Here is the second of two articles by Katie Hopkins in the giant (and liberal) English newspaper, The Daily Mail. Her subject is the imminent failure of multiculturalism in Sweden and its relation to Brexit.
There is a true spirit of “multiculturalism” that authentically respects other paradigms, even those which seem bizarre to it. SSI denizens want to know what the Japanese believe about baseball (and about life!) that is different from what we believe.
An open-hearted man is curious about Buddhism, wants to know what it can teach him. A serious philosopher understands that the Pharaohs, the Chinese Emperors, the Africans, and the Spanish, and even the Kelts had light bulbs on that we do not. True multiculturalism does not posture towards respect of other ideas; it actually does respect other ideas.
It is a false multiculturalism which pretends, in the face of all counter evidence, that every culture in the world, present and past, brings equal benefit to man. We might claim that Iran’s cultural paradigms are as benevolent as Tibet’s are, and the claim might gain us standing in the grad student lounge, but the claim would not be true. Europe is beginning to ask whether Sharia culture is equal in benevolence to Europe’s own. This is a conversation we need to have.
The Daily Mail article is not safe for work. Well, there are no images to worry about, but after reading Ms. Hopkins’ report on life in the “sink suburbs” you might not be too interested in carrying on about your day …
I was quite amazed to see comments with thumbs-up counts on the order of 970:27 in favor. And would be quite grateful to see the Denizens’ thoughts on Ms. Hopkins’ report. Decorum, please. :- )
Respectfully,
Jeff
Detect O Vision Mainframe 
Best line in an article the liberal media will NEVER cover, NEVER address:
“…to accept there is a problem would mean accepting nearly 80 years of liberal thinking was wrong.”
Thanks for sharing this, Doc. It’s too bad there’s so much close-mindedness in this country, otherwise I’d share it on my Facebook page. I’ve foregone such efforts since last fall because the blowback is unendurable…and that’s just from relatives.
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Just from relatives :- ) … would laugh at that if it weren’t so sad…
Who knows, DaddyO. On your Facebook page, a link to this particular article might be received differently. Check out the thumbs-up ratios in the Daily Mail comments.
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adding to my comment above another quote that will never see the light of day in the liberal US press:
“I (the reporter) went to meet him (a local police chief) at his police station in Örebro to ask why he spoke out, in a place where silent acceptance seems mandatory.
He posted on Facebook, ‘here we go; this is what I’ve handled from Monday to Friday this week: rape, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, rape-assault and rape….violence against the police, threats to police, drug crime, felony, attempted murder, rape again.
‘Suspected perpetrators; Ali Mohammed, Mahmod, Mohammed, Mohammed Ali, Muhammad, again, again, again. Countries representing all the crimes this week; Iraq, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Somalia, Syria again, Somalia…’ “”
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Right. And if you were in Germany in 1935, you could have spoken out against Nazism while still holding love in your hearts for Germans in general.
The world could be facing Islamic extremists squarely, just as it would quickly face off against Christian extremists if any significant group of them were doing what Islamic thugs are doing.
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I saw her on TV last night. She reported Sweden plans on importing 400,000 more immigrants over the next few years. I think that is insane. One woman discussed how fearful it is for her to walk alone at night. She was afraid to allow herself to be photographed, because she was afraid of getting harassed from *feminists*. The governing ruling class seems to be blind to their ideology, and the people are suffering because of it. I think it’s very sad.
They should give those 400,000 slots to Bernie supporters – law abiding political refugees who love Sweden’s political values and want America to be more like Sweden.
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How did something so right go so wrong … so-called “feminists” have become completely discompassionate towards any feminine person who disagrees politically. And, in the USA, that is >50% of feminine people who disagree with the big-ticket issue of “feminists.”
The war between women is bizarre.
