There is an extremely important article here on Breivik’s funding, by Justin Raimondo.
It also makes plain that not only did Pamela Geller post a string of virulent anti Norwegian-Muslim articles on her website, not only did she travel to Norway to address a hate rally, not only did Brehvik post to her website and quote it as an influence. She actively supported and encouraged those planning to use terrorism.
This is an excerpt from an email she says she received and posted on her blog:
“I am running an email I received from an Atlas reader in Norway. It is devastating in its matter-of-factness.
“Well, yes, the situation is worsening. Stepping up from 29 000 immigrants every year, in 2007 we will be getting a total of 35 000 immigrants from somalia, iran, iraq and afghanistan. The nations capital is already 50% muslim, and they ALL go there after entering Norway. Adding the 1.2 births per woman per year from muslim women, there will be 300 000+ muslims out of the then 480 000 inhabitants of that city.
“Orders from Libya and Iran say that Oslo will be known as Medina at the latest in 2010, although I consider this a PR-stunt nevertheless it is their plan.
“From Israel the hordes clawing at the walls of Jerusalem proclaim cheerfully that next year there will be no more Israel, and I know Israel shrugs this off as do I, and will mount a strike during the summer against all of its enemies in the middle east. This will make the muslims worldwide go into a frenzy, attacking everyone around them.
“We are stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment. This is going to happen fast.
As Raimondo says, Geller goes on to say that she is protecting the proto-terrorist’s identity so he won’t be arrested. We do not know how this wannabe terrorist in Norway relates to Breivik or his other “cells”. Geller may know but the police are not asking her.
There can be no doubt at all that, were Geller a Muslim, this amount of evidence and connection would have her in jail by now. Do not hold your breath.
I found this excellent and prescient article form 2007 by journalist, Gary Younge – sorry if it’s been posted here before – I found it via Harpy Marx’s site, so thanks to her for linking to it. What Younge writes is to a large extent what I’ve been arguing on this thread, that Europe’s problems wrt racism and xenophobia are internal to Europe and have not be cause by the presence of ‘immigrants’ or ‘born, black and yellow’ people. And that the Jihadist and Racist Far Right political ideas and actions are mirror-mirages of each other, because of course, they both are part of the Far Right. As I said before – and I think we ought not tire of acknowledging this – the Holocaust had nothing to do with:
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1) Muslims living in Europe.
2) Black, brown and yellow people living in Europe.
3) Immigration.
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And Evgueni, while, as I said, I do agree with your basic premises (made, I know, in good faith) wrt expanding democracy, perhaps this is what I was referring to when I mentioned certain “national chauvinistic” attitudes in Switzerland – sadly, Switzerland gets a mention in the article in relation to in relation to Far Right votes, etc. I don’t think that unfortunate aspect of Switzerland has anything to do, either way, with their system of democracy, btw.
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http://www.thenation.com/article/europe-wheres-hate
‘been’, not ‘be’, and ‘brown’ not ‘born’. Typos follow one wherever one goes…
Ah yes, this was it – Jean Marie Le Pen’s expressed view that the Nazi gas chambers were a “detail of history”. And now he calls the massacre of children in Norway, “an accident”.
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But he is honest – you can see he is a monster- and that is to be preferred.
S. Saadi wrote “Some of Wayne’s theories, for example, might best be summed-up as ‘Cockroachism’. You don’t like Pakistanis, Wayne? Do you associate Pakistanis with hordes of cockroaches, just as some leaders of Israel hjave associated Palstinians with cockroaches? Why not just say so? Here, it’s an open debate, no-one is stopping you from expressing your heartfelt views. Be honest. It’s better that way.”
Just to set the record straight here, I do not equate Pakistanis with cockroaches as you state. I was relating the events of these two movies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuYqYhuQDmQ
which I found on the Internet. In part 2 you see that these Pakistani immigrants were quite happy living amongst the roaches. You keep trying to twist the arguments to gain acceptability to your view point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz_HS5Yk9yE
If you are coming to live in Europe then dress as Europeans and keep your religion in your church or home. Abide by the health and safety rules of this continent. Obviously there is white trash that behaves despicably too but what I was telling you concerned this video that I saw. I do not equate any person to a roach! You are trying to see me as a nazi or something that suits your distorted arguments.
