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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Senate European ultranationalists!

Discussion in 'Community' started by Lord Vivec, Feb 23, 2014.

  1. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Tosche I'm not sure your unique brand of evil is required here.
     
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  2. Lord Vivec

    Lord Vivec Chosen One star 9

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    Apr 17, 2006
    I...don't think that's what Ender meant.
     
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  3. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

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    May 4, 2003
    Calling Africa "Bonga Bonga Land,'" wishing that Ebola wipes out Africans, or saying that the presence of Jews in Hungary is a national security threat is "actual racism."

    I'm not even sure how you would define it if those don't count. What are you on about? Are you seriously defending European parties that intentionally model themselves after the Nazis?
     
  4. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

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    Feb 18, 2001
    Wocky, can I assume you've never played Dungeons & Dragons?
     
  5. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

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    May 4, 2003
    I haven't, no.
     
  6. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

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    Feb 18, 2001
    Ah ok. That explains it.

    Trolls are immune to logic. They can only be killed by fire.
     
  7. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

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    May 4, 2003
    That was a dumb punchline.
     
  8. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

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    Feb 18, 2001
    YOUR MOTHER LIKED IT WOCKY.
     
  9. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

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    May 4, 2003
    She wasn't laughing with you. She was laughing at you.
     
  10. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

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    Feb 18, 2001
    [Even] :( [/Even]
     
  11. TOSCHESTATION

    TOSCHESTATION Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 17, 2003
    No. Mocking Vivian's idiocy doesn't entail defending those parties.
     
  12. TOSCHESTATION

    TOSCHESTATION Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 17, 2003
    [​IMG]

    THE GAY COMMUNIST GUN CLUB (SNL)
     
  13. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

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    Feb 18, 2001
  14. Lord Vivec

    Lord Vivec Chosen One star 9

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    Apr 17, 2006
    I'd give you my thoughts if I hadn't already gone over my half an article per year limit two months ago.
     
  15. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001

    Yeah their paywall is strange and annoying. I've pasted it below, and left the small image ad for Rolex in place, because that's precisely how I roll.

    Charlemagne

    Of guns and ballot boxes

    Jews are unnerved, but Europe is not sinking into violent anti-Semitism

    Jun 7th 2014 | From the print edition
    • [​IMG]


    [​IMG]

    FOR many Jews, it was a weekend of double horror in Brussels. On May 24th a gunman entered the Jewish Museum in the Sablon and opened fire with a Kalashnikov, killing four people. The next day, the first results of the European elections flashed up on a giant screen showing that far-right parties, including avowed neo-Nazis, had scored big electoral victories.​
    To some, the events seemed connected: Europe was reverting to ugly old ideologies and the shooting was proof, if it were needed, that Europe is no longer safe for Jews. Israeli leaders said the killings were the result of “constant incitement” against the Jewish state. An American journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, caused a stir with a tweet: “At what point do the Jews of America and the Jews of Israel tell the Jews of Europe that it might be time to get out?”​