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A very interesting article, and a good piece of journalism; thank you for bringing it up. First I’ve heard of the situation. Apparently this recent media dust up started with Trump commenting on “what happened in Sweden last night” which started a social media “what’s he talking about nothing happened in Sweden last night” storm. It turns out Trump was referring to a Fox news interview of a Swedish documentarian blaming immigrants for a huge society threatening surge in violent crime. The MSM has gone after the documentarian, as well as refuting the assertion that immigrants cause inordinate violent crime while attacking those who propose it as racist. Of course, there was that big demonstration in Malmo fueled by concern over out-of-control crime from immigrant enclaves.
The Daily Mail smelled a story, and good for them. The Swedish government has really messed up. A decision from the top to allow the immigrants in and yet leave all the details undone of how to co-exist with and eventually integrate them — strangers in (and from) a strange land. What could go wrong?
The Swedish Govt. released a point by point refutation of the whole idea. The only slight nod to reality, while denying there were any “no go” zones, was admitting “the Swedish Police Authority identified 53 residential areas around the country that have become increasingly marred by crime, social unrest and insecurity. These places have been incorrectly labelled ‘no-go zones’. What is true, however, is that in several of these areas the police have experienced difficulties fulfilling their duties … The causes of the problems in these areas are complex and multifaceted. To reverse the trend, more initiatives are required from all of society, at all levels.” Well thanks for that helpful advice! Meanwhile, the government stopped tracking statistics of crime rates among immigrants, so they only quote country wide statistics, which are not really meaningful.
I don’t blame this on religious beliefs, or a lack of common moral framework. The Swedes have created the perfect environment for organized crime. For example, they have accepted large numbers of “unaccompanied children” (7000 in 2014, 35,000 in 2015), some of whom are actual children, and some of whom are possibly a bit older, since there is no age test. The young ones are placed in foster homes and are vulnerable to abduction, so there has been a spike in “human trafficking.” And then you have the teen-age/young adult male, who is basically gang fodder. And it is going to get worse before it gets better, and it will never get better until the Government faces up to the problem.
As an aside, do you detect a note of needless hysteria in the headlines and stories these days? It seems online news is mostly selected by its clickbait headline potential. Have we entered a new era of yellow journalism? It is very sad to me that both the NYT and WaPo have lost my trust in their commitment to journalistic standards. I remember their Watergate reporting. Now it’s just posturing.
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Thanks for the detail analysis amigo. I’m age 54 and there is no question that this era is unprecedented. Any Trump *opponent* would obviously stipulate that *he* is unprecedented; it’s merely the reaction to him that they cast as understandable.
Jesse Watters just had one of the WaPo reporters on from the Watergate era… am spacing on his name right now … stating flatly that the Watergate-hungry Post of the 1972-73 era would have never *considered* publishing a single word on the Jeff Sessions topic — which in 2016 features scream headlines in the NYT and WaPo every day. Obviously the press had rules of engagement on Obama, such as the bathhouse stuff, his wife, child, etc; with Trump, I would defy anybody to name a single rule of engagement the NYT is using.
What’s remarkable to me is that anyone (Trump) would even consider tilting at the mainstream media windmill. There are 1000’s upon 1000’s of people now searching daily for the scandal that will bring Trump down, and it’s guaranteed to be that way for 4/8 years.
Who among us could survive that environment? Yet, defying gravity, Trump has had the upper hand for some months here.
Yes, I think many in the MSM have dropped even the pretense of reporting objectively. Many quotes out there to the effect that when Hitler came along in the 1930’s, the press should have done its duty.
So we have a fascinating, if depressing, broken-bottle fight to the death between the immovable object and the irresistible force.
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I was thinking about this vignette. Trump makes an offhand comment; MSM and Social Media immediately make it a topic in refutation; further digging reveals substance in support of the comment and evidence of government putting their fingers in their ears and going lalalalalalala; Trump looks better and attackers look worse, and publicity for the issue. Are we witnessing a master class in agenda setting?
