what Trump said. That does not make him any less of a bloviating narcissist, of course.
I am pretty much done with “fear is what right-wingers use” and the whole lefty loosey righty tighty paradigm. It has become absolutely useless. The ideologues in Scandinavia who’ve cracked down on free speech are lefties. The “red” ideologues who destroyed Czechoslovakia were lefties. So let’s just move straight out to the division that still does hold: it’s between people who value freedom and openness and truth, and people who would rather crack down on us with the iron boot. Democracy vs totality?
December 25, 2015 at 7:03 pm
OK–got a response from my niece who lives in Sweden (who grew up in the US, has a British husband, Russian grandparents):
Well that is a lot of stuff in one article. I will start with the Swedish stuff- basically she is right on a lot of it though I don’t agree with how she spins it. True that Sweden decided to be more multicultural in the 70s. True that questioning refugee immigration even from an economic standpoint is seen as very racist, to a point of blatant insanity as it has caused economic stresses and cannot be discussed. As for having more poverty and crime in recent times, well, yes, that is also true but I do not know if it is bc of immigration only that we have seen that increase over the past few decades. I do see some issues with what Sweden has done as it was a bit naive. The Swedes mean well and I think overall they have tried to do the right thing, but its not like Mexicans crossing the border, here we have women in black face covering outfits filing law suits when not given jobs. Sorry, but on a feminist side I cannot be cool with a belief that women can’t look a man in the eye. I do at work every day and tell them off too. It is difficult to integrate when there is a fundamental difference in male female relationships.
I think the issue is not about culture or race, and I think things are destined to change with time so I do not give a shit about the loss of European norms. I thinks the main issue is the religion so many of the immigrants cling to which prevents them from integrating and leads to some societal problems. If you don’t integrate you don’t get a job and you end up in the lower class, eventually it becomes a race issue if there are many of the same background in the poorer neighborhoods. I do however know many people from the Middle East who are not religious and have integrated just fine. In those cases I say bring ’em on. I like the cultures mixing as long as they do actually mix.
I disagree with her point that we can live in separate communities of our own kind – that is what leads to resentment and crime. Separate is almost never equal and once the lower group realizes that they will get pissed off. Then it becomes a race problem automatically, esp in Europe where the original group would always have an advantage with language and assets if they kept separate. Anyway, I volunteered to teach refugees Swedish as I think that is key to full integration and that is the best way in opinion.
December 27, 2015 at 8:48 am
Mary, thank you for getting this independent corroboration of what is happening in Sweden. And I think your niece is right. I mixed too many things together, including my wish for coherent communities in America (and against their loss in Europe). Since the EU arrangement has been for immigrant communities that have been given dispensation to be separate, and not subject to the laws of the land that has taken them in, creating zones of sharia, I can hardly blame her for not liking what I said. I think I need to go back to the drawing board on that. 🙂
I wonder what she means by “so I do not give a shit about the loss of European norms”. She seems to give a shit about norms that say, a woman can’t look a man in the eye. There seems to be a bit of a contradiction there to my mind, and so I wonder. If she ever feels like contributing again, her voice would be valued.
December 28, 2015 at 8:03 am
Her reply, or addendum:
Well the European norms comment was responding the the comments about Swedish culture being too bland and needing to be spiced up and whites being denied their 1000s years old culture – essentially I referred to the mixing of people, food, language; daily things.
When it comes to laws- personal freedoms, then of course I do not want these to change. I see the religion separate from the race and ethnic culture in many cases, therefore I do not enjoy the extreme practicers of religion who won’t adapt a bit (no full-face burka) but I do not care about them looking different or eating different food, speaking their language with friends and family etc. That goes for all religious extremism or other which prevents people from integrating. I think the main goals today should be peace and improving the quality of life for as many people as possible. That includes maintaining personal freedoms valued by the west but for me does not include worrying about losing a history and culture or skin colors getting mixed up as we accept refugees. With the global economy, Internet and affordable travel we cannot stop the mixing. In a couple hundred years we will all be like a big smoothie in a blender and I doubt there is a way to prevent it. Times and technology are changing to fast. Our races & cultures developed in a time when no one could fly from Iran to Sweden to China in a day or speak via the Internet to share ideas around the world as we are doing right now. I just hope we handle the inevitable change in a peaceful and careful manner to avoid conflicts along the way…
December 28, 2015 at 8:17 am
And now my own comment: I do care about culture and history, even of Europe where I’ve never been (it is where all my ancestors come from. Well some of the Jewish side comes from the Middle East).
But I don’t think what she envisions will ever happen, because I think this global economy/culture has a decade or two at the most to run, before we have a major (perhaps gradual) collapse. There are too many humans consuming and wasting too many resources–it CAN’T go on much longer on this trajectory. We’re well into overshoot. It would be awful if we could, and in 200 years we had the blenderized race and culture she mentions, especially if the culture is the sort that has led to the homogenization of the US landscape–one boring, ugly, consumption- and profit-obsessed mall after another with Maine and New Mexico indistinguishable.
But I think it will go the other way before long. Unfortunately, the dehomogenization will ensue following an ugly period of fighting over remaining resources and livable places. But eventually, the survivors will create new cultures, thousands of them. What I fantasize is a universal meme that says anyplace that is worthy of the name “community” will have a visitors’ center where travelers can stay free. And it will be customary to make a grand journey in one’s late teens, to see something of the world–since the options will be feet, canoe and sailing ship, bicycle and horse, it will take months to go a significant distance–it won’t be possible to carry enough trade goods for all one’s food on the way, let alone more for lodging. Some visitors’ centers will have adjacent gardens, worked by the visitors; some townspeople will bring food, to guests expected to “sing for their supper,” that is, show photos and talk about their homelands and adventures on the road.
December 31, 2015 at 12:58 pm
Surprised to see you line up with so many right wing talking points here, Vera. Mary’s covered a lot of the areas I wanted to take issue with already, so I’ll just put a few things into the discussion briefly:
re: white racism vs black racism – the way I understand it, racism functions as a tool to enable exploitation of an underclass without feeling too bad about it – because the victims aren’t really human so it doesn’t matter what you do to them. It’s not as clear cut as it used to be, but I think it’s still true that black folks in the US come under even the poorest whites in the hierarchy of Human Worthiness. Nobody has to start a #whitelivesmatter because everybody already takes that for granted. So the ‘n’ word carries a lot more force than ‘honky’ or whatever because of its history of use as a stick to beat black people down and dehumanise them. When a black elite runs the country and starts systematically exploiting or enslaving an underclass of poor whites, then maybe ‘honky’ or ‘cracker’ etc will need to be starred out in polite discourse.
‘White’ is not a distinct culture or race, it’s an economic terminology meaning ‘those on top’ or somesuch. I’d argue that ‘whiteness’ requires you to actively dismantle everything culturally unique about your heritage in order to blend in with the global monoculture. I don’t think of myself as ‘white’, even though my educators tried their best to make me that way. At most I’m ‘white in recovery’ 😉
I come from what one historian called ‘the most colonised nation in history’ – the UK. Any talk of national pride or praise of the nobility of the english (more likely british) character fills me with deep unease, and not just because I’m a first generation immigrant and don’t feel like I belong. That kind of nationalism looks to me like a confidence trick to try and bind people up into the ideology of empire, to identify with their oppressors and swallow their cultural hegemony (Gramsci). But is there an ‘english identity’? I’ve looked for one, working in conservative middle england, and I struggle to put my finger on something unique to here, and not widespread in the global capitalist culture. Maybe the dark gallows humour, the inability to take any subject seriously without the impulse to take the piss or make a crass joke… Jensen’s mum once said that abusers have no personality so they have to go looking for aspects of character to pirate from other people. I think the same might apply to abusive nations. If you go along with that you forfeit the right to any culturally defining feature. You drink tea from india, flavoured with sugar from the west indies, wearing clothes made in china while listening to music made by impoverished black people. Frankie Boyle put it well:
‘You weren’t born in a country – you were born in a getaway car, and the victims have been chasing you down ever since by boat, by lorry, and on foot.’
