03 December 2015

Why We Culturally Profile


At the height of the Trayvon Martin affair, we met a young Afro-Canadian who strongly objected to being racially profiled. Drawing on the pool of data at our disposal, we presented, to the best of our ability, the reasons such profiling exists.

Today, as hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants pour into Europe to claim asylum, profiling again rears its ugly head. Not racial/ethnic this time, but religious:

At least five European countries have signaled that they prefer to grant asylum only to Christian refugees flooding the continent from the Middle East, not to Muslims.
“I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country,” Hungarian Prime Minister Orban said.  ... “Refugees from a completely different cultural background would not be in a good position in the Czech Republic,” said Czech President Milos Zeman.


On what are these fears based? Ignorance, prejudice? We have been told for years that immigration is a gift, an economic boost, an injection of fresh blood, and that our new guests will culturally enrich our lives with their differentness (all while assimilating seamlessly thanks to their sameness). We at TWCS have thus decided to take a deeper look at the data.

But is Islam a religion, a culture, or a civilization? Has it genetically changed its adherents over time like Christianity has (cousin marriage enforced vs. forbidden)? In the absence of any genetic connection, does it culturally push its believers to certain behaviors? Could these beliefs and behaviors really, as the critics charge, prevent their assimilation into the West?

In a word--is this cultural profiling of Muslims based on fact or fantasy?





I. MUSLIMS IN THEIR OWN SOCIETIES

Market in Marrakech, Morocco

History has shown again and again that when we migrate, we tend to re-create our old societies wherever we wash ashore. And the more of us there are, the more our little colony tends to resist change. So to know if the beliefs and behaviors of our future co-citizens will line up closely with ours, what better way then to ask them? A slew of polling outfits have done just that. Let's see what they have to say.

A reminder: The oldest big Muslim groups in the West come from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

The last 15-20 years have also seen a big jump in asylum seekers from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Syria. 



These are thus the countries on which we will do our very best to focus, as much as the data allows.



1) Different opinions on the role of government


France's prime minister recently announced that Islam is 'totally compatible with democracy.' (We presume he means the liberal French variety and not the North Korean one.) What is the evidence that citizens of the Muslim world see democracy in the same way we do?

We begin with Pew, who has done extensive polling on the question.

As in most places in the world, democracy is aspirational:



But just as 'democracy' looks different in England than it does in Italy than it does in Cameroon, the average Muslim's idea of 'democracy' may be quite different than ours:





How do Muslims feel about imposing religious law on their fellows?




About national feeling versus religious feeling?   (note strong outlier U.S.)


 

The World Values Survey results can allow us to try to make comparisons between Muslim cultures and our own. From the 2009 and 2014 data waves, on the subject of democracy:  


Religious leaders should interpret laws vs. 
Army should overthrow bad government
 
  • "It is an essential characteristic of democracy that religious authorities ultimately interpret the laws." (WVS) (1-10, where 1 = "not at all essential to democracy," 10 = "essential to democracy"; % Respondents who said "9" or "10" only)
  • "It is an essential characteristic of democracy that the army takes over when the government is incompetent." (WVS) (1-10, where 1 = "not at all essential to democracy," 10 = "essential to democracy"; % Respondents who said "9" or "10" only)


Data source  (click image to enlarge)




It appears, then, that many Muslims may have different ideas than us about the role of government.

What about the role of women and men in society?


2) Different opinions on Women and Men

Englischer Garten, Munich, Germany

NW Euros' societies are those where women tend to have the most freedom and autonomy, and this has been true for centuries.



Are our Muslim guests likely to feel at home in such an environment?


What, for example, do they think about sex segregation at work?




 About a wife's relation to her husband? 


To better compare our nations to Muslim ones, we can look at World Values Survey results. From the 2009 and 2014 data waves, on the subject of women and men: 


Men are better in Politics vs. Boys deserve University
 
  • "On the whole, men make better political leaders than women do."  (WVS) (1-4, where 1 = "strongly agree," 4 = "strongly disagree"; % Respondents who said "1" only)
  • "A university education is more important for a boy than for a girl."  (WVS)  (1-4, where 1 = "strongly agree," 4 = "strongly disagree"; % Respondents who said "1" only)


Data source (click image to enlarge)



 Men deserve jobs more than women vs. Democracy = equal rights for women

  • "When jobs are scarce, men should have more right to a job than women."  (WVS) (Agree or Disagree; % Respondents who said said "Agree" only)
  • "It is an essential characteristic of democracy that women have the same rights as men." (WVS) (1-10, where 1 = "not at all essential to democracy," 10 = "essential to democracy"; % Respondents who said "9" or "10" only)




Data source (click image to enlarge)



Having seen some Muslims' views on the roles of government and of women, let us take up a thorny question in any multicultural society: Morality and religion.

We know coastal Americans' disdain for the conservative Christian...


 ...So how well will secular Westerners blend with this new flavor of religious conservative?


3) Different opinions on morality and religion


   a) Morality

For us in the West, theft may be a crime, but adultery and apostasy are today seen as simple lifestyle choices. And among Muslims?





How do they approach such questions as abortion, homosexuality, intoxicants?