Regarding your article about the origins of racism and so on, my view as a layman in this topic is to ask whether possibly this. Racism is a projection that people make. It may have some genetic orgin but in general it is a projection for racism occurred between different European nations and peoples. Maybe it got focused with people who really looked different for example the Romma (indians in Europe) or the jews (originally seen as arabs in Europe). It takes time for the masses to project and to focus on some new thing for example this focus on muslim takeover of Europe. All that is irrelevant to the real argument that there are now way too many muslims in Europe who will take over the continent. Do you really think that such people will not be racist agaist the whites and kick us out of all positions of power? The issue here is not whether racism is right or wrong as you are trying to tell us. Your efforts to pull the wool over our eyes is like calming a pig before his head is to be chopped. Racism is practiced everywhere and particularly in non-christian cultures. Christianity has not even emerged in these countries were the immigrants come from, so how could we possibly expect that they will understand that slavery, racism and other behavious are wrong? Time and time again you try to pass judgement on the Far Right telling it that it is racist and so on, and you do this to distract from the true fact that your people are much more racist and that we cannot educate them and integrate them enough to change all that, they are 200 years behind, and they are in this continent practicing their traditions, speaking their language, wearing their colourful foreign clothes. This is a colonization I would say. Of course there is a possibility that I am wrong but what if I am not wrong. Of course I am just one citizen and so I do not know everything or anything. I am not this monster that you are trying to describe. Reading your views has been fun. Wayne.
Dear Eugeni, the point we must remember are these: (a) the immigrants come from non christian countries and are therefore not as enlightened as yourself concerning the nonsense of racism as you put it; (b) when they are majority (there are truly too many immigrants and their approach to having children is truly third world) then they will openly practice discrimination and racism. Do you want your kids to be at the receiving end of that?
Suhayl, Technicolour – thanks.
I also recognise limitations of the Swiss model. However for the Swiss model to be preferable to ours, it need not be perfect, it needs only be unequivocally better. I think the Swiss foreign policy is indisputably better than that of the UK, its economy is consistently in much better shape than ours, the rights of the Swiss citizens are much better protected than ours in the UK, they have a hybrid healthcare system that is a NHS in all but name except it works much better, etc
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Not sure what you mean by peculiar Swiss chauvinism Suhayl please give examples. Is it the minaret ban? I have not seen a detailed analysis of this outcome but am willing to bet it was more complex than just plain islamophobia, in the same sense as the ‘no’ to gay marriage vote in California was more complex than homophobia, or the ‘no’ vote to equal rights for disabled people in Switzerland was not dismissive of the needs of disabled people and so on. Direct democracy cannot be judged on the binary outcomes of referenda alone – the processes that take place before and after the referenda are probably more important. But perhaps you meant something else, like the Swiss exceptionalism when it comes to joining international treaties, the EU etc? This is what I would call expression of national sovereignty. The Swiss are able to negotiate for themselves bilateral trade agreements and other treaties without giving up any of their national sovereignty. This inner strength must surely derive from the strength of their democracy. The characteristic Swiss resilience to outside pressure was apparently not lost on Hitler who seethed with hatred for it.
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A quick digression – just imagine how resilient to outside aggression a place like Libya could be if they could lay claim to being more democratic than any of the NATO countries. A true democracy on top of a large oil reserve is surely the USA’s worst nightmare because it inevitably leads to ‘resource nationalism’.
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I do not know that sectarianism and racism would go away under direct democracy. However I cannot see how it could be made worse by it, because direct democracy provides a peaceful means to resolve conflicts. An interesting case in point is the canton of Jura – the newest in the confederation. It was formed following a series of referenda in which various parts of the canton of Bern with large Francophone communities voted either to stay part of Bern, or join the new canton of Jura. In this way, a potentially violent and divisive conflict was avoided. I think this is an important example of how national divisions could be resolved.
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I suppose a litmus test would be to see what various minorities in Switzerland think of living conditions there. I remember seeing many orthodox Jews on the streets of Zurich, there must be other minorities that perhaps stand out less..
Another point is that when you came here for example, society had to be tolerant to your diversity, as an Eastern European you probably had a different approach to certain situations and did what British people did not expect. You are however a European (I think) and so after a few decades then this culture would weigh so heavy on you that it will have changed you and you will by now be acting and behaving somewhere between an Eastern European and a Brit. Now tell me with your hand in your heart whether you truly believe that these pakistani men and women and other immigrants from non-christian and far away places, e.g., Nigerian men and women who come recently to rescue the broke universities as bogus students and stay over, are you going to tell me that such people will integrate as quickly as you did.