Czechs weren’t the colonisers? I thought they had an empire back in the day (checks wikipedia) … oh, it was like 1,000 years ago and not that big, okay. Remember that video of young czechs appropriating native american culture? Why didn’t they go back and look into their own traditions? The film started with footage of dancers in traditional dress on one of the Prague bridges. Why didn’t the kids think it was cool to imitate them?
Lastly I really object to the juxtaposition of the ‘conquering wave of germanization’ with ‘And now, all that […] is being swept away by millions of displaced people from as far as Bangladesh, as far as western and central Africa.’ Can’t you see how different the two situations are? Do you see poor, desperate bangladeshis and africans imposing their culture on europe, taking over the schools, forbidding religious practice, assuming the role of the elite? I want some of what you’re smoking. Oh wait, maybe not!
In summary: It’s a problem, granted. It’s going to get worse. Governments are amoral entities so they will let them in or exclude them according to what suits the bottom line interests at the time. Hating on refugees/migrants is no solution and will make things 100x worse. Christ, look what the Daily Mail published back in November:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/daily-mail-nazi-refugee-rat-cartoon_564b526ee4b06037734ae115
But yes, we need an identity of some sort, and boundaries of another sort to keep that identity intact. Just beware nationalism!
cheers,
I
(not so brief after all then!)
January 1, 2016 at 11:29 am
Ian’s back! If posting “right wing talking points” gets you back into commenting (and blogging, please?) I must do it more often. 😉
Clearly this is a conversation worth having since we are all over the place. The whole thing with whiteness weirds me out. I heard that racism got its start way back when slaves and indentured servants were running away together. To divide people. Figures. The n word is commonly used by blacks among themselves, and they are certainly entitled. If Mary wants to use “honky” amongst whites, I can live with it. If it’s used as a pejorative to attack those unlike you, that’s a problem.
Your claim that racism is really about class is very strange. According to your take on it, the Chinese elites running China and Tibet are really white? The black thugs who have run various African states on and off, they are really white?! Ian, that just makes no sense.
I did not know you were first gen immigrant. Like me… where is your family from? If you don’t mind saying.
I think abusive people pirating identities, that was perceptive indeed. But how is drinking tea from India a key to understanding here? “From filmers to farmers” blog wrote 4 posts trying to grapple with real and phony multiculturalism (link to the fourth post of the series is here). I am sorry to hear that Englishers do not seem to you distinctive as a culture any more. Maybe that’s part of why old Europe is sinking?
Thank you for noting we Moravians once had an “empire” — well, a grandiose term for a regional alliance that lasted what, three generations? Somebody could write a dissertation on those Czechs idolizing Indians. Why did they not look into their own traditions? Both of my grandmothers wore the traditional costumes. I never did. By my time, patriotism was turned into embarrassment as the commies made it officially enforced. It may have been Kundera who wrote about a way to escape the communist evil eye: you could be a coal miner, the child of a partisan, or a singer or dancer in one of those obligatory folk ensembles. Then they could not touch you. As close to immunity as it got. But this only scratches the surface. Why did we Czechs fall in love with the Indians and the wild west? The books of Karl May were a formative influence. And the longing to have something freer than the tame humdrum central European existence. Everything is bloody complicated.
You object to me noting the Celts were swept away by the germanic tribes? I am baffled. And that it’s similar to indigenous Europeans being swept away by another wave, this time from very far away? Why?
I side note: Your “poor, desperate Bangladeshis” are still huddling in Bangladesh, or a refugee camp nearby. They can’t afford to pay the 10 to 20 thousand dollars to people smugglers. Could you afford that? No doubt, some of them have families that pool for that kind of money. The rest… where does the money come from? Inquiring minds would like to know.
Do I see the migrants imposing their culture on Europe? Wake up, Ian. Look. What do you think the Swedish no-go zones are? They are sharia zones. They are run by immigrant gangs. Berlin, too. Show me this is not true, and I will thank you always.
Hating on refugees? Am I hating on refugees? Or anyone on this blog? Why do you bring it up when people peacefully discuss? Must we be muzzled because Daily Mail is being a jerk? (I thought dickery is their trade mark.)
But glad to hear we do have common ground. I plan to bring up nationalism in a future post. And localism, btw. And yes, it’s going to get worse. Fast.
January 1, 2016 at 11:36 am
Mary, you may want to look into the early medieval inns along the roads of pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I heard everything was free for the pilgrims. Once the small trickle turned into a flood, though, it could not be maintained, and it turned into big biz.
January 2, 2016 at 6:41 am
Query: Do you see the distinction between your own migration to this country 35 years ago or whatever it was, and that of my great-grandparents, all being seen as fine while Europe should slam the door on the current refugees, as not being because the former were all white and Christian (or Jewish) while the latter are mostly slightly darker and Muslim…but because the former all came as individuals and families who kept some part of their culture and language but mostly assimilated as fast as they could while the latter want to maintain a separate identity and culture within the new countries? But I’ll bet similar charges were laid here a century ago.
I want to point out one more thing: what we really object to in Muslim immigrants is their treatment of women, the chador, the sharia law, the religious fanaticism. But these things don’t actually distinguish Islam from Christianity–Christians have hidden and suppressed women and killed adulterers and anyone who wouldn’t sign on to the locally popular version of Christianity. There have been strains in Islam that rejected all that–I’ve read in fact, that there was a major wave of modernization within Islam when the US government and its allies started attacking Islamic countries because they happen to be situated over major oil deposits…and deals were made with the king of Saudi Arabia and with the power brokers in Israel to keep them powerful at the expense of any challengers, at the expense of democracy. I always wonder why I seem to be the only one pointing out that the actual, as opposed to stated goal of the last 20 years of US wars has been to suppress democracy in the Middle East, not to spread it, and to eliminate cohesion and progress–so the wars have not been massive failures after all. But it certainly is a sad shame, that control of oil led the US sociopathic rulers of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to attack Islamic countries and thus guarantee a backlash against moderation and modernism.
January 2, 2016 at 6:48 am
On the travelers’ centers: I think it depends on whether a given community is a hob, or located on a major trade route like the Crusaders used. If not, there might never be a lot of people coming through. The community would be expected to provide a shelter–in many cases, it would be a room within a community center used for other purposes. The visitors would often help with necessary maintenance, wash the bedding while doing their own laundry, wash the dishes, maintain the garden if there was one. Food would often be provided by local people but would not be guaranteed. This whole scenario is based on the supposition that there is no common currency. I suppose the Crusaders used gold or silver, but that might be in short supply by now. It also supposes that visitors bring something to a community, reducing the need for its own members to travel…in a future in which there is no motorized transport and going, say, from the east coast of the US to the West would take several months (and involve many adventures).
