Short answer yes. Long answer likely yes.
this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2024
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Good video, mostly. I didn't like him simply skipping over the fact that immigration indeed does cause issues, just that the advantages usually massively outweigh those—that felt off-balance.
And I noticed again how in-denial I used to be about Macron. Despite the news about headscarves being branded "un-French", about yellow vests, about expanded police rights, about him and Rishi getting along great because they're both "banker bros", ...
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Damn I landed here over some other BS post of this account.
Many Europeans know first hand that the streets are less safe than they used to be and which groups are causing it.
I stopped reading after this because I can’t be bothered to read generic hate speech. Whoever says that streets used to be safer is full of shit. Even the areas that people call “no go zones” in Germany 2024 are ridiculously safe compared to what they used to be. I’m a peaceful person but I was involved in tons of fistfights when I was young, just because you had to.
I grew up in 2 of the largest German cities in the 90s/2000s and spots that are full of tourists nowadays were literal no go zones if you didn’t know people because you’d just get robbed. All of this became less common during the 2000s and since the 2010s it’s not a thing anymore.
No time to read the rest of the post but I’m sure it’s just more lies.
I have a feeling this largely depends on where you live. In areas where there's a large concentration of immigrants and integration fails is where you can encounter unfortunate events. Just a little anecdote: a local bar that is known for being very left (punks and Antifa regularly hang out here, everyone openly smoked weed even 20 years ago when it still was illegal in Germany) had an influx of sexual abuse caused by immigrants. They even had to hire a bouncer at one point to stop this from happening. The swimming pools have pictograms showing what you're not allowed to do to women, etc. My wife voluntarily teaches immigrants German, and she's like super left. But she has to admit that there is a huge difference between the Ukrainians and Afghans for example. While the former is eager to learn the language so they can contribute to society, the latter is not interested most of the time and they're fine with receiving benefits and living off that. This all happens in a town with less than 100k population. Now imagine what a shitshow it is in Berlin?
All of this happens because of shitty societal practices that aren't compatible to the society here. It is a problem and shouldn't be disregarded.
I'm all for immigrants. I have an colleague at work who fled with his mother from Syria. He learned the language, studied and now works as a process engineer in our company. A fantastic person and I bet there's plenty more of these people. The problem is, we're also gaining a lot of shitty people... And we have enough shitty people among the Germans! Integration practices need to improve! Sending them back into a country at war isn't an option.
All I can say is that I live in Berlin right now and everything is fine. I know Ukrainians who speak fuck all German, I know Syrians who I’d never believe they’re not born here because their German is perfect. I also know it the other way around. But the point is anecdotes like these usually come from people living in small towns / villages and it seems to be because people aren’t used to the diversity and they get most of their information from the media.
In the 70s/80s the inner cities of places like Berlin, Cologne & Hamburg were full of drugs, pimps and gang violence. No one wanted to live there, they literally called Cologne Chicago am Rhein. Needless to say the pimps & gang were all ethnic Germans.
In the 90s Kottbusser Tor was one of the no go zones where you were likely to be robbed if you weren’t from the Kiez. Had to know people. Now it’s a tourist hotspot and there’s nothing comparable to what it was like back in the day. That’s btw not just my feeling but crime statistics point in the same direction. Just one example out of many. If you didn’t grow up in this mess you have no idea how safe it is in 2024, no matter what the media or politics tell you.
I actually grew up in Amsterdam in the 90s. Diversity works really well there in my opinion. In my classroom alone we had 16 different nationalies. It all boils down to integration. Germany is shit at integration. My brother has lived in Berlin all his life. Violence has gone up since the massive immigration waves. And sorry to say this but a lot of the immigrants have problems with their behavior towards women. Why would pictograms in swimmingpools need to be put up, showing not to grope women because of their swimwear?
I myself don't think the immigration is the huge problem everyone makes it out to be. But Germany barely does a thing and allows them to group together, making integration difficult. Other countries ar better at this. My wife came in contact with many immigrants and there definitely is a pattern. This has nothing to do with race and everything to do with societal norms.
I don’t know what to say to your whole thing about pictures in swimming pool and immigrants. I‘ve been to all the big clubs in Berlin and they also have all kinds of tolerance statements in their party descriptions and on the walls inside the clubs that also talk about no means no and that you can’t grope anyone. The party audience is mostly white and mostly from western countries, yet this is there. Do I now conclude that all white westerners have a problem with harassing people? That’s just ridiculous.
I’ve lived in the Netherlands btw and it seemed very popular among locals to trash German cars, break their windows, slash their tires, spray shit like „Germans out“ on cars or walls. Do I now conclude that Dutch people are all racist? Again that would be ridiculous.
