A hundred organized men on violent rampage in Stockholm.

[Joe Hillshoist]

You only jam certain signals tho don't you.

[jakell]

...I always react in this fashion when people inject particular stimuli in order to elicit a programmed response. I jam the signal.

Such basic manipulation is an insult to the intelligence. It's about Pavlov's level and you should really up your game several notches.

You only jam certain signals tho don't you.

Well of course, that is the point.

Seems you understand what I mean by the difference between genuine empathic responses and empty kneejerk ones that are ultimately meaningless. Outwardly similar as these may be.

[Joe Hillshoist]

...I always react in this fashion when people inject particular stimuli in order to elicit a programmed response. I jam the signal.

Such basic manipulation is an insult to the intelligence. It's about Pavlov's level and you should really up your game several notches.

You only jam certain signals tho don't you.

Well of course, that is the point.

Seems you understand what I mean by the difference between genuine empathic responses and empty kneejerk ones that are ultimately meaningless. Outwardly similar as these may be.

You don't have to empathise with the victims of violent home invasions if you don't want to.

Its your choice.

You can empathise with the i home invaders if you want.

[seemslikeadream]

Muslims in Europe: A Crisis of Liberalism, not a Clash of Civilizations
By contributors | Feb. 14, 2016 |
‘By the Book’ with Joseph Preville