To see how our societies line up with Muslim ones on morality questions, here are some results from the 2009 and 2014 World Values Survey data waves:


Homosexuality is justifiable vs. Divorce is justifiable
 
  • "Homosexuality can never be justified."  (WVS)  (1-10, where 1 = "never justified," 10 = "always justified"; % Respondents who said "1" or "2" only)
  • "Divorce can never be justified."  (WVS)  (1-10, where 1 = "never justified," 10 = "always justified"; % Respondents who said "1" or "2" only)


Data source (click image to enlarge)




Homosexual neighbors vs. Unmarried couple neighbors
 
  • "I would not like a homosexual as a neighbor."  (WVS) (Agree or Disagree; % Respondents who said said "Agree" only)
  • "I would not like an unmarried couple as a neighbor."  (WVS) (Agree or Disagree; % Respondents who said said "Agree" only)


Data source (click image to enlarge)




   b) Religion

As far as spirituality goes, most Western countries like to keep the religious and public spheres distinct.  Our own centuries-long bloodbaths over religion led us to enforce strict tolerance of each other's faiths, without imposing any one on the whole.

In addition, for good or for ill, secularism has taken hold deeply in our countries. Many of them can properly be called 'post-Christian.' In such an atmosphere, will newcomers from Muslim countries likely be a 'good fit'?

Pew has polled extensively on the question of how attached Muslims feel to their faith:



On the question of 'marrying out' of the faith, prized behavior in a tolerant, multicultural society:




On the subject of fundamentalism, a recent trend strongly affecting Muslims both at home and in the West:




The World Values Survey has also polled on religion and tradition. From the 2009 and 2014 data waves:


Teaching Religion to Children vs. Importance of Tradition
 
  • "An important quality that children be encouraged to learn at home is religious faith."  (WVS) (Agree or Disagree; % Respondents who said said "Agree" only)
  • "Tradition is important to me; to follow the customs handed down by my religion or family."  (WVS)  (1-6, where 1 = "strongly agree," 6 = "strongly disagree"; % Respondents who said "1" only)


Data source (click image to enlarge)



(See also Emil Kirkegaard.)


Having considered the role of government, men's and women's roles, and religion/morality, let us now turn to out-group relations.


4) Different opinions on outsiders


Out-group empathy, or 'commonweal orientation' is, as we have seen, one of the qualities that make Western societies so appealing. High trust tends to grease the wheels of civicness, leading to clean streets and low corruption. Low-trust immigrants, though, can throw a wrench in these works.

So what do we know about out-group trust levels in the Muslim world? From Pew:





We can get a more planetary picture from comparisons in the World Values Survey. Where are the most high- and low-trust places in the world? Should this inform our choices about immigration policy? From the 2009 and 2014 data waves:


General trust level

  • "Do you think most people would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance, or would they try to be fair?" (WVS) (1-10 where 1 = "people would take advantage," 10 = "people would try to be fair"; % Respondents who said "1" only)
  • "How much do you trust people you meet for the first time?" (WVS) (1-4 where 1 = completely, 4 = not at all; % Respondents who said "4" only)

Data source (click image to enlarge)




Corruption vs. Familism
  • Transparency International Survey, Perceived Corruption Index (1-10 where 1 = very corrupt, 10 = very clean; entire spectrum shown)
  • "One of my main goals in life has been to make my parents proud." (WVS) (1-4 where 1 = agree strongly, 4 = disagree strongly; % Respondents who said "1" only) 

 
Data source 1 , source 2 (click image to enlarge)



Individualism vs. Familism
  • Geert Hofstede's Individualism Index (1-100 where 1 = not individualistc, 100= very individualistic; entire spectrum shown)
  • "One of my main goals in life has been to make my parents proud." (WVS) (1-4 where 1 = agree strongly, 4 = disagree strongly; % Respondents who said "1" only)


Data source 1, source 2  (click image to enlarge)




Trust vs. Familism
  • "One of my main goals in life has been to make my parents proud." (WVS) (1-4 where 1 = agree strongly, 4 = disagree strongly; % Respondents who said "1" only)
  • "Do you think most people would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance, or would they try to be fair?" (WVS) (1-10 where 1 = "people would take advantage," 10 = "people would try to be fair"; % Respondents who said "1" only)

Data source (click image to enlarge)




Corruption vs. Trust

  • Transparency International Survey Perceived Corruption Index (1-10 where 1 = very corrupt, 10 = very clean; entire spectrum shown)
  • "How much do you trust people you meet for the first time?" (WVS) (1-4 where 1 = completely, 4 = not at all; % Respondents who said "4" only)



Data source 1 , source 2 (click image to enlarge)



Even a cursory glance at these last five graphs will show us a veritable gulf in out-group trust levels between Muslim nations and the West. We cannot overestimate how crucial similar commonweal orientation levels are for smooth inter-group functioning in a multicultural society. Political leaders ignore this at their peril.


So we have seen the views of Muslims in their own countries, from Africa to East Asia, on civilizational questions such as government, women, religion/morality, and out-group trust.

Now let us turn to the opinions and behavior of Muslims who have taken up residence in Western nations.





II. MUSLIMS IN OUR SOCIETIES

Fans of the 'proposition nation' say that in any case it doesn't matter what foreigners believe in their own countries, because once they set foot on our magic soil they will quickly take up our mores and habits. Does the evidence back this up?