I also have been to Taiwan and such places but please do not distort the thing. The scandinavian and the dutch girls ARE much prettier than the English girls. I am talking about density and numbers. To think otherwise is completely ludicrous notwithstanding the type or reasoning that you give. Please do not insult the intelligence of your reader.
Finally I would like to make another observation. I have a friend who is red haired and when I mentioned he should emigrate to another country he said “I cannot” and I asked him why? and he said “because of the sun, I am very prone to skin cancer”. So let us accept that the race of a person gives him or her some right to call a continent his or her own. So a red haired European may call Northern Europe and Ireland his or her home. Similarly a person of race who requires vitamin D to live in Britain because of the lack of sunshine could more comfortably call some equatorial region of the globe his or her home. To start to displace people and force them to go to other continents because of the wave of immigrants taking their women or their jobs or whatever is in fact as racist as the movements that try to stop or to reverse massive immigration that has been facilitated by liberals.
Clark,
I am glad you think that! I find the case for DD very persuasive myself, having experienced life under ‘advanced socialism’ in the USSR, advanced capitalist democracies of the UK and France, and DD in Switzerland. Curiously though, I missed English ales terribly whilst in Zurich 🙂
Saadi, why are you trying to lie to us etc. All corners of the world have racists and racism. Europe does not have a particular problem with racism. This continent is more tolerant than most others. You just keep twisting things to gain acceptability of your arguments and your depicting right wing people as crazy or delinquent. Do you think you can fool all people with such liberal diatribe. I did not depict people as cockroaches. There is a video on you tube called “East London: Pakistani illegal immigrants working in butcher shop (2/2)” I just expressed surprise that in a normal looking british home the workers had a roaches infestation, please examine the video. This is not the usual thing with immigrants from european countries and regions.
Wayne, you’ve asked that readers not be insulted, but there is no kind way for me to tell you this. You are suffering from ignorance and from prejudice. Your prejudices affect your outlook on race, gender, culture and religion, and they make you logically inconsistent. I’m really sorry, I feel unkind telling you this. However, I would be more unkind not to tell you.
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The easiest one to show you is your sexism:
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“To start to displace people and force them to go to other continents because of the wave of immigrants taking their women…”
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So you think of men as “people”, and women as “their” property, something that can be taken rather than people with their own power to choose.
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Now your ignorance: “Christianity has not even emerged in these countries were the immigrants come from…”
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Islam developed after Christianity, like Christianity developed from Judaism. Islam is the more modern religion, and Muslims recognise Jesus as one of the prophets.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam
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Now your inconsistency: “getting overrun by foreigners and by people who come here because we are a soft touch and can claim social benefits”, and yet: “…the wave of immigrants taking their […] jobs”. And another: “The 2008 crash was caused by plain and pure dishonesty, people forging information on forms concerning peoples’ salaries and so on”, and yet: “I am of the opinion that the financial crisis of 2008 was caused by the massive influx of latin americans into the United States”.
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In fact, both crashes were caused by inadequate financial regulation by government. Financial stability in the US after the 1929 crash and the Great Depression was restored by government regulation of the economy.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_deal
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Wayne, beware the Far Right. The things they teach are not true and do not make sense.
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I feel truly sorry that you could write those things and not even notice their implications. It means that you have so much to overcome, and so much to learn. I wish you well with your journey.
Another good article on the subject by Gary Younge:
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http://www.thenation.com/article/162270/europes-homegrown-terrorists
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Thanks, Clark, for the intelligent, informative and measured post.
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Further to Clark excellent points, I would remind people that Christianity is a Middle Eastern religion. There were and have been Christians in Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine/Israel, Lebanon, Iraq (until the invasion in 2003 and its bloody aftermath), Turkey, Ethiopia, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Pakistan and India long before there were any Christians in Northern or Western Europe. The theology and rituals of Christianity are Middle Eastern in nature.
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Jesus, Peter, Paul, Mary (both Marys), Anne, Thomas, James, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (and John the Baptist) were all Middle Eastern men and women. So everyone with these names – and of course many others, from Adam and Eve down – has a Middle Eastern name. So, millions of people in Britain have Middle Eastern names, were named after Middle Eastern men and women.