My point is, your opinions are based on diffuse feelings and not on actual data („crime is getting worse“) or logical conclusions („there are posters in swimming pools, therefore immigrants harrass women“).
I actually saw the harassment with my own eyes in that bar I was talking about. It was a huge shock because that bar was only ever visited by the most open minded people you could meet. The posters I'm talking about were put up after sexual harassment took place. This is not a feeling, things have happened. Just not as crazy as the Nazis would like. But ignoring these problems and just not doing anything about it is a good recipe for setting things up to get worse. All I want is that people get integrated a bit better. I'd never send them back to the hell holes they came from. They fled wars for a reason.
I'm very happy for you that you have so much positive to say about what you have encountered! I also know many friends who've never had trouble with immigrants and refugees. But when you let in a huge amount of people, there's bound to be a gigantic portion of asshats among them. I'd say a comparable percentage to the German shitheads.
Edit: yeah, we had our car's windows broken and radio stolen too. My Dutch teacher actually said terrible things about the Germans right in front of me and he very well knew that my family comes from Germany. But my classmates had my back, reported him to to the principal and he was fired on the spot. The classmates in question were from Ghana, Surinam, the UK, China and the Netherlands. It felt great being surrounded by people from all over the world as if it were the most normal thing ever. And it was normal. Largely also because they were integrated very well (us Germans too btw).
The amount of gang violence in Sweden has exploded in the last few years, with shootings and bombings.
Overall crime is down, but the risk of being shot or blown up is higher in Sweden compared to a few years ago.
Sadly most victims of this violence are young men with roots from outside of Europe, many second generation immigrants, which plays right into the hands of the far right.
I want the violence to stop, I just don't think the far right have the solution, however give it a few more years and people will be ready to try anything, even fascism. I think.
Edit: Fixed a damn autocorrect.
The issues are similar to the issues elsewhere: Sweden informally segregated migrants from Swedish-born people, in housing projects, in lower-paying jobs etc. We need to fix the social situation (and not just for migrants) to lower crime rates for the future.
What the right (including the center-right) is doing, i.e. worsening social outcomes for most people and often times intentionally hurting integration in general society and in the labor market will only make crime rates go up.
Absolutely agree about improving the social situation for a lot of people who are struggling, but I also think there's something else. I don't know what. Healthcare is free, dental care is free, education is free and you get paid to attend school. Second generation migrants have opportunities their parents likely didn't, and still they get recruited into gangs and kill or get killed.
I don't know what the real problem is, nor how to solve it. I just don't think either the left (fix the social situation and the crime will stop) or the right (stop migration and the crime will stop) is correct. Or maybe they both are, but in a limited way? Maybe it's something else entirely?
Sweden is so cute, one bad thing happens and they think its bagdad lol.
Source: born & grew up there
Many Europeans know first hand that the streets are less safe than they used to be and which groups are causing it.
No. Many people* believe* that streets are less safe than they used to be, although actual facts and statistics show the opposite and it's much safer now.
They also believe which groups are causing it, because both lies are told by the same right-wing propagandists (and amplified by media giving a shit about facts, context or anything else but attention and clicks). The actual groups causing more crime are also in the actual real statistics: far-right crime and xenophobic assaults are on the rise and massively impact total numbers.
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Islamists are far right.... Yes they might not mutually like white far right people but that's the thing about an exclusionary fascist ideology, which both groups possess
Many Europeans know first hand that the streets are less safe than they used to be and which groups are causing it.
For one thing, that's not what I was saying.
And then there's a lot of conflating "feeling safe" with "being safe" going on here, which has a lot to do with our innate xenophobia. People don't become criminals because of the color of their skin, their language, or their religion. Instead they become criminals because of social standing, lack of money, lack of education, gender, age, drug use. But of course, branding everyone who looks or speaks differently from you as bad/evil happens to be easy.
Yet in reality, it doesn't make much of a difference whether people are murdered by a nazi, someone apolitical born in $yourCountry, or a recent immigrant. But these people will likely share factors such as being less educated, belonging to a social group that is not accepted, being poor, male and under 30.
Then there’s a blatant misquote in there as well. Macron’s minister of the interior didn’t call LePen weak on migration but Islamism, as is visible on the quote he shows.
I did notice that one as well -- although I didn't look up whether there's additional context. This was not a direct quote though, it was from a newspaper that paraphrased.
Nonetheless, even so, it's telling considering the kind of anti-islam, police-heavy state France has morphed into in recent years.
