How dare Eurocrats call UK racist while the Far Right's marching in their backyard?

Blackleaf

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Across parts of Germany, running battles between immigrants and neo-Nazis are becoming so frequent that they no longer lead the news.

In France and Belgium, Jewish schools and synagogues require armed guards. In Toulouse, a mosque has been burned to the ground. In Sweden, neo-Nazi thugs warned of a ‘year of violence’ against immigrants.

Racist violence across much of Europe is now becoming almost routine.

So which country has the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe decided to accuse of ‘anti-foreigner sentiment’? You guessed it. The European Commission on Racism and Intolerance, which reports to the Council, says it is alarmed at the ‘intolerant political discourse in the UK, particularly focusing on immigration’...

How dare these Eurocrats call Britain racist while the Far Right's marching in their own backyard, writes DANIEL HANNAN


In France and Belgium, Jewish schools and synagogues require armed guards

Racist violence across much of Europe is now becoming almost routine

The European Commission on Racism and Intolerance says it is alarmed at the ‘intolerant political discourse in the UK'


By Daniel Hannan, Conservative MEP for South East England and former Leave campaigner
6 October 2016


Daniel Hannan MEP

Across parts of Germany, running battles between immigrants and neo-Nazis are becoming so frequent that they no longer lead the news.

In France and Belgium, Jewish schools and synagogues require armed guards. In Toulouse, a mosque has been burned to the ground. In Sweden, neo-Nazi thugs warned of a ‘year of violence’ against immigrants.

Racist violence across much of Europe is now becoming almost routine.


The European Commission on Racism and Intolerance says it is alarmed at the ‘intolerant political discourse in the UK, particularly focusing on immigration’

So which country has the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe decided to accuse of ‘anti-foreigner sentiment’? You guessed it. The European Commission on Racism and Intolerance, which reports to the Council, says it is alarmed at the ‘intolerant political discourse in the UK, particularly focusing on immigration’.

Seriously? Political discourse in the UK? Let’s compare how politicians talk here with what passes unremarked in other EU states.

Czech prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka says: ‘To be honest, we don’t want a large Muslim population here.’ His Slovak counterpart, Robert Fico, is just as blunt: ‘Islam has no place in Slovakia.’

In France, Nicolas Sarkozy calls Islamic dress ‘a provocation’, and promises laws against it. (And, of course, a ban on the wearing of burkas on French beaches sparked huge rows over the summer.)


Nicolas Sarkozy has described Islamic dress a 'provocation', and has promised laws against it

In Britain, by contrast, Theresa May was cheered by her party members yesterday when she said: ‘I want us to be a country where it doesn’t matter where you were born.’

By what measure is ours an intolerant country? To be sure, we have our bigots, as every nation does. But against whom are we being so harshly judged?

Look at the strength of authoritarian, anti-immigrant parties across Europe.


Members of Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn shout slogans and hold Greek flags

In Austria, the Far-Right candidate got half the vote at the last presidential election, which is now being re-run after irregularities in the poll. In France, Marine Le Pen’s Front National leads in some national polls. In Greece, an unashamedly neo-Nazi party came third at the last election.

Nativist parties — that is, ones that argue for the rights of established inhabitants of a nation over immigrants — are polling solidly in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and many post-Communist states. Here, though, the British National Party barely registers. It has never come close to winning an MP, and currently has just two councillors.

We keep being told, usually by Remainers, that our EU referendum was ‘all about immigration’. In fact, the polls showed throughout that the top issue for Leave voters was democracy and the supremacy of the British Parliament.

If you want a referendum that really was ‘all about immigration’, look at Hungary, where 98 per cent of those who went to the polls have just voted against an EU plan to settle 1,200 refugees on their territory. The prime minister, Viktor Orban, said migrants were ‘over-running’ Hungary. In Britain, 1,200 immigrants enter the country every 30 hours.


Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said migrants were 'over-running' the country

Of course, to say that other places have a worse record than ours is hardly a knockout defence. Any racial abuse is shameful, and Britain has its share of dunderheads, just like anywhere else.

Still, be honest: does the Council of Europe’s report match your experience? Do you, in your daily life, see evidence of what the BBC has taken to calling an ‘epidemic’ of racism?

If you’re old enough to remember the Seventies or Eighties, you must have noticed the improvement in race relations.

