Immigration: Taboo or not

[JoannaL]

5 hours ago, Alarich II said:

 

The question wether or not newspapers should state the descent of a suspect or a criminal is also one that gets debated all the time,

Yes it gets debated which means there is a problem. And yes it may have been lebanese and not lybian clan structures, but thats more or less my point. I can look it up and find it somewhere in the net (which I normally dont do) but it is not included in the normal news (for me normal is the FAZ which I have in print and which is rather conservativ -still it says "extended family" -when it means criminal foreign clan structure, and I also read a varity of news online and watch the public broadcaster).

to prove my point, I found this random  headline today in the " Welt " (the Welt is also rather conservativ, so the reports there should be more open to  printing this information than lets say the leftist TAZ where I do not expect to find anything about the descent of criminals)

"22-year-old flirted with a woman - families attack each other" ; this makes no sense, does it?, and the whole article also did not explain why the families attact each other, because of flirting. I now checked in the net and yes, somewhere I can find that this incident involves two turkish families.

My point is not, that all immigrants are criminal (which they arent) or that there should not be any immigration, my point here is that there is a taboo to report it in the news, and sometimes the news gets nonsensical because of it.

[mormont]

20 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

My point is not, that all immigrants are criminal (which they arent) or that there should not be any immigration, my point here is that there is a taboo to report it in the news

If that's your point, repeating it doesn't make it any less untrue. Your point has been refuted. It isn't 'proven' by a randomly selected headline: one can simply go to Die Welt's website and see numerous stories that explicitly discuss links between immigration and crime, naming specific criminals as members of immigrant communities,

a:

[sologdin]

is it a custom of the local journalism to identify alleged violators of the criminal code by nationality, ethnicity, or purported race? like, do they say that windows of local minoritarian-owned businesses were smashed by indigenous members of the bavarian volk, or that heroic descendants of saxony engage in rassenhygiene among untermenschen?

[JoannaL]

1 hour ago, sologdin said:

is it a custom of the local journalism to identify alleged violators of the criminal code by nationality, ethnicity, or purported race? like, do they say that windows of local minoritarian-owned businesses were smashed by indigenous members of the bavarian volk, or that heroic descendants of saxony engage in rassenhygiene among untermenschen?

Gah, there is really no reason to misunderstand me. I think that a context should be included in an article which helps to understand whats going on  (e.g. it may have been typical in shakespearian times that families attacked each other because of flirting, it isnt anymore, context helps to understand the report)

About your question, yes there are articles of smashed windows and yes there is always the context who did it, as it should be.

[DMC]

Damned broken windows theory.

[Rippounet]

14 hours ago, Altherion said:

The capitalist version of open borders is that people will come to wherever the capitalists need labor, obey the local laws and work, but there are a lot of cultures which are not compatible with this so in practice you have plenty of immigrants storming courthouses or burning cathedrals or something of the sort. Not every culture can get along with every other.

Your post contains so many far-right talking points that it becomes difficult to answer.

I'm not too sure what you mean with the bolded. Usually far-right activists talk about rape culture (or polygamy) or terrorism to argue immigrants are dangerous ("incompatible"). I assume you're referring to the case of the cathedral of Nantes (my hometown btw), though with the information we have as of now the "cultural angle" is contrived to say the least. If other cathedrals have been victims of arson I'd like to know, google isn't telling me anything. Same for courthouses too, unless you're referring to the US, in which case I'm not sure what the link with immigration is exactly... ?

I'm more sympathetic to the first part of your post, because it sounds exactly like the discourse of French left-wing unions in the 1980s. Though of course, the problem there is that we're in 2020.

[sologdin]

 there are articles of smashed windows and yes there is always the context who did it, as it should be.

dunno.  crime news is kinda trifling, no? 

[The Marquis de Leech]

Immigration is indeed a complicated issue, but it honestly irritates me no end that believing in greater restrictions on immigration invariably attracts accusations of racism. As though racism were the only reason for wanting more limits on it.

