Forums › Life › Politics, Media & Current Events › majority rules
The recent elections in Denmark showed, once more, that fear is what gouverns the modern man.
And I’m a bit pissed off!
The extreme right “Dansk folkeparti” gained two more seats in the Parlement. Why? Nobody reacts when they say that muslim culture is ‘middle age’. (How dare they they say that!!) Nobody lifts an eyebrow when thay say that you have to re-educate the muslim man. Racisme is widely accepted, it appears.
Well, this time around, a new party entered the stage, and I thought they were fucking good. The party was founded on (anarco-) humanistic values and they really had something new and positive to offer. Basically, it was about freedom of the individual and doing politics in order to protect the weakest in the society, meaning the prisoners, the mentally ill, the immigrants, the artists, the people who for one reason or another doesn’t want to offer their labour on the free market (for instance, people who wants to do unpaid, volontary work). Finally someone wanting to make politics for human rights! Someone who stated that the individual should have the freedom to make personal, autonomous choices. Self-gouvernment, in other words. The ONLY way to be authentically global!
(and after that little speech…)
This party couldn’t even get the 2% acquired to enter the Parlement. Instead the right wing has grown out of proportion. Because people are so afraid of managing their own life. No wonder that they turn more and more fearful. They cling onto the few things that seem solid nowadays:
Populist opinions and material things. Money.
Populism is the opium of the people.
Meanwhile, I realize that democracy is not doing me any good. I always ‘loose’ and if I don’t, a lot of other people will. And this is the model that western countries try to ‘export’ to poor, primitive countries? How come that this has become the new religion? It is not freedom, it is a cage. I’m sick of the right wing trying to control my life. You wouldn’t believe how much money the Danish society spend on administration and control of the individual.
I’m out of here. Officially
you’re dead right…
denmark isn’t alone in europe in the swing to extreme xenophobia… and it’s not resticted to non-euopeans… i’m wondering how long it will be until the UK starts imposing some heafty restictions on even those people lucky enough to have been born within Fortress Europe…
the talk from Bliar et al usually sees ‘asylum’ lumped into the same sentance as social evils like ‘crime / terrorism’… which creates a subliminal link of negativity in the public mind
thank fuck the high profile nazi’s in this country (UK Independance Party / BNP) have managed to stumble into plenty of ridiculous situations… almost like a bunch of clowns… which isn’t to say that there is nothing to fear…
BNP were trying to recruit on school gates in Devon last year 😡 but we mostly put them down… it’s an ongoing battle
have strength
i think the current form of “democracy” will always be stacked towards conservative, authoritarian and xenophobic types – for the simple reason that these types revel in the competitive nature of the political process; the party banner, stirring speeches, hierarchies and power struggles, in some cases the paramilitary or behind the scenes work.
Of course conventional parties tories and labour do not usually beat up or shoot their opponents, but they will also try and consolidate their power through the ownership or businesses or funding of trade unions, who will dictate their views by who they employ or whether they work or down tools.
The extreme right may come across as a bunch of (still vicious) clowns, but these are often just a show.
The real danger comes from people like the civil servant who hides his support for an extreme party but quietly destroys the application form of someone from an ethnic minority (sorry, your file has got mislaid), the employer who subtly refuses to employ blacks and women whilst not openly being racist, or the 60 year old electronics expert who tells the locals he is teaching a young lad he has befriended how to build an amateur radio set when he is in fact showing the lad how to extract chemicals from fireworks and make a remote-controlled nail bomb 🙁
These things aren’t wild paranoid conspiracy theories but real incidents that have happened in Englands green and pleasant land.and presumably happen in other countries as well.
OTOH the problem the progressive movement has is that many of us do not vote because we have either lost faith in the democratic process or there is no-one worth voting for – and we also tend not to form “legitimate” organisations like political parties with hierarchies etc, nor do we yet have the clout to own our own businesses or other groups that interact fully with wider society…
our numbers are there but our voice isn’t being heard in the “proper channels” – hardly surprising there is paranoia about “civil conflict”
The real danger comes from people like the civil servant who hides his support for an extreme party but quietly destroys the application form of someone from an ethnic minority (sorry, your file has got mislaid), the employer who subtly refuses to employ blacks and women whilst not openly being racist, or the 60 year old electronics expert who tells the locals he is teaching a young lad he has befriended how to build an amateur radio set when he is in fact showing the lad how to extract chemicals from fireworks and make a remote-controlled nail bomb 🙁
I agree that the silent prejudice is equally damaging, but don’t forget that the vocal and upfront racists of the BNP / NF ilk are also part of the chain…dropping leaflets full of hatred justified with lies… and are trying to form the same heirarchical organisations that monkey the establishment…
the same kinds of organisation we would shy away from, but that can provide a cohesive voice that councillors / MPs / police etc respond to (because they are familar with the format and because if a number of people are represented there is weight to an argumnet) in a different way…
when the NF rebrand as the ‘legitimate’ BNP they suddenly have a platform to be heard from 🙁
while ‘we’ are just individuals who don’t agree with a lot of the current direction of society, but just deal with things as best we can in an autonomous way, it’s very hard to have any impact of influence
true – in normal society there actually aren’t many “legit” politicians who represent us; apart from “Green Derek” in Norwich and perhaps some others! where I live the greens don’t even bother fielding a candidate as they would only lose their deposit.
