The slow revolt of Western electorates

[Hereward]

I think Britain has been a largely positive example of integrating Muslims, but despite no major issues like in France and Belgium in the last decade, things are clearly not as good as they were. The reasons behind that seem to me down to Gulf money for wahhabist/salafi preachers and mosques, and UK involvement in Islamic countries, though that may just have uncovered a basic problem rather than caused it.

[Happy Ent]

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I think you'd need to define what you mean by secular and integration.

Sure. I’m a big fan of US-style immigration policies (or Canadian ones). These countries get to import largely secularised, well-educated, intelligent people with a globalist an pluralistic mindset. These are then indoctrinated into a system of drone-like obedience to values of the nation-state and have to survive in the draconian US “swim or sink” social model. I think that’s the way to do it, and the success of US Muslims is testament to the virtues of that policy.

Of course, the success of a tiny sliver of Muslim society in the US gives us no data about policies for integrating average muslims into European welfare states.

[Happy Ent]

9 hours ago, Hereward said:

I think Britain has been a largely positive example of integrating Muslims, but despite no major issues like in France and Belgium in the last decade, things are clearly not as good as they were. 

Hm… the transformation of Britain into an Orwellian dystopia is not positive. I don’t primarily evaluate societal change by the amount of violence and conflict, but by the amount of totalitarianism needed to avoid that conflict. 

The UK is a good indicator that totalitarianism is the logical consequence of immigration from MENA. If so, I don’t want it.

[Jo498]

38 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

Sure. I’m a big fan of US-style immigration policies (or Canadian ones). These countries get to import largely secularised, well-educated, intelligent people with a globalist an pluralistic mindset. These are then indoctrinated into a system of drone-like obedience to values of the nation-state and have to survive in the draconian US “swim or sink” social model. I think that’s the way to do it, and the success of US Muslims is testament to the virtues of that policy.

But this is hardly multiculturalism. It is rather mono-culturalism of people with different ethnic backgrounds. And it is not how the US society came about when it was receiving the "tired and poor" who were usually neither secular nor well educated. One doesn't have to do a lot of integration or genuinely recognize "otherness" if one is importing already largely secularized people etc. It does not solve the problem at hand but a far easier task. This is like asking a prep school principal how he manages to place so many graduates at top colleges and getting the answer that he takes only the top 5% from middle school into his school in the first place.

And it cannot be the only way. Because the "old" US until the 1920s or so did not do it that way and e.g. in Germany the integration seems to have worked comparably well in the 1970s and 80s although quite a few of the foreign workers were barely literal laborers from the Mezzogiorno or Anatolia.

It is also mostly irrelevant for the situation now. Several western countries now have lots of immigrants, often with the status of full citizens, that are poorly educated, traditionalist, and a few thousands might be religious (or political) extremists. So one has do deal with them, not dream about some restrictions letting only PhDs with an international boarding school background in. And the rules and laws that give "the West" the little moral superiority it might have make it impossible to round up and deport people without evidence for serious crimes or terrorism. We have twisted these rules already quite a bit for more surveillance etc.

[Hereward]

14 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

Hm… the transformation of Britain into an Orwellian dystopia is not positive. I don’t primarily evaluate societal change by the amount of violence and conflict, but by the amount of totalitarianism needed to avoid that conflict. 

The UK is a good indicator that totalitarianism is the logical consequence of immigration from MENA. If so, I don’t want it.

If you think Britain is totalitarian, I suggest you need to switch off and switch back on again. 

[Werthead]

Quote

I think Britain has been a largely positive example of integrating Muslims, but despite no major issues like in France and Belgium in the last decade, things are clearly not as good as they were. The reasons behind that seem to me down to Gulf money for wahhabist/salafi preachers and mosques, and UK involvement in Islamic countries, though that may just have uncovered a basic problem rather than caused it.

I agree, and it may be that publicising the problems of radicalisation (although covering up 9/11 and other events was hardly possible) have added to it. However, the fact the the British intelligence and police services have done well in defusing terrorist plots is heartening, and the apparent readiness of many British Muslims to report on extremist behaviour or the suspicion thereof is actually a positive display of integration.

My main concern now, and it seems to be of the security services, is that there will be a move away from multi-people conspiracies and plots involving explosives and weapons that make them much more likely to be exposed, and more to crazed single-actor attacks similar to what we've seen in Germany and France with vehicles.