Here? There are five parties that matter. National and ACT - the two right-wing parties - are generally very immigration-friendly, since it makes their business supporters happy (stops orchardists or dairy farmers paying more than minimum wage to their workers). The Greens - basically Woke Accountants these days - are very immigration-friendly, because otherwise it's Racism. Labour (the current Government) is moderate on the issue. New Zealand First (in coalition with Labour) is classically anti-immigration and protectionist, though I would note that it gets a non-trivial level of support from Maori. Explaining Winston Peters to non-New Zealanders gets rather weird.  

[Clueless Northman]

41 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I'm more sympathetic to the first part of your post, because it sounds exactly like the discourse of French left-wing unions in the 1980s. Though of course, the problem there is that we're in 2020.

Yeah well, that's indeed one of the problems we face in 2020. The Left basically abandoned the reasonable policy of opposing open borders for whatever flimsy reasons they might have, and have thrown to the capitalist wolves the national plebs, which now faces an endless future of minimal wages due to the growing pressure of incoming workers.

I mean, when both the heads of the French and of the German CEO clubs (well, the Employers Federations) published op-eds in the main national papers back in 2015 about the fact that Europe had to take in as many refugees as possible, that it was a humanitarian imperative, anyone with a few valid brain cells could see there was something fishy behind these calls, and that even though there were humanitarian grounds to let in migrants, that was definitely not the reason why they were pushing for it.

[DanteGabriel]

59 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

Gah, there is really no reason to misunderstand me. I think that a context should be included in an article which helps to understand whats going on  (e.g. it may have been typical in shakespearian times that families attacked each other because of flirting, it isnt anymore, context helps to understand the report)

About your question, yes there are articles of smashed windows and yes there is always the context who did it, as it should be.

But your criticism was that the headline was misleading. Headlines usually have to limit the number of words they use, for spacing reasons. Headlines don't supply context, that's what the article body is for. So part of your proof that newspapers are trying to conceal the crimes of undesirable foreigners is that they left ethnicity information out of a headline?

[Larry of the Lawn]

Now I'm wondering if I have to stop listening to Molly Hatchet's "flirting with disaster".  Is it cancelled or not?

[Durckad]

5 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

Yeah well, that's indeed one of the problems we face in 2020. The Left basically abandoned the reasonable policy of opposing open borders for whatever flimsy reasons they might have, and have thrown to the capitalist wolves the national plebs, which now faces an endless future of minimal wages due to the growing pressure of incoming workers.

I mean, when both the heads of the French and of the German CEO clubs (well, the Employers Federations) published op-eds in the main national papers back in 2015 about the fact that Europe had to take in as many refugees as possible, that it was a humanitarian imperative, anyone with a few valid brain cells could see there was something fishy behind these calls, and that even though there were humanitarian grounds to let in migrants, that was definitely not the reason why they were pushing for it.

I keep seeing people say this, but do you actually have a quote of someone on "the Left" (someone influential, not HammerAndSickle69 in the Youtube comments of every Chomsky interview) saying this, proposing open borders, and opposing any immigration restrictions? Honestly, please enlighten me because I'm a dumb dumb on this.

The primary thing I hear is "the Left" consistently opposing the more racist and ridiculous policies being provided by the Right and that's a problem, because the Left seems to me to be constantly playing defense on this issue. The Right gets to define an issue and the Left has to spend all its time stating that "No, we don't want to give undocumented immigrants medicare and social security and voting rights, but maybe that wall idea is a bit dumb." 

[Altherion]

6 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Your post contains so many far-right talking points that it becomes difficult to answer.

I'm not too sure what you mean with the bolded. Usually far-right activists talk about rape culture (or polygamy) or terrorism to argue immigrants are dangerous ("incompatible"). I assume you're referring to the case of the cathedral of Nantes (my hometown btw), though with the information we have as of now the "cultural angle" is contrived to say the least. If other cathedrals have been victims of arson I'd like to know, google isn't telling me anything. Same for courthouses too, unless you're referring to the US, in which case I'm not sure what the link with immigration is exactly... ?