OTOH I can’t see how the current wave of ravers can hope to have any clout in wider society unless they contribute something more than just a few parties (what is going on in SE London seems good and stuff like synergy project, ambient picnic and your planned farm project).
Something needs to be done but it doesn’t seem to be happening quickly enough; maybe not a political party but more grass-roots projects which unite communities. Lots of people on the scene have talked but there is as yet little action…
But it turns into quite a spectacle. In the Bundesland Saxsen (is that how it is spelled?), the nazis got 10 % of the votes at the recent elections. Legal power, not just a circus.
I noticed this as well – unfortunately it doesn’t surprise me as there has always been an undercurrent of support for these groups in Europe and economic problems / high unemployment levels recently in Germany – things very easily blamed on “immigrants”.
by clowns I mean the people who are often so abhorrent (thinly disguised football hooligans) and who make a lot of shouting and noise about this – often still being involved in crime that gets them in jail and disqualified from election.
the more dangerous ones I referred to are the “middle europe” kind of extreme right supporters from from the middle classes – they also vote for these parties (or in some cases their “middle class” equivalents) but do not shout about it so much.
They don’t dress up like soccer hooligans and often they will “happily” work even with ethnic minorities and people they detest (whilst quietly trying to undermine them), some have even tried to infiltrate the rave scene.
Or is this perhaps more a British thing – where people can quietly hate someone for years but not make it very obvious? Until recently in Britain everyone (irrespective of skin colour, original ancestry) bottled up their emotions, “kept themselves to themselves”. (the dark side of “the stiff upper lip”!)
The saddest part of this is it has happened as the EU expanded ostensibly to make a larger community – its as if every nation out of 25 is so angry at having to share resources or accept others (even from these same nations) that this rise in nationalism has occured. Any idea how we can combat this?
Nothing like a bit of positive action 🙂
wherever you are in the UK there will be black-led organisations and community groups near you which are effecting grass-roots change for people from diverse backgrounds…
if you want to do something to counter prejudice you can always offer some of your skills for free to your local Racial Equality Councils, community development groups, family groups, refugee support projects etc…
don’t be embarresd to offer 😮
helping to design publicity materials, writing an article, doing some research, giving IT advice, fundraising, sharing expertise, writing a letter, even giving someone an occasional lift in a car all makes a difference … everyone has something to offer 😉 you’d be surprised how quickly an offer of help gets taken up 😮
and get any ideas you have heard…
just as an example
there was a sort of carnival / fair in the local park last summer… I suggested to the organisers that some of the big banners and welcome signs could include different languages… they agreed that having ‘welcome’ in massive letters in urdu, cantonese, pashtu and hindi gives a clear impression of being including for everyone… one small step
get active in your community basically!
it’s not like you’re doing it for free cos it might help keep people sweet when you’ve been a noisy raver 😎
there was a sort of carnival / fair in the local park last summer… I suggested to the organisers that some of the big banners and welcome signs could include different languages… they agreed that having ‘welcome’ in massive letters in urdu, cantonese, pashtu and hindi gives a clear impression of being including for everyone… one small step
get active in your community basically!
it’s not like you’re doing it for free cos it might help keep people sweet when you’ve been a noisy raver 😎
and thats a particularly good idea – looking at this from the perspective of a British Asian…
prejudice amongst the older generations is not confined to “middle class whites” at all!
A lot of the elders amongst of British Asian and black families actively discourage their young people (teenagers/young adults) from getting involved in stuff like carnivals, fairs etc because “its a hedonistic distraction from religion / studies / family obligations” or even “it encourages bad western values” (the hysterical caricatures of older people found on asian and black comedy dramas aren’t too far off the mark!)
The presence of those banners will go relatively unnoticed by most younger people who normally speak English; OTOH even the sight of a familiar script may give a signal to the elders that these community events aren’t as bad as they are made out to be!