by JOSEPH RICHARD PREVILLE and JULIE POUCHER HARBIN | ISLAMiCommentary | – –
Are Muslims embraced as part of the mosaic of Europe? Or, are they considered and treated as outsiders, foreigners, and invaders? Political Scientist Peter O’Brien deconstructs this issue in his new book, The Muslim Question in Europe: Political Controversies and Public Philosophies (Temple University Press, 2016).
“There exists,” he writes, “no great, let alone unbridgeable, gulf in outlook or lifestyle forever separating ‘Islamic’ from ‘Western’ civilization.” He argues that there is not a “clash of civilizations,” but “clashes within Western civilization.”
O’Brien dissects the hotly-debated and contentious topics of headscarves, terrorism, and secularism (mosque-state relations) within the broad historical and political contexts of “intra-European tensions.” He argues that European Muslims should not be viewed “as a distinct group of political actors.” Rather, he states that European Muslims and non-Muslims both inhabit “a normative landscape in Europe dominated by the vying public philosophies of liberalism, nationalism, and postmodernism.”
O’Brien is Professor of Political Science at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. He was educated at Kalamazoo College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has served as a Social Science Research Council Fellow at the Free University in Berlin and as a Fulbright Professor at Bogazici University in Istanbul and the Humboldt University in Berlin. O’Brien is the author of Beyond the Swastika (Routledge, 1996) and European Perceptions of Islam and America from Saladin to George W. Bush (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
Peter O’Brien discusses his new book in this interview.
The Pew Research Center projects that Muslims will make up 8% of Europe’s population by 2030. How are Muslims changing the social and political fabric of Europe, especially considering the declining birthrate in Europe, which is much lower than other regions throughout the world?
Peter O'Brien
Peter O’Brien
Many reliable studies have found that Europeans of Muslim heritage think and live very much like their non-Muslim counterparts. However, a conspicuous minority of Islamist Europeans do resist and challenge in word and deed so-called “common” European norms and values. A minority (Islamists) of a small minority (Muslims) in terms of the entire population of Europe should not be able to affect much change in the social and political fabric of Europe. However, a growing number of Islamophobic politicians, parties and movements that exaggerate the influence of Islamists could, if empowered by voters, transform Europe into a considerably less welcoming place for Muslims than it has been thus far in the postwar era.
What are the major political controversies surrounding European Muslims?
My book devotes a chapter to each of the major controversies: the requirements for citizenship (or long-term residency); the headscarf debate; mosque-state relations (the level of state subsidies and support for Islam/Muslims); and countering the alleged threat of Islamist terrorism.
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the wearing of the headscarf is akin to proselytization, if I’m not mistaken. And France seems to have the toughest restrictions on the hijab. Do you see French laws and interpretation of laïcité — seemingly at odds with freedom of religious expression — changing at all?
Yes. The central thesis of my book is that because there exists no firm ethical consensus on such matters as the headscarf controversy, ultimately political contestation (in the courts, parliaments, streets) will decide the matter. Contestation means that current decisions will be challenged and likely (someday) altered. Keep in mind that before the ban was legislated in 2004, the Conseil d’Etat regularly nullified individual school bans on grounds that they constituted an infringement of religious freedom. Or consider Germany. In 2003 the Constitutional Court allowed a ban for teachers in public schools but reversed its decision in 2015. It would not surprise me if the hijab were highly in vogue in Europe among Muslim and non-Muslim women by 2025. I mean that somewhat facetiously, but the situation is that fluid.
How did your life and work in Germany and Turkey shape the perspective of your research?
Living in Turkey for the academic year 1995-1996 helped me to reject the neo-Orientalist stereotypes with which I was educated. Repeatedly residing in Germany for long durations over the last 35 years has prompted greater appreciation for the complexity of immigration as well as increased skepticism toward and even irritation with simplistic explanations and interpretations (some of which were my own).
Trinity University students (and I) meeting with members of the Junge Islam Konferenz in Berlin, May 2015.
Trinity University students (and I) meeting with members of the Junge Islam Konferenz in Berlin, May 2015.
Have you been to Germany and Turkey since the Syrian refugee crisis? What have you observed?
I resided in Germany for five months in 2015. I witnessed much admirable generosity and goodwill on the part of Germans and non-Germans toward arriving refugees. Unfortunately, many politicians have been more interested in fomenting anger and resentment toward the newcomers.
German PM Angela Merkel is under increasing political pressure at home – especially since the attacks in Cologne – to revisit the country’s “open door” policy toward refugees. To many German citizens the danger to their society is very real. Do they have reason to be worried or are their fears overblown? Is it possible to put the “crisis” in perspective based on what you know of history and of Germany?
Based on separate figures compiled by Peter Katzenstein and Doug Saunders, I write in my book that a resident of Europe is 33 times likelier to die from meningitis, 822 times likelier to be murdered for nonpolitical reasons, and 1,833 times likelier to perish in a car accident than to fall victim to terrorist attacks, of which only one percent are committed by persons invoking Islam.
An estimated 13 percent of women in Germany experience physical assault at some time in their life. The problem of violence against women neither originated on New Year’s Eve 2015 in Cologne nor is perpetrated by (Muslim) refugees only. Needless to say, this sobering fact in no way minimizes or justifies the crimes against women committed in Cologne on that occasion.
Germany took in as many as 14 million refugees after WWII under conditions far less favorable than today. In 1990 the Federal Republic of Germany annexed a country of 16 million East Germans that had been extensively ruined by two generations of communist rule. With regard to the current wave of refugees, the Chancellor couldn’t be more correct when she insists “We can do this” (Wir schaffen das).
It seems that the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis originated by Samuel Huntington (1996) is back in vogue? Should we be wary of this?
Yes. Because it is reductionist it is highly misleading. It fosters the erroneous and politically dangerous view that all Muslims think and act alike and, moreover, in ways that “clash” with the purportedly central values of Western societies, such as rationality, civil liberty, democracy and the rule of law.
How can an understanding of the political philosophies of liberalism, nationalism, and postmodernism help us to look at the Muslim question and immigration in Europe?
My book shows that the most politically consequential ideological clashes in Europe are those between the public philosophies of liberalism (all should enjoy equal rights and freedoms), nationalism (the rights and needs of natives should have priority over non-natives) and postmodernism (what passes for right and wrong is always the result of political contestation). Two advantages stem from applying this conceptual lens. First, we can understand how these vying public philosophies contribute to highly contradictory, even self-defeating policies regarding immigration across Europe. Second, we see that the three ideologies divide Muslim as much as non-Muslim Europeans. The two groups do not represent differing monolithic blocs locked in a clash with one another.
British journalist Mehdi Hasan has written that “in some respects, Muslims are the new Jews of Europe.” (Huffington Post UK, May 29, 2014). Are there strong historical parallels between what European Jews experienced in the 20th century to current conditions for European Muslims?
This commonly drawn parallel is more misleading than illuminating. Nowhere in Europe are virtually all Muslims —asylum-seekers, resident aliens and citizens — being disenfranchised, dispossessed and sequestered the way Jews were in Nazi Germany. More importantly, the systematic extermination of the European Muslim community is not taking place. Although there are some credible parallels between the everyday discrimination in many walks of life against Jews before the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 and against European Muslims today, the latter have far superior recourse to national and international courts to challenge violations of human rights.

Joseph Richard Preville is Assistant Professor of English at Alfaisal University/Prince Sultan College for Business in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Tikkun, The Jerusalem Post, Muscat Daily, Saudi Gazette, and World Religion News. He is also a regular contributor to ISLAMiCommentary.
Julie Poucher Harbin is Editor of ISLAMiCommentary.

[jakell]

...I always react in this fashion when people inject particular stimuli in order to elicit a programmed response. I jam the signal.

