The rise of right wing narrative in France.
Kraichgauer
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Location: Spokane area, Washington state.
Muslims living in france have lived in de facto segregation and second-class citizenship. Don't forget that Algerians in French Algeria were denied French citizenship unless they renounced Islam. And then they are baffled that they fought so bitterly for independence.
France has always had a massive problem with integration and tolerance. This has been buoyed by the French self-delusion that France is immune to fascism or racism. It's a kind of post-Vichy denial upheld by French people seeing themselves as only victims of nationalism and never nationalists themselves.
This is more or less the same rhetoric used by the American right to paint muslims as anti-democratic and wanting to impose their religious values on others. So I can't help but assume the french right is as full of it as the American right in this regard. They do not want to impose eeeeeevil muslim laws on others. The only religious groups I see trying to impose their religion on others are Christians and atheists. I interact with Muslims every day here in America. Theyre ordinary people. They just want basic dignity and respect. And, you know, they don't want to be accused of being a threat to America if they don't convert and vote republican.
Not to get off the subject, but for all the talk about the French resistance during WWII, there were in fact far more Pro-Nazi collaborators in France.
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-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer
In Poland, we have a traditionally Sunni Muslim minority of Tatar descendants. They have peacefully coexisted with Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants and Jews for centuries.
More recent immigrants seem quite peaceful, too, maybe because we're not a popular immigration destination
But I have another suspition: additionally to religious differences, France has quite a lot of colonial history in North Africa that might have radicalized attitudes on completely different grounds, religion being a tip of an iceberg.
France is physically close to North Africa- right across the Mediterranean.
And France was the colonial ruler of the entire Mahgreb (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia). Britain gets Muslim migrants from it's former colony Pakistan, likewise France gets many from North Africa.
A French commander who had fought in the French resistance to Nazi occupation of France found himself committing the same atrocities against the people of Algeria that the Nazi had done to the French- the very same crimes that had driven him to join the resistance.
When De Gaul finally gave into the reality that France could longer hold onto Algeria and the war was lost-and finnally withdrew from Algeria- the White French colonists in Algeria felt betrayed...and hired a professional assassin to kill De Gaul. The assassin went by the codename "the Jackel", and the almost successful attempt was the subject of the book/movie "the Day of the Jackel".
So politics on one side of the Mediterranean has long effected the politics on the other side.
Kraichgauer
Veteran
Joined: 12 Apr 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 49,751
Location: Spokane area, Washington state.
In Poland, we have a traditionally Sunni Muslim minority of Tatar descendants. They have peacefully coexisted with Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants and Jews for centuries.
More recent immigrants seem quite peaceful, too, maybe because we're not a popular immigration destination
But I have another suspition: additionally to religious differences, France has quite a lot of colonial history in North Africa that might have radicalized attitudes on completely different grounds, religion being a tip of an iceberg.
France is physically close to North Africa- right across the Mediterranean.
And France was the colonial ruler of the entire Mahgreb (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia). Britain gets Muslim migrants from it's former colony Pakistan, likewise France gets many from North Africa.
A French commander who had fought in the French resistance to Nazi occupation of France found himself committing the same atrocities against the people of Algeria that the Nazi had done to the French- the very same crimes that had driven him to join the resistance.
When De Gaul finally gave into the reality that France could longer hold onto Algeria and the war was lost-and finnally withdrew from Algeria- the White French colonists in Algeria felt betrayed...and hired a professional assassin to kill De Gaul. The assassin went by the codename "the Jackel", and the almost successful attempt was the subject of the book/movie "the Day of the Jackel".
So politics on one side of the Mediterranean has long effected the politics on the other side.
Again, not to derail the thread, but it had been found that the same Anti-De Gaullists in France had had a connection to the CIA-Mafia sponsored Anti-Castro underground in New Orleans that had been alleged to have been behind the Kennedy assassination. Hey, even I can get obsessed with conspiracy theories!
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-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer
That's strange, the Muslims we have known were just ordinary people living a ordinary life and they never tried to impose their religion on anyone and they were not terrorists. Even my cousin's wife is Muslim and so are their kids and they wear regular clothing and have an ordinary life but they are both wealthy. They also do not wear hijabs.