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It’s a great question. I’d like to know how much of Trump’s agenda-setting is calculated. For sure he is practiced at changing the subject, taking the fight to the enemy, admitting no pain, etc. Whether he’s playing chess to their checkers seems dubious, but it’s possible.
Trump speaks very loosely and clumsily, without the facts on the tip of his tongue — but usually what he says is right, at least in spirit. The media is totally unfamiliar with the idea that an apparently-unbooked-up conservative could be right about what he’s saying.
That’s probably part of the reason they “pounce on an error” only to have it blow up in their faces again and again — because it turns out to their horror that they can’t easily find the “debunking” of something which was, after all, true (like his “Look what’s happening in Sweden” so-called blunder). It seldom seems to OCCUR to an anti-Trump NYT reporter that the reporter could be wrong about his position. It’s total cognitive dissonance for them. These blind spots are huge disadvantages in public debate.
….
But, intriguingly, on the Obama-tap story the media hedged their bets for the first time. “Trump fails to cite evidence,” they complain hesitantly.
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It seems more instinctual than premeditated — this example is a visceral reaction to a nightly news segment. From the beginning of his campaign, Trump seems to seek and gather strength from controversy. If Reagan was the Teflon President, then Trump is the Anti-Fragile President.
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Right.
These plots take violent turns Every. Single. Day.
And on Sunday it did appear (to me, for the first time) that Trump really was baiting his enemies on the Obama wiretap allegations. This time he did appear to want to trap MSM people on the record saying “no wiretaps occurred” before he releases proof that they did.
The Catch-22 for the MSM, as you probably realize, is that any real evidence of Trump’s Russian collusion would necessarily have been gained by Obama wiretapping. Sunday there was global MSM backtracking to claim that there was never any evidence against Trump. Amazing.
One commenter likened it to “the White House pushing all chips in” to see whether Dems/MSM would commit a lot of credibility points to a war over whether Obama’s wiretaps (?) were justified. After a week’s worth of Trump AND the MSM calling attention to Russia/Wiretapping, the White House would then pull the string and win the pot to the MSM’s great humiliation.
I don’t put THAT level of thinking past Trump/Bannon at this point, do you? They’ve heard this song before. Doesn’t take great subtlety to catch on after this many hands of the poker game.
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Excellent linkage, Doc. I wouldn’t have found that one without your efforts here 🙂
I know a few people from Sweden (most of them readers of my books) and I’ll say that the college-aged people don’t *see* the problem in their country anywhere *near* as clearly as the 40+ crowd does. It’s not even close, frankly, and the 40+ crowd is (at least in my EXTREMELY limited experience) already fully-engaged with the gnashing-of-teeth-and-rending-of-garments phase of their grief over what has happened to their beautiful country. Sobering example in the extreme…
The query above by lampoon regarding whether or not we’re witnessing a master class of media manipulation, I think, is emphatically and categorically supported by the available evidence. And this brings into focus one of my *favorite* paradigms ever–one which was, strangely enough, introduced to me in a way that I could internalize by Stephen Fry, the noted comedian/actor/atheist.
He was on the Rubin Report (one of the most influential and truly BEST interview shows available today–he’s basically a calmer, more *inquisitive* Tucker Carlson who asks questions in order to better outline his guests’ positions) and he described the difference between rationalism and empiricism in one of the finest 4-5 minute speeches I’ve ever heard. And he used the Separation of Church & State vs. the Church of England as a prime example of rationalism vs. empiricism.
The hypothesis, as he relays it, is simple: in order to facilitate and nurture a secular society, a mechanism like America’s Separation of Church & State is *ESSENTIAL*. Without it, so the hypothesis goes, there would be no built-in structural limitation on state force being wielded in favor of a given religion, or against another religion. And any *rationalist* would wholeheartedly support that hypothesis’ credibility.