 

1) Different social demands

One aspect of having a large Muslim minority that Americans may not be aware of is the demands. They do not come at once. They do not come until the group feels its strength in numbers. But at that point, they start to flow thick and fast.


In W. Europe, just to take a few examples, Muslims have demanded the right to


This list is far from exhaustive; it is only meant as an amuse-bouche to whet one's appetite for the inevitable main course.


What is perhaps most distressing about this is that by all accounts, most Muslims in Europe are not especially fundamentalist.

In France, which boasts the largest Muslim population on the continent, they have been widely polled on their beliefs. While more devout than the secular French, a majority of citizens of Islamic background say they are 'not practicing':



Mosque attendance is not very common:


Neither is veiling:



Still, two thirds claim to shun alcohol and pork, and to fast for Ramadan:



How, then, can a community which prides themselves on their 'moderation' be responsible for so much social pressure in countries where they are only 5-10% of the population, and in which they have only recently arrived?

This infographic from The Economist may tell us more than it intends to:


Why do Europeans so widely overestimate their Muslim populations? The Economist-approved answer may be 'they're bigots,' but we find it more likely that these newcomers, despite their low numbers and 'moderate' majority, have a unique way of getting under their hosts' skin in their public spaces. We would be very surprised, for example, if Europeans overestimated their Chinese communities in this way.

But frustrating as they can be, social demands are not the only element that drives negative sentiment about Muslims in Europe.



2) Different crime rates


This strong feeling of apart-ness can also, sadly, lead to widespread social dysfunction. Europeans often complain that their Muslim immigrants commit outsized levels of crime. Is there any truth to this charge?

As no two countries measure immigrant delinquence in exactly the same way, we've done the best we can to show relative Muslim criminality all around Europe, using the most recent numbers available to us.  (Click on any image to enlarge.)

a) Norway


b) Sweden


c) Denmark
 


d) Switzerland



e) The U.K.


f) France

As we have seen, ethnic or national-origin numbers for France are hard to come by. By scouring the available data, we've found the following clues:

For the prison population in France, 2014:  



For Paris, a comparison between (1) high-immigrant neighborhoods and (2) high-crime neighborhoods, controlling for (3) population density (click to enlarge):

Data source (Paris): Demographics, Crime, Population density


For youthful offenders in Paris, Hugues Lagrange has found data on national origin and parents' occupation:



As well as national origin and one- or two-parent families:





g) Sexual Crime

Due to its sensitive nature, we have chosen to give sexual violence its own category. Again, statistics are gathered differently in each country, and we've presented the most recent data available to us, choosing to focus on Scandinavia:






All crime is troubling, but this heightened sexual violence, in most cases targeting native women, is obviously extremely disturbing to European host populations.




These immigrant crime rates, in some cases many multiples higher than that of the natives, are all the more more puzzling in that many of their countries of origin are not seen as particularly high-crime. A sampling:



Social scientists such as Hugues Lagrange in France and Nicolai Sennels in Denmark have pointed out the sharp cultural mismatch happening in Europe's banlieues.

In their own countries, Muslims organically create systems of social and legal controls that suit them. These tend to revolve around the values they hold dear, such as strong patriarchy, harsh punishment, and shame-based rather than guilt-based social sanction.

When young Muslims find themselves plucked from this setting and plunked down in a small colony within a larger society that doesn't at all share their values, the disorientation can be fatal (especially in the 2nd generation). It can lead them down a path of crime they wouldn't necessarily have trod in their home country, where they'd be nestled in a system created for and by people like themselves. (See also Peter Frost and JayMan.)


This sense of alienation and culture clash may also contribute to our third point--higher levels of welfare use.



3) Different welfare use

A constant complaint among western Europeans has been that Muslim immigrants make disproportionate use of their generous welfare programs. Is it true?

a) Sweden

Numbers on employment rates and immigrant welfare budgets from Sweden:





b) The U.K.



c) Germany




d) France

'Sensitive Urban Zones' are the neighborhoods in France marked by, among other things, concentrated public housing. Their demographics differ a fair bit from those of the country at large: 



Here are French public housing numbers broken down by immigrant origin:


 French unemployment rate according to immigrant origin: 





4) Different educational outcomes

Americans are well aware of the social strife born of 'the gap' caused by low-performing minority groups. Europeans have also been troubled by the persistent scholarly under-performance of their Muslim immigrants.

 a) Scandinavia

Numbers for Scandinavia on upper secondary completion and international PISA scoring:






b) England 



c) Germany





d) France

These numbers are not collected at the national level, but Hugues Lagrange has found data on 6th and 9th grade standardized testing for Paris:




As well as national-level data on college education:




Such inter-group gaps may seem not so important, but as we know in the U.S., over the long term they run the risk of creating intractable social strife




We have thus seen that in their own countries, Muslims tend to hold beliefs contrary to those reigning in the West, and that when they settle in our countries, their assimilation process can seem to be distressingly slow. 



*     *     *



Germany's Angela Merkel has said that 'Islam belongs to Germany'; UK's David Cameron that 'Muslim values are British values.' Paris's mayor claims that 'Ramadan is part of France's cultural heritage' and France's prime minister that Islam is 'totally compatible with democracy and women's rights.' Barack Obama has even declared that Islam has been 'woven into the fabric of our country since its founding.'
 