It's not right-wing talking points so much as randomly chosen examples from this thread (the storming of the courthouse) and from recent news (and yes, it was the Cathedral of Nantes). And my point was that these are things that wouldn't even occur to somebody from the American culture or most European ones. That is, there are many legal and illegal things that have been done to courts -- appeal to a higher court, petition for a pardon, bribery, witness intimidation and so on and so forth... but it would not occur to anyone to actually storm a courthouse. Similarly, it would not occur even to a somebody very angry or more than a little mad to torch a cathedral (or at least it hasn't in centuries: when it has burned, it was because of either an accident or bombing during a war). It's just not done.

6 hours ago, Rippounet said:

I'm more sympathetic to the first part of your post, because it sounds exactly like the discourse of French left-wing unions in the 1980s. Though of course, the problem there is that we're in 2020.

It was true in the 1980s and it's still true in 2020. The only difference is that in the 1980s, most of the ideas regarding globalization (including, but not limited to, immigration) were largely theoretical whereas today the consequences are becoming obvious even to people who are trying really hard not to see them.

[JoannaL]

8 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

But your criticism was that the headline was misleading. Headlines usually have to limit the number of words they use, for spacing reasons. Headlines don't supply context, that's what the article body is for. So part of your proof that newspapers are trying to conceal the crimes of undesirable foreigners is that they left ethnicity information out of a headline?

No, I critizesed that the whole article, not only the headline, did not mention any context why "families attacted each other because of flirting".

[Alarich II]

13 hours ago, JoannaL said:

Yes it gets debated which means there is a problem. And yes it may have been lebanese and not lybian clan structures, but thats more or less my point. I can look it up and find it somewhere in the net (which I normally dont do) but it is not included in the normal news (for me normal is the FAZ which I have in print and which is rather conservativ -still it says "extended family" -when it means criminal foreign clan structure, and I also read a varity of news online and watch the public broadcaster).

to prove my point, I found this random  headline today in the " Welt " (the Welt is also rather conservativ, so the reports there should be more open to  printing this information than lets say the leftist TAZ where I do not expect to find anything about the descent of criminals)

"22-year-old flirted with a woman - families attack each other" ; this makes no sense, does it?, and the whole article also did not explain why the families attact each other, because of flirting. I now checked in the net and yes, somewhere I can find that this incident involves two turkish families.

My point is not, that all immigrants are criminal (which they arent) or that there should not be any immigration, my point here is that there is a taboo to report it in the news, and sometimes the news gets nonsensical because of it.

1. You are changing the goalposts, first you said it is taboo and therefore a problem, now you say okay, it gets debated and this indicates that there is a problem. Please make up your mind.

2. "Normal" news. What I find via Google are mainly links to the online-versions of very normal newspapers; BILD, TZ, BZ, Sächsische Zeitung etc. etc. etc. Maybe your Google is broken? Now, I don't read much FAZ since my parents cancelled their suscription, so maybe your very limited view on German newspapers may give you that impression. But in my "normal" news (whatever that is supposed to mean, as if only FAZ and Welt are "normal"), there are plenty of examples that show that there is no taboo.

3. Your "random" headline example (which btw. I couldn't find on welt.de, perhaps you should post a link) exposes the pitfalls of the debate:

Quote

"22-year-old flirted with a woman - families attack each other" ; this makes no sense, does it?, and the whole article also did not explain why the families attact each other, because of flirting. I now checked in the net and yes, somewhere I can find that this incident involves two turkish families.

First of all, most stupid group violence makes no sense, does it really matter where you or your grandparents were born? Second, the explanation is right there in the headline. So why does it only make sense to you, if you know that these two families are Turkish (or are they German, but of Turkish decent? Or maybe not Turkish, but Kurdish, or Lybian?)? I mean obviously, you are filling some kind of explanatory gap with that information, and obviously it is a very important part for you, because otherwise the entire story makes no sense to you. So maybe you can explain to me, why you cannot make sense of this article without this information? And this is something that journalists obviously to decide - is it newsworthy, does it add something to the story that needs to be told for full comprehension etc. And so sometimes things that may be of interest to you, specifically, are left out.