As an idealistic foreign language teacher, I see a problem with the creation of a larger european community by simply juxtaposing the European nations. International culture is based on banal nationalism. For instance, the cultural exchange between Denmark and say, France, comes across as the potential miscommunication between two individuals (or, alternatively, two companies) each representing a ‘culture’, meaning a national culture. “I react like this because of my culture, he reacts like that because of his…”
This banal nationalism is much harder to get by because it is hidden. We can all laugh about stereotypes, because they are so obviously false, but the idea of person’s identity being somewhat connected to his nation, and the subtle idea that the nation is the ultimate institution which determines our way of thinking, defines how we view culture: one culture = one language = one state. We have to get from the idea that language and culture are inherent.
I’ll probably soon go to one of the european countries to work as a teacher. I have been asked to bring stuff from my ‘culture’ : postcards, maps, pictures of the Queen, etc. Which I, of course, will refuse. I will not train teenagers to be tourists. But I will bring some stuff though, that means something to me (in that way, I hope to show that ‘culture’ is something personal and individual): Poetry that I like. Music (oh yeah!), pictures of my family perhaps, and other things that I treasure. Nothing else.
We have to meet each other as individuals, not as nations. And that is actually the REAL definition of intercultural competence, which have so often been mis-interpreted.
interesting points
i do think that anthropologically speaking, behaviour is governed by where our ancestors lived
my partner is swedish and she finds that there is a real lack of sponteneity in sweden… even a group of young people out for a few drinks in town on a saturday night won’t deviate from there planned itinery
“but we haven’t planned it!”
is the normal response to “shall we do something else?”
and is a large part of why she moved away
looking at how people would have lived in Sweden, even as recently as 60 years ago, the reasons why become apparent: if you don’t plan accordingly for a long, cold winter in a little populated area you are likely to freeze, starve, become trapped etc… and this has fed into to forming typical behaviour / outlook of people throughout the swedish society, even tho with today’s technology it is no longer necessary to plan so meticulously
of course indiviuals are all different and have their own personal ‘culture’ of living, but the some of the things we have in common (kinds of food, national holidays, whether or not forgetting to adress an employer as Sir / Madam will win you frinds or get you sacked) do affect who we are…
I think we should be proud of aspects of our heritage (by we I mean everyone) but we should also be aiming to learn about other people’s common cultural heritage and be incorporating it into our own… the idea that ‘culture’ is rigid is ridiculous… the cultures which are enduring are those which evolve
i do think that anthropologically speaking, behaviour is governed by where our ancestors lived
my partner is swedish and she finds that there is a real lack of sponteneity in sweden… even a group of young people out for a few drinks in town on a saturday night won’t deviate from there planned itinery
“but we haven’t planned it!”
is the normal response to “shall we do something else?”
and is a large part of why she moved away
looking at how people would have lived in Sweden, even as recently as 60 years ago, the reasons why become apparent: if you don’t plan accordingly for a long, cold winter in a little populated area you are likely to freeze, starve, become trapped etc… and this has fed into to forming typical behaviour / outlook of people throughout the swedish society, even tho with today’s technology it is no longer necessary to plan so meticulously
this is actually very similar to Asian society (although the extremes of nature in this case come from heat rather than cold!) – but certainly also creates a conservatism and “fear of the unknown”
but in the case of Sweden there is one thing I am always curious about (and would be happy to hear from any others who live there)
I have been under the impression there was a period from the 1960s to early 1980s when Sweden in particular was fairly liberal, inasmuch as hedonistic lifestyles, the use of soft drugs etc was concerned.
Yet recently I see reports that there was a change in societys views in the 1970s/80s and now a very hardline attitude is now taken towards drug use to the point of people being hauled into the Police station by force for just “looking stoned!” – anyone know what happened here?
in many ways sweden is forward thinking… on the environment, on education, on welfare, on political transparency etc
the idea of a ‘drug free society’ was welcomed as being idealistic, rather than imposing on individual freedoms… which i guess says something about the levels of trust people have in their politicians and police :confused:
and to a greater extent it seems to have achieved its’ aim… the vast majority of young swedish people do believe that using illegal drugs will have serious health implications and frown upon peers who experiement…although drinking yourself to death in a sauna isn’t all that uncommon 🙁
and I guess that while drug use is very low in sweden, misinformation is very high, and the policy hasn’t stopped people wanting to alter their conciousness
in reality people who want ot get high just go to Denmark for the weekend (or the UK permenantly 🙂 )…
and as far as being arrested for “looking stoned”… it doesn’t happen: this is a police power that may be used when someone is suspected of having committed another crime (mugging, shoplifting etc)… and tends to be directed at heroin addicts etc (and has definate similarities to the thinking behind Blunkett’s forced drug testing for anyone who is arrested an suspected of drug use)
but don’t go mushroom picking whatever you do… a hallucenogen possesion offence can land you up to 6 months incarcerated re-hab 😮
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Forums › Life › Politics, Media & Current Events › majority rules
