Lash wrote:The feeling can still prowl around unspoken--to me, that is far worse. Let them speak--and answer them convincingly--don't run them off to hate more.
There you've got a point, in general. When I read German discussions I also think, oh, you have something coming still; in the Netherlands, too, a lot of ways to discuss migration/multiculturalism were taboo, and anyone who'd complain about their neighbourhoods being 'lost' (to them), for example, was branded a certain way. That was stifling, and had the whole issue blowing up with Fortuyn's rise.
Perhaps allowing people to express their problems, their grief or resentment perhaps, with society changing around them, will in the long run prevent them from turning to the far right. (In the German elections this year, leftist Lafontaine was excoriated by the more moderate Greens and Socialdemocrats for "targeting far-right voters" in his rhetorics. I'd say it's a
good thing to target far-right voters. How are you otherwise ever going to deplete the far-right's support?)
For example, the discussion of a German "Leitkultur" (see
this article for quickie intro). The new conservative chief of parliament again raised the question of "what makes Germany German", specifying gender equality as a point where there was trouble with some of the new communities: "The right to equality for women, culturally based on our historical experience, and the right of the man to dominate in other cultural circles, also culturally based, cannot exist in one and the same society". For that, he was lambasted by the head of the Greens, who said that he was just "unleashing controversies" and that "The concept of a defining German culture is nothing more than an attack on minorities in our country."
Wow - its that kind of stifling, numbing suppression of any discussion on multicultural problems thats going to get Germany its own Pim Fortuyn some day - and he might not be a hedonistic, socially liberal libertarian.
But yes, there's the opposite too. Making clear from the start that some things (like calling for someone's assassination, or for the deportation of all migrants, or etc) are just not socially acceptable from the start does help in defining a kind of a common basic principles (and lord knows that in our ever more culturally/politically fragmented society, we need some). And it can also be a good way to stop the 'leaking' of hateful positions into the mainstream discourse.
After all, taboos are not always bad - most all of us would be in agreement, I suppose, on taboos on expressing sexual attraction to children, say. And to enforce it, we draw arbitrary lines - no sexual depiction of people under X years old, for example. To prevent the line from being ever shifted, kinda.
Its just a question of where you draw the line, and what you consider so far out, so dangerous or hateful, that you put it in the same category. In a country like Germany, or other countries where the Holocaust ravaged, I can imagine that denying it ever happened falls in that category.
Funnily enough, this kind of line-drawing, this kind of concept of necessary censure, is exactly what that German conservative was talking about too. Cultural difference is fine, but let one thing be clear: treating women like second-rank people is not to be tolerated. Like he said according to the article: "there should be a visible common thread that holds society together. [A] society needs to come to an agreement that there is at least a minimal level of "orientation" that should apply to everyone, regardless of ethnic or cultural background."
The Germans (and Belgians etc, dont actually know about the Dutch) decided, even before the migrants came, that a minimal level of "orientation" that should apply to everyone in the country includes the acknowledgement of what happened in the Holocaust, the biggest mass crime ever committed in the country.
. There were other ethnically based teams we could have played for but we played for Croatia SC because we were all mates at school and we joined up together. None of us thought it was odd.Good Grief,Y'all !! Never in my life have I seen such bile and hatred from such a young person. I was just out crusin' the A2k posts,when