Quote

Hm… the transformation of Britain into an Orwellian dystopia is not positive. I don’t primarily evaluate societal change by the amount of violence and conflict, but by the amount of totalitarianism needed to avoid that conflict. 

The UK is a good indicator that totalitarianism is the logical consequence of immigration from MENA. If so, I don’t want it.

Theresa May's limitations as a politician, a lack of flexibility and a preference for simplistic solutions to complex problems, are starting to become more apparent, and certainly her solution to the perceived issue being surveillance, surveillance and retention of data is problematic (not to mention using a nuclear weapon to crack a walnut). Fortunately every attempt to impose that kind of "Orwellian dystopia" has been legally shot down in flames, most recently today.

Until we leave the EU, anyway, I don't see this being a larger issue.

[Happy Ent]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Fortunately every attempt to impose that kind of "Orwellian dystopia" has been legally shot down in flames, most recently today.

I know! This is actually cause for joy. Very good news, and a welcome antidote to my cynical ramblings. Thanks for mentioning this.

[Wouter]

On 20-12-2016 at 10:12 PM, Rippounet said:

Considering the sizes of our respective countries, I think these figures go a long way to explain our different perceptions and perspectives..

 

Yes, I have the impression that Hollande is unusual for a European socialist in that he has followed far stricter policies in this regard. which was a wise move IMO, but he won't be rewarderd for that.

On 20-12-2016 at 10:49 PM, Kalbear said:

I think you'd need to define what you mean by secular and integration. 3 million muslims live in the US, and muslim laws or issues have not been particularly relevant or important in the US internally at all - and that's been the case for a long time. Well-respected and admired sports stars and other members of society in the US have converted publicly, and that again hasn't been a source of any particular ire. I suspect that this isn't the example of what you're wanting, however. 

The US isn't a particularly secular country, though. Lots of real religious sentiments still present in large parts of society.

And I'm under the impression that migrating to the US isn't all that easy (what's that "green card" thing for?). In earlier discussions, I have noted that US participants (in that particular thread, on another forum) simply refused to believe that Belgium attracted mostly immigrants of low to very low education. All this leads me to believe that average muslim in the US is probably educated far better than his or her counterpart in Europe. And the more educated people are, the less radical they tend to be in religious matters.

On 20-12-2016 at 11:08 PM, Jo498 said:

In many European nations there have been several million muslims in France and Germany and there was neither terrorism nor fear of terrorism from them until comparably recently. So either it is a new wave of more extremist muslims coming from the ever more unstable near/middle East. And/or more muslims who were born in the West or had been living there for many years "radicalized" themselves in the last 10-20 years whereas this had not happened before.

 

Lots of salafist propaganda, in all forms (satellite TV, internet, SA funded organisations active in Europe, preachers in mosques and even more so, on the streets) is the main culprit for this. Another factor may be the disconnect between the original culture, which they still cling to as a group, on the one hand and the desire to be a succesful person in the host society on the other hand. The latter would not have been felt by the original immigrants.

On 20-12-2016 at 11:17 PM, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

I can only speak for what I know of locally, but San Francisco's Chinatown might be a good example of this. You have a couple of older generations of Chinese in this neighborhood that I think it's safe to say never really assimilated. Many of them don't speak english, they often dress (in what I assume) is a traditional fashion. They have Chinese newspapers and literature. Chinese schools and Art Centers and the like. It seems to me that this neighborhood is a bit of a bastion of sorts. 

So those older Chinese immigrant families didn't integrate. But I assume that the present (younger) generations speak English, dress in the general American way, follow US media and celebrate the 4th of july? And if not, that only some local and very isolated communities don't?

If my assumption is correct, then I see rather the opposite happening in Belgium. Young people with a Moroccan background increasingly were traditional muslim clothes and ever more women are heavily veiled (rather than just a head scarf). If anything, the original culture has a bigger presence among the young people when compared to the original "gastarbeiders".

On 21-12-2016 at 0:13 AM, Hereward said:

I think Britain has been a largely positive example of integrating Muslims, but despite no major issues like in France and Belgium in the last decade, things are clearly not as good as they were. The reasons behind that seem to me down to Gulf money for wahhabist/salafi preachers and mosques, and UK involvement in Islamic countries, though that may just have uncovered a basic problem rather than caused it.

