assimilation vs. integration

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And if their culture is incompatible or contradictory? When you move somewhere you don't establish your own set of rules you follow the new places rules, the same applies to cultures otherwise we will have needless clashing of cultures within our own citizenry.

It depends on which aspects of culture you are talking about. I am a first generation immigrant in Sweden. Sweden wanted my husband's skills. They sought him out and offered him incentives to come and share his skill with Sweden. He uprooted his family to do this. We now live and work in Sweden and pay taxes like everyone else and follow the laws of the land. Beyond that, what we do or don't do is nobodies business but our own.

The Lakota, the Aztecs, the Picts, the Australian Aboriginals* etc. etc. etc. would tell you that this happened long ago and the people you are calling "native" are the immigrant interlopers. If it's ok for some people to move around the world and re-settle, why isn't it ok for everybody?

Or are you honestly not seeing the irony in thinking that white people are any more native to Australia than asians?

Just for the record, I have no desire to undo immigration and send everybody back to the land that their DNA originated from. If you turn back the clock far enough, that would mean 6 billion people would have to cram into a little corner of the African continent. I live in the U.S. My ancestors crossed the Atlantic to get here about 100 years ago. That makes me a less recent immigrant than Hispanics who crossed the Arizona border to get here but a more recent immigrant than Sioux who crossed the Bering Land Bridge to get here (although of course they didn't call themselves Sioux back then).

If you want to really parse things out, the Hispanics currently crossing into the U.S. are a genetic mix of the Spanish who came here about 400 years ago and the asians who came here about 10,000 years ago, making them cumulatively more local to the New World than the grandson of somebody Irish who came here 100 years ago.

But no matter. I say that as long as everybody abides by the laws of wherever they end up, then it's all fine. The big picture is just humans moving all over the globe as fast as they can, which is what humans have always done.

*additions and corrections to this list are welcome. I'm no anthropologist and cobbled it together quickly to make a point.

I am gobsmacked but the presumptuousness of the claim on behalf of "native" people of Western countries that utterly fails to acknowledge their Aboriginal populations. Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Japan are all colonized.

So this is all alarmist nonsense intended to allow the racist to clothe his hatred in the garb of rationalism.

Demographics will not back you up on any of your claims--but even if they could, you have failed to demonstrate that there is any harm in that.

I live in one of the most diverse cities in the world, and also one of the most livable cities in the world. I am not threatened by my Chinese, Vietnamese and Punjabi neighbours. I am not threated by their places of worship. New Canadians, and the children and grandchildren of people who were new Canadians in previous generations have made an enormous contribution to this country. They live under the same system of public law as we do, they face the same penalties when they fail to do so.

Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims live side by side in my city. Tamil and Sinhalese live side by side in my city. Vietnamese and Cambodian live side by side in my city. British and German live side by side in my city. Yes, there are historical disagreements, and our relationships with our neighbors are not always warm and friendly. But they are peaceful and respectful.

Perhaps you should all come for a visit sometime and see how it can work.

What is a nation? topic

Ernest Renan wrote:

[Quoted in Exporting Democracy by Bob Rae (2010, p 51)]



There is no talk of race, ethnicity, creed or origin here, but a sense of shared values, and a shared future together.

Well said, visagrunt.

Last edited by sartresue on 10 Mar 2011, 6:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Visagrunt is a self-described Zionist jew. In other words, he supports ethnonationalism for the Jews in Israel but, in self-serving, hypocritical fashion (as can be seen above) he supports multiracialism for Western nations and condemns people who oppose it. Understand this and one can save oneself the frustration of "debating" with him on this subject.

Last edited by codarac on 10 Mar 2011, 3:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Can you tell us what ideas you have learnt as a result of non-White immigration that you could not have learnt from a book or from another White person?

There is some strange logic here. Japan could use immigration to prevent population decline, but they (sensibly) choose not to. I don't see why short-term population decline is such a problem for a small overcrowded country anyway.
(PS - the original post was about Denmark, which is as much of a nation state as China and Japan.)

So much that could be said. But other people are declining to swallow the poisonous bait so I guess I won't either.

What is codarac? topic

He is a neofacist idealogue who misunderstands multiculturalism because all he sees is the legitimacy of a single ethnic group, and that group is white European. He is also an antisemite, antiblack and against anyone else who is not a member of stormfront.

Last edited by sartresue on 10 Mar 2011, 6:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You nothing short of a bald-faced liar, and I expect you to withdraw this remark in short order.