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Wayne, I don’t think you’re a “monster” and I know that saying this will irritate you even more, and will seem – and probably is – incredibly patronising – but truly I feel really sorry for you. Reading what you’ve written fills me with sadness, not anger. I hope someday you will be able to shed your fear and feel able to critique those forces which really are messing-up all our lives and which very deliberately are promoting division. In this regard, and in the context of the betrayal of ordinary people (of all backgrounds) by the Labour Party, who some years ago completely sold out to Wall Street and the MI Complex, organisations like the NF, BNP, EDL, etc. fulfill a useful role for those in power. Whether or not their leaders are paid agents is, to some extent, irrelevant in this specific context.
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So, while you resent me, and I patronise you, ‘our real rulers’ take our money, our futures, and laugh all the way to the bank.
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Evgueni, thanks again for your reasoned input. Good points, as always.
I don’t usually post entire articles here, or anywhere, but I think that this is such an important, evidence-based, piece and we’ve had such a lot of very long contributions from posters from the Far Right on this (as well as some from from me!), and other recent, threads, that I think it justified in this case. Younge tackles all the main tropes, tropes which we seen repeated time and again by some on this blog. I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind – very difficult to do – but simply am attempting to demonstrate the fallaciousness of their arguments.
Europe’s Homegrown Terrorists
Gary Younge | July 25, 2011
The Nation
“Two weeks after the fatal terrorist attacks of July 7, 2005, in London, and one day after another failed attack, a student, Jean Charles de Menezes, was in the London Underground when plainclothes police officers gave chase and shot him seven times in the head.
Initial eyewitness reports said he was wearing a suspiciously large puffa jacket on a hot day and had vaulted the barriers and run when asked to stop. Anthony Larkin, who was on the train, said he saw “this guy who appeared to have a bomb belt and wires coming out.” Mark Whitby, who was also at the station, thought he saw a Pakistani terrorist being chased and gunned down by plainclothes policemen. Less than a month later, Whitby said, “I now believe that I could have been looking at the surveillance officer” being thrown out of the way as Menezes was being killed.
The Pakistani turned out to be a Brazilian. Security cameras showed he was wearing a light denim jacket and clearly in no rush as he picked up a free paper and swiped his metrocard.
“The way we see things is affected by what we know and what we believe,” wrote John Berger in Ways of Seeing. “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.”
When some Western commentators see a terrorist attack they are apparently far more comfortable with what they believe than what they know.
So it was on Friday when news emerged of the appalling attacks in Norway that have left an estimated seventy-six dead and a nation traumatized. Rupert Murdoch’s Sun in Britain (the bestselling daily newspaper) ran with the headline “Al Qaeda massacre: Norway’s 9/11.” The Weekly Standard insisted: “We don’t know if al Qaeda was directly responsible for today’s events, but in all likelihood the attack was launched by part of the jihadist hydra.” Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post then claimed: “This is a sobering reminder for those who think it’s too expensive to wage a war against jihadists.”
In just a few hours an entire conceptual framework had been erected—though hardly from scratch—to discuss the problem of Muslims in particular and non-white immigration in Europe in general and the existential threat these problems pose to civilization as we know it.
Then came the fact that the terrorist was actually a white, Christian extremist and a neo-Nazi, Anders Breivik, raging against Islam and multiculturalism. Unlike Muslims in the wake of Islamist attacks, Christians weren’t called upon to insist upon their moderation. No one argued that white people had to get with the Enlightenment project. But the bombings—and the presumptions about who was responsible—suggest that the true threat to European democracy is not Islam or Muslims but, once again, fascism and racists.
The belief that Muslims must have been involved chimes easily with a distorted, hysterical understanding of the demographic, religious and racial dynamics that have been present in Europe for well over a generation, variants of which are also at work in the United States today.
The general framing goes like this. Europe is being overrun by Muslims and other non-white immigrants, who are outbreeding non-Muslims at a terrifying rate. Unwilling to integrate culturally and unable to compete intellectually, Muslim populations have become hotbeds of terrorist sympathy and activity. Their presence threatens not only security but the liberal consensus regarding women’s rights and gay rights that Western Europe has so painstakingly established; and overall, this state of affairs represents a fracturing of society that is losing its common values. This has been allowed to happen in the name of not offending specific ethnic groups, otherwise known as multiculturalism.
