I dunno what the polls say, but I know that they have in fact created a permanent underclass of immigrants in their society. They have institutionalized islamophobia, in that they passed laws to ban conspicuous displays of religion in schools, despite the fact that catholicism is actually directly supported by the government and all catholic holidays are national holidays.
France has always had a very weird nationalist slant, with their insistence on trying to preserve “purity” in their language, to the extent that the government has passed laws trying to mandate the use of acceptably “french” descriptions for things rather than just adopting already existing terms from other languages.
Their treatment of Muslims, specifically, is pretty dark… Muslims make up like 8% of France, but they are over 70%(!) of their prison population. A big part of this is that there is widespread xenophobia in France, where it’s very difficult for muslim immigrants to get work in French society at large.
To me, as an American, I find this kind of thing messed up… but then again, as an American, I see the same kind of thing spreading in my own country, and it’s even more troubling.
I’m looking at polling on immigration issues across Europe and comparing France results with that of other countries. Just trying get to look at data and not opinion pieces/analysis.
Spain is indeed a weird case since immigration support is over 80%, it might be because a lot of our immigrants speak the language, but I doubt it. We also have plenty of non Spanish speaking immigration and attitudes don’t differ. In a way, the most integrated minority I know here are second generation Chinese. Latin-Americans are more likely to live in somewhat homogeneous communities and second generation children seem not to integrate as well (first generation obviously has a tremendous head start).
Recent fascism and rejection of it might be a better explanation for why right wing populism has a thoughter time here. Not even our right wing is openly anti-immigrant and only recently has the center left embraced the flag a a national symbol to be proud of.
Strangely the Serbs, who were victimized by the Ottoman Empire and therefore can’t get over it, were victimized far more recently by the Austro-Hungarian and German Empires, and not only were they able to get over it, they got over it so damned well they actually voluntarily joined a political union with Germany, Austria, and Hungary. So it seems to me that if you’re looking for the reason for the difference in attitude, it is less about the victimization and more about who the victimizers were, e.g. Isn’t it surprising that their animus is reserved for Muslims from Africa and the Middle East rather than white folk? It’s almost like there is another factor here we’re pretending doesn’t exist.
With a lot of pushback. And they are going populist as well, as the “German Mtitleeuropa” neo-imperialism is brought up these days and Serbs aren’t happy about it.
No one is pretending that racism isn’t an issue with regards to Syrian migration into Europe. No one has said that it isn’t. That is a Straw Man you are beating there. You are pretending that nothing else is. And running around saying that every other issue is unimportant.
Not a single living Serb suffered under Muslim rule, and not one of them ever met anyone who did. Pointing to the history is a way of pretending it isn’t simple racism and bigotry; we see examples of that sort of thing all the time. I’m not saying that I can dictate the attitudes of Serbs. I am saying that they joined a union which is supposed to dictate those attitudes on these kinds of matters, and Merkel was right to take the high road, and it makes me sad to see people on the left criticizing a leftist politician for standing up for human rights even when it will cost her her job.
Did anyone say it wasn’t bigotry? Who are you arguing with? Are you offended that people want to try to understand what makes these peoples and groups tick? Why these things happen? What can be done to try to change these attitudes.
You seem to spout a lot of whataboutism, negativity when people are just discussing complicated issues. Like you want everyone to conform with your pre-conceived notions, and that other facts that don’t fit in with those notions must be “annihilated”.
Whatever suits you. As for me, I was responding to 1) the general idea that Merkel was wrong to what she did, and 2) the specific claim that the Ottoman Empire history gives Serbians cause to reject Muslim immigration. Go back up and read the thread if you like, I wasn’t responding on that to you.
Those two statements are true. But you just want to argue, and “whatabouteed” with the Serbs. You just said:
“2. the specific claim that the Ottoman Empire history gives Serbians cause to reject Muslim immigration.” Bolding mine.
No one made that specific claim. So, you just wanna argue?
We’re done here. I like you Scott, PBF, Star Trek, etc. I consider you a valued forum friend.
But here you just wanna fight. Frankly this kinda stuff by you specifically, is why I stay away from P & R. It’s a time-waster and detracts from the other discussion going on here. Mind-opening discussion at that.
Merkel, maybe I have the wrong image of her, but I don’t quite have the idea of such a great leader. Competent, rational, and that’s not something to treat lightly in these days, but from the days of the Euro crisis, a leader who gets in front of the problems to solve them is not what I think of Merkel. Not so much a politician who shapes opinion as one who follows opinion.
At least until the refugee crisis. She didn’t seem to follow opinion then, and suffered for it.
And IMO, the refugee crisis in Europe isn’t just about refugees trying to come in. It’s also about them trying to come in to specific countries, central countries, countries that aren’t the actual entry point into the EU, and the countries that are the entry point to the EU, they’ve were left “holding the bag”.
And Europe isn’t great at integrating people, the USA appears to be much better at it, it might be improving now, but a old coworker of mine, dude in his 40’s today, he moved from France to Portugal, and he complained that integration in France wasn’t exactly easy for him, and he’s the son of a French / Portuguese couple.
