2017 French elections

The news has been full lately about how Le Pen wants to "exploit" the latest terror attack in Paris; also a lot of lamenting is about of how the Far Right is surging ahead. (Although it seems like these news outlets like to blame Le Pen herself, as if she was doing everything on her own, and the French had nothing to do with the whole thing, unlike those pesky Eastern Europeans, who are en bloc racist, and that's why they keep reelecting Nazis. Interesting contrast.)

This amount of blindness is simply astonishing.

If the Far Right wins in France, they win because they were handed the election on a golden plate. They were the only ones who expressed any unease about the increase of Islamic fundamentalism (and terrorism) in France; they were the only ones who dared to say anything about uncontrolled immigration. If the electorate shares some of these worries, some of these opinions, and nobody else picks them up, what do you think will happen? Sure, you can come up with statistics about how many more people die of other acts of violence than terrorism, but you'd miss the major point: most of those acts of violence happen between people who know each other. They don't involve thinking about speeding trucks when you take a stroll in a Christmas market, or gunmen when you're attending to a rock concert. You can say that if a drug dealer is murdered that it has nothing to do with you, and in some respect you'd be right. If you don't mix with the bad sort of people, in general, you have a good chance of avoid being beaten, knifed or shot. You can't say the same thing about terrorism; it's random, and it can kill you. The last couple of years have shown how inept security services are identifying individuals who may be planning acts of terrorism. Politicians have been shown to be delusional of what their electorate thinks about the influx of large number of largely uneducated Muslim migrants, and quick to condemn anyone who does. There has been an incredible amount of accusations of racism, xenophobia and Fascism for everyone who dared to voice any worries, devaluing the meaning of these words. In Western Europe only the Far Right was willing to address these issues, and now it does not shock anyone if you call them racist or Fascist; these words just don't mean anything; not really, not any more. Judging by the comment sections your average reader of even the Independent and Guardian will just think that people called racist merely did something that displeased the establishment.


If you ignore what people think don't be surprised if they vote for someone who they think does not ignore them; I think this is the take-home message.


In some respect it is beautifully democratic.


Let's just hope this time France does not elect a Far Right party, and let's hope the "mainstream" political elite gets their shit together before the next general election. We have had enough Trumps and Brexits already.

Victim blaming is fine, when it's not us

So every time you have a terror attack - 9/11 especially -, usually it's a sign of bad taste and horrible personality to suggest the country which fell victim to the attack may had something to do with why the attack was perpetrated. So the last seven-eight decades of US policies in the Middle East had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, and if you mentioned that they might, you were defiling the memory of the innocent victims, and were an America-hater, who should really just go and kill themselves silently, as they are beyond redemption. After all, claiming that the terrorists acted because of a grievance would justify their actions, right? And if we do this, then we use the lives of those innocent victims to further our agenda, right? Excusing the actions of the terrorists, that's what it is! This is not the right time to discuss these things, not while the bodies are still warm... so there will be no lessons learned. Ever.

(Which is a convenient stance because we don't need to take a look at ourselves, and it also has the added benefit of making it impossible to treat the root of the issue, hence we will always have a convenient threat we can point at when we chip away civil liberties, and bomb countries.)


The same is true with all the terror attacks that happened in Europe; saying that France's or Belgium's inability to assimilate large amount of immigrants might have something to do with what happened (they are rather be focusing on a straw men claiming the attackers were domestic born), that Germany's decision to let fresh immigrants in might have something to do with these things, that the UK's, France's actions in the Middle East and North Africa might have something to do with what happened, is an anathema. "Fringe" papers and websites (whose readership reaches into the high dozens) do discuss these connections, but "reputable" newspapers and other media outlets will never touch this topic; instead they present a whitewashed picture of ourselves, and how those scary terrorists are hating us for our freedoms.

But not when it comes to the Ruskies.

They are to be totally blamed for what happened. (Published mere days after the attack.) But, wait, the hypocrisy is not finished! After all, the Ruskies are responding with revenge (forgot about Afghanistan and Iraq yet?), and their foreign policy is repugnant... Definitely forgot about Iraq and Afghanistan, then.

The double standards are astonishing.

Addendum. Well, it didn't take long, did it? Hypocrites.

When are news news?

Weird stuff. Any time something happens in Hungary that can be used to put the country into negative light, the press is all over it. Yet it's absolutely not newsworthy to report about the continuation of mistreatment of Hungarian minorities abroad, and it never has been. You might argue that in Slovakia the situation is much better, but then again an American friend of mine who works there as a businessman asked me a couple of months ago why there is so much hatred against Hungarians in Slovakia, so there's that. It does not point to an improving situation.

Yesterday there was a great demonstration for the autonomy of Transylvania (well, Szekelyfold, which is part of it) within Romania. The ill treatment of Hungarian minorities are pretty well known and still ongoing in neighbouring countries: Slovakia, the Ukraine, Romania, Serbia all have their own ongoing histories of both state level discrimination.

I've only found one non-Hungarian report of this demonstration. It's funny how the fate of a minority in EU countries does not worry anyone, yet everyone is condemning an entire country when it is unable to deal with the influx of 400k people. (Weirdly when others do the same things -tightening borders, building fences, talking about defending European values-, nobody bats an eye.) I would be very curious what the reason is behind the anti-Hungarian attitudes of the Western press; after all, when the Keleti Railway station was full of migrants, the whole world was up in arms against the brutality and indifference of the Hungarian nation in general. After all, what civilized nation would allow such conditions within its own capital, asked these newspapers. Well, yesterday the French police started clearing out similar camps within Paris.

Fair enough. There's one issue here, though. I haven't even read about the existence of these camps beforehand.

I find it very curious. Apparently it's fine when the very same process is happening in France; after all, they cannot possibly as barbarous and xenophobic as the Hungarians, can they? And make no mistake, it is the very same process: a mass of people refuses to register in the country they are in, and instead opt to live under horrible conditions in makeshift camps in the hopes they could go to a more attractive country instead. You might be able to forcibly move them into closed migrant camps until they are properly registered, but that would be akin of the Holocaust. So that's out. There's not much more a state can do. It is well understood with the French or anyone else- but it's apparently not an issue when you condemn the Hungarians.


There's a clear double standard at work here- it's fine when us, enlightened Westerners do something (even when its horrendous), but god forbid something happened we don't approve somewhere else. I would be curious to know the reason.