On the contrary, as we have seen, there is a real civilizational divide between what we think and what Muslims in their homelands think about the proper place of government, women, religion, and morality in public life. They also show far lower levels of out-group trust than we do in the West.

And when they come to our countries, it is often with the hope that we change our habits and customs, not the other way round. This can unsurprisingly rub their hosts the wrong way.


And despite a bourgeois class who both adopt western values and obey the law, there are a great many who fall prey to social dysfunction.  The latter tend to commit more crime, use more welfare, and do less well in school than their hosts. This patchwork of anti-social behavior and rejection of Western values has made Muslims undesirable immigrants in the eyes of many.

We don't pretend to know how much of this equation is genes and how much is culture. Are we seeing genetic predispositions for low impulse control, low out-group trust, low abstract reasoning ability in some of these groups?  Was Islam adopted in the first place by particular ethnies because it was congenial to their character?  Has inbreeding intensified certain of their traits over the centuries? (See HBD Chick and JayMan.)


Such feedback loops can be devilishly hard to pick apart, moreso in such vast, heterogeneous groups as 'Muslims' or 'Christians.' Whatever the ingredients in the cake may be, the evidence is stacking up that Muslim immigrants to the West, even the 'moderates,' feel deeply uncomfortable here. Even as they walk among us, they seem to remain stuck on the far side of a civilizational gulf.

So if our first impulse is to call immigrant-skeptics 'bigots,' we would do well to step back and take a fuller look at the data. The discomfort our Muslim newcomers feel is palpable, it is measurable, and it is long-lasting. As its destabilizing effects are becoming more intense, it should come as no surprise that many of us are reluctant to usher even more, refugees or not, into our rapidly fraying societies.

Thank you for reading.



Previously:

28 comments:

Toddy Cat said...

Man, back where I come from, that's called "laying it on the line". Thanks for a fantastic summing up of the anti-immigration position. I wonder if the opposition has any come backs, or if they will just scream "racist!"...

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this outstanding report! The disparities between native and immigrant crime, employment, and welfare use should be more widely discussed and appreciated.

Opfer said...

"Why do Europeans so widely overestimate their Muslim populations? The Economist-approved answer may be 'they're bigots,' but we find it more likely that these newcomers, despite their low numbers and 'moderate' majority, have a unique way of getting under their hosts' skin in their public spaces. We would be very surprised, for example, if Europeans overestimated their Chinese communities in this way."

I think, there is an additional explanation. People would have tended to extrapolate the percentage of Muslims based on their social context. Muslim age-pyramids look much different than the ones of their host populations, entailing much higher Muslim percentages in lower age brackets. Disproportionate polling of younger people could contribute to the overestimation of Muslim populations.

M.G. said...

Toddy Cat--

Thank you kindly. Yes, there's a level-headed contingent who are open to facts, but the true believer multicultists can't be swayed by data any more than a young-earth creationist can by fossils. I write for the former; the latter are sadly a lost cause.

Anon--

Thanks for reading.

Opfer--

You're right. I didn't include it in the post, but here's the age pyramid of Muslims and natives in France. A stark difference!

Statisticians are sneaky about this too, counting immigrant-origin population but only "age 18 and up" (like here). I see this all the time when looking for ethnic numbers on France. Officials say the country is 7-8% Muslim; but I've calculated it to be over 10%, way higher in the big cities. If you dig deep you can find clues, for example these tables show that in 2011, for the Paris area, 46% of newborns had one or both parents born in a foreign country! (Some of these are other Europeans of course, but it's still an incredible statistic.) The mayor of a large southern provincial city, Béziers, got in hot water recently for letting slip that 65% of schoolkids in his town have Muslim names. I believe Muslims are more numerous than TPTB would like us to know, especially in the big cities, where no doubt many of these people were polled.

JayMan said...

Great work! As always, your meticulous assemblage of the data makes you incredibly valuable.

Readers see also:

Terrorism Quotient

Ivan .M said...

I remember some malcontents filming a similar video about catcalling here in New York City. Flagrant offenders tended to be of the Congoid persuasion.

Excellent work, as usual. By the way, M.G., will you reply to Fred Reed's recent piece at Unz concerning HBD? It seemed strongly worded just a tad.

M.G. said...

Ivan--

I hadn't seen that Fred Reed piece. I quite like his writing, I'm sorry he took issue with the photo I used. I got it from here with a credit 'Reuters/Bernardo Montoya;' I suppose he can take it up with Mr Montoya if he feels the image is inaccurate. In any case when I use photos it's just to give a little visual flavor and avoid the eye-glazing WALL OF TEXT effect.

Re: saying negative things about Mexico: I'm glad Reed loves his adopted homeland. His fellow ex-pat Allan Wall (who is also married to a Mexican woman) no doubt loves it too, but even he recognizes littering is quite common there, as does the Mexican EPA, whom Wall quotes in this piece. As to Reed's other beefs, I think the commenters over there said it all and said it well--No matter how groovy Mexicans are, it's the U.S.'s right to oblige them to be groovy in their own country rather than ours.

