What difference a year makes...

So the Daily Mail (a delightful paper aimed at well-informed, affluent readers  disgusting tabloid) has published a cartoon last year.

Just to be clear: the cartoon does NOT say the refugees are rats. It says that rats -terrorists- enter with refugees undetected. Yes, the Daily Mail is not a very respectable newspaper. No, even they can have a valid point now and then.

That did not stop the outrage machine starting up. From the Huffington Post to the Guardian people were up in arms comparing this to the Nazi cartoons depicting Jewish people as rats. The comparison is very much flawed (as I said: the refugees are not depicted as rats; the ISIS terrorists are, which, frankly, is not very nice to the rodents.) Some people were claiming it was racist because "Syrians don't dress like that", but that really is scraping the bottom of the barrel... it's a cartoon about migrants from the Middle East. It has to make a point in one frame.

Orban got a lot of flak for linking terrorism to uncontrolled migration; he has been called a xenophobe and worse by the Hungarian opposition, and by the foreign press.

Fast forward 2016. In July Merkel said the following: 

  
terrorists entered into Europe last year with the migrants.  

She did not draw a picture, true.
So... saying it in 2015 made you a Nazi (when you could have done something about it), saying it today (when it's too late) is fine. I have not read anything about Merkel being a Nazi. Why do you have to jump off a cliff first, and then say it was a bad idea, to be politically correct? Why are people who say it is a bad idea to jump off to begin with are labelled Nazis? I'd think they'd be called smart to foresee problems -with uncontrolled migration in this case. The people who warned about the dangers were proven right in every single issue so far- even with the rapes... which frankly I thought was just demagogic populism appealing for the xenophobes. It turns out I was wrong. Apparently a lot of the newcomers have issues with not assaulting women sexually.

But no, the Huffington -and Der Spiegel, the NYT, and all the rest (Mama Merkel included)- were huffing and puffing about Nazis and xenophobes when people asked these questions, or warned about this. Now, a year later it's all forgotten, and the very same people who huffed and puffed are talking about the same things for which they labelled others Nazis. Orban and others -who, let's make it clear, who are corrupt cleptocrats and populist asswipes- in this case actually had a point: before you let in millions upon millions from a different culture, let's take a look at how similar groups fared in Europe (Paris, Belgium, even the UK). For this they -and the entirety of their countries- were labelled xenophobes. (Instead of asking them about untold millions of EUROs disappearing... it seems like corruption is encouraged.) For once, Orban actually had Europe's best interest in mind, and papers derisively quoted "experts" saying that he was trying to present himself as visionary. Guess what. He WAS one. And not because he is so smart. These things were clear for anyone with an iota of brains. He was a visionary, because all the others were blinded by dogma.

Today all that's forgotten. Today those enlightened Western countries are talking about strengthening border controls, talking about terrorists sneaking in, and all the rest; as if they had no memories from last year. (One thing you do have to give them: they still insist on letting millions more in as a solution to a problem that can only be solved where it comes from.)

Incredible.

Brexit and the media treatment

Well, things are changing all over the world (well, “world” defined as the US and Europe, so I think I’m being a bit arrogant here); since we can’t do anything about it, get the popcorn out and enjoy the show.

It seems like there are fundamental changes in our societies. The traditional left is sinking into insignificance, and the center-right parties are breaking up as their fringe is getting stronger. We see a general shift to the right, nationalism is on the rise, and people seem to be really, really angry at the established “elite”, so they are voting to hurt them (regardless of they themselves getting hurt in the process, too). So we have the Tea Party, OWS, Trump, Sanders, Boris and Farage, EU scepticism all over Europe (even the Austrians??), xenophobia and racism everywhere - and now we have something unthinkable: Brexit. Globalization did not work out very well for most people it seems. As more and more people got into the losers’ side in this game, as more and more people realized the cards were stacked against them, and as the winners overplayed their hand redistributing the wealth even more unevenly as before, anger rose to the surface. Even mainstream newspapers are full of analyses of this sort now, although even two years ago it would have been only a few voices on the “far” left (Chomsky, Greenwald and their kind) who were raising these issues.