January 2, 2016 at 6:51 am
Yes, am meaning to get back into it. Personal shit took up all my energy since the summer. Sorry for jumping back in on a negative note…
re: whiteness, have a look at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_people#United_Kingdom_and_Ireland
The elites were so keen to set themselves up as racially superior that they even perceived irish, welsh and other ‘celtish’ (as opposed to anglo-saxon) people as tainted or ‘africanoid’ and therefore below them in the hierarchy. Thus justifying their exploitation and the ‘internal colonisation’ of their lands which set the template for the british empire’s expansion across the globe. As for the ‘chinese elites’ and ‘black thugs’ you mention, well no it doesn’t make sense if you’re looking at skin pigmentation, but if you’re looking at denial of heritage, aspiration towards the behaviours & benefits of former colonisers, acceptance of free market doctrine (or christianity in former times) then they’re plenty white and can be accepted into the ‘club’ to a degree. Increasingly middle-upper classes in nonwhite countries are actually bleaching their skin to live up to these ideals. Eg:
http://screamer.deadspin.com/the-whitening-of-neymar-how-color-is-lived-in-brazil-1601716830
Me? I’ll just say there’s a nice mongrel mix of french, czech and italian in there 🙂 Didn’t I mention that before?
You ask, ‘how is drinking tea from India a key to understanding here?’ – isn’t it weird how the british national drink is a product of colonialism and empire, using a plant that won’t grow here (same with the sugar sweetening it) and requires importation from halfway across the globe? I heard that a key reason it became so popular was because merchants were looking for something to fill their empty ships with on their way back from trading in the far east. Anyway, the point is that cultural identifiers (analogous to personality in the individual) become alienated from the land and immediate lived existence of the people who come to identify with that culture. The national drink should be nettle tea or yarrow ale or something, but because so much of the british identity has been bound up in the commercial exploitation of other countries our presence here has become just as alien as in any of the colonies.
Interesting points about traditional czech stuff vs the commies. So the kids didn’t think the ancestral traditions were cool or subversive enough because of appropriation by the occupiers? A neat trick to undermine a culture… Maybe the christian transformation of pagan deities into saints worked in a similar way? Will have a look at Karl May, thanks – I’ve long wondered about that strange aspect of czech culture. Some family connections are strongly involved in the ‘tramping’ movement, which borrows heavily from the wild west fetish.
‘You object to me noting the Celts were swept away by the germanic tribes?’ – er, no, you were talking about a ‘conquering wave of germanization’ in the last 150 years which I thought referred to the austro-hungarian empire and its effects on czech culture & identity (my history is very sketchy on this though – didn’t the czechs play a big role in that empire, rather than being trampled on & colonised?) and later the nazi ‘lebensraum’ offenses. Now you say you were talking about prehistory? I’m confused…
Either way I disagree that europeans are now ‘being swept away by another wave, this time from very far away’. What aspects of their culture have been outlawed? Are they no longer permitted to speak their own languages? Have the immigrants taken over key government offices and are now forcing everyone to submit to their way of doing things? Rubbish. No matter what their former social status, over here they’re right at the bottom of the pile and they will be used for cheap labour in the shittiest, most deregulated & insecure jobs. They are not conquerors, invaders or occupiers. Their power is precisely zero in that regard. Why are you so scared of them? Considering you don’t even live in Europe any more?
‘What do you think the Swedish no-go zones are? They are sharia zones. They are run by immigrant gangs. Berlin, too.’
If you say so, I’ve never been – have you? People say the same sort of thing here about towns like Birmingham or inner city London and I tend to disregard it as racist fearmongering. Although, again, I’ve not lived in those places so can’t really comment. But then, don’t these people pay taxes, electricity bills, car insurance? Apart from the relentless pressure to ‘integrate’ coming from the media, local government, the schools etc it’s pretty clear that they submit to local rules far more than the other way round. But for you it doesn’t seem tragic for these people to have their culture forcibly ‘swept away’ from them. Why that failure of empathy? If you come from an immigrant family surely you should have some understanding and sympathy for people in a strange land wanting to hold on to aspects of the culture they were forced to leave behind.
‘Am I hating on refugees?’ – well I would be too polite to say, hence why I deflected that criticism onto the DM. I think it’s a very dangerous area right now, with incitement a real possibility. Muslims all over France have been getting it in the teeth, and the camp in Calais got attacked after the killings in Paris, so anything that contributes to the dehumanisation of these people, and especially associating them with terrorism (no, I haven’t seen that here) has a risk of leading to violence and/or further state repression.
On a lighter note here’s a perspective-shifter from Andre Vltchek which you might enjoy:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43097.htm#.Vhks8IQ3Ues.twitter
cheers,
I
January 2, 2016 at 8:29 am
We keep going in circles. You don’t answer whether it would be a good thing to open wide the gates of your own community. It’s the same principle. Do firstlings have rights as firstlings? I think they do. And that right is given, however imperfectly, to First Nations. But when it comes to Europeans, that is prejudice. Huh?
When I first came to Colorado, there were bumper stickers everywhere saying Don’t californicate Colorado. But Colorado got californicated anyways. Every time I go up to Denver, the prairies between Monument and Denver disappear more and more to give way to McMansions, as far as the eye can see. Horrifying. And for this Coloradans steal water from the western slope, water which then ends up missing lower down as the river peters out. I am sure that the generation before me was horrified by the changes that we the newcomers caused there. Where to lay the line? How much is too much?
You are right about what we don’t like about the Muslim culture. More on that in my next post. And I totally agree with your analysis of the conflict in the Middle East, and all those ruined countries. But I think the same impulse is now showing in Europe — the powers that be do not want Europeans united together in their own ethnic nations. No more of those uppity monocultural Icelanders jailing rogue banksters!
January 2, 2016 at 9:10 am
Ian, yes, I can see how the concept of race and class are mutually reinforcing. Still though, I take racism to be prejudiced on the basis of skin color. Otherwise you might just throw away the dictionaries and say that anything means anything. I am not sure I have anything useful to add at this point. I remember a film about race on the campus of a black school long time ago, where the main protagonist was a black couple, and at one point she chided him for picking her, because she was “one of the darker sisters on campus” and at that time, it was seen as more politically correct amongst the black students, so more status for him. The games we play…
I just did not know, or remember, that you were a newcomer to Britain. Nettle tea? 🙂 Well, not likely. Caffeine has its pluses. The American colonists drank Oswego tea, some herbal tea picked up from the natives, and whipped up patriotic fervor about it, but it never really caught on. On the other hand, there are still many Europeans who prefer their coffee mixed with chickory, even when they don’t have to (like they did during WWII). Traditions evolve in response to everything, even war or colonialism.
I am confused too. I was talking about both. But I likened what is happening to Europe similar to what swept the Celts away, way back. Or I could say, like the kurgan tribes that swept away the Neolithic “Old Europe”. About Austro-Hungarian empire… Czechs played very much the third fiddle there, and were forcibly recatholicized by the Habsburgs after the Battle of White Mountain, at the start of the 30 years war. The Czechs lost their protestant (utraquist) identity, the nobility was executed or fled, many utraquist intellectuals fled too (eg Comenius), Jesuits took to hunting down Czech bibles and other religious writings, and germanization began big time.
Mary, could you ask your niece to write about Swedish no-go zones? Ian here thinks they are a figment of my fevered imagination. Disconcerting, to say the least.
(more anon)
January 2, 2016 at 9:18 am
Whether we are talking about my community in WV or your area in Colorado, what we are really talking about is not so much cultural imposition as overpopulation. Next weekend a couple is visiting us–we would all be happy if it worked out and this couple settled on the fourth leasehold. But this is an intentional community in which membership is restricted–the board votes on adding new members. That’s about WHO joins–but you are really asking, how about throwing open the gates to where we have more than the land can support (not that people are swarming in asking to enter–if we provided free housing that would happen but it seems hardly anyone wants to build their own house). This is a population issue, and a global problem.