You can measure it in any way you like: the decline in violence, the increased approval of mixed-race marriages, the rising number of multi-ethnic neighbourhoods, the success of ethnic minorities in our professions.

Ours is a tolerant, comfortable, multi-racial society, which is one of many reasons that migrants prefer to come here.


A minority of Remain supporters spent the campaign dismissing all anti-EU sentiment as ‘racist’

What is it based on, this idea that we are in the grip of some new xenophobia unleashed by the referendum? Much of it comes from people’s determination to see what they want. A minority of Remain supporters spent the campaign dismissing all anti-EU sentiment as ‘racist’.

By the end, they had convinced themselves, and were determined to pounce on any news item as evidence of what they took to calling on social media ‘#PostRefRacism’. Three incidents were widely reported straight after the vote as evidence of an ugly new mood: an attack on a tapas bar in South London; a demonstration in Newcastle calling for foreigners to be repatriated; and graffiti outside a Polish community centre.

It emerged that the attack on the tapas bar had, in fact, been a burglary, and that the idiots in Newcastle had been holding the same demonstration every weekend since long before the vote. As for the graffiti, no one yet knows whether it had anything to do with the referendum.

That, though, hasn’t stopped some irreconcilables from continuing to use all three episodes as evidence of what they want to believe. They are thrown at me several times a day by pro-EU campaigners who accuse me of complicity in violence for playing a leading role in the Leave campaign.

It’s nothing new. Two years ago, an Italian constituent of mine, a waiter, was horribly murdered in Kent. Immediately, his death was blamed on Eurosceptics. The leader of the Socialist MEPs’ group said that he was a victim of David Cameron’s anti-EU rhetoric. Not long afterwards, it emerged that the killers were a Lithuanian gang.


Some of the ‘reports’ of hate crime after the Brexit vote appear to have been people letting off steam after the vote, including some complaining about Nigel Farage (above)

Did the Socialist leader apologise to David Cameron? Did he admit that, now he had the full facts, he could see that the incident made a case for stronger controls on who entered the country from the EU, rather than blaming racist Britons?

Of course not. People are very good at fitting facts into their existing prejudices.

One such ‘fact’, endlessly quoted, is that hate crimes have ‘risen by 57 per cent’ since the referendum. A moment’s reflection tells us that this figure is implausible and, sure enough, it turns out to be ludicrously misleading.

The police have a website that encourages people to report hate crimes. In the first four days after the vote, 85 people logged such incidents, up from 54 people in the corresponding period the previous month. The numbers had been rising for some time, because the website was more widely advertised. As yet, there has been no increase in the number of incidents that have triggered prosecutions.

Some of the ‘reports’ appear to have been people letting off steam after the vote, including some complaining about Nigel Farage. Yet, under police guidelines, all such reports have to be recorded as ‘hate crime’ incidents.

The police press release from which the 57 per cent figure was taken was, in fairness, quite clear about what it meant: ‘This should not be read as a national increase in hate crime of 57 per cent but an increase in reporting through one mechanism.’


People of every background campaigned on both sides in the referendum, but many seen determined to tell us that we are a narrow, nasty, prejudiced nation

In other words, an extra 31 people during the 96 hours after the vote complained to police, triggering no extra prosecutions. And yet that 57 per cent figure has assumed almost canonical force among Remoaners. Simply to question it is taken as evidence that you are a racist yourself.

People of every background campaigned on both sides in the referendum. There were several Leave organisations run by Brits of Commonwealth background: Bangladeshis for Britain, Africans for Britain, Sikhs for Britain and so on. We also had support from people of Continental European origins who had come to see the EU as a racket.

Such people don’t fit the anti-Brexit, pro-Brussels narrative. Many broadcasters, in particular, are determined to tell us that we are a narrow, nasty, prejudiced nation — and won’t be distracted by inconvenient facts.

Here, though, is the most inconvenient fact of all. The rise of actual bigotry in Europe is being exacerbated by two EU policies: the euro, which has caused needless poverty and unemployment, especially among southern European nations who have found themselves growing ever closer to the breadline; and the Schengen agreement on open borders, which has left countries unable to regulate migratory flows.

This has meant that the hundreds of thousands arriving in Europe from Africa and the Middle East have to a large degree been able to travel northwards and westwards unhindered.