But in England (which is *probably* a top-5 nation in terms of being secularized) there is *NO* Separation of Church & State, or any even remotely similar apparatus. Henry VIII did the *opposite* by inextricably melding Church & State by creating the Church of England and placing it directly under the monarchy’s authority. Empirical evidence demonstrates cleanly, effectively, and irrefutably that a Separation of Church & State is *NOT* necessary in order to cultivate a secular society.
Which brings us back to Trump (or, as my four year old daughter calls him, ‘Da Trump!’). I, and I think *any* rational person would, after viewing a few hours of Trump’s interactions with the media, conclude *precisely* what Doc describes above: that he is clumsy/awkward compared to his predecessors, that he pivots unpredictably and seemingly irrationally, and that his command of the issues is questionable on nearly everything.
And yet, here we are, nearly two full YEARS after he boldly declared his candidacy for the Presidency of the United States. The media establishment in the USA, and the West in general, has NEVER been more powerful than it is today. Full stop. And they’ve had two YEARS to try to tear this guy down, but have never–not even once!–managed to reverse his momentum. Full stop.
The rationalist in me wholeheartedly agrees with Doc that Trump is EXTREMELY unlikely to be conducting a Master Class in media manipulation for the whole world–and, indeed, for antiquity–to witness. But the empiricist in me *cannot* ignore that he is, essentially, untouched by the constant barrage from the ENTIRE American political establishment, roughly half of its populace, AND a media establishment which wants nothing less than his head on a pike (and I don’t even think I mean that metaphorically…).
The reason Trump’s style *looks* so weird is because it’s a (previously) unorthodox approach. But that was the case with TTO hitters in baseball until a few guys broke down the barn door and demonstrated that there is indeed significant value to be had by grippin’-and-rippin’ pretty much every time a pitch comes into the zone.
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I ran across a Harvard Biz Review article on Trump’s masterful use of social media, and it identifies several keys to his success, which include being provocative and making statements that are easily misinterpreted and misquoted.
https://hbr.org/2017/03/what-trump-understands-about-using-social-media-to-drive-attention
It appears to me that controlling the agenda, the topic of conversation, is what is most important to Trump. Being provocative allows him to do so. What is that old George M Cohan show biz adage? “I don’t care what they say as long as they talk about me.”
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Bill James also scoffed at George Steinbrenner for “valuing publicity, as measured in quantity rather than quality” … LOL.
Cool analysis of Trump’s tweets at HBR.
Hey, if you liked that analysis of Trump’s tweets, you are simply not going to believe THIS analysis of his tweets: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/02/donald_trump_is_the_best_at_twitter_here_s_why.html
An incredible read. And it is from a year ago!
…..
Trump for sure is very skilled and talented at:
1 Tweets
2 Using a 4th-grade vocab
3 Talking with the intent of convincing the average person, not with the intent of impressing his peers
4 Putting his finger on “Little Marco” kill shots
5 Rocky Marciano style “I will accept two of yours to give you one of mine” courage
How COHERENTLY he has mastered the total game I have no idea. But he does some things well, that’s decided.
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Awesome link, Doc 🙂 High quality H2O indeed!
I never dug too hard into his technique on Twitter, but the author of that article is absolutely right. He’s the master spin-controller, and he basically oozes it from every pore.
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Mr Jonez – grandmaster-level analysis as usual. I know when you chime in on something there are going to be minor AND major ideas that are totally new to me, and yet totally sensible.
Am starting to wonder whether you’re right. I typed out my reply above to Lampoon (about Obama “wiretapping” tweets) before reading you.
Jolly good show. Will keep watching to see whether your take is the right one.
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=== Scott Adams’ blog ===
As a completely worthwhile issue on its own, Jonezie … assume you’re familiar with Dilbert’s blog? For a full year, Adams has been INSISTING that Trump is a “master persuader.”