One could spend all day ripping these arguments to shreds, but for now let’s just deal with the facts.
There have been predictions that the Muslim population of Europe will almost double by 2015 (Oner Taspiner, the Brookings Institution); double by 2020 (Don Melvin, the Associated Press); and be 20 percent of the continent by 2050 (Esther Pan, Council on Foreign Relations). Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum told Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches: “The number I heard is every 32 years the population, the European population of Europe will be reduced by 50 percent. That’s how bad their birthrates are. This is in many respects a dying continent from the standpoint of European-Europeans.”
This is nonsense. The projections are way off. While Muslims in Europe do have higher birthrates than non-Muslims, their birthrates are falling. A Pew Forum study, published in January 2011, forecast an increase of Muslims in European population from 6 percent in 2010 to 8 percent in 2030.
The Norwegian terrorist Breivik feared a Muslim takeover. But Muslims make up 3 percent of Norway. Black Americans have a greater presence in Alaska.
But even if these predictions were true, so what? There’s nothing to say Europe has to remain Christian or majority-white.
Nor do immigrants struggle to integrate. In Britain, Asian Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus all marry outside of their own groups at the same rates as whites. For most ethnic minorities in Britain, roughly half or more of their friends are white. Only 20 percent of those born in Britain have friends only from their own group. According to a Pew Research Center survey, the principal concerns of Muslims in France, Germany and Spain are unemployment and Islamic extremism.
In most of Europe the official politics of multiculturalism that the likes of Breivik and more mainstream politicians rail against—a liberal, state-led policy of encouraging and supporting cultural difference at the expense of national cohesion—is an absolute fiction. Last year German chancellor Angela Merkel claimed the “multikulti” experiment had failed. Earlier this year, British Prime Minister David Cameron said the same thing. The truth is that neither country ever tried such an experiment. “We never had a policy of multiculturalism,” explains Mekonnen Mesghena, head of migration and intercultural management at the Heinrich Böll Foundation. “We had a policy of denial: denial of immigration and of diversity. Now it’s like we are waking up from a long trance.”
The real object of their ire is the existence of “other”—meaning non-white—cultures and races in Europe: the fact of “other” cultures, not the promotion of them. The single greatest obstacle to integration in most of Europe is not Islam or multiculturalism but racism and the economic and academic disadvantage that comes with it.
And, finally, Muslims are nowhere near the greatest terrorist threat. According to Europol, between 2006 and 2008 only .4 percent of terrorist plots (including attempts and fully executed attacks) in Europe were from Islamists. The lion’s share (85 percent) were related to separatism. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem. But it’s not on the scale or of the nature that those first out of the gate on Friday claimed it was. Put bluntly, if you have to assume anything when a bomb goes off in Europe, think region, not religion.
But there are some in Europe who are struggling to cope with the changes taking place—who are failing to integrate into changing societies and who harbor deep-seated resentments against their fellow citizens. That is a sizeable and growing section of the white population so alienated that it has once again made fascism a mainstream ideology on the continent.
In Germany the bestselling book since the Second World War by former Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin blames inbreeding among Turks and Kurds for “congenital disabilities” and argues that immigrants from the Middle East are a “genetic minus” for the country. “But the subject is usually hushed up,” he wrote. “Perish the thought that genetic factors could be partially responsible for the failure of parts of the Turkish populations in the German school system.”
A poll published in the national magazine Focus in September 2010 showed 31 percent of respondents agreeing that Germany is “becoming dumber” because of immigrants; 62 percent said Sarrazin’s comments were “justified.” In Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France and Italy, hard-right nationalist and anti-immigrant parties regularly receive more than 10 percent of the vote. In Finland it is 19 percent; in Norway it is 22 percent; in Switzerland, 29 percent. In Italy and Austria they have been in government; in Switzerland, where the anti-immigrant Swiss People’s Party is the largest party, they still are.
Breivik was from a particularly vile strain of that trend. But he did not come from nowhere. And the anxieties that produced him are growing. Fascists prey on economic deprivation and uncertainty, democratic deficits cause by European Union membership and issues of sovereignty related to globalization. Far right forces in Greece, for example, are currently enjoying a vigorous revival. When scapegoats are needed they provide them. When solutions are demanded they are scarce.”