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There isn't a "rise" of right wing narratives, as with the rest of Europe anti-immigration sentiment is always bubbling just beneath the surface. France and Austria have always had prominent far right parties.
Incidents like the Charlie Hebdo and Nice killings create a groundswell of reactionary comments from the populace who now feel emboldened to air their inner thoughts.
The French seem to indeed have a problem with integrating minorities, especially Muslim. I remember the long skirt affair https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/worl ... igion.html where a Muslim girl was sent home from school for "too long skirt" - because after hijabs were banned, Muslim teenagers manifested their religion by long skirts (girls) and beards (boys).
Crazy.
The Dutch figured it out better. Soon after the Charlie Hebdo killings I had some business in Amsterdam. On the airport, I saw something remarkably usual and unusual at the same time: two airport workers were chatting with each other. They were an European man and a veiled woman.
The Dutch seem not to fight hijabs (and long skirts...) but they choose the parts of culture that seem much more relevant to me.
France seems to have a very assimilationist view- to them, if you live in France, you are French, not Algerian or Congolese or Breton or whatever. On the plus side, it can make it easier for people of immigrant stock to be accepted as equal. On the minus side, there is zero tolerance for them acting in a "non-French" manner, as with the hijab.
I haven't given this much thought, but my position is:
If you migrate to another country, you should embrace the values of that country and be a true citizen of the country.
My parents did.
In the 1930's, there were many German Jews who saw themselves as Germans first.
It didn't save them.
Let's face it.
The human psyche is an abomination.
The US on the other hand got the educated elites of Muslim societies, a lot of them there are doctors, engineers and scientists; and got there due to their professions.
Generalizing that Muslims don’t try to impose their religion on others is a proof that you’re not aware of the filthy things a lot of Muslims in Europe, especially their clerics, do and say. Like... have you ever followed the news of Europe?
France is particular had suffered a lot of terrorist attacks more than any European country.
Besides claiming that atheists impose their “religion” more than Muslims...? I find this hard to believe, I don’t buy it for a second.
This is true. Europe has had much more contact with Muslims for much longer. Anti-Muslim sentiment has been stewing in Europe as long as there has been Islam. Before 2001 especially, Muslims here in America were more out-of-sight, out-of-mind.
Muslims being more prone to radicalism in Europe just seems like part of a self-fulfilling prophecy on the part of non-Muslim Europeans: Europeans look down on Muslims as dangerous and inferior -> Muslims are treated as dangerous and inferior -> Muslims live in second-class citizenship and segregation -> Muslims see their religion disrespected left and right -> radical groups prey on disaffected, desperate Muslims looking for an outlet for their frustration -> small percentage of Muslims join terror groups -> Europeans look down on Muslims as dangerous and inferior -> repeat.
Europeans and my countrymen in America often forget that integration is a two-way street. If you reject them, they are not going to find it easy to integrate--or to even want to integrate. When my ancestors came here from Ireland and were spit on as drunks and radicals that sure as sugar didn't make them want to become American if that was what Americans were like.
The Muslims I see every day are not doctors or scientists--they're working people just trying to get by. I've also known Muslims whose parents came here as professionals to live in the suburbs. I've met far more of the former. America gets fewer Muslim immigrants for the same reason Europe gets fewer Latin American immigrants: distance. They both flee violence and political turmoil and poverty, and they both get looked down on for not having more education/money/skills. If they weren't overwhelmingly Christian, Americans would blame the perceived shortcomings of Latino immigrants on their religion in the same way Europeans blame Muslims' religion. (America already puts Christians in cages, I shudder to think what they would do if they were Muslim).
Of course there are radicals who get cherry-picked by right-wing or even mainstream media to fulfil their audiences' pre-conceived notions of what Muslims are like. American news does the same thing. Fearmongering is great for ratings, and islamophobia is still fashionable. Muslims are overwhelmingly ordinary people who just want dignity and respect. And yes I keep up with European news--I'm not another Yankee who doesn't know how to pull his head of the sand. I get sick of consuming just American news sources. I read from the BBC, and if I want a continental perspective I read the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and the Tageszeitung. If I spoke French, I would read French sources too.