On a personal note, I'm also a long-term ex-pat married to a foreigner, so I get to hear les amerloques bashing my second home too, but so it goes, there's good and bad everywhere. (I was also amused at being called a 'Roaring Right HBD Site'; I'm pretty sure Reed is to the right of me.) But I adore his stuff and wish him well.

Mr. Rational said...

Alan Wall is not an expat; his columns are now titled "Memo from Middle America".

Anonymous said...

Great stuff. See also: http://catalogingthedeclineofthewest.tumblr.com/ and http://catalogingthedeclineofamerica.tumblr.com/

Ragno said...

As always, invaluable reading; but even more priceless as data one can both brandish at leftists as well as fashion into a truncheon (for use against same).

But a question I've been asking to no avail still remains unanswered: why?

Nobody believes any longer in the cheap-labor fairytale; and, given how Muslim immigration's staunchest supporters tend also to be the most dogged proponents of feminism, homosexuality, anti-militarism, abortion-on-demand, and all the rest of it, well - the ability to reconcile the two grows more and more difficult and remote.

It would be one, wholly-different, matter, if the migrants coming over were refugees from Muslim medievalism, and motivated converts to Westernism; but the exact opposite is occurring. (And, almost comically, the migrants we are getting are probably putting the lapsed Muslims among them in deadly peril...)

Living as we are in an age where there is no longer such a thing as "political paranoia" (plainly, they really are out to get you), perhaps the idea here is to fulfill Oprah (and Tim Wise's) prophecy - of a better tomorrow only beginning with the death of the last white Christian conservative, via a kind of sotto-voce policy of speeding up the process by Any Means Necessary (generally, op-ed writers, leftist professors and quisling legislators tend not to contribute to these jihadi bodycounts; although France is proving that theory incorrect already).

And if the traditional dowsing rod of truth - cui bono? - has no answer here (other than one formulated by madmen), then the answer that is left to us.... that the impetus driving this relentlessly forward is nothing more than the messsianic fervor of atheists convinced that history, human nature and prior catastrophe are mere details that can now be easily corrected with posthuman high-tech, coordinated global surveillance, the clumsily-manufactured consent of social media and - every now and then, when glitches arise - the periodic deodorant of bombing raids.....then God help us all.

But I'm still interested to hear your take on 'why'.

M.G. said...

Mr. Rational--

Oops, guess he's an ex-ex-pat. Thanks for the correction.

Anon--

Thank you for the excellent links. I especially like the strong visual aspect. I've added them both to the blog roll under 'Food for Thought.'

M.G. said...

Ragno--

Nice to see you, thanks for the kind words.

that the impetus driving this relentlessly forward is nothing more than the messianic fervor of atheists

This right here is it, I believe. Just plain old religious fervor. With a dash of folie à plusieurs, mass hysteria. The best parallel I see is to the early communists. We tend to forget today how many true believers there were at the beginning--there were even Americans who ex-patted to Russia before the war; they thought it was the new Utopia.

And why not? The industrial revolution was a nasty business, it took people from hard but rather healthy farm living and stacked them up twenty to a room in filthy, polluted slums working 15-hour days year round in horrid conditions. Communism promised to put an end to the madness. Pendulums swing too far one way, then too far the other.

Isn't today's ethno-masochism similar? Sure it goes back to Boas or earlier, but when did it flower? After the German atrocities of WWII had shocked us into repudiating 19th c. race science and eugenics, which themselves had been totally mainstream (more progressive than not) before WWII. 'Never again' meant the baby went out with the bathwater.

human nature...mere details that can now be easily corrected with posthuman high-tech...

You're dead right, and the modern progressive's fatal flaw is his hubris. He truly thinks himself immune to groupthink / brainwashing, yet bangs his Mismeasure of Man on the pulpit just as fervently as any backwoods preacher. The 'god-shaped hole' is the truest thing I've ever heard. Where religion dies, we will create something to take its place.

Nobody believes any longer in the cheap-labor fairytale

In Better Angels of our Nature, Pinker talks about the 'Abilene Paradox,' which is where most people in a group claim to believe a thing, not because they believe it, but because they think everyone else in the group believes it.. At its extreme end, you can have 99% of a group professing a belief from sheer social pressure, not actual conviction. I wonder how close we are to that today with multicultism? (If Trump's anything to go by,...)

of a better tomorrow only beginning with the death of the last white Christian conservative

Leftists' other reliable habit is to get into circular firing squads; from the French Revolution on we've seen it a million times. This'll never stop at 'white conservatives'; as the recent campus brouhaha showed, white liberals are in the cross-hairs next. That tends to be where the 'oops, this has gone too far' comes in.

So in a nutshell I agree with you, there's nothing rational at work here. Just the leftist's love for the underdog, hard-wired egalitarianism, and pathological fondness for the outsider (or Williams' Syndrome writ large), gone haywire. But like any religious fervor, it can cool just as quickly.

God help us all.

Amen!

Artur said...

Bonjour MG :

Slightly O/t but do please indulge :

After watching Le Petit Journal (anchored by Yann Barthes) every night for the past few weeks / months, I have been noticing an extremely disturbing trend in this nightly news commentary show roughly equivalent to what Jon Leobovitz's "Daily Show With Jon Stewart" used to be :

LPJ has turned its anti-racist bona fides up to 11 on the morality posturing dial.

