Nationalism, immigration and racism in the EU

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
"Some in France have already complained that the novel fans right-wing fears of the Muslim population, but that is to miss Houellebecq’s deeply mischievous point. Islamists and anti-immigration demagogues, the novel gleefully points out, really ought to be on the same side, because they share a suspicion of pluralist liberalism and a desire to return to “traditional” or pre-feminist values, where a woman submits to her husband – just as “Islam” means that a Muslim submits to God."

Have you read Self's The Book Of Dave? This is captured perfectly in the internal monologue of a xenophobic London cabbie: "Fucking muzzies, fucking filthy Pakis...tell you what though, they know how to keep their women in line..."

A similar thought occurred to me in the wake of the London riots a few years ago:

The Daily Mail, ca. 2008 - ISLAMIC COURTS "INTRODUCING SHARI'A BY STEALTH"

The Daily Mail, August 2011 - JOIN OUR CAMPAIGN FOR THIEVES TO BE SOUNDLY FLOGGED, THEN HAVE THEIR RIGHT HAND CUT OFF WITH A SWORD
 

you

Well-known member
Anders Breivik committed his outrage because he thought socialists were betraying his beloved Christian Norway to Islam, not because of a perceived blasphemy by an artist/humorist/writer. Not that that makes it any less bad, if I have to spell that out - but it is a different phenomenon.

Tea, not sure what this distinction achieves tbh. He killed for an ideal and set of beliefs. Believing that blasphemy is worth killing for is another belief from another belief set.

Regardless of the nature of a belief I think the important thing to ask is what actions are warranted by beliefs and values full stop. (and this is where Self's remarks on satire vs absolute sanctity of free speech come in)

Regardless, it's too easy to point out, not that it matters much because the belief to action protocol is identical, is that Brevick was less discriminate in his violent actions than the Kouachi bros. Brevick killed 77, 69 of which were teenagers.
 

droid

Well-known member
OK, fine, clearly Islamism does not have a monopoly on the use of political terror. But then I never said it did.

None of the types of terrorism you've mentioned is exactly analogous to what I'm talking about. For instance, when the IRA was carrying out political assassinations in the '70s and '80s its targets were generally high-profile members of the British establishment (MPs, royals) or symbols of state power (police stations, army barracks). Whereas Charlie Hebdo is clearly no more a part of the French establishment than Private Eye is of the British. And in any case, I'm talking about the present day, and with the exception of a couple of atrocities committed against members of the general public, the IRA has been virtually inactive the last 20-odd years.

I specifically mentioned IRA attacks on journalists, not on the 'establishment'. Republicans are far from inactive sadly. CIRA are still involved in all kinds of shit.

As far as white far-right or Christian fundamentalist terror goes, the analogy to the CH killings (or the Jyllands-Posten murders and attempted murders, Theo van Gogh's murder, Hirsi Ali's death threats, the Rushdie fatwa, the scores of people killed in protests at The Innocence of Muslims...) would be someone trying to kill the remaining Monty Python team, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Jerry Springer, anyone involved in the making of Father Ted, Andres Serrano, Chris Ofili...

Anders Breivik committed his outrage because he thought socialists were betraying his beloved Christian Norway to Islam, not because of a perceived blasphemy by an artist/humorist/writer. Not that that makes it any less bad, if I have to spell that out - but it is a different phenomenon.

Yes, it is not exactly analogous. Almost nothing in history is, but the fact is that journalists and commentators are regularly killed for insulting nationalist, political and racist ideologies. This is not so very different.
 

droid

Well-known member
Pure whataboutery. Abuses of state power are bad and are to be resisted as well - so what? I'd rather be able to exercise my right to free speech without having to worry about being incarcerated by the state or murdered by ultra-reactionary religious shitheads. It's not compulsory to side with one of two antagonistic evils.

Er... I didnt say it was, but the predominant narrative now, and the focus of the orgy of hypocrisy in Paris today is the idea that Western free speech must be courageously defended from the evils of Islam, when in fact Western free speech is under far more serious, sustained and effective attack by Western governments.
 

you

Well-known member
You're still not getting it. An equivalent would be a comedian getting killed for telling Irish jokes, or a cartoonist for mocking the Catholic church.

Tea, I don't think making judgements based on the supposed reasons for terrorism is a worthwhile thing to do. The point I was trying to make in my other post is that the belief behind violence is arbitrary.

To explain, should I kill people because I believe:
1 - dropping H's in speech is morally wrong to me and I must make a violent and indiscriminate stand against it.
2 - my father was murdered and I must avenge him.
3 - my territory has been taken by a force with a different ideology to mine.

In each case I would say that killing is the wrong option, regardless of whatever reason is behind it. It is why capital punishment is still viewed, largely, as wrong. It is why war is so contentious and divisive even when the sole argument or belief behind it is to save many many more lives.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Edit: @ droid

Agreed, there is a huge amount of hypocrisy and many "free" societies are not nearly as free as they purport to be. I read something today about a man in Glasgow being given a community service sentence for shouting "No public sector cuts" at the PM. I would call it unbelievable, except it's all too commonplace. Still, I don't see how it undermines the position I've taken here.

Tea, I don't think making judgements based on the supposed reasons for terrorism is a worthwhile thing to do.