So, far from soothing national antagonisms, it is Brussels that is stoking them. When we leave, we shall be a more global, more outward-looking and, yes, more tolerant country.

Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP. His book What Next will be published next month by Head of Zeus.
 

Dexter Sinister

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The Far Right marching in the European Commission's back yard doesn't mean Britain isn't racist, those are quite unrelated circumstances.
 

Blackleaf

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Everyone's racist except those who aren't.

A racist in the eyes of most Eurocrats is anyone who doesn't want their beautiful little European country as part of a corrupt, undemocratic, sclerotic, job-destroying, declining union, in which their country's ancient culture and quaint medieval towns are being swamped by immigrants because of the EU's stupid free movement laws. That's why this report picks on Britain: because of Brexit.

When I heard about this report a few days ago I thought it is likely to be nonsense. And then when I heard it's an EU report I knew it's DEFINITELY nonsense.
 

Remington1

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No matter how it's spin or denied, racism is on the rise, and it was rising pre 'The Donald', he's just facilitated yelling about it, he's made it okay to not only yell it out loud, the man is on television for the world to join in. I think the trigger was 9/11, even though it was dormant. Pre 9/11, prejudices had become such a distasteful thing that most people were willing to shove it to the back burner and try to live in harmony (there's always exceptions). Then the clear prejudice horrors of Paris, USA, Belgium, Germany, etc... started happening, and this time the racism was directed at the ones who had tried to live in this 'joy and bliss' of tolerance !!! It was clearly a betrayal and the media was there to showcase it to all. In my opinion, the effect has been what we are seeing now!! How can this be reversed and people reminded that the huge prejudices we have seen was done by terrorists, and that we can return to living side-by-side in harmony. There should have been a lot lot more visibility from communities coming out and condemning these attacks, similar to what we would have done if their centres, events, gatherings would have been attacked and people murdered in the middle of Boston, Paris, etc.. !!I Instead of watching young men at a bar in Paris saying they understood why it happened and they didn't see it as wrong !! Prejudices is a strange phenomenon.
 

Blackleaf

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No matter how it's spin or denied, racism is on the rise, and it was rising pre 'The Donald', he's just facilitated yelling about it, he's made it okay to not only yell it out loud, the man is on television for the world to join in. I think the trigger was 9/11, even though it was dormant. Pre 9/11, prejudices had become such a distasteful thing that most people were willing to shove it to the back burner and try to live in harmony (there's always exceptions). Then the clear prejudice horrors of Paris, USA, Belgium, Germany, etc... started happening, and this time the racism was directed at the ones who had tried to live in this 'joy and bliss' of tolerance !!! It was clearly a betrayal and the media was there to showcase it to all. In my opinion, the effect has been what we are seeing now!! How can this be reversed and people reminded that the huge prejudices we have seen was done by terrorists, and that we can return to living side-by-side in harmony. There should have been a lot lot more visibility from communities coming out and condemning these attacks, similar to what we would have done if their centres, events, gatherings would have been attacked and people murdered in the middle of Boston, Paris, etc.. !!I Instead of watching young men at a bar in Paris saying they understood why it happened and they didn't see it as wrong !! Prejudices is a strange phenomenon.

If racism's on the rise then it's all the fault of the Left and their disastrous policy of multiculturalism.
 

Jinentonix

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The Far Right marching in the European Commission's back yard doesn't mean Britain isn't racist, those are quite unrelated circumstances.
True, but when you have a bunch of dead bodies buried in your backyard, the smart money says you shut the hell up about the dead bodies buried in your neighbour's backyard.
 

Blackleaf

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COFFEE HOUSE

The great conundrum for the Islamophobia lobby


Douglas Muray
6 October 2016
The Spectator



It is a shame that ‘subversion’ of the state is no longer a crime in Britain. One result of it not being so is that people have become blind to the idea that it is even going on.

The other day I wrote about the ‘academics’ who had signed a letter to the Guardian insisting that Britain should not have a counter-terrorism policy, a view which is increasingly echoed at the top of the Labour Party. Interestingly enough, since pointing out that the letter’s signatories included people who are not only not academics, but extremists, I have learnt a most interesting thing. A signatory informs me that letter was not just signed by that friend of ‘Jihadi John’, Asim Qureshi, but was in fact in part organised by him. That is right, the man who believed the head-hacker of Isis was a ‘beautiful’ person actually wrote to the signatories of that letter inviting them to sign it.