Presenting the left popular front as some kind of success, is also reaching. It’s a desperate survival strategy.
That's pretty much what he said.
He then goes on to bash liberal democrats for the rise of fascism, stopping short of calling them fascists as well.
There's data to back up what he says -- austerity & accompanying economic vulnerability, destruction of community, strengthening social hierarchies all lead to authoritarian tendencies.
So overall this is just a doubling down on a failed strategy of the left.
Ftr: Don't agree. He's right in that what's failing us is the stream of center-right policy since the 80s.
Being uncritically ideologically pro immigration, regardless of facts, social, demographic, and political realities,
Tbh, I see a lot more people who uncritically ideologically against all immigration, regardless of facts.
while calling everyone fascist, hasn’t stopped us from ending up in the current situation.
Good one! In your own words, the guy from the video is
stopping short of calling them fascists as well.
And indeed, pretty much everyone else is too.
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Not because of some vague feeling, but because I myself, friends and acquaintances have been harassed, insulted, robbed, sexually assaulted, and violently injured. I’m visibly queer and can’t use public transport at night anymore because of repeated harassments. I had to run more than once.
I am sorry that this happened to you.
However:
- I do know that locally, in this Eastern German town, right-wing asshats use general feelings pretty much exclusively and don't even care that crime rates have gone down quite significantly or that we're doing better than other cities.
- I do have right-wing family. I can tell you that the only reason you don't run from them in public-transit contexts is that they use cars not transit.
On top of that Islamist knife and vehicle wielding terrorists didn’t used to murder in my city 10 years ago.
Are these a common sight now? And if both of these happened in your city, then I suspect the only German city you may be living in is Berlin.
Yes, poor young single males are more likely to be violent criminals. Maybe that’s a reason to not take them in in huge numbers?
... Or maybe, they're coming here in any case and European societies have too few young working-age people, so on average they're come in extremely handy?
The real learning from this should be not to let social outcomes go to shit for less well-off people.
You’re conflating Islam and Islamism.
I am not. I understand it might read like that though.
However, I meant Islam. E.g. anti-headscarf laws to me, are generally anti-Islam, not anti-Islamism.
Most Muslims are normal and well behaved folks.
So maybe these 40% migrants in some age groups are not all a danger to social cohesion then?
Of course the right populists use issues of demographics, migration, identity, crime, anlienation, etc. to the detriment of the working class. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any real issues.
I guess we're finding common ground there. Except I see that issues arise in terms of there being a large potential of fucking up integration. Like, e.g. Germany which has just cut a lot of money for language courses which were already overflowing to the degree that people couldn't register for way too long.
And yes, different cultures approach problems differently and tend to have different values, and that will obviously lead to certain issues. As long as violence and wild insults are credibly off-limits, there's no real harm in that.
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Christianity and Islam are largely the same culturally, at most you could say that some Muslims lag a few decades behind in their understanding or women and other minority rights (although even that is questionable looking at some evangelical Christians).
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Sure there are differences, but they are relatively minor compared to other major world religions/cultures.
And I think you should read up on the massive expansion of evangelical Christianity in Africa and south America. Islamist expansion is rather "tame" in comparison and their believes in regards to women and minority rights are pretty much the same.
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Evangelical Christian influenced governments declaring LGBT+ to be illegal and punishable by death sentence are tame? That is if the evangelical lynch mobs don't get them first? Maybe look into them a bit more.
You're male and heterosexual, right? Otherwise, there wouldn't be much difference for you between fundamental Christians and Islamists.
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Well, Evangelical extremists would at least send you to several conversion camps
In Germany? Lol, no. Nice whataboutisn by the way. Why not just believe that there are problems with differing societies mixing on a grand scale all at once? These problems can be fixed by the way, but you'd have to rationally acknowledge them first.
Yes, poor young single males are more likely to be violent criminals. Maybe that’s a reason to not take them in in huge numbers?
Well, there's war in the middle east, and the western world (including parts of europe) caused it. So it's only fair that we care for the refugees.
Fascism? In my Europe? It's more likely than you think!
Assuming that immigration is "the" real problem (jobs, safety, and so on). Why would facism be "the" solution?
I could skip the discussion on wether migrants are here stealing jobs. In fact, I'd rather focus on discussing solutions. The extreme right is capitalizing on lefties caught on arguments with their narrative. If we agree on the issues (that is, partially) perhaps, could we work together? And I don't mean with the fascists, but people. We need not to alienate those that consume their propaganda.
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I hope the rest of your day is as pleasant as you are.
I hope you learn some comebacks from somewhere other than Reddit
And I hope that you someday will learn to behave like an adult.