    To many European Jews, the idea is preposterous. Yet thoughts of leaving are not far below the surface. Returning to the Promised Land is at the heart of Jewish tradition and modern Zionism. A survey last year by the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency showed that nearly a third of Jews had considered leaving in the previous five years because they did not feel safe. Three-quarters felt that anti-Semitism was worsening, with the situation in Hungary and France especially bad.​
    For years there has been a particular worry about France, home both to Europe’s biggest Jewish community and to its largest Muslim minority. The controversy over performances by the comedian, Dieudonné, and his popularisation of the “quenelle” gesture (supposedly a modified Nazi salute) stokes belief in entrenched hatred of Jews. French criticism of the Israeli government, plus an EU-wide campaign for boycotts of products from Jewish settlements, has led some to argue that anti-Zionism is a hidden form of anti-Semitism. The success of the National Front, which came first in the European election, is a new cause for concern. It is part of a wider surge across Europe, including the election of neo-Nazis in Greece, Hungary and even Germany.​
    Israel’s Jewish Agency says there has been a fourfold increase in the number of French Jews emigrating to Israel in the first quarter of this year, compared with the same period last year. French is often heard in fashionable districts of Tel Aviv. How much of this flow is attributable to fear of anti-Semitism, and how much to the economic stagnation of France, is hard to judge; many French citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish, are abroad, not least in London.​
    The killing of children at a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012 was horrifying. The attacker, Mohamed Merah, who died in a shoot-out with police, had much in common with Mehdi Nemmouche, the presumed attacker of the Jewish Museum in Brussels, who was arrested in Marseille during a customs check (he has denied the charge). Both were young men of north African extraction with a history of petty crime who seem to have been radicalised in jail and were in touch with jihadists abroad—the first in Afghanistan, the second in Syria.​
    For Europe’s intelligence agencies and security forces, the Brussels attack confirms their worst fears of the threat posed by young European Muslims who are fighting in Syria. Many will no doubt come home, some might continue to commit violent acts or even try to kill Jews. Synagogues and Jewish schools across Europe have received extra protection. Some people stay away from obvious Jewish targets. Hebrew-speakers consider switching language when talking in public. Even if Jews have not left Europe, argues Daniel Schwammenthal of the American Jewish Committee, some have “already emigrated from their communities”.​
    There was a time when the new Europe opening after the fall of the Berlin Wall seemed to augur a golden age for European Jewry. Jewish life was restored where it had been extinguished, and the expanding borders of a post-national Europe offered new opportunities to Jews scattered across borders. Plainly, nationalism is reasserting itself. And lingering anti-Semitism of the old, Christian-based sort is now mixed with radical Islamism among disenchanted Muslims.​
    Unpack your bags
    Yet, worrying as such changes are, they may not be a signal for Jews to pack up and leave. To state the obvious, anti-Semitism in Europe is not sponsored by governments, and there are no organised pogroms or Nuremberg laws. Berlin boasts the world’s fastest-growing Jewish community. Jews are free to stay or leave. Moving to Israel may fulfil a religious, cultural or political need for many Jews, but it is not safer than staying in Europe.​
    Moreover, if new populist parties have done well, it is in part because many have worked hard to detoxify themselves. Where Jean-Marie Le Pen would talk of the gas chambers as “a detail” of history, his daughter, Marine, now calls the Holocaust “the height of barbarity”. The populists’ anger is directed much more against Muslims than against Jews.​
    If this is all an attempt to hide old-style anti-Semitism, the image-scrubbing has been helped by some Israeli and American Jewish groups. The likes of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands have been welcomed by hardliners in Israel even as Jewish groups in their countries have at times sought to isolate them. And what of the jihadist killers? The threat is real, but it can strike gentiles as well as Jews—whether in Europe or America.​
    The European political model may be fraying, but it still tries to maintain open and tolerant societies. The EU, though in need of reform, seeks the same across the continent. Such ideals are worth defending, including the right to dissent and to criticise Israel. The protection of Jews is an important test of Europe’s democracy, as is the treatment of other law-abiding minorities, including Muslims. Should the spirit of tolerance ever disappear, Jews may not be the only ones to leave Europe.​


     
  16. dp4m

    dp4m Chosen One star 10

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    Nov 8, 2001
    It's interesting that the two specific countries mentioned are France and Hungary, notably because France is currently considered to be one of the worst in terms of overt antisemitism but also because the stories I've heard of my grandfather and mother traveling back to Hungary to visit his family tell tales of the types of Passion plays around Easter that would make even Mel Gibson blush.

    Which, of course, meant it was more than 4-5 decades ago, they just keep it under wraps better one supposes. ;)

    But overall, I tend to more or less agree with the article -- it's not yet time to panic, nor can I (at the moment) envision a time when it would be a good time to panic. It's unlikely that anything Holocaust-level would happen in Europe again; far more likely would be anti-religious measures (like the "all French school meals must include pork" or the "no hajibs in public" types of things). It might, at some point in the near-to-medium future be uncomfortable to live in Europe in some places if those measures occur and I'd expect to see Orthodox/Lubavitcher members migrate to more sensible countries for them in that case, and that should rightly be construed as roundabout antisemitism but it's not inherently dangerous.