One wonders what the families of the men Asim’s friend tortured and beheaded think about him trying to direct UK counter-terrorism policy? Or of the Guardian newspaper being either duped or complicit in giving such a man an uncritical control of their pages? And did the signatories of that letter – low-grade occupants of low-grade posts though most of them are – sign such a letter knowing that it came from such a source? During the Second World War or the Cold War, if a Nazi or Communist activist was openly trying to subvert the state a view would have been taken about their activities. Perhaps such a view will one day be possible again.

In the meantime, the pro-beheading lobby is assisted by a number of other useful idiots helping to grease their progress. For instance earlier this week a group from the Council of Europe which calls itself the ‘European Commission against Racism and Intolerance’ (ECRI) has slammed Britain for an alleged upsurge of ‘anti-foreigner sentiment’ and tied this to Brexit. In particular the group highlights a rise in that mythical beast ‘Islamophobia’. According to the group’s chair (one Christian Ahlund), ‘It is no coincidence that racist violence is on the rise in the UK at the same time as we see worrying examples of intolerance and hate speech in the newspapers, online and even among politicians.’

Mr Ahlund’s group appear uninterested in the fact that the real, serious attacks on Muslims in Britain are in fact carried out by other Muslims. It was not a British newspaper editor or politician who murdered a Muslim shopkeeper in Glasgow before Easter this year. Nor was it any columnist who slaughtered an Imam in Rochdale in February. These real, actual crimes were committed by other Muslims who thought the Muslims they killed were not the right sort of Muslim. But this attempt to blame the papers for an alleged upsurge in ‘Islamophobia’ points to a fascinating conundrum for dim-witted groups like the ECRI.

Because when, say, a gang of Muslim terrorists massacre 130 people in a night in Paris it is likely to make the newspapers. And though ECRI might wish that two jihadists slitting the throat of a Catholic priest while he says mass near Rouen should receive no coverage, it is the job of newspapers to report such news. Likewise, when a suicide bomber detonated, earlier this year, just beside the headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels I suppose the newspapers could be ordered not to report it. But it would be a very strange world in which the news of regular Islamist terror attacks was not reported. Though I suppose it would mean that there was more room for the papers to run pieces like the Guardian’s, endlessly giving oxygen to the people who support terror, while failing to report the terror itself. How Jihadi John’s friends must laugh.

The great conundrum for the Islamophobia lobby | Coffee House
 
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Blackleaf

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No... It's actually the result of little mind plus big mouth - then when you let them near mummy's computer when they should be hard at work in the coal mines....

It's multiculturalism that causes it - the Left's policy of bringing in every Tom, Dick and Abdul, usually from Third World or poorer Europeans nations, for no other reason but to bring in cheap labour, so that employers don't have to pay as much in wages and to keep the ordinary, working class oik poor. This in itself naturally breeds resentment amongst the natives of that country, but what further breeds resentment is the cultural practices that such immigrants bring with them - whether sexually molesting women or punching women to the floor for not being covered up enough if you're a Muslim to killing and eating the local swans if you're a Pole.

So it is, most definitely, the Left's failed and disastrous policy of mulitculturalism that breeds racism and feeds the Far Right.
 

bobnoorduyn

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From what, exactly?


Though sociology is probably more art than science, I do remember in one text where existing societies can only tolerate a certain rate of immigration before its comfort level is exceeded. The rate would be variable as well depending on the social strata, demographic and ethnic mix and makeup of the existing society and that of the immigrants along with other factors such as the economic state of the host country. Signs like "Irishmen need not apply" did appear on this continent.


I think that point has been reached or exceeded in many EU countries, their governments just haven't realized it but the people have.
 

Murphy

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Apr 12, 2013
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The Brits don't like whites. Sounds silly, eh? That's why Muslims are poring into the UK. The Brits, despite what BL says, are being taken over. And Britain wants it. Brexit was a command - an aya that told the Brits to dump Europa and stand with Mo and the gang.

We should have selfsame come along shortly and post the quote. BL will deny, but that's to be expected. Denial is always the first stage of any invasion.

Come shop at my new London store! "Bagpipes and Berkas".

Cue the wailing imam...