Such basic manipulation is an insult to the intelligence. It's about Pavlov's level and you should really up your game several notches.

You only jam certain signals tho don't you.

Well of course, that is the point.

Seems you understand what I mean by the difference between genuine empathic responses and empty kneejerk ones that are ultimately meaningless. Outwardly similar as these may be.

You don't have to empathise with the victims of violent home invasions if you don't want to.

Its your choice.

You can empathise with the i home invaders if you want.

What, the 'three disorganised men'? Not much detail available there and I'm not one to embroider things in order to construct a personal connection.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Good, cos while empathy is good, the real point is attacks like these are more likely in a climate of fear and division. The rhetoric spouted by the Islamophobes and BN types and groups like UKIP and Pediga creates an environment where random attacks like this are more likely to happen. As an aside to the more organised stuff.

[jakell]

Good, cos while empathy is good, the real point is attacks like these are more likely in a climate of fear and division. The rhetoric spouted by the Islamophobes and BN types and groups like UKIP and Pediga creates an environment where random attacks like this are more likely to happen. As an aside to the more organised stuff.

Ah, if things were only that simple, but they're not, in the UK at least.
I spoke earlier in this thread about the organising of far right groups:

Anti-fascists need to think a bit more and realise that they never had it better than when they had the BNP as a focus (taking the UK as an example), and that since the demise of the BNP et al, it's a lot harder to keep track of the far right's movements and activities, and we see more incidents like those described in this thread.

Simply trying to stop them organising even the slightest political extension may be emotionally satisfying in the short term, but it's ultimately ineffective.

There was a noticeable trend from the NF, to Tyndall's BNP, to Griffin's BNP of a reduction in this sort of violence, and this seems to go along with the ability to find a voice and vehicle of expression, and it is too simplistic to simply act to chop off every visible emergence of organisation, it doesn't make the people go away. Of course a certain sort of violence and intimidation remains, and it is about striking a balance.

This is complicated by the fact that tension between formerly immigrant communities is becoming significant, possibly even more so, especially with new arrivals from Eastern Europe.

[jakell]

I was going to add above that there is also conflict within communities, thinking mainly of the Pakistani/Muslim one of which I'm most familiar. This has often been fueled by the changing status of women, but also happens between extended family groups and around business interests.
One has to be close up to see these things, they are often not much talked about, particularly where there is religion involved. This is one factor that helped conceal the large scale grooming and abuse of children by multiple gangs not so long ago (around the time of, and conveniently obscured by, the Saville business.)

I decided not to add this at the time as I've already produced a lot of anecdotal stuff. This evening though there was a program on BBC Radio 4, 'Sunni Shia Splits' which describes a more recent angle, although it may have been going on for some time, but recently exacerbated by the IS situation.

It's well worth a listen, and unlike other BBC podcasts, doesn't expire. (begins at 2:40)

[American Dream]

If “what is bad about being buddy-pals with fascists“ is actually a question you think it’s appropriate to ask then you should probably get off the internet and get acquainted with what fascists have done and are doing in the real world.

I don’t think being a mutual with a fascist is giving them material support or anything, but fascism isn’t something that’s exactly open to rational debate. Part of the problem with lesswrong style discourse (to be broad) is this peculiar line of thinking that everything can be debated. While we might be able to debate the effects of fascism or fascist organization in the 21st century in a rational manner, fascism has no coherent political or philosophical principles by which we can debate it. Fascism, as a serious political movement, will not tolerate us through peaceful debate, and fascists have no intention of debating the merits of their platform.

Fascism, as an historical movement, came to power through force. It gained the support of the masses through the exploitation of their misunderstandings and neuroses, not through rational discourse. To anyone with historical literacy, it is absurd to suggest that you can “debate” fascism. There is nothing to debate. Fascism is not rational, and that is precisely its appeal.

http://softprimitivist.co.vu/post/13939 ... -pals-with

[Joe Hillshoist]

The rhetoric spouted by the Islamophobes and BN types and groups like UKIP and Pediga creates an environment where random attacks like this are more likely to happen.

Ah, if things were only that simple, but they're not, in the UK at least.
I spoke earlier in this thread about the organising of far right groups:

since the demise of the BNP et al, it's a lot harder to keep track of the far right's movements and activities, and we see more incidents like those described in this thread.

Simply trying to stop them organising even the slightest political extension may be emotionally satisfying in the short term, but it's ultimately ineffective.

