So apparently Germans do not want to change because we have guests living with us

 Bild, the German magazine, has published a manifesto addressing the three million or so recent immigrants with things like "This is our Germany", and the rest.

I guess a threshold has been crossed and people realized what a large group of people, who have no intention to integrate, means to the country.

Weirdly enough this heroic stand for German values, for Western values, for democracy, and the rest sounds exactly like what Orban was saying in 2015 -and for which he was labelled far-right, populist, and in general, a person who has rejected the famous European values, and has no place in polite company.

Now, let's get something straight. Orban is a populist, corrupt asshole. But in this, in the question of mass immigration, he was right on the money. And the Western part of Europe is now catching up slowly -kind of late, though. They are trying to close the barn doors after the horse has bolted. And this did not require some genius to see. Most normal people saw the dangers, but were browbeaten to silence by the "multiculti" crowd. These people now should really apologize, not to Orban, but to the others they intimidated, and admit they made a grave mistake. (Fat chance of this happening...)

OK, so, with the smug "I told you so" out of the way.

Perhaps, this could be used to reflect on past mistakes, and make sure our decision making processes will not so easily fail next time.

But who am I kidding... They will keep doing the same stupid mistakes over and over again because they are incapable to do anything else. Our leaders are intellectually challenged -even worse than the fabled in-bred crowned heads of Europe of old.

The Left is in crisis -and the first steps have been taken to the right direction

 Weak pun in the title intended.

So. The Left is in an utter disarray, with failure after failure everywhere in the Western world from the US to Central Europe. (Yes, culturally, it is still "the Western World".) The focus shifted from the traditional issues (plight of the working class, the poor and the rest) to identity politics that is oh so important for the activism-minded part of the upper middle class, the people I like to call "the Starbucks Socialists".

And it shows. 

But now, in Germany, at least, there is a new party. And the people forming this party gave a pretty good argument for their case. If they are successful, I can only hope there will be similar initiatives all over the world. 

Even if you are a conservative, you have to agree that an unipolar political field is unhealthy for all involved. We need a strong, healthy Left to keep the Right in check, and vica versa. So cudos to you, guys, and godspeed.

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.

Snooper's Charter

So finally, the government has gone through with the mass surveillance bill even the Americans would admire: the so-called Snooper's Charter.

Good job, you. I wonder what would Orwell say, but let's forget about that part.

What I'm really curious about is the muted response from the EU and Western powers. You would expect a general outcry, based on what happens whenever a newspaper goes bust in Hungary (never mind it was seriously in debt), or the government flaunts some shady surveillance bill idea, but no. While these things are obvious signs of dictatorship and totalitarianism in Hungary, clearly it's not the case in the UK. No general condemnation, no fiery speeches about Western values (sorry, Values). So to recap: the UK enacts a bill that would make any Stazi leader wet his pants, and nobody bats an eye. It's fine. Some left-leaning newspapers write some alarmist articles, but in general the political landscape (and the media) does not give a shit. Not one little bit of shit. No calls to impose sanctions for breaching EU's fundamental values, or exclude the UK from the EU (I know, I know, but it is a symbolic gesture, OK? You're not leaving, we're throwing you out because, guess what, you are shitting on the fundamental values we hold dear). This is quite telling about the whole issue of hypocrisy, doesn't it? The tone is similarly muted from the Hungarian Left; somehow there are no hysterical cries of totalitarian take-over of the most admired democracy... they are fine with this; the "West" is still the idol to look up to. Sure. Let's ignore the worrying signs that things are seriously going wrong everywhere. And if you don't think the UK is in danger of losing personal rights and freedoms, think about these issues:

1. Spying on MPs
2. Forward Intelligence Team
3. Special Demonstration Squad

and let's not forget about surveillance of peaceful groups, to the extend of undercover officers having families with the subjects of surveillance. Good job doing this democracy-thingy. And even the Germans are doing it: as usual, they prefer to do it so that they can be seen as clear.

What we see here is a general trend moving towards a totalitarian surveillance state in the Western World, but of course it's only a problem when a shitty little country is trying to emulate the big brothers (the term used in more than one meaning here, in case you miss the reference). Nobody wants to point out that the emperor has no clothes; perhaps the supposedly free press is not so free after all. (Who would have thought? They must be free, since about 70% is owned by one individual...)

Conflicting ideologies on the Left

You could ask me (not that anyone bothers :) ) why I focus on the Left so much.

Well, the answer is simple: I expect more of them than the usual tribalism, and ideology-driven thinking I kind of taken granted from the Right. (In which I myself display my own set of biases and bigotry.)