That’s all good and well. Only one thing infuriates me. The Guardian and other papers are discussing this, they are talking about the worrying trends in racism and xenophobia embedded into the British society but their tone is very understanding, very constructive… contrast this to the tone they discussed the very same trends in Hungary last year, and the years before. The tone was very much reprimanding and ostracising. Those hairy barbarians, they have no place in civilized Europe, they said over and over again. They were thundering maledictions and painting the entire nation racist and worse… and now here we are. The UKIP’s popularity is explained as the rebellion of the poor and dispossessed (ignoring the seriously troubling racist and xenophobic narrative of the party). In contrast, the popularity of Jobbik, the Hungarian version of the far right, was explained with that Hungarians just simply hate Jews. This makes a good headline but ignores the fact that the trends are the same in both countries. People hate the establishment and anything promising a change (and also a national reawakening, apparently) will draw people in. Last week the United Kingdom has shown itself to be even more provincial, even more nationalist than Hungary –the country the British media (and others) were accusing of being the narrow sighted, regressive nation, a nation, which does not have a place in the EU. Apparently Britain is the one that does not have a place; at least this is how people voted here. What makes this double standard especially appalling is that never once in Hungary were violent and non-violent hate crimes on such levels as in the UK and in Germany, for that matter; never where the far right’s rhetoric as toxic as in these countries, yet the country was (and still is) depicted as the pariah of Europe. 

Football, Stadiums and Orban

Looking at the recent success of the Hungarian football team I developed a theory. Perhaps Orban and Co. are not a bunch of corrupt crooks, but misunderstood geniuses. Perhaps there was another reason behind building all those stadiums.

Maybe, just maybe football is like a nuclear chain reaction: once you reach the critical stadium/capita ratio, your team performance exponentially improves. Only time will tell.

Peter Griffiths and the weird twist of events in the UK

So this respectable gentleman said the following in the '60s:  "if you want a nigger for your neighbor, vote labour".

The whole campaign for Brexit is essentially hinging on the hatred and suspicion against immigrants (or expats as I like to call us, as the British living in Spain are called).

This got me thinking: we got to the stage where I, as a white male from Central Europe, became the "nigger".

I feel strangely accomplished.

King Leopold the Third, and historical amnesia

Recently I’ve been to Belgium on a meeting. The place looked nice and affluent, and in general, a pleasant country overall. Except for one thing. I’ve seen King Leopold III’s photos in my hotel and in a restaurant I've visited framed.

This got me thinking (after I calmed down). Here we are, in the 21^stcentury, and we can see a mass murderer’s picture displayed openly. This person was responsible for the death of about ten million people in the Belgian Congo. This makes him one of the worst mass murderer you have never heard of. While we know about Hitler, Stalin, Saddam and other monsters (although Saddam’s worst acts were committed under US protection in the ‘80s, and they have only become publicized in the media when he became a “bad” dictator after ’91), somehow the less-than-savoury acts of Western politicians are less advertised. We don’t read much about the engineered famine in India, which killed about 3 million under Churchill. We hear about the approximately 60 thousand US causalities of Vietnam, but not the 1-4 million (nobody knows for sure exactly how many) Vietnamese dead; we don’t read much about the Latin American death squads, the School of Americas, the genocide in East Timor... It seems like history really is written by the victors. And it makes the constant finger-waggling, and moral superiority of the Western powers sound a little hypocritical. You’d expect people who demand constant historical retrospection a little bit more eager to follow their own advice.

Molenbeek and the problem of terrorism in Europe

It seems like Western Europe has become an exporter of Islamic terrorism. France, Belgium, the United Kingdom have all had their share of radicalization, and their citizens joining ISIS... and committing acts of terror in their native lands where they grew up. There are no-go areas in these countries where it's surprisingly easy to get weapons, where the police and ambulances don't really dare to go, where the population is isolated by their choice and by their will from the rest of the society. These areas (Molenbeek is one example), with the very effective help of Saudi Arabia which does its darnest to export their brand of fundamentalist Islam, have essentially became breeding grounds for home-grown terrorism.