Here's what I mean (and I will attempt to say this quickly, before the red wine and benadryl kick in ) :

A} In today Friday 11 December MMXV's edition, a young LPJ journaliste - Camille Crosnier - travels to Oslo Norway to report in a "how to be écolo without being chiant" segment, where she finds a city bus that runs on bio fuel made with sewerage, and she interviews people on the bus : her first four interview subjects are noteworthy by the fact that they are obviously not native Norwegians at all ;

B} Another young LPJ journaliste - I'm not going to look up his name, but he is easily distinguishable by his squishly, de-masculated, sexually ambiguous appearance - does a "micro trottoir" outside of the Bercy Theater in Paris, and NOT A SINGLE ONE of his micro-trottoir interview subjects are white (in fact the majority are excitable, swashbuckling, almost cartoon-ized hyper young banlieusisés hyper-africans) ;

C} The bewildering bedouin "reporter" Mouloud Achour - the semitic buffoon who has given France several live interviews of the most shocking and foul-mouthed american "rappers" like Young Thug (Mouloud taught YT [heh] to say "thooth muh beet" on camera) as well as an absolutely nauseating hagiography / interview with a fully wiggerized Justin Beiber in the past few months, tonight Canal + aired a short segment where Mouloud and that ultimate symbol of French hatred, Omar Sy (the one who played the hero in a highly symbolic film about a paralyzed white man in a wheel chair and his enlightenment at the hands of a jolly and wise african).... anyway today Mouloud and Cy interviewed an elderly white woman known as "Mami Danielle" who is outspoken about her outrage NOT at the Grand Remplacement (de peuple et de civilization) in progress, but instead against - what else ? - the rise of the Right, the FN in particulier.

This obvious anti-white contempt delivered as minority uplift / love is becoming so over the top in France that I am just shocked.

How are the Big Heads at Canal + not able to see that their anti-white animus (disguised as Love for the vivre-ensemble) is increasingly obvious to even the most brainwashed of their flock ?

Answer : It occurred to me just two nights ago, that just like the New York Times, the people who run editorial content at Canal + are starting to realize that spitting upon and hating upon literally four out of six Frenchmen might not be such a good idea after all.

We saw it today right there on the front page of the New York Times : Sulzy's minions are noticeably toning down their attacks on Trump :

"New Populism Puts Old Guard On Defensive"

"Poll Has Trump Gaining Ground On Terror Fear"

(sorry don't know how to embed link).

.../...

I seriously think that a lightbulb or two went off in the heads of some majeur rédacteurs at Canal and the NKY recently : "Holy crap, if over half of the people are in agreement with the positions of Trump and Le Pen, we're going to look quite stupid if we keep attacking them.

(End Part 1 of 2)

Artur said...

(Continue Part 2 of 2)

Have you noticed these three trends ?

.../...

Talk about interesting times.

It's like : in the not too distant past, going out of your way to find a non-white interview subject in Oslo - or anywhere in Europe - might have seemed like a good idea to prove to your viewers how inclusive / anti-racist you were.

Now though, they have taken that trend too far :

A program about a Swedish Navy submarine patrol ?

--> The person in uniform is going to be a woman, or an Arab, you can practically bet on it ...

A program / segment about ANYTHING happening in Paris ?

--> Token, Bashar and Tashfeek will be there, on your screen.

.../...

MG : You have been living in France for a while now, I think.

What are your feelings about this ?

How recent is the radicalization of this trend, in your view ?

.../...

One areas where France and the USA are still not yet fully aligned, however, is : Diversity In Advertising.

Where in the USA it is impossible repeat IMPOSSIBLE to spot an ad that does not aggressively promote the corporate diversity ideal - with the mixed-family "heart healthy" Cheerios ad being one of the higher profile examples - in Europe it is still possible to see ads featuring more than two whites where a forced diversity is not inserted.

About that : wouldn't it be great if we could get a 2 million dollar grant to study "Diversity In Corporate Advertising"?

We could sell it as a project to expose "white privilege" in screen and print advertising in the USA and Europe, but then use the predictable data results to expose what is really going on.

This is actually a pet project of mine that I would love to get funding for.

After all, if you spend one hour say, watching regular cable TV in the US, you are going to consume several tens of millions of dollars of tv ads, all of which as we know will feature a gargantuan forced diversity quotient.

Step back from the trees to observe the forest, and you will see that tens of BILLIONS of dollars if not more, are spent every year in the US to uplift non-whites in corporate advertising.

Could it not be possible to envision a serious study that purports to correlate expenditure on (forced) diversity in advertising with actual consumer results?

.../...

This is a snowball that has become so gigantic that many of us (including the corporate boards who automatically sign off on diversity inclusion in paid communications) are rendered incapable of seeing the ricks (and other sharp objects) embedded in the rolling ball of snow.

It would be nice to take a powerful and well-funded scalpel to dissect the problem, don't you think ?

Would be most grateful to know how you feel about this.

Sincerely,

- Arturo

(end part 2 of 2)



dc.sunsets said...

M.G., you invoke "a madness shared by the many," which I too find compelling. I'm fond of a related area of study called the Socionomic Hypothesis (www.Socionomics.net) which grows out of the observations of R.N. Elliott in the 1930's and 40's. It offers some perspective on this current mania (which has tendrils in finance, politics & pop culture), and how we have so much in common now with prior lurches into mass mania chronicled by Charles Mackay in his famous 1841 tome.

