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| Thread: Rise of xenophobia in Europe |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 · NEXT» |
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Doomforge
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posted August 11, 2011 04:22 PM |
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Rise of xenophobia in Europe
Watching latest comments of people and hearing stories from my friends visiting various European countries (or living in them), I can't help but to wonder whether Europe isn't regressing back to what it was before World War II.
Just look at any random internet forums. Everywhere, there are posts made by unhappy locals about various immigrants. They vary from unfriendly ("they are stealing our jobs" "they don't assimilate") to plain hostile ("******* Muslims/Romes/Arabs/Polacks/etc"). With the borders open and lots of people migrating to avoid their native countries' poor life level, combined with global crisis and increasing unemployment in many "rich" countries, xenophobia is rising its ugly head again. Almost everywhere, people are becoming increasingly unfriendly towards people from poorer countries, or blatantly consider them scum stealing "thier" jobs. Extreme right movements are being resurrected and start rising to power again. The numbers of extreme political movement supporters is radically increasing.
History starts repeating itself, I'm afraid. I thought we Europeans are beyond stupid "common enemy" concept that brought us once to the edge of destroying each other, but nah. It's happening again right in front of us. Whenever I open a random news on polish news portals regarding situation in England or Norway, I'm terrified by the amount of xenophobic posts there. The moderators don't even delete those anymore. Heck, they didn't delete even the comments that basically said Breivik "did the right thing" cause "he killed young communists, not humans"...
Can Europe go back to unity ideals, or are we going to see nationalism's second youth and once again revert to closed borders, hatred and contempt for other nations (especially those poorer than our own) and extreme right-wing movements?
Discuss.
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Corribus
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posted August 11, 2011 04:33 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 16:34, 11 Aug 2011.
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Quote:
Discuss.
Correction: discuss respectfully and nicely. 
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Zenofex
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posted August 11, 2011 04:46 PM |
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As long as the general level of economic welfare is good, the xenophobic movements will remain relatively toothless and most people will consider them a background noise. If the situation continues to worsen though and if the current debt crisis is not efficiently resolved... then they might become troublesome.
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Doomforge
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posted August 11, 2011 04:49 PM |
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Well the problem is that my country went through crisis extremely well and continues to maintain a decent GDP increase rate. It's literally a lot better place to live than 10 years ago, but despite that, xenophobia is spreading like a plague and people aren't even trying to hide the fact they have massive racial/national bias anymore.
So I guess that financial problems of the world aren't exactly the only problem.
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Darkshadow
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posted August 11, 2011 04:51 PM |
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Can we have some far right parties that aren't a complete joke?please?
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xerox
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posted August 11, 2011 05:06 PM |
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Edited by xerox at 17:13, 11 Aug 2011.
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I really do not think it is so extreme that something crazy like the "Fourth Reich" will be created. >.>
This is mostly from the perspective of the situation in Sweden, so all of Europe probably doesn't have the EXACT same problems-
This does not suprise me at all. Look around in european countries and you will see that there are obvious problems that immigration coupled with lack of proper assimilation policies have contributed too. For instance, crime has increased greatly and is much higher among immigrants (but that does not mean its okay to generalize and say all immigrants = criminals). A study in Sweden showed that on average, immigrants did 300% more harsh crimes such as rape than swedes. A study in Norway showed that pretty much all rapists in Oslo where of foreign descent.
Of course people should not resort to racism and xenophobia, but "multiculturalism" (which doesn't really exist imo, I don't see a lot of swedes enjoying somali food and culture) has obvious problems that can not just be ignored.
In my country, the politicans have just completly ignored these problems which, seeing as we live in democracies, has opened the doors to political parties that critize mass immigration.
I think immigration is fine IF there are working integration/assimilation policies which there are not. Immigrants who come here get thrown into enclaves where swedes are a minority and do not want to live. Of course that creates segregation and prevents integration or if that does not work, assimilation.
A lot of immigrants here also do not have jobs and we tax payers are the ones who are forced to sustain them, since the state gives them tons of wellfare money.
ILLEGAL immigrants even get FREE healthcare and dental care et cetera.
So the main problems are:
1. To high immigration coupled with failed assimilation policies.
2. Immigrants are "forced" to live in ghetto enclaves where the native population are a minority, which isolates them from the rest of the society.
3. Because of all this, many immigrants do not have a job and that contributes to increased crimes etc.
4. When immigrants do crimes and stuff, they get a bad reputation.
5. People start seeing the problems and start voting on people who want to fix this.
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Zenofex
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posted August 11, 2011 05:10 PM |
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Quote:
Well the problem is that my country went through crisis extremely well and continues to maintain a decent GDP increase rate. It's literally a lot better place to live than 10 years ago, but despite that, xenophobia is spreading like a plague and people aren't even trying to hide the fact they have massive racial/national bias anymore.
So I guess that financial problems of the world aren't exactly the only problem.