Anyhow. The import of "Taharrush gamea" (the mass sexual assaults on women by young men) into Europe with the recent migrant crisis points to a very interesting contradiction on the Left.

I associate the Left with human rights, women's rights, equality, feminism. Usually left-wing thinkers campaign for these things, and usually people on the left fought for them. Most feminist writers I know identify as someone being on the left. And yet, when it comes to these sexual assaults, both the political establishment, and the media is strangely silent; it's mostly the right-center right that is vocal about them. It seems like things flip upside down when it comes to migrants and sexual assaults: the Left is content blaming the victim ("keep them at arm's length" as the mayor of Cologne suggested; blaming drinking culture, as some people in Sweden suggested), while the Right wants to defend women against these men from a very different culture.

It is mind-boggling. Jessica Valenti is silent on the matter, even though she was quite vocal during even the Shirt Gate crisis. No prominent feminist writer in left-wing papers talk about these issues. It seems like the different ideologies (multiculturalism, Wilcommenculture, feminism, human rights) have this rock-paper-scissors dynamics. Apparently multiculturalism beats feminism when it comes to migrants. And this is sad, because it points to one thing: not even the Left has a coherent world-philosophy. (Well, very few on the Left does, let's just put it like this. Chomsky would probably have no problems processing these issues.) It shows that the Left is merely a collection of activists with very little intellectual power (or just simply too lazy). People who cannot or will not comprehend that things don't have to be mutually exclusive, so when one ideology (feminism) clashes with another (open borders, multiculturalism), one will lose out. I just had a conversation with someone who said the whole issue was blown out of proportion due to "some improper touching in Cologne that happened once". The mind blows. Suddenly I have a leftie who blames women, and trivialises sexual assault -something that is usually thought to be the privilege of the Right.

This leads to this weird reversal of roles between the Left and Right. I never thought one day I'd see Farage to be more of a feminist than Merkel.

Cologne and the press

There were a series of mass attacks on women during New Year's Eve; attacks which were coordinated, committed by people who "look African and Middle Eastern", and attacks which did not really get a lot of attention from the media for a long time. Even the police reported initially that all was well... The very first thing that came to my mind was the fact that the far right was actually using this as a warning cry to whip up the fear: they are coming to rape your daughters... we came to an age when closet Nazis are more dependable source of information than the mainstream media. The second thing actually reinforced this notion: it took an awful lot of time and misinformation for the facts to come out: it was not committed by Germans, or by people who have been living in Germany for decades. These attacks were prominently committed by newcomers, who were arriving as refugees.

The media outlets took up this story very slowly. The Guardian specifically was silent for five full days; even though they were really fast to comment on the Shirtgate, or on Mattelgate (the missing female figurine), and were really eager to jump to conclusions on refugee matters as well previously. But now they were taking their time. Suddenly everyone is surprised, as if this was not predicted before. Well, guess what. It has. Cairo and Sweden had experienced similar attacks (which was promptly covered up by the police); it was not really difficult to imagine something like this can happen in areas where refugees/economic migrants were present en masse. Suddenly people are surprised about the skewed sex ratio- oh, my, there's a lot of men in the crowd! Too bad, though they called everyone a Nazi who said the very same thing before; and interestingly this fact did not register for the photographers, either, who spent a year trying to pick up the odd little girl from the crowds of young men for emotional photos about the plight of the refugees.

The Guardian's rich and very excitable feminist writers are also silent; as if actual attacks of women's basic rights were not worth the effort. Even the victim-blaming from the Major of Cologne was left unmentioned... This cartoon sums up everything nicely.

But the Guardian was not silent on other matters. It was running a really long feature on the Two Tailed Dog party, in which they equated Orban with the Far Right (which he is not), and that idiot who charged a police station in France and got shot was featured prominently on the front page, too. It took five days for articles on Cologne to appear. One even called for asking for tough questions, but then avoided to do so.
One genius piece managed to have the following two quotes in the same article:

Abroad, Merkel will work for burden sharing, tougher measures to patrol Europe’s borders and seek solutions to stop the refugees at source

Already the venomous Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán is calling for tougher border controls,

Really?

It seems like the media by propagating the idea of uncontrolled migration boxed itself into a corner it cannot come out of without looking foolish or criminally negligent. And what they are doing now is just as bad.

The main problem is: this sort of behaviour completely surrenders the issue to the far right. It only gets stronger when the media does not report, lies, when the media and the police covers these things up, when you label everyone with concerns racist... you are responsible for turning away from the victims (the women who were assaulted), and you are responsible for the strengthening of the far right, and the gangs who mete out their own justice, and beat up Middle Eastern people on the street.