4. You are repeating that there is a taboo, your example is an article that is not even linked, and that's it? What about a counter example, the rape-case in Freiburg? Münchner Merkur and TAZ report on the nationality of the accused - obviously with a different tone which is to be expected.

Or maybe you don't read FAZ close enough? Jordanian man sentenced to 14 years, Police raid against arab/turkish clans just to link two articles from your "normal" newspaper.

There are plenty of examples despite your claim of taboo, so how does this work? Perhaps nationality or descent it is not always a newsworthy item, perhaps the police doesn't always release that kind of information but your claim that in German newspapers, the nationality or descent of a suspect or convicted is taboo does not fit the facts.

 

[JoannaL]

39 minutes ago, Alarich II said:

3. Your "random" headline example (which btw. I couldn't find on welt.de, perhaps you should post a link) exposes the pitfalls of the debate:

I mean obviously, you are filling some kind of explanatory gap with that information, and obviously it is a very important part for you, because otherwise the entire story makes no sense to you. So maybe you can explain to me, why you cannot make sense of this article without this information?

link Welt: https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article212313623/Ludwigshafen-Elf-Verletzte-bei-Auseinandersetzung-zweier-Familien.html

Why should two families attack each other because of flirting? Sorry, there really is a question here and yes I do not find it selfexplanatory why flirting leads to a fight with 11 injured. And why should I make up some explanation by myself??  No  I want to read the explanation and background information and context in the article. 

[Alarich II]

14 hours ago, sologdin said:

is it a custom of the local journalism to identify alleged violators of the criminal code by nationality, ethnicity, or purported race? like, do they say that windows of local minoritarian-owned businesses were smashed by indigenous members of the bavarian volk, or that heroic descendants of saxony engage in rassenhygiene among untermenschen?

Sometimes they do - say if Frankfurt Football Hooligans are invading Rome like whilom Barbarossa, their specific descent is important, with out the implicit knowlede that Frankfurters from the Main are prone to mindless violence, we could never make sense of this story. Same goes for Saxons, who of course have been be bloody bogeyman ever since Charlemangne. Of course, today this is coded, so if headlines say that Dynamo Hooligans are clashing in Hamburg, the common cultural connotation that every German would understand is that Saxonian hordes are invading the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. Bavarians are usually discussed in the context of the inacceptable cultural appropriation when Americans wear lederhosen and talk about "their" octoberfest back in Fargo, ND.

In the examples you mentioned, the reporting used to rely on that anti-semitic or anti-immigrant crimes are usually perpetrated by Germans, so the distinction between Franks, Bavarians, Saxons, Frisians etc. ist not made. However, in the specific case of anti-semitism, there has been a raise in criminals of arabic descent, so today the distinction is made, if it can be made. Otherwise the assumption is usually that these crimes are perpetrated by Neo-Nazis and those have been hesitant to welcome immigrants in their ranks, so their default nationality setting is "German", even if not explicitly mentioned.

[Alarich II]

42 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

link Welt: https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article212313623/Ludwigshafen-Elf-Verletzte-bei-Auseinandersetzung-zweier-Familien.html

Why should two families attack each other because of flirting? Sorry, there really is a question here and yes I do not find it selfexplanatory why flirting leads to a fight with 11 injured. And why should I make up some explanation by myself??  No  I want to read the explanation and background information and context in the article. 

So why does their Turkish descent explain this and not anything else that wasn't mentioned in the article?

 

30 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

And why should I make up some explanation by myself?

Also a funny question, as you already are making up an explanation: your explanation is that it's because they are Turkish, because apparently no other additional information would explain this otherwise completely unexplicable deed to you.

Maybe you should ask yourself - "why am I making up this explanation?"