But it seems like nobody really cares. There are the usual talk about the victims, about how bad these terrorists are, but nobody really looks into their communities where they found shelter. Like it or not, the Muslim communities in these regions did nothing to expose these "few bad apples", which makes them accessories to these acts; they even attacked the police when they arrested Salah Abdeslam. Like it or not, these countries, by letting these no-go areas form and grow without intervention, allowed these communities to develop. You can use all the feel-good messages that #notallmuslims and that "they are not real Muslims", you probably should look into how the mastermind of the Paris attacks managed to evade detection in Belgium for four months before being captured. He was not living in some cave, or some isolated safe house. He was living in the heart of Belgium in a metropolis. Apparently in the very center of Europe, the fact that sizeable communities reject the values of the majority, and even commit violent acts against them, is something you are not supposed to mention in a polite company. In this light Orban's speech sounds like a wake-up call that nobody's going to heed. Perhaps because the Eastern part of the EU lacks the white guilt of the former colonial powers, they don't bind themselves into knots they cannot escape from. Who knows.

But one thing is for sure. I think in order to tackle this threat you really, really should address this issue. Before, you know, the far right grows strong enough to try to tackle it themselves both on the political arena and on the streets; because at this point it's going to be even less pretty.

The Guardian, the refugee crisis and Hungary -again

The current editorial of the Guardian really shows something incredible: a complete 180 from what they have been preaching before.

They claim the solution has been laid out for this crisis, and then list the following:
1. pan-European resettlement efforts
2. strengthening of the EU's external borders
3. to make a deal with Turkey
4. negotiated repatriation of economic migrants who are not entitled for asylum


Well, guess what. Point 1 is absolutely unenforcable; no country who is not volunteering can be forced, and no refugee who is unwilling to receive less benefits can be forced into this arrangement. The Schengen borders make sure of that. As soon as you drop your refugee in Hungary or Bulgaria, they'd get on the road again towards Germany. (As they did the first time around, instead of claiming asylum at their points of entry, like the law requires. If they had not respected the law then, they'd probably ignore it again.)

But points 2-4... really? This was exactly what Orban said for which he was called an extreme-right wing leader, a xenophobe, and a Nazi. The Guardian -and the rest of the Western media- was very critical of everyone who dared to suggest that perhaps the borders needed to be strengthened, that perhaps we should talk to Turkey (if we're fucking up countries in the Middle East), and perhaps there ARE people who are not war refugees, but economic migrants. To this day this is a contentious point; this is the first time I've ever seen the Guardian admitting to this possibility that not all refugee are fleeing war an persecution.

This leaves us where, exactly? Orban -who is not exactly your model politician, and would be quite nice if was voted out of power- got a tremendous boost of prestige for the way he handled the crisis. (The only political figure in the whole of EU who did not run around like a chicken with his head cut off. How scary is this thought?)
The Guardian essentially vindicated him. His suggestions are accepted -but at at time when it's way too late. You can close the barn door, but the horse has already bolted.

The Guardian talks about bridges to be mended, yet it does not acknowledge that it had not only slandered Orban over this year, but the whole of Hungary, depicting the population as the collection of some backwards xenophobic barbarians, saying this flat out, or simply implying. How do you expect cooperation after this?

The "EU" is not a rich block; the Central and Eastern European member states cannot deal with an influx of unemployable migrants (according to the Germans only 10% if the refugee population is employable), even IF there were jobs to be filled. However, unemployment and poverty is high; you can't expect these states to add extra burden. So that is a blatantly untrue statement... another little slip in the truth. Yes, it would be desirable if you could convince these countries, however, the way they were treated (Greece and Hungary in particular) will make sure that they will not be open to persuasion.

So again -we have too little, too late. Even The Guardian realized not all was perfect in their own little world, and now it proposed solutions to a problem that has increased in proportion hundredfold since these solutions were proposed by those evil Nazis, The Guardian now parrots.

Separate moves do make things worse -if only the Western media's and political establishment's refusal to face reality had not forced countries to act separately. Good job, guys. We can always trust you to do the right thing after you have exhausted every other choice.