His last 100 posts, probably 50 are on that topic, I’d guess. So it’s you and Dilbert against the world on this one :- )
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I haven’t been following Scott Adams on his blog, but I did encounter him when he was a guest on the Rubin Report last summer/fall. On there he insisted, confidently and with the poise of a perfectly centered Buddhist, that Trump was unstoppable due to his mastery of all things media–with special emphasis on his ability to employ social media to his advantage..
It really is *fascinating* watching Trump do his thing, isn’t it? Even if you happen to be on the opposite side of the ball from him on just about every issue, watching him do what he has done–without ANY insider backing of significance–is one of the most breathtaking demonstrations of a guy singlehandedly ‘hacking’ the system to his (and, I think we all hope, to OUR) benefit.
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What a visual on a macro level, Jonezie. Trump “hacking” the Establishment. :gasp:
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Tell us where to find your books, Mister Jones!
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All of my stuff is available at Amazon, and my Amazon Author Page is linked below 🙂
Lots of action, mostly sci-fi/space opera with a few fantasy novels sprinkled in. I steer away from rough language for the most part, but I don’t have much issue with painting a realistic action scene now and again.
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I don’t read science fiction, but your stuff looks interesting, I always like what you say, and I wouldn’t mind broadening my horizons. Which would you recommend I start with?
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Hrm..that depends on what kind of a mood you’re in 😉
My most successful series is the Spineward Sectors: Middleton’s Pride military space opera. I’ve got seven books out in that series, with number eight undergoing the clickity-clack at the moment.
My *personal* favorite series is only two books deep at present, and that’s the Imperium Cicernus: The Chimera Adjustment series. It’s a far-future sci-fi story about a cluster of star systems that were cut off from the Empire a couple hundred years before the first book takes place. The people there live under a pretty ruthless system wherein the ruling class is *at least* as afraid of the people as the people are of the ruling class. The reason for this fear is pretty simple: there are ‘Adjusters’ who are, in effect, publicly-sanctioned and privately-funded assassins. These Adjusters punish corruption, tyranny, and treason without referring to the judicial system–if the people under a given bureaucrat become sufficiently dissatisfied with his/her job performance, an Adjustment is triggered and–if found guilty–the bureaucrat in question gets the axe.
I’ve got another series, Sphereworld, which is about a young half-elf in a bizarre world where the sun never touches the horizon–in fact it never moves from directly overhead!–who forms the unlikeliest of friendships with a magical sword. Two novels and one novella are currently e-published in that one.
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Thanks!
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Ya Jonezie. Pretty soon here you’ll have to do us a front-page article at SSI letting people know where to get your books. Maybe with a back-cover type summary or two?
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I’m running a free promo for Book One of my presently seven book series, Spineward Sectors: Middleton’s Pride, on *I think* March 24th – 26th. It’s pulpy military space opera with a pretty broad cast of characters (lots of ‘Chinese’ characters get heavy features in this series) but, I must warn potential readers: I’m not afraid to kill characters if that’s their best service to the story 😉
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On multiculturalism–or, I think to put it more accurately: plurality.
The tolerance of plurality is one of the West’s greatest achievements. And, indeed, tolerance is as much as a system of law can *possibly* hope to achieve. Anything more is up to the distinct, plural groups.
Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist (who many consider to be the contemporary Father of Libertarianism) has a beautifully articulate speech titled ‘The Pencil,’ for which I’ll provide the link address below this paragraph. Key takeaway: there is not a single human being in the world who can manufacture a common pencil. The only way to make it is by cooperating with literally THOUSANDS of other people–many of whom you might despise.
One of the most profound and horribly misunderstood features of a Free Market system is that it enables people who might *hate* each other to cooperate from opposite corners of the world–so long as they all agree on the goal of prioritizing mutual gain. That fundamental agreement forms the basis of Cultural Pluralism–which, strangely enough, stands in DIRECT OPPOSITION to what *most* of us think of as contemporary Multiculturalism.