I have rarely described myself as a Zionist--and I do so only in the context of the narrow definition of a supporter of the right of Israel to exist as a sovereign nation. I have never offered uncritical support for ethnonationalism. Quite the reverse.

I do, indeed, support the right of Israel to exist as a sovereign nation, so to that extent you might choose to ascribe the Zionist label to me--but it is not one which I would generally apply to myself because of the baggage that has been attached to it. The Israel that I support has Arab membership in the Knesset, on the Courts, in the Cabinet and at the senior levels of the bureaucracy. The Israel that I support is a secular, parliamentary democracy.

I firmly support a two state solution for Palestine. I have been clear an unequivocal in my view that ongoing settlement activity on the West Bank is a cynical attempt on the part of the Israeli government to ensure a significant cash settlement financed by the Americans and Sauds when the inevitable occurs and the infrastructure built there must be handed over to the Palestinians. You will never find a post by me that supports West Bank settlement activity.

It is true that I support maintaining the blockade on Gaza, but I do so from the perspective of the collective security of all nations in the region. Egypt and Jordan have just as much to lose as Israel does from allowing Iran a free hand in Gaza. When the Palestinian people can get Hamas under control, then we can have a meaningful discussion about reopening Gaza. In the meanwhile, Fatah, and the Palestinian on the West Bank present an ongoing opportunity for progress, were the present government of Israel willing to engage with them.

I was thinking of writing something about your silly xenophobic viewpoints, but your neo-fascist posture is self-evident for why you are unworthy of debate. There are legitimate concerns about multi-culturalism and you have addressed only the ones that the uneducated hateful bigots would choose to bring up



Sounds right

You have described yourself as a Zionist, and Zionism is, broadly speaking, the support for the self-determination of the Jewish people in a Jewish national homeland (i.e., thinly-disguised ethnonationalism). There's nothing wrong with that. And your opinions on the situation in the West Bank are not relevant to this central point.

That is a separate debate. However, the Japanese state identity would be changed if they took in mass migration.



Japan is the oldest population in the world and it is a situation that is getting worse. Any cursory look at the statistics shows this is not a short term issue for the Japanese. The United States, for example, has side-stepped this issue.



As much a nation-state as China, yes. Japan, no and Denmark is most likely more a citizen-state presently. What do you think a nation state is in relation to the definitions of nation and state?



This is not a logically contradictory position; if you think it is, you must have some unexpressed hidden assumptions at work. Visagrunt does not necessarily support a non-multicultural Israel. I support Israeli national self-determination. However, I live in a settler colonial citizen state, so we have a different identity concept. Your view is that certain ethnic groups in citizen-states can demand a monopoly of identity determination. Being a nation-state proponent in Israel does not in any way make on a hypocrite when Israel is a nation-state. You however want to change citizen-states into something like a nation-state. However, what you do not understand is that nation-states do not assimilate outsiders at all, or very well. For Denmark in particular, with a growing migrant population, a strict nation-state approach to identity is not the answer. The people there know this, which is why they are seeking to strengthen their civic institutions and citizen-state identity.

denmark is unfortunately sliding into bigotry in my eyes.
if you look back just 5 years we had a massively different public opinion on how to help immigrants.
unfortunately the danish peoples party has come into an odd kind of power, with a powerfull group of voters, the aging population.
we stand in much the same situation as japan in this regard, there is a grossly undersized "current" generation, it threatens our whole economy.

the issue here is they are too openly racist, this is not just an emotional response, their reaction to the new integration ministers statement was to propose a whole new kind of law here in denmark.
they tried to ban the bhurka and a slew of other religous practices, they behave as if they can barely tolerate any immigrants no matter how well integraed.
this fortunately means that they have no chance of becoming the primary political party,
but the current primary party V.(venstre<means "left" but they are a liberal party) needs the support of the seats that the danish peoples party have available, so they made a coalition.
despite the huge difference in politic the danish peoples party have become a very powerful influence and its sending the signal that rascism is okay, at least it seems as tough a large part of the general populace perceives it as such.




danish peoples party


and i quote
"The changes to Denmark's immigration laws drew some criticism from the former social democratic government of Sweden, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner. In a response to the criticism from the Swedish government, Pia Kjærsgaard said: "If they want to turn Stockholm, Gothenburg or Malmö into a Scandinavian Beirut, with clan wars, honour killings and gang rapes, let them do it. We can always put a barrier on the Øresund Bridge."

That sounds very much on point. Having a democracy is not a social suicide pact, or at least it ought not to be. Confining Muslim extremists to the Casbah is not a bad idea. A better idea is not to have them in the country in the first place.

ruveyn