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Gary Younge, from ‘The Nation’
Wayne,
What a pig’s ear you have made of this. I am surprised at the measured tone of other commentators’ responses to your argument. I find your generalisations about ugly, unenlightened, unhygienic races unpleasant and reminiscent of the Nazi concept of untermensch. But this is beside the point, I do not have to agree with your flawed and ugly reasoning in order to arrive at the same conclusion, stated in your first post. Namely, that the people should be given the means to talk amongst themselves and decide, i.e. real democracy.
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I also agree that a spectrum of racist views exists and may even have origins in our evolutionary past. I think these cannot be killed off entirely by rational argument. Consequently, it is counter-productive to sweep one side of the argument under the carpet by forcing people to conform to some liberal ideal through coercive central government policy – that will tend to offend, breed ignorance and radicalise.
So this is the extent of our agreement, for the record.
An article exploring the possibility of a general mistrust of outsiders being rooted in our evolutionary past. Of course this generic predisposition can then be morphed and amplified by cultural factors.
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http://www.philosophynow.org/issue80/On_Xenophobia
“Put bluntly, if you have to assume anything when a bomb goes off in Europe, think region, not religion.”
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As the Spanish government did after the Madrid bombings … I’d say, assume that the way to know what happened is to go and find out. And question very hard when people tell you you “have to assume” anything.
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Incidentally, I’ve seen rants in a Bradford local paper from 150 years ago, banging on about how the foreign immigrants will outbreed “us” and “swamp” Britain, with their alien religion, alien clothes, alien food (catholicism, wellyboots, cabbage-and-bacon …). But Britain got canals, and then railways, out of them; and they didn’t get paid tremendously well for it. Plus ca change …
Some mention a journey I must take and that Islam is the more modern religion etc but islamists are demonstrating over a cartoon etc, one does not wish to get into that but the naivity of the post on that surprised me. I thought I had reflected the course of civilisation correctly and the Europeans achieved civilisation first and we are more civilised societies arguably than the other societies and perhaps an additional reason why people from all over the world wish to move to Europe and the USA, we have human rights and freedom etc. As I said nobody is against controlled immigration, what people are against is uncontrolled immigration and foreign colonization and yes the number of births from immigrants of foreign cultures and the number of immigrants is dangerously high. It could be that it is not dangerous? one cannot be sure but it is very similar to global warming arguments, except it is much more clear because one sees the large numbers of peopl in the population pyramids and one cannot understand why an overpopulated continent should encourage more rather than far less immigration. Also there was an assumption on that post that the British Empire exploited foreign people making them work for nothing etc and that we should now pay some price (I wont go into such an argument). The British Empire was a benign empire and civilizing force in the world and so now it evolved into the commonwealth – it was far better than say the way the spaniards colonized the americas sending former criminals and so on to destroy the indians and whatnot, they do not have a commonwealth now but let us leave such an argument alone for a moment.
On Evgueni’s point on evolution I would like to emphasize the issue of social trust and social cohesion. Monkeys needed each other to survive attacks from bird and what not. Notice how we are too weak to fight a tiger or lion and yet we survived. There is a social expectation on the citizen that if he gives to the society (through work, through community, through parenthood) etc, then society will need to reward him. It is a social contract of sorts and this requires that a society is cohesive. If elements of that society are diverse (multiculturalism) then this social contract is broken and the social order is lost and economic chaos ensues. Please think about this it is written in our genes. So as individuals join a country they should be integrated and should be encouraged to conform. Obviously, people are free and so highly nationalistic places with little freedom will not be preferable. If you said to me “yes I want to be European because I value your institutions and freedoms and way of life” then I would say “OK join in but please abandon your culture and traditions because we have a social contract here, we have order, and that is why our system is successful and works.
And regarding the 1920s yes there was some lack of control as in 2008 but that is not what I am telling you. The 2008 recession involved large and pervasive fraud – people lying on forms and misrepresenting the truth, and a climate where production was clearly at odds with investment and share value. The problem in 1920s was a mad rush to buy shares, it was not an issue of lying openly on forms about salaries and so on. Please accept the difference!
“I thought I had reflected the course of civilisation correctly and the Europeans achieved civilisation first”
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You might be interested to read a history of China.
In Mary’s post we read that ‘Events in London in recent weeks have highlighted the growing collusion between American neoconservatives and the European far right in stirring up hatred of Muslims. Suhayl in his quote reminds us that agent Cameron has deemed multiculturalism in Britain a failure?!