Bottom line; the PC narrative will likely disintegrate at the same time the financial markets tank.

Target said...

Very solid work. Great job.

M.G. said...

Artur--

What a pleasure to see you here!

the people who run editorial content at Canal + are starting to realize that spitting upon and hating upon literally four out of six Frenchmen might not be such a good idea after all.

I can't stomach Le Petit Journal at all, but as with the NYT I see you don't fear wading into the muck...I limit my media consumption to François de Souche and Le Figaro and, of course, the unparalleled Bernard Lugan. But if you're right and the worm is turning, then interesting times are ahead...

How recent is the radicalization of this trend, in your view ?

It's been happening for a while now, since before Hollande, remember Sarko saying 'métissage is the future of France' or some such? Heaven knows in Paris they're re-naming streets after 'people of color' as fast as they can,

in Europe it is still possible to see ads featuring more than two whites where a forced diversity is not inserted.

It's coming faster than you may realize! The non-white-is-better campaign has been speeding up, in music festival brochures, museum posters, on public TV anti-racism PSAs, municipal posters, and even hospital waiting rooms. (Even 'Je Suis Charlie' wasn't immune!)

Could it not be possible to envision a serious study that purports to correlate expenditure on (forced) diversity in advertising with actual consumer results?

I'm surprised someone hasn't studied this already... The bottom line in advertising is supposed to be the almighty dollar, no? How could companies not want to know if it really brings in more $$? This is a great idea though, if it were me I would propose it to some of the more right-leaning think tanks, there are more and more of them out there.

M.G. said...

dc. sunsets--

I knew Mackay but not Elliott, I'm going to read up on him.

Is there a particular article you recommend on the socionomics website for a non-expert?

M.G. said...

Target--

Thanks, I really hope the data can be of use.

AmericanGoy said...

"We don't pretend to know how much of this equation is genes and how much is culture."

Right, and at this point we (White Europeans) do not care.

I am not responsible for other people's children, nor other people's adults.

I live in a racist country which, using completely government mandated, legally binding laws and regulations actively discriminates against me.

I am American, French, Dutch, Swedish, German, Belgian... White. At this point, just White.

My government is my enemy.

In the 1960's, black people in the USA (justifiably) declared that they have no loyalty to their government because it actively discriminated against them.

In the 1960's, Algerians threw out (White) "pieds-noirs" colonizers because they wanted Algeria to be Algerian.

Now, in 2015:

http://stuffblackpeopledontlike.blogspot.com/2015/12/blacks-from-baltimore-surreptitiously.html

" Hill's family is among nearly 10,000 black women and children who have moved into overwhelmingly white, prosperous suburbs through a court-ordered relocation program designed to combat the intense inner-city segregation and poverty forged by decades of discrimination.

That relocation program — one of the nation's largest — has been discreetly rolled out to avoid the political and community opposition that routinely arises to defeat proposals for building subsidized housing in Baltimore's suburbs. Hill's Cockeysville townhouse, for example, was purchased by the city through a nonprofit organization based in the suburbs, with little notice to elected Baltimore County officials or the public.

"We did it very much under the radar," Amy Wilkinson, fair housing director for the Housing Authority of Baltimore City, said of the home purchases. "We met very early on with the county executives. They understood we had to do it. Their request was to make sure [the homes] are really scattered and make sure we do it quietly." "

Now it is 2015, and the pendulum swung too far. It needs to be righted.

The first step is to recognize that, like in the old USSR and communist countries, the government is neither my (or yours) representative, nor does it act in your interests.... it is rather an alien, enemy zone, where the "mandarins" far, far removed from the common people (you know, normal working folk, middle and low class) set up policies for the rest of us.



PS
Here is a great article for you babes, from 2008, grab it while it's there:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american-murder-mystery/306872/

"About six months ago, they decided to put a hunch to the test. Janikowski merged his computer map of crime patterns with Betts’s map of Section8 rentals. Where Janikowski saw a bunny rabbit, Betts saw a sideways horseshoe (“He has a better imagination,” she said). Otherwise, the match was near-perfect. On the merged map, dense violent-crime areas are shaded dark blue, and Section8 addresses are represented by little red dots. All of the dark-blue areas are covered in little red dots, like bursts of gunfire. The rest of the city has almost no dots. "

I am amazed this article is still up, TBH.

AmericanGoy said...

PSPS

Great points, someone up thread, about the actual numbers of muslims, blacks, whathaveyou in our nations.

Lets start by saying that all government statistics are doctored i.e. lies and go from there.

In Chicago, every 3rd car is Mexican - not just the driver, but usually 3-7 people in it.

Cars driven by White or black people usually have one or 2 people in them, max.

I believe there are many, many more black people in USA than is let on. Same with mexicans.

Same with arabs in Europa.

After all, the most populat name in England & Wales is.... Mohammed.

Draw your own conclusions.

Anonymous said...