But whenever I suggest a universal one-child policy to get our numbers down to a sustainable level, I’m met with pretty much universal cries of outrage. Most think procreation is a sacred right that everyone has the right to indulge in as often as they choose; others think restrictions are fine for some groups but not others. Europe is more heavily populated than this country, which is why the refugees there are more of a problem than the Spanish-speaking ones coming over our southern border…though there are the same calls for fences and walls and shootings. But you have not couched your whole issue in population terms but in cultural terms. So would I welcome a Syrian refugee family on that leasehold, if they somehow were equipped to build their house there? Depends on their values. I don’t care if they pray to Allah five times a day and don’t eat pork. If the woman is in chador and is essentially owned by her husband, I don’t want them as neighbors.
January 2, 2016 at 9:29 am
A neat summary, Mary. I feel the same way.
About population, a few years back I suggested that Haiti’s problems could be alleviated if in return for commitment to replacement-only procreation each Haitian be given enough land to support themselves on. I even did some back of the envelope calculations which seemed to say it was doable. You shoulda seen how those “progressives” clobbered me.
January 2, 2016 at 10:27 am
Oh, no doubt, and I can see why–you were saying–or they were hearing–“if only them dumb niggers would control their breeding they’d be fine. We could make a deal…” This is why I say such a policy makes sense only if it is universal. EVERY woman is entitled to one child, no exceptions, and no woman is entitled to a second, no exceptions (if the first one died she could have another, but would still have just one). My sister argues that some groups, like the US, don’t “need” such a policy…but the people with the lowest birthrates are mostly those with the highest per capita impacts, and anyway, regardless of “need”, the only way such a policy could ever possibly be accepted, is if it were universal. Nobody saying “you people need to reduce your numbers…but we, well we have individual rights.” The thing is–the alternative is to breed ourselves over the demographic cliff. If we want to maintain the current paradigm that involves low death rates–in childbirth, neonatal, and at every age–we have to have matching low birth rates. Since we have failed to do that enough of the time that our numbers have driven much of the plant’s fauna to the edge of extinction, we are facing what any species that is too successful faces–a mass die-off, our death rates rising to match the birth rates (which will then soar as we will have lost civilization and its handy birth control methods). These are the only two options–we live on a finite planet. The notion that we can have high birth rates and low death rates, counting on technology and human exceptionalism to somehow make it work…well, it HAS worked much longer than Malthus thought it could, but as a commenter somewhere pointed out, Malthus’s predicted die-off DID happen–we just managed to push the deaths off onto other species, which have died off in great numbers before our onslaught. There is a limit to this replacement of animal flesh with flesh of one species, as ecosystems are complex and we still depend upon them.
January 2, 2016 at 11:01 am
Mary, I certainly wasn’t saying anything about color. I was trying to supply helpful ideas in the wake of the earthquake. But that’s how the discussions go nowadays. And yes, it should apply to anyone. I thought, since people say Europeans (and former Europeans)’s procreation is down because of greater prosperity, that taking care of the Haitians’ livelihood would be a no brainer. But noooo! (Such a deal is not necessarily needed in other places, though on the other hand, land issues lurk in the back of most human conflicts).
Malthus was essentially right. He got some details wrong. But the bullies ran in to discredit him because human procreation is a sacred cow. My impression of the progressives who steamrolled me was the same… some genuflecting in the direction of overpopulation, but when it comes to setting actual and effective limits on people, and putting in schemes that encourage personal responsibility, that’s a no-no. And my scheme was voluntary! Go figure.
January 2, 2016 at 1:54 pm
Agree to disagree on race, not sure if I said what I was trying to say very well…
Not a newcomer myself – I was born here after my folks met in London and eventually settled down in the SE (apparently ‘first generation’ means different things to different people).
Well remembered about chicory. I think there was a similar attempt to market acorn ‘coffee’ as ‘indigenous’ in France at a time when imports were under strain. Didn’t stick though.
‘Traditions evolve in response to everything, even war or colonialism.’ Yes, no argument there. The british isles have been dominated by ‘wheat and beef’ agriculture for a long time, but this too was the outcome of invasion and displacement of h/ger cultures before. Beer, porridge, steak, lamb chops etc. – all foods originating in the middle east, using non-native plant & animal domesticates (although similar foods were cooked from native sources before). This goes deep!
Thanks for the CZ history lesson – I will have to take a look at that properly someday. Any accessible history books you can recommend (in English, unfortunately)? As for celts and ‘old europe’ – again I don’t know a huge amount about these, but didn’t they get ‘swept away’ militarily through conquest, occupation and forced assimilation? It just doesn’t seem like the same phenomenon we’re seeing today. I’d be more inclined to look for analogies with the slave populations of ancient Greece and Rome, many of which came from the frontiers, destabilised through the empires’ wars & conquests, and were put to work in the most menial tasks. Were Greek & Roman elites or the wider cultures ever under threat of takeover from these slave populations? Maybe the occasional revolt, but otherwise I think they were kept firmly in their place. Another research project…
re: ‘no-go zones’ in Sweden, I’m just wary of accepting this without direct evidence. Maybe your imagination is ‘fevered’, maybe not. I reserve judgement. A lot of people will have axes to grind on the subject and will leap on anything that appears to confirm their pre-formed biases. Most of the people I hear complaining about the influx of foreigners, the ‘white minority’ in cities and about how they apparently don’t recognise their country any more have lived in the affluent south-east most of their lives in towns where you hardly ever see a dark-skinned face. They’re just running a script the media and inherited prejudices have installed in their heads and they’ve never made the effort to check it against reality, eg by visiting these places and (shock) talking to these people like they were real human beings.
It all smacks of divide and rule to me. Horizontal hostility too. If the elite can get us squabbling amongst ourselves and with people we could be working with in solidarity, then they will succeed in blinding us to the role they have played in undermining our cultures, through globalism, consumer capitalism, media homogenisation etc etc.
cheers,
I
January 2, 2016 at 3:32 pm
To respond, Ian, to your disbelief that old Europe is being swept away (boiling the frog, anyone?), and your question regarding
“have the immigrants taken over key government offices and are now forcing everyone submit to their way of doing things” I would like to refer the readers to the widespread sex slavery gangs around Britain. The most notorious being the Rotherham one, run by Pakistanis. I read over thousand barely pubescent (white) girls from troubled backgrounds were victimized in this town, and though some of them appealed to the authorities, people in power, including the cops, turned a blind eye. For 16 years! No, poor Pakistani immigrants, they have no power at all, ey? What was I thinking? And what about the failure of empathy here, on the part of all people living in Rotherham and the other cities? Apparently, fear of “OMG racism” trumps empathy for severely abused girls.
As for no-go zones, I did not mean to imply they are all sharia zones. I read that there are 7 Arab gangs running the various areas in Berlin. I hear that some of the zones in Sweden are sharia, though, with thugs patrolling the street for compliance. Why don’t you ask around, Ian? You live nearby. Surely someone you know knows someone who’s witnessed what these zones are like? Meanwhile, maybe Mary’s niece will have some direct information from Sweden.
“I would be too polite to say” — don’t go coy on me, Ian. If I have erred, I want to know. Please point out what you mean. And I don’t know what you mean by the DM — I did not get any email from you about this.
Vltchek’s article is awesome. Some factual errors (like 300,000 refugees this year, hahaha, as if). (Btw, his name is Czech and means Little Wolf.) But if you are willing to believe that many of the hordes of westerners ruining other parts of the world are arrogant thugs, why is it so hard to believe that many of the hordes of mostly young men from Africa and Middle East ruining Europe are also arrogant thugs? It cuts both ways.
