On the failure of multiculturalism in Europe

[oslo]

I'd like to springboard off of this post in another community to discuss a disturbing development in European culture and politics caused by the Syrian refugee crisis. In my view, it really calls into question whether we can really all just get along

Comments

[johnny9fingers]

How soon we forget.

The echoes of Julius Streicher resound though the years.* What I find most interesting about it is the number of folk on T_P from old EU countries, some of them mods, who seem oblivious to the dog-whistle politics being espoused here. Even when it is pointed out to them.

*Der Sturmer had a lovely line in promoting stories of how Jews had raped Aryan women, and how manly German chaps then beat them to death, to cheers from the general onlookers.

[oslo]

It's unfortunate that they've cultivated an atmosphere that is so devotedly antagonistic towards Americans. I really feel like we could teach them a lot about dog-whistle tactics, if they would listen.

[johnny9fingers]

I must admit to cultivating and exaggerating a certain set of characteristics that may well antagonise them. Like the Republicans and Obama, they would rather find common ground with Hitler than with me. And yet folk say politics is not personal. :)

But try as I might, I cannot yet turn myself into the sort of brilliant curmudgeon that Mark did, god bless his cotton socks. But I do find that I'm admiring him a good bit more. But that's just me. :)

They do get it wrong though. Almost criminally, when you think about it, because that is what apologies for dog-whistle racism are: appositional to racism itself.

Which is not to say that criminal behaviour on the part of refugees should be tolerated either.

[oslo]

Who's Mark?

It can be tricky addressing the occurrence of criminal behavior amongst the Syrian refugees because, yeah, you don't want to condone or justify their behavior. At the same time, it is essential that we recognize the conditions that give rise to that behavior. I am really quite skeptical that Germans, faced with a parallel set of circumstances, would behave much better. What we're seeing, in my view, is precisely what you would expect to see when you violently uproot a population from their homes, place them in a separate, unfamiliar country, and isolate them in ways that limit their ability to adapt or integrate into their new situations.

[dexeron]

"Excuse me, but an American is probably around the bottom of the list of people that I'd take a lesson on justice from, especially in terms of geopolitics."

What a convenient ad hom to avoid having to answer anything challenging a black and white view of the world.

[johnny9fingers]

I still read TP and cheer good sense from the sidelines, but I've given up commenting, considering any opinion which I express would be regarded as the wrong opinion.

[turk_diddler]

Okay, this is the sort of bullshit that gives liberals a bad name. We're 'intellectually sophisticated', we're utopians, we see through the prejudices of others, but we still need a scapegoat for society's ills. You happen to pick on Romanians and Bulgarians, Europeans foreign enough from most of us to be a bit strange and therefore legitimately scorned

[dexeron]

You're not wrong, really, but I should point out that the OP is in a lot of ways a satire: a funhouse mirror twisting of the words of certain specific "Romanians and Bulgarians" in another political community back on themselves to point out their intellectual and moral paucity. I don't think Oslo actually thinks Romanians or Bulgarians are actually, as a people, intellectually unsophisticated, though of course he's welcome to speak for himself if he disagrees. ;)

[johnny9fingers]

Rhetoric being what it is and all that....

[thedr9wningman]

Thanks for starting an enlightening discussion. I have little to add, but this:

In response to: "How is the utopian vision of the European Union possible, when its citizens are so easily whipped into xenophobic, racist furor?"

This is not something unique to Europeans. As a citizen of the US and a world traveller, I've learnt one thing; to paraphrase: ignorance is the default case and ignorance: conservatism:: educated: liberalism/pragmatism.

I've seen it a million times: conservatives create a limited worldview, and then get upset when people don't tow the line. It revolves around the simplistic disciplines of authoritarianism and hierarchy.

Libertarians (extremists) make similar logical mistakes in assuming that everyone is enlightened enough to not require order, usually from a social/supra-personal scope.

In my mind (I'm a social Democrat/Green in European politics), Europe still gets a lot more right than wrong. But human tribalism and instincts turn a blind eye to overcoming educated points of view, allowing even the most

[complex8systems]

Normal society unite separate groups of equivalent exchange, and a common part of worldviews.
Similarity tolerant society consists of closed groups with incompatible worldviews and unequal exchange.

In normal societies of the future will be optimally reproduced and used all of reality from the sequence of human development and society.
All modern societies are reproduced and are used excessively underdeveloped reality from the beginning of the sequence of development of man and society, causing not enough resources for the reproduction of the most developed of the realities of the end of the sequence of development.