I wasn't making moral judgements, if that's what you mean - in fact I should hope it was clear I wasn't trying to distinguish between "good terrorism" and "bad terrorism". It was more about the perception of what it's OK to publicly say (and draw etc.) and how that relates to your status as a legitimate target in the eyes of certain people who might not like what you're saying.

(Or who, if one were to exercise a little cynicism, might absolutely love what you're saying, because it gives them an excuse - as they see it - to prosecute their violent agenda.)
 
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Leo

Well-known member
#foxnewsfacts: not that anyone doubted it previously, but they truly are either ignorant or intentionally misleading.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
As I've said above, what other cultural or ideological group is so quick to react with violence to a perceived slight?

I know I was going to stay out of this, but this kind of statement is absurd (at best) and has been so often trotted out this past week that my head is beginning to hurt.

1/ The idea of a cultural or ideological group cannot be used to draw any conclusions regarding common behaviour between members of that group. The massacre in question was carried out by a handful of individual people, acting according to their own motivations. What does that automatically have to do with other Muslims, just because the killers say they're acting on behalf of Islam, or whatever their exact words were? If there's a causal link between being a Muslim and being more disposed to violence, then what is that link? Given that...

2/ ...if we are to play the game of 'my group is less violent than your group', (although *many* white Westerners seem to think that they couldn't possibly be seen as belonging to any kind of group, even though they view everyone else as belonging to clearly defined groups, and therefore are invulnerable to generalisations themselves) lots of other entities that could be dubbed 'cultural or ideological groups' have a long record of violence without much provocation at all, such as most Western nations (or maybe there are perceived slights, for example, in the temerity of other people elsewhere in the world to be different? I don't see how violence without provocation is better than violence in response to a perceived slight, anyhow).

Asserting that people who define themselves as Muslims have a greater propensity towards violence than people who don't is....well, y'know, prejudice.
 
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luka

Well-known member
Baboon you expanded on my razor sharp sharp critique with aplomb. Craners statement was dopey and a bit rich coming from a torture and war crimes condoning psycho and Mr tea has always been a tribalist. Nothing riles him like an attack on his tribe.
 

vimothy

yurp
There's a pertinent discussion of "freedom of speech" in Roger Scruton's half infamous, half forgotten, The Meaning of Conservatism, which describes both liberal and traditional conservative approaches to the matter:

[L]et us consider, in order to make the general issues [surrounding abstract conceptions of freedom commonly made use of during the Cold War and battles against totalitarianism] a little clearer, just one small example: the freedom of speech. It is obvious that there cannot be freedom of speech in any healthy society, if by freedom is meant the absolute untrammelled right to say what one wishes and utter one's views on anything, at any time, and anywhere. And it requires little knowledge of law to see that there is no absolute freedom of speech in the United Kingdom. Liberal thinkers have always recognized this fact. But they have seen the constraints on freedom as arising only negatively and in response to individual rights. Freedom should be qualified only by the possibility that someone might suffer through its exercise. For the conservative, constraint should be upheld, until it can be shown that society is not damaged by its removal. Thus the constraints on freedom arise through the law's attempt to embody (as for a conservative it must embody) the fundamental values of the society over which it rules. I shall argue that this vision of law is both more coherent and more true to the facts than its individualistic rival.

There is no freedom to abuse, to stir up hatred, to make or publish treasonable, libellous, obscene and blasphemous utterance. In England, as in every civilized country, there is a law which forbids the production and distribution of subversive material - the law of sedition. Now this law also makes it an offence voluntarily to stir up hatred between different sections of the community. Proper application of that law -which makes not only the manipulation of racial hatred but also that of class hatred into a criminal offence - would have made the first Race Relations Act (the Act which still required some element of mens rea for its statutory crimes) more or less unnecessary. It was not applied. This was not only because the symbolic gesture of a law specific to racial relations appeared immensely powerful, if not in quelling racial antipathy, at least in appeasing the middle-class conscience over its existence. It was also because the application of the law would lead at once to the curtailing, not only of what was said on the rostrum of the National Front, but also of what used to be said at every radical demonstration, and at many a Trades Union Congress.

This decline in the very idea of sedition has been brought about not by popular agitation, but by the politics of power. The fact is, not that our society believes in freedom of speech and assembly, but rather that it is afraid to announce its disbelief. This disbelief is so entrenched in English law - in the common law just as much as in statutory provisions - that it is possible to doubt that it could be eradicated without wholly overthrowing the social order which the law enshrines. But it is now principally judges and juries who respond to its demand. Politicians, and especially politicians of the 'moderate' Right, have lost their nerve.

This is not to deny the reality of some less absolute ideal of freedom, according to which it would be quite true to say that there is and has been more freedom of speech (and more freedom of every kind) in the United Kingdom than in most other countries of the world. And this Anglo-Saxon freedom is rightly valued by all of us who share its benefits, including the benefit of writing and reading the present book. But this freedom is not identifiable apart from the institutions which have fostered it. It is a freedom to do precisely what is not forbidden by law, and what is forbidden by law records a long tradition of reflection on the nature and constitution of British society.
 

luka

Well-known member
No one's gunna read that shit mate. Say something controversial. That's why we employ you remember?
 
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