[Rippounet]

10 hours ago, Altherion said:

It's not right-wing talking points so much as randomly chosen examples from this thread (the storming of the courthouse) and from recent news (and yes, it was the Cathedral of Nantes). And my point was that these are things that wouldn't even occur to somebody from the American culture or most European ones. That is, there are many legal and illegal things that have been done to courts -- appeal to a higher court, petition for a pardon, bribery, witness intimidation and so on and so forth... but it would not occur to anyone to actually storm a courthouse. Similarly, it would not occur even to a somebody very angry or more than a little mad to torch a cathedral (or at least it hasn't in centuries: when it has burned, it was because of either an accident or bombing during a war). It's just not done.

A credible narrative, but factually incorrect.

On the contrary, in France at least, degradations (and even arson) of churches occur on a regular basis. An anarcho-libertarian group set fire to a church in January 2019 in Grenoble. In 2018 there was a case in Orléans (with penises drawn and a poorly spelled "Allah ou Akbar," which says a great deal). I also found two fires started by teenagers and at least four by men with "mental problems," all in the last few years.
And this is thanks to a 10mn search, if I were to dig deeper I am certain I would find many more.
I did also find numerous articles claiming that France is in the midst of a wave of arson and degradation of churches that should be attributed to "barbarian" immigrants (no doubt Muslims). All of them seemed to be, to make it simple, full of shit, either from far-right (the "fachosphère") or Russian sources (which are the same, on this topic), compiling erroneous lists that do not stand up to scrutiny, or outright lies. About half of the fires reported are actually believed to be accidental and I couldn't find a single proven case of arson for "cultural" or religious reasons, the recent Nantes case being the closest to that, even though it's really not close at all.
In fact, if you think about this for the entirety of 2 or 3 minutes you should realize that such a narrative is invalidated by actual attacks. If you look at "terrorists" (including the smallest attacks, i.e. a lunatic with a knife shouting "Allahu Akbar" in a train station), they pretty much never target churches. Concert halls, bars, restaurants, train stations or airports, markets and supermarkets... all seem to be higher on the list.
I vividly remember one counter-example, and the reason I remember it so well is precisely because it was a counter-example, that one case when two guys attacked a church and a priest for some reason (and failed miserably IIRC).
And of course, anyone who knows France and French culture would know that the deeper reason is that French people are overwhelmingly non-religious (anti-clerical even, for quite a few on the left) and view churches as monuments to visit (like castles, basically), rather than as sacred cultural/religious symbols. For many of us, attacking the terrace of a bistrot is really more of a blasphemy than trying to burn a church! And maybe Notre-Dame de Paris would have been a decent counter-example (considering its mystique) if that one was actually proven to be criminal, except it's not...

Point is, yes, you are indeed spewing far-right talking points, or at the very least, a far-right narrative. If I had the time I could probably prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, or if you were honest, you'd admit that you get your information from dodgy sources.

BTW there was a case of a far-right nutjob attacking a mosque because he believed Notre-Dame had been burned down by Muslims, so spreading bullshit narratives is not without consequences.
Something to think about for the other thread on "cancel culture" and free speech, perhaps? Because you and I can't both be right on this one. Narratives or perspectives may differ, but numbers and statistics are objective, which means one of us is spreading misinformation.
At least when it comes to France, since the cathedral case is a French one. Whether your narrative could hold in other countries (say, Poland or Sweden) is a different question, and it might take a Pole or a Swede to answer that one.
But historically speaking, the narrative of the "immigrant" (or foreigner, or "other") as a barbarian (godless, primitive, savage) is pretty much always rooted in misinformation and ignorance. The other is always aggressive, lazy, sexually perverted... etc. So of course he will burn churches and rape/enslave women, because he is barely human, because his skin is of a different color... yada yada... That stuff gets boring once you realize the narratives have barely changed since the dawn of time. No doubt the first sapiens had similar stories about neanderthals, though we now know for certain that those two were not above fucking each other...
 

10 hours ago, Altherion said:

It was true in the 1980s and it's still true in 2020. The only difference is that in the 1980s, most of the ideas regarding globalization (including, but not limited to, immigration) were largely theoretical whereas today the consequences are becoming obvious even to people who are trying really hard not to see them.