The question of integration vs assimilation is a hard one. I am not in favor of the melting pot. America used to have ethnic neighborhoods all over, that enriched everybody, mostly. But not anymore. And I understand people’s need to hold on to aspects of their culture — in fact, part of my post was precisely about that. But holding on to honor killings, ripping girls’ genitals out, pedophilia, brutal misogyny, sex slavery and a few other choice aspects of “certain cultures”, no, I would fucking rather die than sanction that.
You ask me: Why are you so scared of them?
I ask you: Why are you so scared of the truth?
Here is a letter from a Czech doctor working abroad about what is happening in German hospitals.
January 2, 2016 at 4:14 pm
I don’t know the situation in Europe but I must say this letter reeks of xenophobia, which makes it less than credible to me. I mean look at Trump’s similar claims about hispanic people coming into the US–and it isn’t true here. She makes quite a few factual claims that sound pretty inflammatory–but is she exaggerating, cherry-picking, and perhaps also being exposed to the worst refugee behavior because her own hostility and superiority is so poorly hidden?
January 2, 2016 at 5:31 pm
Look at the vids, Mary. Nasty stuff is all over Youtube.
Is Trump saying that because of Hispanics, they have to have cops with dogs in the hospitals? Or that Hispanics are attacking people with knives when they don’t like what the doc tells them or if their child dies in the hospital? Or maybe that they refuse to be treated by women? Where are those “similar claims”? I have seen vids of Middle Easterners telling each other to cut Europeans. And a woman and her son were attacked with a knife and killed at an IKEA in Sweden. I believe the assailant tried to behead them, but I am a bit vague on the gory details.
“perhaps also being exposed to the worst refugee behavior because her own hostility and superiority is so poorly hidden?”
Really. Sounds like blaming the victim to me. I started following the vids early on in the wave, and I remember the “welcome refugees” crowd was claiming that the xenophobes were accusing the poor refugees of trashing everything wherever they went. They somehow staged the vids! Oh yeah. Now that the trashing has been documented endlessly, nobody is saying that anymore. Beware of reverse bias.
January 2, 2016 at 6:24 pm
A History of the Czech Lands (2009)
by Jaroslav Pánek and Oldřich Tůma
This looks good, Ian. Kinda pricey. It’s probably a tome. Maybe your library would get it for you? Or were you looking for something more on the order of a short book, summarizing the main points?
As far as I know, the Celts were pushed out by what we Czechs call “Moving of the Nations” way back when… I think the Celts began to be pushed westward by the germanic tribes couple of centuries BC… and then the germanic tribes in turn were pushed westward and northward by the Slavs around 400-600 this era. Not conquest as such, but overwhelming with mass migrations. The Slavs pushed into what was East Germany and even towards Denmark, but those people (the Wends) eventually got assimilated and disappeared. Many place names remain as witnesses. The name Bohemia means “home of the Boii” who were a Celtic tribe.
Divide and rule is right. The “new Europe” will never be able to unite against their true oppressors any more. No more Icelands. Can’t have THAT, can we?
January 3, 2016 at 6:23 am
Trump said most of the Mexicans are criminals and rapists, carrying diseases, sent into this country by their government because they’re the dregs of their society. As for the existence of corroborating vids, look at Breitbarks work “proving” that Planned Parenthood is selling baby parts, that ACORN was hustling whores, that a woman who worked for a federal ag agency was favoring black farmers…I don’t remember the details, just that he set up situations and edited the videos to maker criminal intent appear, and was exposed, and it didn’t matter; ACORN was defunded and disbanded, the woman was fired, Planned Parenthood is under relentless attack. I’m not saying no Muslim immigrant in the EU has ever pulled a knife or refused to be treated by female doctors, etc–just that the existence of a few such stories proves nothing. We have proof that a Christian white male killed a bunch of black people in a church, which has happened before. Better get the dangerous white Christian males out of this country, eh? Since that doctor said she and other female doctors “refused to go among those animals” who didn’t want female doctors, I’d say she had more than a bit of attitude toward them. I’d like to see statistics, or first-hand testimony from multiple Europeans known to be reasonable people.
January 3, 2016 at 7:20 am
Had a look at that cz doctor link.
‘A friend in Prague has a friend, who, as a retired physician, had returned to work at a Munich area hospital where they needed an anaesthesiologist. I correspond with her and she forwarded me her email.’ – Wow, sounds legit!
‘Many migrants have AIDS, syphilis, open TB and many exotic diseases that we, in Europe, do not know how to treat them.’ – Ah, the ‘they’re all infected with dangerous diseases’ trope. Another reason to eliminate this scourge of parasites, right? Also this ‘doctor’ apparently thinks that medical science hasn’t made any progress since the start of the 20th century.
‘The local press is forbidden to write about it,’ – ah, I see. Very convenient the story can’t be corroborated in any way, so we just have to take this unnamed source on trust.
Had a quick search and the only page picking up this story without any affiliation to american psycho-conservative websites was this one debunking some more of its claims:
https://www.truthorfiction.com/female-physician-in-munich-pens-email-about-refugee-crisis/
Surprises me that you’re not applying lashings of salt to these stories, V.
Gotta go, more later,
I
January 3, 2016 at 8:29 am
So. Clearly publishing anonymous letter that is hard to verify was a mistake. I am not going to debunk the debunkers. I will just say that I have been really bothered by the responses from you both. Basically saying, if it’s nasty, it must be xenophobia and racism, even though the Swedish niece confirmed much of what I was reporting, and even though Ian can find out from people in England whether or not the no go zones exist and what they are like. Crazymaking, on my end.
So lets take another tack. We know each other as reasonable people with open minds. How can we listen to what the other has to say? I would like to be heard, and I am sure you feel I am not hearing you as well. So lets take it to a metalevel, so we can understand better. Game?
January 3, 2016 at 9:57 am
No, I don’t feel like you aren’t hearing me; I just feel like you believe different things than I do. Which is a vast general problem–so few of the things we argue about (I mean “we” in the broad sense here), even things with a factual basis like our issue here, can be resolved simply and directly by any of us. My sister can come up with rafts of scientific “proof” that climate change is a hoax and is enormously frustrated that I refuse to look into the matter for myself–as if I were remotely qualified to judge a matter so far beyond my scientific expertise.
People argue about whether 9/11 was an inside job, offering as evidence things they’ve read–but how do we know what is legit and what is false? In this case, the truth may be somewhere in between–but I am certainly in no position to judge it, having never even been to Europe let alone being there now. In this, in the 9/11 stuff, climate change, I use my judgment to weigh the credibility of claims, asking which explanations best accord with my experience of how the world works. For example, I find the idea that thousands of the world’s climate scientists are working together in a hoax to get research funds stretching credibility beyond the snapping point, whereas the idea that the enormously well-funded and interested oil (and coal and gas) companies would fund and encourage denier scientists likely and believable. It does stretch credibility that a conspiracy the size of what would be required to wire the Trade Center buildings to collapse when the planes hit them–and hide the plane that supposedly hit the Pentagon, along with its passengers, while shooting a missile at it instead–could be planned, successfully executed, and covered up afterward. But on the other hand, the motive is there is abundance, the power players I believe to be sociopaths who wouldn’t hesitate to kill thousands of Americans, and the “official” explanation also requires not only a successful conspiracy but a level of incompetence on the part of authorities that’s a bit hard to credit. And many like my husband, who does have a degree in physics, say the towers could not have collapsed as they did because of the planes.
