So, two parties with strong anti-immigration stance have essentially won the elections in Austria.
Both are right-wing, and far-right to top that. You could make all sorts of arguments about how Nazism is rearing its ugly head in the birth place of Hitler; The Guardian is certainly not shy talking hard when it comes to the region. (Well, a bit east of Austria, but still the same region.) Yet, what is The Guardian fretting about?
The candidate's age.
The same newspaper that issues thundering rhetoric about Nazis in Eastern (well, Central) Europe every time these unwashed barbarians do something that affronts their "European Values", suddenly becomes really quiet when "their guys" do something as bad as electing some crypto-Nazis to power.
Figure that.
Showing posts with label sebastian kurz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sebastian kurz. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Monday, October 31, 2016
So Sebastian Kurz told Profil that only the best educated migrants should be allowed in Austria.
(Could not find the original German article, and strangely no English reports are available on this interesting take on helping war refugees. If it helps, here's a Hungarian report of the interview.)
Let's ignore the fact that had Szijjarto said something like this on behalf of Hungary, the whole Western media would be screaming about racism and the rest.
Let's just think about the implication of this statement a bit, shall we?
Option #1: we are talking about war refugees. The Austrian minister essentially says that we only should help the well educated, rich refugees, and leave the rest to their fate.
This, if you ask me, is an insanely un-European attitude; I'd hazard to say it would justify a little international uproar. After all, this is a very cold-hearted, and frankly evil stance. We can safely say it reminds us to the darkest moments of European history.
Option #2: we are talking about economic migrants. In this case it's a fair stance, however it ignores a lot of things that should have been discussed before even one economic migrant was let over the border.
These things are:
1. why are we allowing in millions of economic migrants in the first place?
2. why did the mass of people start walking towards Europe last year?
3. why are we trying to impose hypocrisy costs on countries who refuse to allow economic migrants into their countries? You have no right trying to shame and coerce countries to accept economic migrants, after all.
4. Why nobody's talking about the costs and benefits of taking millions of economic migrants?
These question, obviously, will not be asked either by the media or the politicians. They seem to be quite content on using this sliding scale of "war refugees" and "migrants" whenever it fits their narrative, trusting that the average reader is an idiot who cannot see how he or she is manipulated. And the worst thing is that it seems to be working. Nobody stops to think about these issues; they read a short article, they take up the war cry, then move on. A couple of days later they repeat the same process with another article which is diagonally opposing to their previous opinion. It works with everything; even when these two opposing things happen at the same time: take the war crime that is the siege of Aleppo, and the heroic liberation that is the siege of Mosul.
(Could not find the original German article, and strangely no English reports are available on this interesting take on helping war refugees. If it helps, here's a Hungarian report of the interview.)
Let's ignore the fact that had Szijjarto said something like this on behalf of Hungary, the whole Western media would be screaming about racism and the rest.
Let's just think about the implication of this statement a bit, shall we?
Option #1: we are talking about war refugees. The Austrian minister essentially says that we only should help the well educated, rich refugees, and leave the rest to their fate.
This, if you ask me, is an insanely un-European attitude; I'd hazard to say it would justify a little international uproar. After all, this is a very cold-hearted, and frankly evil stance. We can safely say it reminds us to the darkest moments of European history.
Option #2: we are talking about economic migrants. In this case it's a fair stance, however it ignores a lot of things that should have been discussed before even one economic migrant was let over the border.
These things are:
1. why are we allowing in millions of economic migrants in the first place?
2. why did the mass of people start walking towards Europe last year?
3. why are we trying to impose hypocrisy costs on countries who refuse to allow economic migrants into their countries? You have no right trying to shame and coerce countries to accept economic migrants, after all.
4. Why nobody's talking about the costs and benefits of taking millions of economic migrants?
These question, obviously, will not be asked either by the media or the politicians. They seem to be quite content on using this sliding scale of "war refugees" and "migrants" whenever it fits their narrative, trusting that the average reader is an idiot who cannot see how he or she is manipulated. And the worst thing is that it seems to be working. Nobody stops to think about these issues; they read a short article, they take up the war cry, then move on. A couple of days later they repeat the same process with another article which is diagonally opposing to their previous opinion. It works with everything; even when these two opposing things happen at the same time: take the war crime that is the siege of Aleppo, and the heroic liberation that is the siege of Mosul.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)