    On the flip-side, nor is it inherently dangerous to criticize the continued settlements in Israel; I do that and I support the State of Israel (and eventual two-state solution) probably more than the critiquers in the article. I think it's a bit extreme for a blanket condemnation, for example I understand SodaStream -- while technically illegal -- is pretty good about equitably employing and wealth distributing among all citizens, Jewish, Israeli Arab, Palestinian. This article is one such account; how true overall, obviously I can't say as I don't live there.

    ETA: I should note that my sister, who grew up in NYC when it was... not like it is now... went to London with the boys and stays in the tonier of neighborhoods there and did not feel comfortable with her boys in the playground. Just didn't feel safe.

    I get a weird vibe in Vancouver, so maybe it's just a socialism thing, but I didn't get the vibe it was antisemitic.
     
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  17. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

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    Feb 18, 2001
    Well, like a lot of the articles from this newspaper, there's a real attempt at trying to see beyond the views of both sides to find the truth in the middle. I think you're right; France being a staunch critic of Israel does not make it anti-semitic and the pork-in-schools thing is an absolute commitment to European secularism and liberalism. It affects Muslims as much if not more.

    But the point about jihadists such as Mehdi Nemmouche are carrying the fight against the Jews to Europe is a well made one. On the one hand, you want a society in which liberal values allow individuals to contribute to society as a whole, in which individual freedoms are observed. But such societies are vulnerable to determined illiberal elements, such as monotheists on a mission.
     
  18. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

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    Feb 18, 2001
    Can you elaborate on the London part, dp? She wasn't staying in Finsbury Park, was she? :p
     
  19. dp4m

    dp4m Chosen One star 10

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    Nov 8, 2001

    No clue, sorry -- I just know her preferences (e.g. her husband stays at The Peninsula in HK, etc.) and it was a quick story.
     
  20. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

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    Aug 18, 2002
    its not "Actual Racism" until a person of color gets dragged to death behind a pickup truck. and even then, its clearly only the guy driving the pickup that was "The Racist"
     
  21. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

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    Feb 18, 2001

    Youwot?
     
  22. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

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    Aug 18, 2002
    explaining the mindset of mr TOSCHESTATION, who will no doubt shortly explain how ive got him all wrong with a series of animated gifs that dont actually explain anything about his worldview

    can i also point out that nobody on the actual, active far left had any idea who "saul alinsky" was before the tea party decided he was the godfather of communism or something? he has no relevance anywhere but in the deranged minds of conservatives, and honestly, as far as i know, having not read his stuff but having plenty of experience listening to the conservative echo-chamber for fun and profit, they're making the vast majority of the stuff they attribute to him up wholesale
     
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  23. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

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    Feb 18, 2001
    Oh right. Yes, like most middle class kids I was left wing at university and I know nothing of this Alinsky chap.

    But since Trollystation feeds off your reaction to his schtick, I wouldn't bother debating hiim.
     
  24. Lord Vivec

    Lord Vivec Chosen One star 9

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    Apr 17, 2006
    The article does a good job of reminding us that this EU election wasn't as big a victory for the Far Right as we thought it'd be. Sure, the UKIP and FN were the leading parties of their respective countries, but they didn't exactly win by landslides and it's not like turnout in these elections were particularly high. Center parties still dominate the EU parliament and it's unlikely that's going to change.
     
  25. dp4m

    dp4m Chosen One star 10

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    Nov 8, 2001

    Out of curiosity, do we know if any of those places have mandatory voting and/or national holidays for election days (if any)? I know that's sometimes posited as a "thing" for the US, but don't rightly know if any major Euro-nations do this.