In our issue I am influenced by the parallel with which I’m more familiar–hispanic immigrants to the US (though even there, I live in the state with the least immigration and don’t get out much). And I find it hard to credit that desperate refugees move into wealthier new non-Islamic countries and immediately start acting like empowered obnoxious jerks as though determined to wear out their welcome. A few? Sure, you’ll get a few of almost any behavior. But in large numbers? And again, the alternative explanation, that these stories are being amplified and exaggerated by xenophobes, I find entirely credible as this seems to be a fairly universal human phenomenon. People instinctively bond with those they see as tribe against those they see as “other”. Especially in times of stress and resource competition.
January 3, 2016 at 10:53 am
I agree, there is much out there that is hard to dig to the bottom of it. I’ve pretty much ignored the truthers because I have absolutely no way of finding out what’s what.
But I have seen too many vids, filmed over many months now, of large groups of new refugees creating havoc, throwing stones at the locomotives at train stations in Hungary, taking the gifts and water the volunteers brought them and ostentatiously throwing them away, while trying to kick the volunteers… a very credible interview with them by an Arab speaking reporter who said they told her those volunteer women who brought them food and gifts are crazy hags who ought to be home with their husbands… many vids of people using threatening language against people of Europe… language of conquest and violence. Vids of street assaults. The contempt is well-documented, one only has to look. Oh and another well documented thing: all the gifts, plush animals, tents and so on ostentatiously left behind as trash at each station on the journey they were taking, like throwing the finger. Vids of Islamic demonstrations in Germany with the black flags ISIS uses… and imams holding forth in Christian churches… well, after a while, it gets pretty bizarre. Why do Brits allow burkas, and Germans? It’s an insult to European women. Why do they tolerate hate language from the immigrants while clamping down on less violent, though perhaps incendiary, language from indigenous Europeans?
That is not saying that it is most of the refugees. Of course not. But as in the Vltchek post, not all or even most of westerners go abroad creating havoc either. It’s enough for a critical mass to do so, whatever the critical mass is in each case, no?
I am not sure that I have any fixed opinions on this issue. I resent the PC clamp down on information. I am talking about what I see, what I hear on alternative media. I want to understand better, and be able to talk to others, such as you two or folks on Resilience, without it degenerating into a clash of assertions that goes nowhere. How to do this? That’s my puzzle.
January 3, 2016 at 1:33 pm
Curious and infuriating discussion while I was away. There are no solutions, of course, only perspectives to communicate and understand (albeit only and ever partially and provisionally). Even if the 3-4 of us participants reached consensus, it would affect absolutely nothing, since it’s quite impossible to design and construct utopian societies. I have only a few comments.
The bit about English tea habits being an artifact of empire is just plain silly. Some college campuses have been promulgating the notion that there are cultural sensitive ways to enjoy foreign cultures vs. offensive ways of appropriating them, which is especially misapplied to menu items. International trade for millennia has included import/export of foods, drinks, spices, and cuisines. Now that international transport is ubiquitous and fast, many options coexist on store shelves and in ethnic restaurants. Their authenticity varies a lot. What is absurd is to suggest that some blended version (e.g., Tex-Mex) is offensive (non-PC) for failing to be pure enough.
Applied across the entire spectrum of cultural offerings now transiting the globe continuously, it’s clear that we all have what might be called a cafeteria culture (food metaphor intentional), or what is sometimes called Sheilaism. I came across the latter term in Dick Meyer’s book Why We Hate Us, which describes how U.S. faith/religion in particular is assembled hodgepodge from available preexisting doctrine, much like a buffet-style meal is mixed together according to taste rather than by ideological grouping and thus loses all integrity. Much the same happens with music these days, and I might add that some bygone styles, practices, and ideologies are being resurrected, so we have diverse genres and timeframes all coexisting in the current day. So it’s surprising (and yet not) that Czechs may have latched onto Native American culture (as it formerly existed, be reminded) in search of identity rather than its own past. The impulse to preserve and/or reestablish cultural identity is vulnerable to the smorgasbord effect that renders everything inauthentic.
Also, culture is a moving target from the start. Some changes are organic and natural, others forced and disruptive. Refugees and others arriving en masse in Europe are undoubtedly the latter sort, often bringing with them a bellicose, intransigent attitude that makes no sense considering the charity, compassion, and forbearance of which they are recipients. They’re painting targets on their own backs, and it won’t end well.
I don’t know anything about no-go zones in Sweden or Germany, but I don’t doubt they exist. (They’re a frequent feature of dystopian novels.) Reminds me of S. Amer. barrios, S. African shantytowns, and U.S. ghettos where gangs (including protection rackets) possess power in everyday matters within those narrow borders to a greater degree than do civil authorities. Power devolves from the state to the street. Upscale versions also exist, where self-policing and forced conformity (lest one be ejected from the privileged group) are practiced. Gated and intentional communities both qualify, I think, though their financial wherewithal differs greatly.
January 4, 2016 at 10:57 am
Brutus: Sheilaism, huh? These neologisms multiply far faster nowadays than I can keep up!
Thank you for your eloquence bringing more light into some of our explorations here. And I am particularly grateful for your “Refugees and others arriving en masse in Europe are undoubtedly the latter sort, often bringing with them a bellicose, intransigent attitude that makes no sense considering the charity, compassion, and forbearance of which they are recipients.” Indeed. I would conjecture that they probably think that they are not painting a target on their backs with it, because their numbers in western Europe are rising so fast — through immigration and births together. Eastern Europe is, perhaps, another matter.
I agree with your skepticism regarding consensus. Witnessing first hand the pernicious groupthink even well-meaning push for consensus brings about, it’s not something I am aiming for here. My first objective is to have a space opened up for being honest with one another. A space without spurious attacks that intimidate people into saying only what is socially acceptable.
The second is deepened understanding of the issues and each other, facilitated by the honesty.
And the third? This one is still fuzzy. It’s about better listening. Moving away from expending most energies on honing one’s argument and more on really hearing the other person. And it’s also about having the sort of dialogue/multilogue that leads to breakthroughs. That gets us further than where we were before it started. Doable?
January 4, 2016 at 3:09 pm
“So. Clearly publishing anonymous letter that is hard to verify was a mistake. I am not going to debunk the debunkers. I will just say that I have been really bothered by the responses from you both. Basically saying, if it’s nasty, it must be xenophobia and racism, even though the Swedish niece confirmed much of what I was reporting, and even though Ian can find out from people in England whether or not the no go zones exist and what they are like. Crazymaking, on my end.”
Okay, let’s try this: I hear you’ve come across a lot of disturbing videos & articles where refugees/migrants are shown apparently acting like bastards. Fine, there’s no way I can deny the experience of what you’ve seen, and how it’s made you fearful for what people in Europe are going through as a result of this sudden influx people from foreign lands. On my end I’m cautious & suspicious of narratives that support the power structure, as so many of these have turned out to be outright fabrications in the past. Also it’s my belief that there’s usually a good explanation for apparently extreme behaviour, whether we’re talking about school shootings, terrorism, abuse of women & children or just plain rudeness. (NB: explanation does not mean excuse – adults are responsible for their actions and should be held to account appropriately BUT this does not mean their actions emerge from a vacuum, and in order to change behaviour you need to understand what lies behind it.)
