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 #2 (permalink) Wed Dec 20, 2006 2:03 am Right wing nationalists unite? |
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This is a pretty funny scheme, Torsten. An international association of nationalists, with an international exchange program. That's hilarious!
I once saw a former Ku Klux Klansman on TV. There are only a few thousand people in the Klan, amid all the 300 million people in the US. The number is estimated today at 3,000, but sometimes the media make it sound as if there were millions of them. This ex-Klansman who was interviewed on the tube was asked how the government, or American society in general, can keep the Klan small or even eliminate it. His answer was to keep the economy healthy. He said that as soon as those guys have jobs, they quit worrying about what the foreigners, blacks, etc., are doing. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #3 (permalink) Wed Dec 20, 2006 7:36 am Good idea |
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Hi Torsten!
It?s a good idea! And they might join with the slogan: "Nationalists of every country: You?re not alone". 
Michael |
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| #4 (permalink) Wed Dec 20, 2006 9:28 am Right wing nationalists unite? |
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Hi Torsten,
To use the words of that wonderful tennis champion, John McEnroe: You cannot be serious!
A
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Alan
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| #5 (permalink) Wed Dec 20, 2006 10:54 am Right wing nationalists unite? |
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OK, I admit my proposal might have the smell of a dead duck. But then again, if those young people became aware of the fact that there right wing extremists in almost every country across Europe, they might start using their brains for productive purposes. As Jamie said, the Ku Klux Klan can only exist if there is a certain percentage of unemployment and the weakest layer of the society is feeling left behind. They look for a scapegoat and put the blame on the 'foreigners'. Now, if these guys realized that in any country there is a certain percentage of foreigners they would ask themselves where those foreigners come from. They would use Michael's slogan: We are not alone! -- we share this problem with others. They would understand that we live in the age of globalization and the modern nationalist has to share his experiences with his fellow nationalists in other countries in order to survive...
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Torsten
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| #6 (permalink) Wed Dec 20, 2006 11:08 am Right wing nationalists unite? |
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April Fools' Day is still months away, Torsten, and there are still eight days to go before its Spanish version (los Santos Inocentes).
Oh well, I guess this is as good a time as any for a bit of laugh!
Edit: I hadn't read your last post before sending mine out. This idea of nationalists over the world uniting still sounds bizarre -- it would be totally self-contradictory! |
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| #7 (permalink) Wed Dec 20, 2006 11:20 am Right wing nationalists unite? |
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Hi guys
This scheme sounds scarily surreal enough it could work.
However do not underestimate that Nationalists can cross borders or work together. A group of Nationalists called Combat 18 were banned from the UK, so what did they do you may ask? They re-located to Spain and still had contact with the BNP.
I think the crux of the matter would be if this exchange programme could change minds. I rather believe that it would simply build an affinity between the causes, issues. After all the Polish hooligans want to be like the Brits, so they offered some "firm" members to help train them.
Despite what a powerful msg films like Hooligans, The Chelsea Factory or American History X send out, boys will be boys. If they have no toys they use their fist to "bounce heads round like bunnies".
If race relations is an issue you feel strongly about check out this website, my last art project was based on info from here: www.irr.org.uk
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Stew.t.
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| #8 (permalink) Wed Dec 20, 2006 12:19 pm Right wing nationalists unite? |
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Hi everyone
I also fail to see the humor in this...International co-op and exchange in the right-wing extremist scene has been going on for quite some time. They use the Internet like everyone else to get in touch with like-minded people. If you dig into this more deeply, you'll find some really scary connections. I've always fought any kind of prejudice, not so much in a physical sense nowadays, but with arguments against certain statements made in my immediate environment. Because letting extreme nationalist or racist talk unchallenged helps prejudice to take root.
Cheers
L.L. |
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Lucien_Librarian
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| #9 (permalink) Wed Dec 20, 2006 18:10 pm Right wing nationalists unite? |
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Hi all!
Why not walk unsual ways? I mean, when Nationalists are habitants of certain areas in the world and they might join to a comunity of people who all think they were the one and only really humans they on the one side might learn about their equality or they might smash their heads each other and in both cases there might be one problem less for the rest of the world, mightn?t there? The task could be keeping them joined in such a comunity.
