Lelijke Europeanen (Slate)

Tue Apr 30 00:13:10 CEST 2002

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Beste Lijsters,

Als reactie op het artikel dat Hein doorstuurde: De haat tegen Moslims is in
de VS inderdaad nauwelijks aanwezig. Dat komt volgens mij met name omdat
religie hier dogmatisch als 'moreel goed' wordt beoordeeld. Iets slechts kan
volgens de gemiddelde Amerikaan nooit van religie komen. Zelfs het misbruik
van kinderen door priesters werd in een talkshow op CNBC toegeschreven aan
de opkomst van het  secularisme in de maatschappij (dat al die vreselijke
dingen als homosexualiteit en dergelijke bevordert...).

Men wil hier niet zien dat het fundamentalistisch moslimgeloof kan leiden
tot intolerantie en terrorisme. Zoals ook het fundamentalisme in het
christendom vaak tot intolerantie en soms tot terrorisme leidt, zie de
anti-abortus strijders ('Army of God') in de VS.
De concensus is hier dat terroristen het geloof misbruiken. Er is dan ook
geen voedingsbodem voor haat tegen gelovigen. Erg goed uiteraard, maar de
kop wordt daardoor soms wel diep in het zand gestoken. Al het kwaad in de
wereld wordt veroorzaakt door terrorisme en drugs(handel), die meestal samen
gaan. Het leidt tot de beroemde simplificatie als 'good and evil', 'you are
either with us or against us'.

Het is voor de Amerikanen dan ook onbegrijpelijk dat Europa zo
'pro-Palestijns' is. Israel is immers een 'ally' in de strijd tegen het
terrorisme. Het is schelden in de kerk als je beweert dat Israel en Amerika
(met zijn pro-israel politiek) eerder het terrorisme aanwakkeren.

BUsh en vooral Powel staan op dit onderwerp trouwens dichter bij Europa dan
de gemiddelde Amerikaan. De Democraten voeren dan ook stevig oppositie tegen
het in hun ogen inconsequente handelen van Bush in zijn 'war against
terrorism'. De moties die hier ingediend worden roepen op tot het bevriezen
van Palestijnse bankrekeningen, het verbreken van de banden met de
Palestijnse Autoriteit, etc. En niks geen kritiek op Israel.

