The rising storm of ethnic fear in Europe and the United States

[mwrguy]

By Richard Cohen

Let me tell you about my boat. It has a single mast and a cabin at the stern. It is painted white with a red stripe at the water line. I bought it in Denmark, at the port where in 1943 Danish fishermen and others transported most of the country’s Jews to safety in neutral Sweden. My boat measures 5 inches long. It is as huge as the human heart.

The doughty Danes, so wonderful in World War II, have now turned churlish. They seize the jewelry and other valuables of Syrian and other migrants seeking to enter the country. This is not the same as barring the migrants, but it shows what happens when a bighearted people get scared. Much of Europe is now scared.

The problem in both Europe and the United States is not just a huge influx of migrants, but a lack of political leadership. The exceptions are Barack Obama here and Angela Merkel in Germany. Merkel showed extraordinary leadership in allowing about 1 million Syrian migrants to settle in Germany. Obama has been stingy in his welcome — about 2,500 migrants had arrived in the United States as of late last year — but he has been generous in his embrace of the Muslim community. Trump, characteristically, mischaracterized the president’s recent visit to a mosque, saying he had gone to apologize. For Trump, no lie is too low.

What both the United States and Europe need now are more leaders who know how to say, “Hold on a minute. Let’s work this out.” Instead, we get calls for mass deportations, closing borders, confiscation of wealth. In Europe, Hungary has veered right and turned ugly. Poland is leaning that way. France is showing a little Vichy, and Germany is shivering with second thoughts.

Trump, I’m sure, knows little about history. His boat, until he was forced to sell it, was a huge, bloated affair. My boat is small, very small, only symbolic. It stands for not just what happened, but what can happen — the heroism of some, the political opportunism and cowardice of many. At the moment, too many politicians have their fingers to the wind. A storm is brewing and, aside from a weakened Merkel and an exiting Obama, not a captain is in sight.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-rising-storm-of-ethnic-fear-in-europe-and-the-united-states/2016/02/08/bf0e73a8-ce92-11e5-b2bc-988409ee911b_story.html

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[DetlefK]

1. What will Europe do when sexual assaults and attacks on Jews become the new normal?

Most of these people won't be a problem. Most.

There will just be a tiny minority of Arabs who thinks that sexual assaults and rape are completely normal.
There will just be a tiny minority of Arabs who thinks that Jews are vermins and should be eradicated. (There haven't been attacks on Jews yet, but is anybody willing to bet that 2016 will pass without such an attack?)

But I guess, those incidents will have to be the burden we all live with for the sake of tolerance.

Let's see: We had the mass-assaults in Cologne on New Year's Eve, we had a gang-rape by iraqi teenagers in Belgium in November, we had a sexual assault by a group of refugees on a woman in a public pool in Germany... Now imagine what happens when bikini-season comes by.




Stop claiming that Merkel did a good job. What she did was morally right and politically wrong.

Her first and foremost priority should be Germany.
And for that she should have launched initiatives to immediately integrate the refugees culturally, to teach them what life in Germany is like, what's normal, what's acceptable behaviour and what's not.
But she didn't.
And now there are refugees running around in Europe who think that rape is okay.

[Nay]

2. Well, I think it's a bit nasty to blame citizens for being afraid of crowds

of entitled males who think groping and rape are A-OK. It is NOT necessary for all countries to agree to take on whatever refugees come their way; it should be a measured process by which the only refugees who enter are those who can reasonably be expected to obey the laws of the host country.

Tens of thousands of undifferentiated refugees arriving in waves should probably be held in decent refugee camps until a return to the war-torn country is possible. I wish the $$$$ being donated could go to that. It would solve the problem of criminals preying on the citizens of the host country.