No major issues? There was the Rotherham abuse scandal (where the police/politics deliberately kept things under wraps), the attacks on the tube and hate preachers in London that the government just couldn't get out for the longest time. The situation may be better than France or Belgium but there is hardly cause for cheering.

On 21-12-2016 at 2:19 PM, Werthead said:

However, the fact the the British intelligence and police services have done well in defusing terrorist plots is heartening, and the apparent readiness of many British Muslims to report on extremist behaviour or the suspicion thereof is actually a positive display of integration.

[...]

Theresa May's limitations as a politician, a lack of flexibility and a preference for simplistic solutions to complex problems, are starting to become more apparent, and certainly her solution to the perceived issue being surveillance, surveillance and retention of data is problematic (not to mention using a nuclear weapon to crack a walnut). Fortunately every attempt to impose that kind of "Orwellian dystopia" has been legally shot down in flames, most recently today.

I'm going against the grain here, but I disagree regarding the wisdom of the ruling by the European court of justice.

See your first paragraph; the intelligence and police services have done well in defusing terrorist plots. Bravo. But in the other paragraph quoted, you also applaud the courts taking away part of the tools that the intelligence and police services have been using in order to defuse those plots.

It seems to me that the fear for the Orwellian society is weighing too much now, in your judgment. Sure, privacy is important and abuse of such laws is possible. But this has to be weighed against the consequences of terrorist attacks (and of organised crime) and the means that counterterrorists have to stop attacks from even happening.

In my view, the ruling from the court risks that some plots that could be stopped now won't be stopped in the future anymore. Keeping this data for 12 months can be a very useful tool against terrorists, and the intelligence services can't know in advance who will plot the next attack so in the majority of cases they won't know in advance who they have to follow.

Checks and balances can be build in to avoid abuse: limit access to the data, add a strict behaviour code for the agents who do have access (with serious punishments if they go out of line), change the law if necessary so this data can only be used in a context of terrorism or major criminal acts,...

Privacy laws can get out of hand. In a famous case in Belgium, a gang of drugdealers in Antwerp got away scot-free because the phone tap used as part of the operation to catch them wasn't approved in a 100% correct way. Minor procedural issues have led to a lot of acquittals in Belgium, making judges a laughing stock in Belgium, especially because this can become a convenient way to stop powerful people from getting convicted.

The reality is that right now, terrorist attacks are an issue. There is no indication that it will stop being an issue in the coming years, or even decades. Stopping such attacks before they happen should be a priority, and after every attacks the local politicians say it will be the priority, and the cooridination with other police services (internally and abroad) would be improved, etc.

However, after every new attack it turns out there is still little coordination between European intelligence and police services (see the story about the Tunisian who is now the main suspect for the attack; he was already convicted in Italy, and known as a radical salafist but he could still enter and stay in Germany, no problem), and it seems that this kind of privacy laws is the actual priority, at the cost of the tools available to dismantle terror cells before they become active.

People talk about Orwellian surveillance, but in the case of the Berlin attack there isn't even any camera footage of the perpetrator. Seems that the (near)future from shows like "Continuum" and "Person of interest" and the likes is still fiction. Terrorist attacks are very real though, and I wonder how important privacy will still be in the eyes of the public once/if those attacks (or string of attacks) will make 100s of victims instead of 10s, let alone 1000s as happened 9/11. 

And on the other hand, almost everybody uses Google/Android or Microsoft/Windows, both as operating systems or web services. This is hard to avoid, and many also use other privacy-hostile tools that can (more or less) be avoided, like Facebook. So we find privacy very important when it comes to government surveillance, but Google and/or Microsoft and/or Facebook (and I guess Apple is not much better) certainly get a lot of access with little protest.

The "multicultural' (rather, western+islamic) condition is the reality right now. It is very important that the number of succesful attacks is kept as low as possible, both in order to not encourage copycats and to stop massive reprisals. This may cost us some privacy, but the price in the other direction could be very high, too.

As an example: many in Belgium did not want soldiers patrolling in certain vulnerable streets and installations (like the train staton which I pass daily). That is supposed to be a dire threat to the rule of law: the totalitarian police state is near, etc.