I hear you, it's not very different in Bulgaria and we also have our good share of xenophobes here as well but they are mostly a nuisance until something major happens. As long as the situation is bearable, the extremes can not gain much power. I mean - we're the poorest country in the EU and we have two large minorities which some of the locals have problems with but there haven't been any serious outbursts of "cleansing" attitude for quite a while, even though certain people definitely attempt to provoke it. I'm not sure if this will hold if the regular household income is significantly reduced though.
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Salamandre
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posted August 11, 2011 05:20 PM |
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There is a difference between congenital xenophobia/racism and the one provoked by real life experiences. IMO, saying today that immigration is not at all the cause of such various social and cultural disasters in Europe is irresponsible. Those who live in this countries since many years saw the social climate degrading much faster after huge immigration waves rolled in. I can't speak for other countries, but here where I live, I don't feel at all that these people were stigmatized or ghetto-ized. They benefited from huge social aids, absolutely no discrimination at start, and no one forced them to pack together, but their religion and ancestral habit.
With time, the fact that they naturally exclude any miscegenation with other races, by marriage or work, cluttered and isolated them even more, thus creating a high feeling of discrimination. On the other side, the locals feel powerless and frustrated, because the political correct behavior refused to develop any productive dialog on the matter, by simply quickly closing any attempt to.
Such frustrated feelings, not having any democratic way to express, congested and found the only possible loophole, the national party.
And we saw what were the results when dealing with sick people as Breivik. I fear it is only the start.
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Tsar-Ivor
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posted August 11, 2011 05:44 PM |
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Agreed with Xerox, people want this issue addressed and a measure to put in to satisfy both the immigrants and the 'natives' (lol), and since their own government won't do it, they turn to more extreme measures. Simples  .
Also my father was required to take a citizenship test, and a survey was conducted to see how well the British would fare at it, Clicky, this is supposed to be common sense, but so many failed miserably it's funny, i'll try to find the link for that, to sum up, who should really be thrown out? Those who come to Britain to appreciate how much better it is (not to mention are expected to know more then the average Brit) or those who take everything for granted??? Ponder that one my fine folk.
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Fauch
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posted August 11, 2011 05:53 PM |
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so it's not just in France 
of course the problem is very old, it's not just the past few years, it begins when you start categorizing people and then drawing frontiers. as long as you compare yourself to others and consider that such dude belongs to one category and you belong to another, there will be problems.
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blizzardboy
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posted August 11, 2011 06:04 PM |
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Immigrants are not a burden. War refugees: debatable, though they can still be just as valuable. The idea that the natives are propping up the immigrants through their money and labor is reminiscent of the 'White Mans Burden' mentality. There is a great incentive for more fortunate countries to bring in immigrants because as standards of living increase, rates of birth seem to decrease, and that leaves a larger aging population going into retirement with a shrunken younger generation to support them and to enter the domestic job market. Old people are expensive. The solution to this is to bring in human resources from elsewhere. Immigrants do jobs that a lot of other people wouldn't necessarily want to do, and assuming they're registered, they pay taxes just like everybody else. So even low-class immigrants are a wonderful asset and they deserve to be valued as such and treated with respect.
Of course, there are unique challenges with extreme culture and ideology clashes. Immigrants moving from a country of roughly similar cultures don't bring those challenges so much, but to start with, I don't think anybody has any clout to say that immigration is an act of nobility. If Western Europe didn't have immigration, its economy would be suffering for it. You might point out that a lot of immigrants are on welfare programs, though really, that is what happens with recession. You can argue just as much that affluent white people are sucking more than their fair share out the system with retirement packages that may be unreasonably juicy and being stubborn asses when it comes to cutting back on certain entitlements.
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B0rsuk
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posted August 11, 2011 06:09 PM |
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To be fair, many Polish people really don't assimilate. I live in Poland. They're not as bad as Germans in that (who often create their ghettos in the internet), but bad indeed. I have never been to France, but I hear the French are famous for rarely learning any other languages, and not going abroad on long holidays. At least young Poles do, in fact, learn other languages, especially english. But older people, who emigrated years ago - they create so-called "Polonia's" in other countries, notably US and UK. There are phrases like "ponglish", which is an odd mixture of English and Polish they use to communicate when forced to go to an english shop.
Poland was an extremely tolerant country in XVI century. In fact, probably the most tolerant European country. But things really went downhill from there. "Colorful" people are still a pretty rare sight, I live in a big city and it's possible not to see someone looking "foreign" for days. You no longer raise an eyebrow if you see a black person, but they have reasons to be afraid of going to a poor district at night.
As usual, simple people in poor districts are especially prone to oversimplifications, and populism. They like to have simple enemies to blame. Hitler propaganda was very successful and it lingers. You can still hear tasteless jokes about Jews from time to time. Similar, many people are convinced blacks are inherently inferior (This, in turn, is the result of successful propaganda of slave traders. Nonsense like "europeans brought order and civilization to Africa"). If you want to know more about how and why slave trade looked in Africa, I recommend a book by Basil Davidson - "Black Mother".
