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marrs | 3 months ago
I didn't read it that way at all. I certainly didn't see him "painting brown people as criminal". I read it predominantly as the musings of a man afraid to lose his culture in the same way the Cockneys lost theirs. Now it's my experience that most fears are exaggerated - and perhaps his fears are exaggerated - but that doesn't mean they aren't legitimate. At the very least, they need to be heeded, because - as no one famous ever said - feelings don't care about your facts.
> a nation is the socially constructed identity I was talking about. It can be mono- or multicultural, and people from other cultures may be integrated
...or they may not be...
> But one thing is clear, if you're born into a culture you are part of the culture, and so through a civic nationalist logic you are automatically part of that nation.
All that is true, but as you just pointed out, there is not only one culture, so which culture are you born into, and is it compatible with the other cultures you have to live with? A nation also has to function; and for a democratic nation to function, it has to be united on the fundamentals. Regardless of the cause, it is quite clear to me that a good deal of trust has now broken down between different communities in my country. That needs to be addressed, not lazily dismissed as mere racism.
And leftists in particular have no business dismissing it as mere racism; because, if we want to get into causes, I'd just like to remind everyone reading this that the idea that we can and should divide and categorise people by their race has been aggressively and exclusively pushed for the last decade or more - and successfully mainstreamed - by the left. Now we all have to reap what they've sewn.
tovej|3 months ago
DHH's fears are all feeling no fact. The "Pakistani rape gangs" targeting "white british girls" and trying to tie brown people to increasing theft is made specificly to paint brown people as dangerous. No mention of the fact that the perpetrators were all native brits, part of whom had Pakistani heritage, no mention of the fact that white people are more likely to commit child sexual assualt in general, no evidence provided for the idea that brown people commit theft. DHH is clearly associating the crimes with perpetrators at the resolution of skin color, because he does not give any other information.
A nation is not a state, it cannot be democratic. A nation is a socially constructed group identity, it's not the same as your country. A state can be multinational, as the UK is.
Racist ideology, and the very idea of races, comes from right wing ideas like nationalism and colonialism. The right wing historically supported apartheid, Jim Crow, zionism, segregation, the idea that muslims are terrorist, and that black people are criminals and dumb. There are multiple far-right groups pushing false racist narratives for decades, such as the Pioneer Fund (founded 1937) and the Human Diversity Foundation in DHH's native denmark (founded 2022). They are all far-right ethnonationalist groups.
The fact is that the nazi ideology did not disappear after WWII, it just kept out of the mainstream and tried to reinvent itself with a more seemingly scientific public image, claiming to cite statistics and banking on the audience not being able to interpret them.
The left is interested in combating these ideas, which is why it talks about them, because they are dangerous. The left does not generally use the concept of race, which is nebulous, conflating ethnicity, statehood, and cultural identity, like the protonazi Völkisch movement did.
And you usually don't sew seeds. You're thinking of stitches.
marrs|3 months ago
They're mostly feelings (which is what I said above), but there are plenty of facts in that article as well.
> The "Pakistani rape gangs" targeting "white british girls" and trying to tie brown people to increasing theft is made specificly to paint brown people as dangerous.
Where does DHH say that the characteristics of the Pakistani rape gangs extend to all brown people, or even to all Pakistanis? You've made that leap all by yourself. And his remark on phone theft doesn't make reference to race at all; nor does the article he links to. They were just talking about the rise in crime, and you again added the racial element yourself. Instead he's criticising the police, firstly for not dealing with the rise in crime, and secondly for their authoritarian behaviour.
As for what he doesn't mention, that doesn't make him far right any more than your failure to acknowledge his points about authoritarianism makes you far right.
> A nation is not a state, it cannot be democratic. A nation is a socially constructed group identity, it's not the same as your country. A state can be multinational, as the UK is.
You're very good at being pedantic on points that don't further the conversation. I think you know what I was getting at. If you don't, please ask for clarity. Otherwise, perhaps you could address the point directly rather than deflect from it.
> Racist ideology, and the very idea of races, comes from right wing ideas like nationalism and colonialism
That's your assertion and I doubt it very much; moreso given the very obvious racism that's been peddled by the left that I mentioned in a previous comment, and that you refuse to acknowledge. And what makes you think colonialism is a right wing idea? Have you never heard of The Soviet Union? Or is that the right kind of empire? More likely, racist ideology is as old as the human race, and is a simple manifestation of tribalism.
But you're right at least that, since the far left have been slandering everyone to the right of Mao as far right - especially if they're a liberal, the real far right are now able to hide in plain sight.
But I'm really not interested in having an argument about which of these rancid ideologies is worse. Frankly, they're largely indistinguishable to me, and are both equally detestable.
> The left is interested in combating these ideas
Some of us are. Some right wingers are as well. Others of us want to use race to sow division. (Did I get it right this time?) And those people, as far as I'm concerned, are the worst kind of racists because they mask it behind feigned compassion. At least the far right are honest about their superiority complex.