So that’s why I’m challenging your conclusions here. You don’t have to take it personally. I don’t think I’ve actually accused you of anything. I’m not interested in using the word ‘racist’ to shout you or anyone else down for saying something that isn’t ‘socially acceptable’ as you say – that would be a bit weird coming from me, wouldn’t it?! – I don’t think that gets people anywhere. Better to have it out in the open rather than repressed & festering away. Anyway E-prime forbids me from saying someone ‘is’ a racist, so I have to turn it into an adjective where someone said something racist (in my interpretation), which gives me a springboard to challenge that particular viewpoint without attacking their entire personal integrity. That’s what I try anyway, I’m sure I don’t succeed all the time…
More questions then: have you allowed for confirmation bias, in yourself and in the people who are relaying these videos/articles? Have you spent an equal amount of time researching positive ref/mi stories? Could there be an inherent bias against these in that they don’t make for such attention-grabbing content (as well as failing to support power-friendly narratives*)? Etc etc.
re: Rotherham, yes I was dimly aware of that story. Sounded pretty horrific. As are all cases of abuse where the perpetrator’s racial background isn’t a major part of the headline. Of course I also feel obliged to point out that this isn’t the only case of organised abuse or paedophilia which the authorities have failed to investigate lately in the UK. In some instances (eg: beloved children’s entertainers, religious figures, MPs) the police have actively colluded in the cover-up.
You’d like me to ask around about ‘no-go zones’ here? Well, okay, though there aren’t a lot of people I could ask. I’ve friends who have lived in the Brixton area but not not heard them express fears about black or asian folk, or worries about being in the minority. Probably there are places they wouldn’t walk at night and a low-key threat of violence or theft, but they’ve seemed quite blase about it, apparently just accepting it as a fact of city life. A colleague grew up in Birmingham and has spoken about areas he didn’t feel comfortable walking through too, and apparently there is quite a lot of gang violence, but again he wasn’t hysterical about it, just ‘it’s a shithole’ and he wouldn’t want to move back there (not just for those reasons). I can ask him more about it if you like though.
I did have the opportunity to speak to a lady from Lebanon over xmas, though. She comes from a wealthy christian family who own a lot of expensive property in a town over there. They had a lot of people come in from Syria, looking for a place to stay, and they let several families move in with them directly, partly through charity & partly because these were quite well-to-do refugees and they thought it would be better to invite them in rather than be confronted by squatters who might be more aggressive and/or damaging. She described an odd situation in the country where youth employment was practically non-existent, so all the kids went abroad and sent back some of the wages they earned to the parents & grandparents they left behind. But this left a gap in various sectors which the refugees are now filling. The people now living with this lady’s relatives are eager to pay their way however they can, from cultivating the gardens to teaching the children, doing the cooking & cleaning, running errands etc.
Again, this won’t be the universal experience, and in itself it could be a troubling precedent with refugees turning into an underclass whose insecurity is exploited to provide menial labour for a pittance (viz ancient Greek/Roman slavery again), but it shows people as capable of getting along and the woman wasn’t full of hatred towards them for undermining her culture or whatever. She was more angry at the state for failing to do anything to help. It made me think of another aspect of this ‘crisis’ – non-european countries have been taking in floods of refugees for years now, a lot of them as a result of the ‘War on Terror’ (4 million from Iraq alone, I think it was). Isn’t it a bit distasteful for Europeans to now start squealing because they too now have to start taking some of these people in? Entitlement, privilege and hypocrisy are other words that spring to mind…
Mary said:
Yup, I agree.
cheers,
I
————
* – btw I want to say that I also think the whole ‘refugees welcome’ thing was very weird, if not just as suspicious as the usual anti-immigrant footing. The way the media narrative turned round on a dime just because of a picture of a dead child on a beach. I wonder if it suited western govts at that time to show syrians as ‘worthy victims’ because that helped them ramp up their warmongering against Assad. Anyway, they seem to be firmly back on the anti-migrant track since the Paris attacks. Maybe because they finally got what they wanted, with airstrikes going ahead practically overnight. Another Frankie Boyle quote:
‘Come to the conclusion that it’s not that people don’t care any more, it’s that they care when their media tell them they are allowed to.’
January 4, 2016 at 4:14 pm
Oops, meant to delete that first para quote.
Also meant to say about Rotherham that it doesn’t really disprove my point about migrants/refugees (henceforth ‘migrugees’ – bored of typing them both out) not being analogous to state conqueror/occupiers because they were exercising power over an similarly vulnerable part of society, not dominating all social relations from the top.
And I take your point about reverse bias. It would be just as prejudiced and divorced from reality to say ‘they’re all angels’ as it would to say ‘they’re all bastards’. Although on the plus side I suppose it wouldn’t stir up violent reactions.
I
PS, Brutus, not quite sure why you find my tea spiel ‘silly’. It’s just a statement of fact that the consumption of tea & sugar (and many other items in everyday use) by britons was only made possible by the empire and the global trade networks it set up, and without this state of affairs and the continuing exploitation of 3rd world workers that props it up, tea drinking would very rapidly become a thing of the past, or at least prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of people (as it was to begin with, incidentally). I’m not a purist insisting that everything we consume should be native-grown, or that there should be no trade at all. And yes, your description of ‘offensive’ vs ‘culturally sensitive’ types of food does sound pretty ridiculous. I just find it interesting what it says about a people when their identities depend to such a degree on these unsustainable systems.
January 4, 2016 at 9:47 pm
This just in. In Cologne, on new years eve, more than a 1000 men (some report Moroccans living in Germany for some years) gathered around the main train station, then dispersed in several large groups and began to attack women in the area. Some 80 women were assaulted/robbed/raped. The men also shot fireworks into the crowd, including the cops when they showed up.
New York Times published a brief, sanitized version of the news. I guess this is too big to be silent about.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/01/04/world/europe/ap-eu-germany-sex-assaults.html
Post war Germany. It was nice while it lasted.
January 5, 2016 at 8:28 am
Ian, I simply meant that people who for 16 years ran a pedophile, sex abuse ring while the authorities looked away, do not fit your picture of depowered people at the bottom of society. They more fit the picture of folks who were able to assert their power via intimidation, bribery, blackmail, “special” connections and whatever other strings they may have pulled, to get their way.
January 5, 2016 at 9:19 am
Ian: Yes, the “welcome refugees” crowd had a very strange sense to it. I wonder now if they were “useful idiots” herded by operatives. It seemed so orchestrated. And of course it was part of the anti-Assad propaganda. It’s widely known that huge numbers of the fugees began to claim they were Syrian because they quickly seized on which way the winds were blowing.
Your quote of Mary’s: a few bad apples? A few? The Cologne story is starting to be reported from other German cities, albeit in smaller numbers.
You’ve attempted several times to tell me how I feel about this all. Would you be so kind and ask next time?
When I first began to follow it, I was in shock.
Then, I got very baffled. Began to study, began to ask people all over the net, why were the gates opened in August? Who is financing this? Got all sorts of wacky ideas back. Nobody knew.
Now I feel… incredulous. Like a person tooling along the highway, and suddenly you see a horrible accident unfolding over in the next lane, in slow motion. I can’t look away. I am getting whiplash.
—
I am in agreement with your points around the Lebanese lady and the folks she helped. There is a profound social dimension around this, and of course around the underlying evils of economic/resource wars being waged seemingly everywhere nowadays. And other commenters have noted the pattern: one group of people is displaced and flees. Then, you have to import some other people from somewhere else, to fill the gaps in the economy. And the strife grows, as cultural cohesion and trust weakens more and more. Poland is thinking of importing Ukrainians because so many Poles have had to go west for work. And so it goes.
By no go zones, I don’t mean unsafe after dark. Common, these days. I mean, places the cops don’t venture any more, because they would be mobbed, or someone would throw a grenade on them. They do exist in Sweden, I am told. And/or zones of sharia where streets are patrolled for obedience. Do they exist in England?
You ask whether I have spent time researching positive stories. They are all over MSM, there is no need to dig. Some of the Scottish independence blogs I follow have carried such stories. It’s the other stories that have been clamped down on. And I have been attacked on other blogs for even just questioning the official line.