Christians here in America have spent the last 400 years imposing their will on non-Christians through the legal system, but that gets plenty of attention. Atheists don't do it here as much as they do in Europe bc atheism is just less accepted here. But there are still the pointless anti-religious policies in the name of secularism, like forbidding public workers from wearing jewelry/clothing with religious symbols on them. It's a solution in search of a problem that just adds to the fundamentalist Christians' victim complex.
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I guess I just wasn't made for these times.
- Brian Wilson
Δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν.
Those with power do what their power permits, and the weak can only acquiesce.
- Thucydides
Conservatism discourages thought, discussion, consensus, empathy, and hope.
Half of Muslims cannot co-exist with others in a secular nation with secular values. Period.
So you disagreed previously about an issue that you just happened to change your mind on?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54729957
I think this might escalate into major international incident, as Macron and Erdogan are already on a collision course…
As if COVID-19 wasn't bad enough...
You can't be tolerant of intolerance for your own country.
The US on the other hand got the educated elites of Muslim societies, a lot of them there are doctors, engineers and scientists; and got there due to their professions.
Generalizing that Muslims don’t try to impose their religion on others is a proof that you’re not aware of the filthy things a lot of Muslims in Europe, especially their clerics, do and say. Like... have you ever followed the news of Europe?
France is particular had suffered a lot of terrorist attacks more than any European country.
Besides claiming that atheists impose their “religion” more than Muslims...? I find this hard to believe, I don’t buy it for a second.
This is true. Europe has had much more contact with Muslims for much longer. Anti-Muslim sentiment has been stewing in Europe as long as there has been Islam. Before 2001 especially, Muslims here in America were more out-of-sight, out-of-mind.
Muslims being more prone to radicalism in Europe just seems like part of a self-fulfilling prophecy on the part of non-Muslim Europeans: Europeans look down on Muslims as dangerous and inferior -> Muslims are treated as dangerous and inferior -> Muslims live in second-class citizenship and segregation -> Muslims see their religion disrespected left and right -> radical groups prey on disaffected, desperate Muslims looking for an outlet for their frustration -> small percentage of Muslims join terror groups -> Europeans look down on Muslims as dangerous and inferior -> repeat.
Europeans and my countrymen in America often forget that integration is a two-way street. If you reject them, they are not going to find it easy to integrate--or to even want to integrate. When my ancestors came here from Ireland and were spit on as drunks and radicals that sure as sugar didn't make them want to become American if that was what Americans were like.
The Muslims I see every day are not doctors or scientists--they're working people just trying to get by. I've also known Muslims whose parents came here as professionals to live in the suburbs. I've met far more of the former. America gets fewer Muslim immigrants for the same reason Europe gets fewer Latin American immigrants: distance. They both flee violence and political turmoil and poverty, and they both get looked down on for not having more education/money/skills. If they weren't overwhelmingly Christian, Americans would blame the perceived shortcomings of Latino immigrants on their religion in the same way Europeans blame Muslims' religion. (America already puts Christians in cages, I shudder to think what they would do if they were Muslim).
Of course there are radicals who get cherry-picked by right-wing or even mainstream media to fulfil their audiences' pre-conceived notions of what Muslims are like. American news does the same thing. Fearmongering is great for ratings, and islamophobia is still fashionable. Muslims are overwhelmingly ordinary people who just want dignity and respect. And yes I keep up with European news--I'm not another Yankee who doesn't know how to pull his head of the sand. I get sick of consuming just American news sources. I read from the BBC, and if I want a continental perspective I read the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and the Tageszeitung. If I spoke French, I would read French sources too.
Christians here in America have spent the last 400 years imposing their will on non-Christians through the legal system, but that gets plenty of attention. Atheists don't do it here as much as they do in Europe bc atheism is just less accepted here. But there are still the pointless anti-religious policies in the name of secularism, like forbidding public workers from wearing jewelry/clothing with religious symbols on them. It's a solution in search of a problem that just adds to the fundamentalist Christians' victim complex.
In which ways (besides perhaps LGBT-related issues) have Christians "imposed" their will on non-Christians in America?
If you migrate to another country, you should embrace the values of that country and be a true citizen of the country.
My parents did.
When in Rome...
I have seen that cultural tolerance might be taken too far when trying to accommodate religious/cultural practice such as prayers in public spaces, no go areas for women in public spaces and building permits for structures that don't fit into the community of the area (mosques).
The fuzzy lines are getting more blurry.