Okay, okay, you can reply that they possibly were capable to figure out a new picture for enemies. But do you think that they really are capable that? I mean, first they might find out what they have in common before they could figure out who the ?others? are. That might be a good lesson for them.
What do you think?
Michael |
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| #10 (permalink) Wed Dec 20, 2006 23:20 pm Right wing nationalists unite? |
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| Michael: Sadly enough I can tell you that -at least those from Western Europe and probably many from Eastern Europe, too- already agree upon a common "enemy": Dark-skinned, dark-haired people, of possible African or Arabian/Eastern descent. Or "non-whites" in general... Quite stupid really, but a fact. |
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Lucien_Librarian
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| #11 (permalink) Thu Dec 21, 2006 7:35 am Right wing nationalists unite? |
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Hi LL (or may I say Ralf?)
You?re right, it is sad. But if the Europian Nationalists would join to the Arabian Fundamentalists, for example, what do you think might happen?
Michael |
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| #12 (permalink) Sat Dec 23, 2006 9:14 am Right wing nationalists unite? |
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| Lucien_Librarian wrote: |
| I've always fought any kind of prejudice, not so much in a physical sense nowadays, but with arguments against certain statements made in my immediate environment. Because letting extreme nationalist or racist talk unchallenged helps prejudice to take root. |
There's another danger that can occur in the reaction against racism and bigotry. It's that people react so extremely to anyone making any negative judgment of a person of another race that people aren't allowed to state the negative truths when they need to.
For example, in my classrooms I frequently have to deal with behaviors that are definitely culture bound and maladaptive to our society. I know, for example, that Albanians and Poles tend to react differently when they are caught cheating on tests. I even notice that people from some countries almost never cheat, and that most (but not all) people from certain other countries will almost automatically cheat if they are not watched. I know that a lot of Middle Eastern students fall behind in their studies due to family pressures that Americans and most Europeans don't have to deal with. These things are not universally true about everyone in each ethnic group, but they'll happen frequently enough to allow a fallible generalization for preparing to deal with the people.
You also get situations in which most people from country X do not do Y, but if someone does Y, he is almost certainly going to be from country X.
You don't have to be a fascist lunatic to notice these things, and they are actually what cultural trainers are hired by management to teach about in companies and institutions. But the things cultural trainers have to teach about to help diverse people at companies get along smoothly are the same things that can get a person into trouble if he says them at a school or college, or in a political debate on TV.
The problem is that people have become so paranoid about ethnic bigotry that they see it even in cases where it doesn't exist or isn't important. In some situations merely mentioning the name of another ethnic group -- even in a neutral or positive way -- will cause inappropriate condemnation.
Another problem is that due to this paranoia, many people have been miseducated in such a way that they can't tell the difference between a generalization and a stereotype. They think that all generalizations are stereotypes. It gets really screwy. For example, a linguistics professor I worked with showed a dialect map of the United States and started teaching about the geographic distribution of various forms of English here. One student couldn't stand it, and he took over the class berating the professor for "stereotyping". Just because generalizations always have exceptions, the kid thought that the whole field of dialectology was invalid. Just because some people who speak with a southern dialect live in the north, and vice versa, this student thought the whole study of dialects was a form of bigotry. However, studying languages and dialects REQUIRES this kind of generalization.
Marketing research is another situation where necessary generalizations are made. This research shows, for example, that ON AVERAGE Cadillac buyers are less educated than Ford Taurus buyers. Does that mean that ALL Cadillac buyers are less educated? No. Marketing research also shows that the most avid consumers of contemporary art fiction in the US are Jews and gays. (This is why disproportionately many contemporary high-brow novels published in the US have Jewish and gay characters and themes.) Does this mean ALL Jews and gays read that kind of fiction? No. Does it mean that ONLY Jews and gays read that kind of fiction? No. Is it BAD to read that kind of fiction? No. However, if a professor mentions the results of this research to a group of American university students, several of them are liable to attack him or her for negative stereotyping. They don't think it's bad to be Jewish, or bad to be gay, or bad to read art fiction, but if a prof puts them all together in that kind of statistic, some of the students will claim the prof is a bigot.