Groeten,
Mark

>From: Hein van Meeteren <heinwvm at chello.nl>
>To: d66 at nic.surfnet.nl
>Subject: Lelijke Europeanen (Slate)
>Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 14:10:47 +0200
>
>REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl
>
>Dit kon ik jullie niet onthouden:
>
>--------------------------------------------------
>
>After Sept. 11, many observers predicted that the ugly side of the American
>character would soon reveal itself. Xenophobia and nativism would flourish.
>Ominous reports of widespread violence against Arab-Americans would
>surface. A few hysterical doomsayers worried that it was only a matter of
>time before Muslims would be placed in internment camps. Despite those
>fears, none of the Ugly American predictions came to pass. Instead, 9/11
>cemented an altogether different phenomenon: Ugly Europeanism.
>
>Jean-Marie Le Pen's strong showing in the French presidential election is
>only the latest in a string of successes by anti-Muslim political parties
>across the Continent. Only two weeks after Sep. 11, Hamburgthe most liberal
>state in Germanyelected an anti-foreigner candidate nicknamed "Judge
>Merciless" to the state parliament. In November, Denmark's anti-Muslim
>party, the Danish People's Party, received 12 percent of the vote, up from
>7 percent three years earlier. Then in March, the party of the Netherlands'
>Pim Fortuyn, a zero-immigration candidate who says "the Netherlands is
>full," reaped 35 percent of the vote in Rotterdam, making it the most
>popular party in the country's second-largest city. A few weeks later, the
>Popular Party, which urges a "special integration program" for African
>immigrants because of their "propensity for violence," joined Portugal's
>new governing coalition. And this week, Le Pen.
>
>Granted, the Ugly Europeans are not purely a post-9/11 phenomenon. The
>Freedom Party of Austria's Jörg Haiderwho came to international prominence
>in 2000is a fellow traveler, as is Belgium's Vlaams Blok, which took a
>third of the vote in Belgium's second-largest city that same year. (The
>leader of Vlaams Blok, a Flemish nationalist party that wants to forcibly
>expel all unemployed non-European immigrants, said he and Le Pen were
>"brothers in arms.") And the Ugly Europeans' anti-Muslim tactics predate
>the terrorist attacks. In 2000, for example, an anti-racism poster
>picturing a black child and the caption "When I become white, I'll be a
>schoolteacher" prompted the Danish People's Party to counter with its own
>anti-welfare poster: a picture of a white homeless man with the caption
>"When I become Muslim, I'll have a house."
>
>But the Ugly Europeans accelerated their anti-Muslim rhetoric in the wake
>of the Sept. 11 attacks, and they found a newly receptive audience.
>Anti-Muslim sentiment was already widespread in Europe, but 9/11 reinforced
>the Ugly Europeans' bigoted message: Muslims cause crime. Muslims cause
>unrest. Muslims must go. The effect was immediate: The terrorist attacks
>and the discovery that Hamburg was a haven of al-Qaida activity gave Judge
>Merciless (real name: Ronald Schill)and his attacks on "imported
>unemployment and imported crime" from Muslim countriesa more than 5 percent
>bump in the polls. The anti-Muslim electoral wave had begun.
>
>Much of what the Ugly Europeans propose isn't out of the mainstream of
>American political debate: Get tough on crime, promote Christian family
>values, reform the welfare state, curtail immigration. But the Ugly
>Europeans' policy inclinations on all those issues stem not from political
>ideology but from prejudice. How to get tough on crime? Get rid of the
>Muslim immigrants who are causing it. Why reform the welfare state? Because
>the Muslims are sucking us dry. Why promote Christian values? Because the
>Muslim invaders threaten to drown out our faith. Why curtail immigration?
>Because Muslims cannot assimilate into Western European cultures.
>
>The Ugly European viewpoint stems from an exclusionary ethnocentric
>nationalism, summed up by Le Pen's slogan "France for the French," Haider's
>slogan "Austria for the Austrians," and Vlaams Blok's slogan "Our Own
>People First." Muslims from North Africa cannot assimilate even if they
>want to. Pia Kjaersgaard, the housewife leader of the Danish People's
>Party, wants the Muslims in Denmark to "go home": "They must not be allowed
>to integrate into Danish society." Filip Dewinter of Belgium's Vlaams Blok
>agrees: "We must stop the Islamic invasion," he told the New York Times
>Magazine. "I think it's, in fact, impossible to assimilate in our country
>if you are of Islamic belief." During a protest of a plan to open a center
>for foreign asylum-seekers in his hometown of Antwerp, Dewinter proclaimed,
>"Antwerp is not a garbage can." In an effort to prevent Muslim (and perhaps
>Jewish) assimilation in France, the mayor of Marignane, who is a member of
>Le Pen's National Front, eliminated the
>option for a non-pork lunch when pork was on the menu at public school
>cafeterias. The clear message: We don't want your children to eat with our
>children.
>
>Ugly Europeans are adamantly opposed to multicultural, multiethnic
>societies, and they employ a neat rhetorical trick: framing their racist
>anti-Muslim sentiment as a defense of the multicultural value of diversitya
>way to protect their own national culture, which they see as threatened.
>(The Netherlands' Fortuyn, in a similar bit of ideological gymnastics,
>justifies his intolerance for Muslims by saying that Muslims threaten the
>Netherlands' vaunted reputation for tolerance.) They're fiercely opposed to
>the European Union, which they see as leveling the distinctions among the
>Continent's distinct nations. And most assail America for its globalizing
>culture and its multiethnic society.
>
>In this, ironically, the Ugly Europeans share more than a little in common
>with the Islamic extremism that has propelled them to new heights of
>popularity. They may not be terrorists and murderers, but their separatist
>agenda is familiar: a belief that Christians and Muslims cannot commingle;
>that the infidel invaders must be expelled to ensure their countries'
>self-preservation; and a backward-looking celebration of an empire long,
>long gone.
>
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