There was a noticeable trend from the NF, to Tyndall's BNP, to Griffin's BNP of a reduction in this sort of violence, and this seems to go along with the ability to find a voice and vehicle of expression, and it is too simplistic to simply act to chop off every visible emergence of organisation, it doesn't make the people go away. Of course a certain sort of violence and intimidation remains, and it is about striking a balance.

This is complicated by the fact that tension between formerly immigrant communities is becoming significant, possibly even more so, especially with new arrivals from Eastern Europe.

You need to reread what you wrote...

You can't quote yourself pinning violent events like the rampage that inspired this thread on the rise of "disorganised" (ie unofficial) islamophobia then say it has nothing to do with an associated rise in inflammatory and outright hateful speech about Muslims.

Well you can if you want I spose but intelligent people don't do that sort of thing unless they have a good reason.

Nice deflection btw. All this anti Muslim stuff does only come from the evil pakis.

[jakell]

You can't quote yourself pinning violent events like the rampage that inspired this thread on the rise of "disorganised" (ie unofficial) islamophobia then say it has nothing to do with an associated rise in inflammatory and outright hateful speech about Muslims.

Well you can if you want I spose but intelligent people don't do that sort of thing unless they have a good reason.

Nice deflection btw. All this anti Muslim stuff does only come from the evil pakis.

I have made no such claims, which is probably why you've had invent them here. What I've done is to try to raise the level of debate above the standard simple tropes and assumptions by adding some local detail. It's about practical 'anti-fascism' again
Notice that (as I mostly try to do) have stuck to opining on the UK situation which I'm pretty familiar with. I wouldn't presume to tell those in other parts of the world what their own situation is based upon some imagined wishful global parity.

This is why I began my post with:

Ah, if only things were that simple, but they're not, in the UK at least...

[Joe Hillshoist]

Me:

The rhetoric spouted by the Islamophobes and BN types and groups like UKIP and Pediga creates an environment where random attacks like this are more likely to happen. As an aside to the more organised stuff.

You:

Ah, if things were only that simple, but they're not, in the UK at least.
I spoke earlier in this thread about the organising of far right groups:

Anti-fascists need to think a bit more and realise that they never had it better than when they had the BNP as a focus (taking the UK as an example), and that since the demise of the BNP et al, it's a lot harder to keep track of the far right's movements and activities, and we see more incidents like those described in this thread.

The only point I'd make about that is organisation and randomness are more fluid things with mobile communication tech.

[Joe Hillshoist]

What I've done is to try to raise the level of debate above the standard simple tropes and assumptions by adding some local detail. It's about practical 'anti-fascism' again
Notice that (as I mostly try to do) have stuck to opining on the UK situation which I'm pretty familiar with. I wouldn't presume to tell those in other parts of the world what their own situation is based upon some imagined wishful global parity.

[jakell]

Me:

The rhetoric spouted by the Islamophobes and BN types and groups like UKIP and Pediga creates an environment where random attacks like this are more likely to happen. As an aside to the more organised stuff.

You:

Ah, if things were only that simple, but they're not, in the UK at least.
I spoke earlier in this thread about the organising of far right groups:

Anti-fascists need to think a bit more and realise that they never had it better than when they had the BNP as a focus (taking the UK as an example), and that since the demise of the BNP et al, it's a lot harder to keep track of the far right's movements and activities, and we see more incidents like those described in this thread.

The only point I'd make about that is organisation and randomness are more fluid things with mobile communication tech.

Yes, that was stated a bit too crudely in attempt to relate to the title I was more thinking of my experience with the development of of the BNP.

In reality, I can't really think of any incidents that relate to the title of this thread, so it's hard to find a pattern. In the past we had small scale stuff that was personal and fairly brief (and poorly planned) and the other end of the scale was more or less demo scale stuff where the only real violence was between the fascists and the antis.

This incident seems to occupy some middle ground, and is harder to link with either individuals or organisations. Possibly some new model along the lines that you describe is needed.

I've had a think about this, using the guidelines you offered, and have come back to my original conclusion... I do find it offensive.
Sorry about that, must be a British thing.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Yes, that was stated a bit too crudely in attempt to relate to the title I was more thinking of my experience with the development of of the BNP.

In reality, I can really think of any incidents that relate to the title of this thread, so it's hard to find a pattern. In the past we had small scale stuff that was personal and fairly brief (and poorly planned) and the other end of the scale was more or less demo scale stuff where the only real violence was between the fascists and the antis.

This incident seems to occupy some middle ground, and is harder to link with either individuals or organisations. Possibly some new model along the lines that you describe is needed.

FFS can you please talk like this more often.

Its a pain getting that smiley.