Where legitimate Cultural Pluralism and contemporary Multiculturalism differ, in my view, is simple: one advocates the TOLERANCE of divergent cultures, while the other demands EQUAL STATUS for all cultures. It’s the old ‘Equal Opportunity vs. Equal Outcome’ argument playing out in the marketplace of ideas–for that’s really all a culture is: a constellation of ideas, manifested (generally) as a set of traditional teachings, values and practices.
Tolerating ‘The Other’ is *essential* to seeking truth and achieving harmony. If one does not assume he or she Knows What Is Best on a given subject, then he or she *must* be open to new information–including the falsification of previously-held values and ideas. Once we can *tolerate* differences, we can examine them–even at arm’s length–more clearly. That process of honest, dispassionate examination is how we learn more about The Other and, more importantly, ourselves. Comparing and contrasting isn’t just something we’re supposed to do in High School English essays–it’s one of the most proven methods by which humans can learn new information: by referring an unknown item/idea to a known one.
Demanding *equal status* for The Other, however, does the exact opposite. When one demands that all cultures be TREATED equally irrespective of the apparent (and not-so-apparent) merits and flaws of each represented culture, one is circumventing the compare-and-contrast mechanism at the outset of experience with The Other. Compare-and-contrast is, fundamentally, a scientific/logical/empirical process. Disallowing its application to *anything* is anathema to the Pursuit of Truth and enlightenment generally.
Science doesn’t operate by consensus, or by ‘proving’ claims or statements. Science is a process of systematized elimination and falsification, by which statements and claims can *only* be DISproven. Which means that enduring legitimately HELPFUL criticism will *never* be a pleasant experience. But it *is* the only method by which humans have repeatedly demonstrated an ability to revise and reform traditional ideas and practices. In order to conduct such revisions, it’s necessary to remove all possible impediments from viewing angles to better ensure a clear vision of what a given thing is or is not.
After all: monkey see, monkey do.
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I copied and subsequently did some minor editing to the above comment before re-posting it on my own wordpress blog at the address below:
Sometimes I get going and it’s hard to stop 😉
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misterjonez, it’s great to meet a fellow pluralist. I too was thinking about multiculturism. I just read a great piece at lookoutlanding by Kate Pruesser on Leonis Martin, reminding me of belonging, a basic human need.
Thinking of the refugees in Sweden, it’s tough being a stranger in a strange land. They huddle together, and no one is there to protect the minnow from the pike.
I wonder, in the US, have we done better? We certainly have a long history of large influxes from a particular region or culture, voluntary and involuntary. We have endured some very dark periods including a bloody civil war whose echoes are still with us, and the recent imprisonment of citizenry greater than the Gulag.
The danger of pluralism, it seems to me, is slipping into relativism, maybe what you are calling equal treatment. “I like coffee, you like tea. Nothing more to be said.” blech. I believe that we have shared moral principles, to varying degrees of course. To be human means to be able to recognize empathetically a moral principle when we see it, even if we might not value it as much as someone else. Just don’t tread on me, or said another way, I may be tolerant, but I am nobody’s patsy. If your culture requires either my conversion or extermination, well, you better free your mind instead.
“But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t gonna make with anyone anyhow”
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As someone who spends a lot of time in London, I have to point out that the idea the Daily Mail is a liberal newspaper would be regarded as completely outlandish by a Brit (whether they like the paper or not). It’s held up as the single most right-wing paper (with the possible exception of the Express) in the country. It’s fairly notorious for its support of fascism in the 1930s as its owner (Lord Rothermere) was a friend of Hitler and Mussolini. Katie Hopkins is the British equivalent of Ann Coulter so there’s nothing very surprising about an article bashing multiculturalism in the Daily Mail proving popular.
Now none of that is to say whether I agree or disagree with the article, I just think for context it’s worth pointing out how the Daily Mail is perceived in the UK as this could give a slightly misleading impression.
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