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Is it not these two strands that confirm my argument that in the months ahead propaganda that Sharia law will creep into Europe will intensify in an attempt to create an anti-Islamic European front to justify attacking Iran. Two million marched against the Iraq war and I wonder how many are prepared to stop the Zionists from destroying Iran.
“You might be interested to read a history of China.” but you treat me like some idiot, I am a sophisticate guy. That is not what I meant. Obviously China has a long history but the countries of freedom and civilisation are in Europe and in the USA. China is great but it is not really a place at our level of human rights, personal freedom, personal wealth yet. Incidentally, they have succeeded this time because they have controlled their population with the one child per couple policy.
I find the posts here very anti-European as if the posters cannot admit that Europe and the USA are (or have been up to now) the countries we should aspire to emulate. The point of controlling immigration now is to preseve this way of life and this superior culture rather than to bash it.
Wayne, my comment was not really about the world in general. It was about what your writing says about the way you think. The assumptions and contradictions in your thoughts are reflected in what you write. It doesn’t really matter what the contradictions concern; it’s the fact that they contradict without you noticing, and that you’re not challenging the assumptions.
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Overcoming this sort of thing is difficult. I know, because I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness; it filled my mind with contradictory assumptions and dominated everything I thought. It took me years to learn how to criticise my own thought process.
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PS, you can make paragraphs here by putting a full stop in an otherwise blank line. Without the full stop, the site software removes the blank line.
Wayne, here’s a tip. When you think something, see if you can invert or re-apply it. So, If I thought “Islamists are demonstrating over a cartoon etc.”, I would then think “does that only apply to Islamists? NO! When the film “The Last Temptation of Christ” was released, some Christians got very angry and tried to get it banned! So this tells me something about people, but nothing about Islam”.
“I thought I had reflected the course of civilisation correctly and the Europeans achieved civilisation first”
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Er, no. You haven’t reflected it correctly at all. Major civilisations arose in Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Indus valley while Europe was still in the stone age. The Great Pyramid for instance predates Stonehenge.
Dear Wayne, I have no real sentiment against you and thank you for sharing your experience but your projection that I am somehow deluded and that I need some type of salvation from my own ideas is unjustified. First of all consider that these topics we are discussing are quite subjective and emotive. They are also surrounded in context and also it is very easy to offend people with what one writes. I can nail contradictions in what anyone else says etc and problems have more than one solution. My point is practicalities. You are not going to eradicate racism or cultural bias very soon. It is a fact now that counries that control their immigration and are of uniform culture are on the economic acendancy, and my contention is that in order for this continent to rise again and to keep its edge in such an intensely competitive world we must ensure we have cohesion for otherwise we will not necessarily survive. Jobs can go anywhere and people can do anything. Governments must ensure some type of cultural cohesion and purpose. I do not enjoy nationalism, I am too educated and travelled for that, but it is a fact that nationalism has restored nations. There are places in the Far East that started with nothing and where people worked even Sundays and slept on building sites on the actual sturcture of the skyscrapper. My question to you then is how will be restore our position, improve the economy, fight crime, get national priorities and purpose. We wont achieve it I believe by becoming overly lax with immigration and de-regulation. We need some order and national identity. Of course you are going to equate that to some Far Right nazi issue but have a heart! that is not what is meant here. What is meant is to put our house in order and get society working and I mean literally working on issues of national priority. If I work hard or do something I do not wish to feel used, I need to know that there is some system, some career progression. What I am ultimately after is the situation in Japan say in the last 30 years. When a chap spent long hours inventing something you then found that same guy 20 years later as the CEO of the firm! In the UK for example, as soon as the guy put his heart and soul into inventing something he will be chucked away, the business sold and a money man who knows nothing of the product put in charge and such things. OK obviously this is a generalization, but society is like a control system, you need to tweak it to steer it to a better place.
I meant Dear Clark sorry!
Clark, The Passion of the Christ had a mixed reception amongst Christians and atheists. I am an atheist but I found it portrayed sadism and so I did not enjoy the film very much. You cannot compare that with masses of people demonstrating about the cartoons and threatening to kill people. Yes you can look at the other side but please maintain some measure about what you are judging here.
““I thought I had reflected the course of civilisation correctly and the Europeans achieved civilisation first”
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“You might be interested to read a history of China.”
