Merry Andrew wrote:Why Belgium and not Germany or Holland? (In the US Belgium isn't much in the news so I'm apologetically ignorant of the situation there.)
Well, I'm in danger of putting my foot in my mouth, because everyone always says that their country is OK, that it couldnt happen with them ... whereas the Van Gogh murder and the ongoing chase for "terrorist cells" shows that theres enough **** going on in Holland.
But, to mention some aspects (in random order and a sketchy way - it's just my impressions):
In Flanders, the extreme-right Flemish Block is powerful. It has gradually and consistently surged from a marginal party to the largest party of Flanders overall (!) in the last elections. Its success is a reflection of very strongly entrenched xenophoboc prejudice, and a wide-spread parochial type of intolerance, which has made life very hard for immigrants.
In Holland, of course, we had the List Fortuyn, and there certainly has been no lack of racism, prejudice and exclusion here. But comparing Pim Fortuyn with the Flemish Block's Flip de Winter, there's a number of striking differences. Fortuyn was a libertarian, and as a gay man from a Catholic family, parochial "nest smell" was an ambivalent matter to him. His appeal to Dutch nationalism was one to a secular, modern nation that should defend its progressive, liberal values against conservative Muslim intrusion. The Flemish Block, on the other hand, has traditionally been a very provincially conservative party, that appealed to the desire for closed communities.
Fortuyn actively appealed to Hindustanis and blacks as well, and his proposal was to close the borders entirely, but also to accept and legalise everyone who'd already made it inside, including illegal immigrants. The Flemish Block only started putting up window-dressing minority candidates in the last elections, and has very long simply argued against foreigners per se, appealing to an each-culture-for-its-own world view. Predictably, Fortuyn and his followers, in their heyday, stridently rejected any comparison with De Winter. I'd bet that this difference in cultural orientation is also reflected in different on-the-street relations.
Whereas Dutch minority militance seems to focus on small and rather amateuristic violent cells with grotesque plans (collecting maps of the parliament etc), minority protest in Flanders has flamed up before in more large-scale, if less ultra-violent forms, especially in Antwerp, from the odd street battle to demonstrations. So the problem seems to be different: apathy at large with marginal extremists resorting to murder in Holland, versus an absence of such extremist violence there, but a much wider-spread active discontent.
Antwerp is also the city where Abou Jahjah, the radical Muslim leader, became big: not as a devout Islamist, but more as a Malcolm X-type minority nationalist (see this thread:
'Belgian Malcolm X' seeks office). The Paris riots, done by angry and not particularly devout or ideological youths (with the Muslim clergy actually trying to stop them, and play a bridge role) fits right into such a Malcolm X orientation. Perhaps significantly (?), Jahjah tried his luck in Dutch politics as well and bombed, fizzling out as quickly as he came.
As for Germany, they seem to have done better than either Holland or Belgium, and definitely than France, in many ways.
Both in Germany and Holland, there's less ghetto-forming than in France. Migrant communities mostly centre in old neighbourhoods ringing downtown, rather than in the literally distant, separate high-rise suburbs France has.
Measures of integration in Germany (education, employment) are better or the same as Holland's. Apart from Turkish participation in the traditional May Day riots in Berlin's Kreuzberg neighbourhood, I don't know of any major public unrest of note to date. I also know of no influential radical-minority organisations in Germany.
Likewise, far-right parties have been largely unsuccessful except for on state level. Where the neo-nazis have done well on state level, it is interestingly enough in (East-German) states that actually have few immigrants, so little chance of it resulting in clashes between the groups.
Furthermore, in Germany, the largest immigrant groups, as far as I know, are Turks, people from the former Yugoslavia and people from the former Soviet Union. I dont know about Germany, but in Holland the Turkish minority is known for its discipline and focus on family and work. The result is perhaps the most insular minority community (after the Chinese), but also one whose second and third generation have caused a lot less trouble than the socially fragmented Moroccans.
Of course, if the next riot breaks out in Hamburg, I'll eat crow ...
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