But in practice? I feel safer with them around, knowing that one idiot with an AK47 is not going to have it so easy as to murder everyone at his leisure. Now he has to find a way to incapacitate or kill armed and trained soldiers too, and that is a complication he and his accomplices wouldn't want. It's not bad to make things difficult for the terrorists!

And that police state? Well, apparently "small crime" has dropped considerably where the soldiers are present. Perfectly fine by me. What's certain is that the soldiers haven't killed or beaten or even intimated anyone, nor am I under the impression I'm suddenly living in Damascus, being watched by 37 police and intelligence services. It's fine. They are our soldiers. Sometimes I wonder if some people prefer having armed jihadists on the street, rather than actual Belgian army.

 

[Savannah]

Wouter, for how long has it been like that in Belgium? 

I guess Germany will start barricading the Christmas Markets, though of course they should try barricading the borders first.

 

[Iskaral Pust]

US immigration policy got mentioned in a few posts, so let me post a few impressions:

- There aren't many Muslim immigrants here, but there is a mix of well-educated Muslims from Pakistan, India, Turkey, gulf states, etc who immigrate via education and professional jobs, and less educated Muslim asylum seekers from Somalia, Chechnya, Iraq, Bosnia, Syria, North Africa, etc.  Domestic conversions to Islam amongst African Americans is a major part of Islam in America, although that seems less noticeable than in the heyday of the Nation of Islam.

- There are lots of low education immigrants here but they are mostly Central American.  SE Asian immigrants through asylum programs also arrived here with very low education and generally struggled to match the success of NE Asian immigrants who generally arrived via education & professional jobs. 

- Family sponsorship is a factor for all immigrant groups here.  Whether initial immigration is through "high end" (educations & professions) or "low end" (asylum seekers), many sponsor family members to join them. 

- For most Muslim parts of the world, the US looks pretty inaccessible for mass migration, although it's still ridiculously easy to arrive as a tourist and just never leave, but then eligibility for social welfare benefits require some knowledge of how to attain a fake social security number -- probably not difficult in the immigrant communities.  Mass migration here generally comes from the southern borders.  Central America is massively dysfunctional with crime, gangs, corruption, poverty, over-crowding, etc and there has been a sustained influx for decades of illegal immigrants that dwarfs the Muslim influx into Western Europe. 

[Wouter]

1 hour ago, Savannah said:

Wouter, for how long has it been like that in Belgium? 

I guess Germany will start barricading the Christmas Markets, though of course they should try barricading the borders first.

 

Do you mean the presence of the army in some places? Since early 2015, among lots of protest from left-wing oriented organisations. Others, like some mayors (including the socialist mayor of Vilvoorde) and the Jewish community in Antwerp specifically asked for protection.

 

Iskaral pust; thanks for the explanation.

How do the people from Latin America integrate, in your opinion?

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

3 hours ago, Wouter said:

So those older Chinese immigrant families didn't integrate. But I assume that the present (younger) generations speak English, dress in the general American way, follow US media and celebrate the 4th of july? And if not, that only some local and very isolated communities don't?

 Yes, I would say that's a fair assumption. There are other districts of San Francisco that have large (perhaps even majority percentage) Chinese populations, but none is as sequestered or as separate as Chinatown seems to be.

[Iskaral Pust]

19 minutes ago, Wouter said:

Iskaral pust; thanks for the explanation.

How do the people from Latin America integrate, in your opinion?

I'm not an expert in this topic but it is widely discussed in journalism and politics so I can summarize the broad impression and you can research further. 

On one hand, Latinos are perceived as not integrating very strongly because they tend to live, work & socialize in ethnic clusters and speak Spanish as their primary language, which results in large enclaves where the entire community is a very obvious ethnic silo from nearby English-speaking Anglos. There is also a perception that they vote pretty uniformly as a bloc and are always seeking "immigration reform", i.e. a mass amnesty for illegal immigrants and open borders to more.  This is probably exaggerated.

On the other hand, second and third generation Latinos are usually dual language speakers and participate more in education and employment outside the enclave. Also Latinos are generally perceived as being very family-oriented, law-abiding (with the exception of gangs & drug trafficking), hard-working and socially conservative, which is generally consistent with the values of America.  The Republican Party even likes to say that Latinos are Republicans who just don't realize it yet.  Latinos are usually Catholic, which is at odds with the Protestant majority, but no different from the Irish, Italians and Polish.