Forgive me for being a bit sharpish, but e-prime did not prevent you from suggesting I was hating on refugees. Now, you can avoid my questioning. But it does neither of us any good. I want to know if I was, so I can learn from my mistakes, and make an apology. And if I wasn’t, well, maybe you owe me an apology. You tell me. And of course it’s not personal. We are all friends here. No villains. Just us, trying to do our best in a civ falling apart at the seams.
January 5, 2016 at 2:31 pm
Hey, just briefly:
‘You’ve attempted several times to tell me how I feel about this all. Would you be so kind and ask next time?’ – my bad, will do.
‘e-prime did not prevent you from suggesting I was hating on refugees’ – looking back I see it does sound like I was making an accusation with my ‘Hating on refugees/migrants is no solution and will make things 100x worse’, but really I was going for a blanket statement, pointing to the Daily Mail (DM) cartoon as evidence of that happening. Sorry, I jotted it out quickly and didn’t think through other possible interpretations.
Glad we’ve managed to find some common ground on this. Will have a look at the new years thing, but energy’s running low on this topic now so may not get back to you.
best,
I
January 5, 2016 at 3:40 pm
Glad you took time to write, busy as you are. No prob. Many other chances to talk in the new year, I hope. Esp. on your blog. Hope you check out Smaje’s writing as well on smallfarmfuture.
(Hug.)
January 6, 2016 at 12:08 pm
The attacks in Cologne (and Hamburg and Stuttgart) are appalling in their brazenness. Reminds me of “wilding” in NYC back in the day, though I still don’t understand the motivation. The NYT sanitized report is also disgusting. The story is developing at other news organs, with demonstrations regarding poor responses by civil authorities.
Germany and Europe aren’t over quite yet, but like much of the rest of the world, they appear to be in an unrecoverable death spiral.
January 6, 2016 at 12:26 pm
You know what REALLY makes me angry, Brutus? The appalling response of the Mayor of Cologne basically blaming women. Saying she will issue “guidance” to women on how to behave in public… Excuse me? Hey, women of Germany, you’ve brought it upon yourself because you were just too forward, and too uncautious, maybe just too loose around North African men on the street. Back 50 years in one fell swoop. I haven’t heard such blunt women-blaming for the crimes against them in many a decade. And where the hell are the German feminists?!
I want to add that the mainstream media sat on this for several days, unwilling to come forward. If it were not for new & social media, I am sure they would have tried to smother it.
January 8, 2016 at 3:27 pm
My niece finally responded, but all she said was
“There are no real no go zones. The worst ghettos are better than any in the states. There are areas with higher crime and these are the heavily populated with immigrants areas but they are not terrifying. I know some students etc who live there and do not love it but it is really still ok. There are worse ones in France I am told. Again this is why I prefer integration to avoid bad pockets building up.”
January 8, 2016 at 6:01 pm
Mary, it’s a puzzler.
Ok, now I have a couple of names of Swedish no-go zones: Tensta and Rinkeby. Police say they “simply can’t go there.” This link links to a report in Swedish that quotes the police. The source says there are so far no sharia-enforced areas in Sweden, but claims they exist in Britain, and adds pictures. Hm.
Here is a no-go debunking story on Bloomberg.
So… I hope, Mary, your niece does not tire of us. I would ask her what these areas Tensta and Rinkeby are like? If she’s ever been? Would she go? Or does she thinks that she would be ok, but the police are not?
My understanding so far on the Muslims in Europe is that many don’t want integration. Some clerics also berate them for wanting to integrate (those that do).
January 11, 2016 at 7:57 pm
a response from my niece in Sweden:
Well unfortunately those suburbs are in Stockholm and I don’t know much about them really. If I get a chance to talk to colleagues living there I’ll ask. In general, yes, there are places in Europe which are pretty bad and are mostly immigrant areas. Again, none in Sweden which are actually off limits. There are no go zones in Paris and in UK. Yes, in London I understand there are some areas practically with sharia law. My husband went with some girls to look at a flat near one of these areas as a student and the local immigrants threw stones at all the English girls he was with “whore” and other foreign insults at them. The thing is you actually can avoid these areas completely and while different they are not more dangerous than many American ghettos.
As for Sweden, the integration has been better so it hasn’t gotten to that level. Many immigrants do integrate! I have lots of friends from the Middle East and most of them are against Islam themselves.
As for what happened in Germany and Sweden on NYE – yes it’s true. What can I say, there has been naive planning. My focus comes back to integration and some screening so that ones who believe in our freedoms are allowed in and those who have no respect for western ideals are not. I do not want a complete border shutdown only more planning on proper integration and background checks which has not been done for the recent wave of immigrants. But all in all there is no clear answer and probably there is no easy path in handling migration from third world Islamic regions.
January 11, 2016 at 8:04 pm
And now, speaking for myself, I saw a news report about the Cologne thing–and the bit in my niece’s report above corroborates it. I still find it amazing that people would move to a foreign country and immediately ATTACK THE WOMEN. I mean, that’s at the top of the list if you’re LOOKING for a provocation. I would certainly be all in favor of booting out anyone caught doing that–even if it’s “just” throwing rocks and calling someone a whore. I oppose the French ban on headscarves, I think people should be entitled to dress as they please. But to insult and attack people dressed in the way that is the norm for the country you live in? Wow.
January 12, 2016 at 10:17 am
Mary, thank you again, and please extend my thanks to your niece. It is awesome to get news directly from people one can trust, who are right there on the ground.
Yes. Wow.
I also do not approve the ban on headscarves. But meanwhile some countries allow burkas which is unconscionable — if, that is, one cares about women, our rights, our quality of life, and our safety. And that includes Muslim women, of course.
“Top of the list when looking for provocation”: indeed. Many commenters on the massive wave of young Mid Eastern and African men into Europe predicted that it’s a given that some percentage of them are coming to stir up trouble. Looks like they wuz right. Interesting questions now surround the complicity of European elites in all this.
Addition: I just watched a Muslim woman interviewed by Bill Maher, and it seems that liberal men side with the burka because of the not-at-all unreasonable idea of women being able to wear what they want. So they don’t care for the burka but don’t like the idea of an official ban. What then is the solution that takes both concerns into account?
January 17, 2016 at 4:00 pm
Just a few notes on the Cologne assaults…
The graun interviewed an iranian eyewitness whose report suggests it was organised and tolerated by the police:
Which fits with complaints from the tahrir square occupation:
On the other hand this practice of mass sexual assaults at public events is apparently common enough in the middle east / north africa to have a name: ‘taharrush gamea’, roughly translated as ‘collective harassment’. Here’s a wiki article that may or may not be deleted soon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taharrush_gamea
I would agree with Mary’s response that it’s appalling behaviour for people newly arrived in a country, or anywhere for that matter. You’re just left with the questions of how such twisted attitudes can come about in the first place (warfare and social upheaval will have played a part in their emergence, I’d guess) and what can be done to change them.
On a related note I talked to a distant relative who grew up in Spain and she told me there were problems with a new influx of Morrocan immigrants when she was young – inappropriate staring, entitled behaviour, and then getting into fights with boyfriends, brothers etc. Even as a 13 year old she felt under scrutiny in a very forward manner. But she said the behaviour slowly changed as they stayed in the country longer, and she thinks the next generation will be largely ‘assimilated’ in this way at least. Not nice in the early stages though…
cheers,
I
January 17, 2016 at 4:12 pm
(Oops, I meant the Cologne attacks were organised full stop. Furthermore, they were tolerated by the police. The evidence presented doesn’t suggest they were in on the organisation too.)