It might have been true in the 1980s. I certainly read at least one well-sourced article on this, but what we're talking about is some large corporations deliberately employing immigrants to weaken their unions. In other words, while it is true that immigration was used as a weapon in class warfare, it was done at the level of micro-economics, because it could often be traced back to the management of specific factories.
The conclusion that from the start there was a "grand design" at the highest levels (political and industrial) might be credible, but as far as I know it remains unsubtantiated. TBH I think they (industrialists) stumbled upon the weaponisation (both economic and political) of immigration thanks to de-colonization, the two being intimately linked, as Sologdin already pointed out. It's funny how often Marxists are proven right in this story...
Anyway, flash forward to 2020 and it's a different world. Most of the factories are already gone, and many of the remaining ones are being automated. The weakening of the unions in the 1980s was successful and, combined with a concerted political and mediatic effort, resulted in a significant shift to the right in most Western nations.
Point is, even if immigration was a powerful economic weapon once, there's no way you can see it as the major factor today. There are other trends that are far more important.
On top of my head, since you mentioned inequality, the incremental disappearance of progressive (redistributive?) taxation has a considerable and well-documented effect. So if you're genuinely concerned about inequality, wealth and estate taxes should be your main focus, not immigration.

If you are primarily concerned with inequality, of course. In my experience, what right-wing folks are really after is a good narrative, not justice of any kind. At a glance it might seem curious that meaning and justice could be opposed, but if one thinks of conservatism as stemming from the elites' opposition to the progress of social justice, then it follows that it has to find meaning in non-progressive narratives. QED, I guess.

[Rippounet]

21 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

I mean, when both the heads of the French and of the German CEO clubs (well, the Employers Federations) published op-eds in the main national papers back in 2015 about the fact that Europe had to take in as many refugees as possible, that it was a humanitarian imperative, anyone with a few valid brain cells could see there was something fishy behind these calls, and that even though there were humanitarian grounds to let in migrants, that was definitely not the reason why they were pushing for it.

I guess... ? I honestly tend to view 2020 as far more complicated than 1980, so I'm a bit wary of simple explanations. I'm sure Employers' Federations saw refugees as economically profitable, but otoh France and Germany's respective economic and demographic situations are  different, so the motives of French and German CEOs could be subtly different as well.

Generally speaking, I'm inclined to think that immigration doesn't have that big an impact on the macro-economic level, in the sense that benefits and costs largely cancel each other over time. Since we don't actually face scarcity in Europe, more human capital is likely to be a net positive, regardless of its impact on the labor market(s).
Funnily enough I would personally focus on consumption & production rather than labor, because one way or the other we probably have too much labor already, even though we should be lowering our production anyway (or our environmental impact at least). I've seen various estimates saying at least 30% and up to 50% of jobs are becoming obsolete ; in that context, immigration will be a drop in the ocean in most countries.

I suppose a short version of this is to say that even if some anti-immigration or anti-globalist discouses have some truth to them (and that's still a big if), it's not too important in the grand scheme of things. In the grand scheme of things we should be rethinking our consumption, our production, and thus the very definition of labor. Another way of putting it is that our societies are facing structural changes that are far more consequential than anything immigration entails at the moment. In fact, I'm not sure the debate around immigration has fundamentally changed in the last 50, 100, 150, or even 1000 years.

The caveat to all this is that Germany may be a counter-example, because taking in about 1 million refugees at once is exceptional, so I have no idea of how that affects economics there. But on the "cultural" side, so far, it seems to be going well. Yes, truly. There are many anecdotal incidents, but apparently few negative patterns threatening the entire experiment (in other words, you can find many bad examples, but statistically speaking they tend to be almost irrelevant). Contrary to what the far-right would have us believe, it seems it is perfectly possible for Western countries to manage mass migration. In sum, humanity seems to have evolved to the point where one imagined community can take in 1 million humans from another imagined community.
If one forgets about bigotry for a few seconds that is a remarkable achievement.

Another caveat is that global warming might lead to an explosion of refugees, thus making some discourses far more pertinent than they are now.