It gets really sick when, for example, the young Polish women in a class are disruptive when they sit together, so in order to separate them, you also have to separate the Brazilians, even though the Brazilians are not disruptive. Political correctness requires that you punish everybody in every ethnic group -- including people who aren't doing anything wrong. Otherwise you can be accused of bigotry. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #13 (permalink) Sat Dec 23, 2006 23:54 pm Right wing nationalists unite? |
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| Jamie, I think I get your point and I would agree that there is a difference between being a keen observer and acting accordingly and just relying on prejudice or stereotypes. But: You have to take into account the cultural differences, too. I can only speak for Germany and out of my own experiences, of course. But Germany is just slowly becoming the sort of melting pot the USA has been for quite a while longer. Also, because of our past, many people are more sensitive when it comes to these issues. Okay, the US has had and still has its civil rights issues, too. But these matters are quite complex, aren't they? If one watches the "David Chapelle Show" on MTV in example..I've read on the Net that many African-Americans consider the show to be counter-productive to an integrated society, because a certain group of white people uses it to say "See, Blacks are saying the same things about their own ethnic group, that we've been saying for years". |
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Lucien_Librarian
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| #14 (permalink) Sun Dec 24, 2006 0:00 am Right wing nationalists unite? |
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Hi Michael
Of course you may call me Ralf <s>
I am bit puzzled by your question. Alliances are born out of necessity most of the time and if those two groups could somehow benefit locally from a form of cooperation I am sure they would initiate one.
It's "European" and "join with" by the way.
Cheers
Ralf
| Fan of Arabian horses wrote: |
Hi LL (or may I say Ralf?)
You?re right, it is sad. But if the Europian Nationalists would join to the Arabian Fundamentalists, for example, what do you think might happen?
Michael |
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Lucien_Librarian
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| #15 (permalink) Sun Dec 24, 2006 0:56 am Right wing nationalists unite? |
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| Lucien_Librarian wrote: |
| Jamie, I think I get your point and I would agree that there is a difference between being a keen observer and acting accordingly and just relying on prejudice or stereotypes. But: You have to take into account the cultural differences, too. I can only speak for Germany and out of my own experiences, of course. But Germany is just slowly becoming the sort of melting pot the USA has been for quite a while longer. |
There's a difference, though. The US is a society founded on an idea, and race and ethnicity are irrelevant to that idea. Every American can tell you what it means to be American. Germany is a society founded on ethnicity, and when ethnicity becomes irrelevant, nobody can tell you what means to be German. Over here they say that this kind of ethnic identity, weakened but still present, coupled with the lack of a fundamental ideal is the reason European nations have so much trouble absorbing their immigrants.
| Lucien_Librarian wrote: |
| Also, because of our past, many people are more sensitive when it comes to these issues. |
I think they're more preachy than sensitive. A lot of Germans remind me of the white lady whose black boyfriend left her in college when she was pregnant, and who then decides that the black child will have trouble in life and gets an abortion. Years later she regrets it, and her way of dealing with her guilt is to run around telling other white people they're racist. I used to know a woman like this, and she is what Germans remind me of very often. "Our nation killed six milion Jews, and this makes us uniquely qualified to point the bigotry finger at you."
| Lucien_Librarian wrote: |
| Okay, the US has had and still has its civil rights issues, too. But these matters are quite complex, aren't they? If one watches the "David Chapelle Show" on MTV in example..I've read on the Net that many African-Americans consider the show to be counter-productive to an integrated society, because a certain group of white people uses it to say "See, Blacks are saying the same things about their own ethnic group, that we've been saying for years". |
Other African-Americans think Dave Chapelle is exposing the absolute truth that people don't want to admit. There are also black American commentators who talk and write frequently about absolutely verifiable, statistically measurable social pathologies in the black community. Even though what they're saying is proven to be true, the same people who condemn Chapelle will say these commentators are "playing into the hands of white racists" by saying those things. One example is that in the US about half of all murders involve black men killing black men. This doesn't include cases where black men kill black women or people of other races. Since the vast majority of black men never kill anybody, it's very weird that a small fraction of a small fraction of the population is committing most of the murders. Normal people would expose this fact, want to find out the cause of it, and try to do something about it. However, in the present politial climate, people who do that are marked as racist, no matter what their race is. |
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Jamie (K)
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