Everyone please become comfortable with being called a "racist". I am in southern California, grew up with black friends in Compton, Chinese and Koreans in the San Gabriel Valley, & never felt animus toward any of them. I'm married to a Mexican woman. I'm German, Swedish, English. I went to an Id al Fitr dinner with my Pakistani friend. What is happening in Europe, & here, is that we are importing agitators despite the fact that we already have people here who are blaming their lack of success on math being an example of "white privilege". We need to stop all immigration because it hurts low-skilled workers & divides us. Please try to convince those around you that many are coming to reap the benefits of Western civilization while destroying the values(liberty, equality of OPPORTUNITY only) that produced them.

AngryPhil said...

An excellent summary of the (reasonable) anti-immigration position - will recommend it to (a select group of - you can never be too careful these days) my friends.

Per your question of why Islamic pressure seems wildly out of proportion to the percentage of actual Muslims in Europe (and the not-especially-radical character of these groups), I can only point you to Nassim Nicholas Taleb:

https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15
(or Google "Why Europe will eat Halal")

Keep it up! We are in desperate need of more of this.

aram h said...

I appreciate that there are quite a few stats here, but many of them fail to argue that Muslim immigrants will be necessarily harmful.

1. When surveyed about Sharia law, most people favor whatever the current policy in their current country is. When you ask say a Muslim in the UK whether Sharia law should apply to non-Muslims, the rate is very low. Sharia also means different things to different people. In some cases, it's like asking Christians whether the legal system should be based on principle from the Bible; in other cases, it means specific things only about family law, and sometimes applies to other areas. It is often misrepresented as saying that Muslims want us to live in Medieval times which is just not right.

2. Some of those cultural practices, like female genital mutilation, are not Islamic, and are practiced by non-Muslims as well.

3. More generally, people change when they migrate. I have seen this with Indians. In India they are serious about norms like not dating for a long time before marriage, not eating meat (in some cases), etc. and then when they come to the US, they reevaluate which ones are important to them.

4. How well Muslim immigrants do depends on their destination. In Europe they are somewhat less integrated than in the US. One theory is that European labor laws make it harder for outsiders to break in. Your stats don't rule these explanations out.

5. Let's say Muslim immigrants do worse than the typical native, and there is say more domestic violence within Muslim immigrant families. The right comparison is not to the native but to whether that same bad event (say domestic violence) would've happened without the immigration. If you care about domestic violence you probably don't care where it happens, so better for it to happen in a place where the culture and police are better equipped to handle it. Ok maybe you don't want natives to be victimized but for immigrants in a ghetto the victims are probably mostly fellow immigrants.

6. Muslims are being held to a standard that native citizens are not. If you survey Americans, they often agree with appallingly violent and ignorant propositions. And most of the demands are local. Neighborhood associations and small towns often demand all kinds of crazy things of their residents. Google Orthodox Jews in New Jersey for some examples.

7. When you say: "And when they come to our countries, it is often with the hope that we change our habits and customs, not the other way round." this needs more evidence. Yes you cite some anecdotes, each a local incident that becomes a national news story, which reflects our sensitivity more than the frequency of these events. Mostly they change their habits.

8. The US constantly has worried about the culture of the latest immigrants. Italians really did bring over a terrorist organization (the Mafia) but US law enforcement crushed it (easier here than in Italy) and now pizza is practically the national dish. There is nothing qualitatively new in these concerns.

I could go on but I have to get back to work.

aram h said...

sorry, one more

9. If you worry about inbreeding, you should definitely want more Africans. Their genetic diversity puts the rest of the world to shame.

Anonymous said...

Aram h:

On 5: I couldn't disagree more. (1) Domestic violence, and violent crime in general, is worse when it takes place in an advanced, peaceful nation than a chaotic, backwards nation, because it destroys more value. (2) A democratic government is there to advance its citizens' interests, not the interests of all people equally. It is not in the interests of a nation's citizens for it to import people who will commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime. Even the crimes they commit amongst themselves will have knock-on effects for everyone else.

On 9: The reason to worry about inbreeding because it has deleterious effects on the offspring, like reduced IQ.

However, adding Sub-Saharan Africans into the mix also produces children of reduced IQ.

aram h said...

I think it's better to happen in a place where the police respond effectively, give protection to the victims of domestic violence and maybe even counseling to the offender, and also in a place where the social norms are more likely to discourage domestic violence.

The bigger argument about the crime rate is that (a) this depends on which immigrant community you're talking about - immigrants in the US commit _less_ crime than natives, and I'm sure the post focused on France/Paris because they are one of the worst, and (b) the absolute magnitude of the effect is in any case way way less than the economic benefits from migrants.

Look: Muslims immigrants are (mostly) from poor countries. So their values, backgrounds, etc. will reflect this. That doesn't mean they're inherently harmful. Once they move, or their countries change, they change too. Did you know fertility is falling faster in N. Africa than anywhere else?

There's no way your evidence about genetics is strong enough regarding inbreeding, IQ, etc. I'm sure there are some genetic connections but our science is simply not strong enough to understand them now. We don't even understand the genetic basis of height and IQ is way more complicated.
More on that idea here:
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/academic-racism-has-kn-problem.html

Rob said...

I think a lot of the isolation of women from single unrelated men is actually about protecting them from violence rather than simple oppression. Since there is no focus on men not committing violence there they have a more "natural" level of sexual aggression that western societies are not designed to handle. And neither western countries nor, I would argue, Muslim men should be required to try to handle that situation.