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Salamandre
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posted August 11, 2011 06:14 PM |
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Quote:
I hear the French are famous for rarely learning any other languages, and not going abroad on long holidays.
You are wrong, 10 millions of french speak a perfect Arabian and visit regularly north Africa countries.
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xerox
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posted August 11, 2011 07:25 PM |
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Sure, a type of immigrants will be needed in the future since caucasian birth rates are low and half the population will be pensioners.
But that's a different type of immigration and I do not think that labour migration is causing a lot of problems.
It is the "refugee" immigration that is causing problems because the current failed integration/assimilation politics can't keep up with the massive number of "refugees" flooding in every year.
I like to use this as an example: If your cellar is flooded, do you either let the water flow and damage the house, or do you try to stop it and fix the damage?
The flood is the immigration here, the damage the effects of segregation and the fixing up is the integration/assimilation process.
Point here is that the mass immigration needs to stop (except for true refugees) so that the immigrants who are already in these countries get the resources and time they need to be integrated into the society.
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Doomforge
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posted August 11, 2011 07:44 PM |
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Quote:
There is a difference between congenital xenophobia/racism and the one provoked by real life experiences. IMO, saying today that immigration is not at all the cause of such various social and cultural disasters in Europe is irresponsible.
The issue is that xenophobia, caused by whatever reason, is always bad and pointless. It puts an unnecessary tag on people based not on their attitude, but origin. I'm pretty sure you could find tons of lazy Frenchmen benefiting from overgrown social fund, but nobody bashes the attitude of doing nothing and just taking money and reproducing. Instead of that, the main focus goes to the nationality. Which is the beginning of something that can end really ugly. Indeed Breivik may just be the beginning of organized xenophobic actions and, eventually - the rebirth of a long-dead concept of "race superiority". Heck, most of my friends consider white people more valuable then Blacks or Arabs already... Racism and Xenophobia are running rampant all around us. We can't even deny that anymore.
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Corribus
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posted August 11, 2011 07:55 PM |
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Unfortunately, the situation isn't helped by the fact that immigrants tend to self-segregate themselves. In the US, at least, it seems that more and more immigrants set up their own isolated communities and do not make an effort to really integrate themselves into the culture of their new country. I know of people who have lived here over a decade and still don't speak the language. They shop at their own grocery stores, wear their traditional clothes, and speak in their native tongues.
I do believe there is value in preserving one's cultural identity. On the other hand, some degree of integration is required. Not only does this make it easier to live in your new homeland, it certainly contributes to xenophobia on the part of native citizens.
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xerox
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posted August 11, 2011 07:56 PM |
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Edited by xerox at 20:03, 11 Aug 2011.
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Well, to be fair Anders Breivik isn't racist (more the opposite of it), he just hates Islam (and probably arabs, I guess that makes him semi-racist) and he fears that it will take over Europe (which is ridiculous imo).
Back to segregation/integration/assimilation.
It is natural for us to want to live with people we have much in common with so it is not strange that immigrants tend to self-segrate. And there must be laws in order to stop that. Maybe there could be a law that says that in an area, the immigrant population can't be over 40-50%
I think it is fine for immigrants to keep their culture and language. Well, as long as it does not break the country's laws (like do not discriminate women). If I moved to Greece, I would still speak swedish IN MY HOME but the main difference is that I would do everything I could do learn more about Greece, the greek language and trying to find a job etc.
The requirements on immigrants do not need to be extremly hard.
1. Learn the language.
2. Learn some basic history.
3. Learn about the culture.
4. Learn about how the society works.
5. Promise to want to find a job and teach your children all the above points.
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Over himself, over his own
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- John Stuart Mill
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Adrius
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posted August 11, 2011 08:08 PM |
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Edited by Adrius at 20:09, 11 Aug 2011.
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I don't think those rules are needed.
I agree with what Dagoth said in an earlier thread, just cut the welfare.
"Hmm... I don't have money... I need to get a good job, I bet knowing the language could help..."
And it works itself out.
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Doomforge
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posted August 11, 2011 08:08 PM |
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@xerox
Or you could limit social funding. Or remove it. Without the racial/xenophobic agenda behind stuff.
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xerox
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posted August 11, 2011 08:18 PM |
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Edited by xerox at 20:22, 11 Aug 2011.
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I don't think it is a good idea to completly cut the social fundings but yes, that is a problem here. That immigrants are to reliant on the tax payers sustaining them.
I have lived in an immigrant area and during the election, over 70% voted on the Social Democrats who want to increase social benefits. Already you can have an okay life without working here, so I think it is a horrible idea to give more wellfare money to people who do not make any kind of contribution to the society.
Also on that election, guess what party that made the second best election in that area?
The Sweden Democrats who got about 7-8% and are against immigration. And there are about 10% swedes left in that area.
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Over himself, over his own
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- John Stuart Mill
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