So the Trumpian bone of contention with Latinos is not their reticence to integrate over time but rather that they are a very large and easy to identify "other" sub-group that has arrived here mostly illegally and with low education, which meant they depressed wages for the native low educated population. 

[Wouter]

Manhole eunuchsbane and Iskaral Pust; thanks for the responses.

[Chaircat Meow]

I don't think the UK has integrated its Muslim population very much at all. There are lots of very distinctive Muslim areas dotted around the UK, with their own cultural practices and to varying degrees removed from full participation in the nation. As Happy Ent has pointed out, the presence of so many Muslim immigrants and their descendants has prompted a shift towards authoritarianism in the UK. Blaming Theresa May for this is senseless: it was Labour which took the initial steps in this regard.

All the UK has done is to, so far, avoid having its ethnic/religious divisions manifest themselves in terrorism/fear/disruption in the ways being seen now in France, Belgium and Germany. And to a degree this might just be luck: it will only take one or two attacks slipping through the net to change the perception that Britain is doing better than the continent. After all, the USA does undoubtedly have a better integrated Muslim population and still had the atrocity in Orlando.

[Kalbear]

Latino immigration is also not really uniform, as there are a lot of different groups that come into different places. As an example, the Puerto Ricans that have come to live in Florida are very different politically and culturally than the Cuban generations that live in the same places. El Salvadorean aren't the same as Mexicans. It's kind of like saying how the caucasian immigrants from Europe integrated when talking about the Irish, Polish, Italians, and Germans. 

[Arakan]

55 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

All the UK has done is to, so far, avoid having its ethnic/religious divisions manifest themselves in terrorism/fear/disruption in the ways being seen now in France, Belgium and Germany. And to a degree this might just be luck: it will only take one or two attacks slipping through the net to change the perception that Britain is doing better than the continent. After all, the USA does undoubtedly have a better integrated Muslim population and still had the atrocity in Orlando.

I do not agree with this. London was the second major target of Islamic terrorism, after Madrid in 2003. And then there were other smaller jihadi inspired incidents. Germany before 2016 had basically never seen Islamist terrorism (except the Frankfurt airport incident where a Kosovo Albanian shot two US soldiers). France is a different story but the U.K. is not "safer" than the "continent" per se. 

[Chaircat Meow]

8 minutes ago, Arakan said:

I do not agree with this. London was the second major target of Islamic terrorism, after Madrid in 2003. And then there were other smaller jihadi inspired incidents. Germany before 2016 had basically never seen Islamist terrorism (except the Frankfurt airport incident where a Kosovo Albanian shot two US soldiers). France is a different story but the U.K. is not "safer" than the "continent" per se. 

I said it might just be luck. I had Hereward's comments about the 'last decade' in mind. The tube bombing was 2005, of course (although the murder of Lee Rigby was in 2013).

[Arakan]

12 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

I said it might just be luck. I had Hereward's comments about the 'last decade' in mind. The tube bombing was 2005, of course (although the murder of Lee Rigby was in 2013).

I think the reason why the U.K. was relatively safe in recent years is because you have a much stricter immigration policy than say Germany. Obviously this is only possible in a practical manner due to the UK being an island. 

All Islamic terror incidents in Germany 2016 have been conducted by asylum seekers/refugees: 

- Suicide bombing in Ansbach: Syrian refugee 

- Axe attack in train (Würzburg): Afghan refugee

- Berlin attack: Tunisian asylum seeker 

So basically no homegrown Islamist terror but in the UK the terrorists were homegrown IIRC. 

My point: the roughly 4 million Muslims living, working and grown up in Germany never did any terror deeds (except the mentioned case). 

[Chaircat Meow]

13 minutes ago, Arakan said:

I think the reason why the U.K. was relatively safe in recent years is because you have a much stricter immigration policy than say Germany. Obviously this is only possible in a practical manner due to the UK being an island. 

All Islamic terror incidents in Germany 2016 have been conducted by asylum seekers/refugees: 

- Suicide bombing in Ansbach: Syrian refugee 

- Axe attack in train (Würzburg): Afghan refugee

- Berlin attack: Tunisian asylum seeker 

So basically no homegrown Islamist terror but in the UK the terrorists were homegrown IIRC. 

Interesting point.