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“you treat me like some idiot, I am a sophisticate guy. That is not what I meant”
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Well, so sorry. But it’s what you said. I can’t see any point in dealing with anything as though it’s just personal mudslinging (I don’t mean just you, either), I was trying to be helpful. I did think that if that was your understanding of world history, you might have found it interesting to expand it. After all, there’s always more to learn.
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“as if the posters cannot admit that Europe and the USA are (or have been up to now) the countries we should aspire to emulate”
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Me, I’m a Brit. I’d love to see my country emulating a democracy that was worth emulating.
Suhayl,
thanks for the article from Gary Younge. It identifies many disturbing realities in Europe. But I think it also sidesteps important questions, e.g. why there is a stubborn undercurrent of extreme racist views. Yes there is, and it is scary, but why does it exist?
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One possible response, and perhaps it is an unpalatable one to a person holding liberal views, is that it is a direct result of Europe being relatively prosperous and therefore attractive as a destination to would-be migrants. People can argue about positive aspects of immigration and how much immigration is sustainable but in the end these are subjective arguments and consensus is unlikely. If no meaningful political dialogue is allowed to take place (one that can lead to decisions being put to a vote by citizens) then the frustrations of some will find expression in the adoption of extreme views and actions. No doubt some crazies will be moved to outright violence, and no doubt some crazies would not be dissuaded by any amount of political dialogue.
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But we must not conflate actual fascist views and their pseudo-rational justifications with legitimate feelings of unease at the situation with regard to the scale and quality of immigration, the pace of integration, economic and cultural effects, religious sensitivities, crime etc. I say these concerns are legitimate not because they are necessarily wholly rational, but because we cannot wish them away or rationally argue them out of existence.
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Btw SVP in Switzerland is one of seven parties in government. The Swiss do not have a majoritarian system of government. Also, SVP is not a hard right party as the article implies but is a conservative one. Such intellectual dishonesty on Younge’s part is very naughty and it makes me wonder what else is misrepresented.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_People%27s_Party
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So let’s take Switzerland as an example. It is extremely prosperous, its GDP per capita being one of the highest in the world. If it opened its boarders completely it is uncontroversial to suppose that it would become overwhelmed with economic migrants. So the only question that arises is – how closed should its borders be? This is a matter for national debate, and SVP is part of that process. I can entirely see this from the Swiss perspective – the wealth and infrastructure that is collectively built up by them, belong in no uncertain sense to them and are theirs to share or not to share. The same applies if they wish to preserve their cultural identity, religious identity, or whatever. We cannot deny the Swiss a say in these matters, and we have no option but to respect their decisions.
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PS The SVP’s ‘black sheep’ poster campaign was undoubtedly in bad taste.
Wayne, your question: “My question to you then is how will be restore our position, improve the economy, fight crime, get national priorities and purpose…”,
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That’s easy, or would be if we had functioning democracy and honest mainstream media. Tax the rich and the big corporations, and regulate finance. Then the government would have the resources to take the lead again. It could fund honest research instead of the partisan stuff we have currently funded by industry. It could employ people to do the things that need doing that don’t generate profit. Still, you know this, because you wrote “society is like a control system, you need to tweak it..” Yes, this is what government is meant to do, instead of constantly capitulating to pressure from business. The UK/US could save a bundle by refraining from attacks upon much poorer countries. That wouldn’t suit the powerful armament and “security” sectors, though.
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But in the long term, with rising global population and finite resources, the world economy can’t keep growing. Research has consistently shown that population growth slows as women are educated and empowered, but that requires resources for education and social support.
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“The Passion of the Christ had a mixed reception amongst Christians and atheists. […] You cannot compare that with masses of people demonstrating about the cartoons and threatening to kill people”.
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No personal death threats were made, though inflammatory placards were carried. About 500-700 people demonstrated. This incident has been magnified out of all proportion by a chain e-mail campaign. The three most offensive “cartoons” were never actually published in the Danish newspaper, but were added by two imams who wished to inflame the matter. Mainstream Muslim sources condemned the placards.
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http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2006/02/islamic-society-of-denmark-used-fake-cartoons-to-create-story/
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http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/muslimprotest.asp
Actually, Wayne, I can and did compare religious outrage between two religious communities. It is you that “couldn’t”.
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Please paragraph! Reading your comments drives my eyes funny.
Evgueni, how active are provocative Far Right organisations like the UK EDL in Switzerland? How much racially motivated crime is there?