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> The establishment left in Europe, from what I can see, is lying about the problems of Muslim immigrants and crime/other social problems. Could you quantify h

by gjm11 11y ago

> The establishment left in Europe, from what I can see, is lying about the problems of Muslim immigrants and crime/other social problems. Could you quantify how severe you see those problems as being, how they're lied about, and what sort of solution you think might be possible? My impression (as a leftish European, so discount it as you please) is that no one denies that some Muslim immigrants commit crimes, nor indeed that some Muslim immigrants are terrorists, but that the usual lefty view is: 1. This, in itself, no more calls for action against Muslim immigrants (or against Muslim immigration) than the fact that some people with beards commit crimes calls for action against people with beards. 2. Overreaction to fear of Muslim immigrants is a bigger problem than crime committed by Muslim immigrants. (E.g., crimes with Muslim victims are commoner than crimes with Muslim perpetrators, and this sort of fear is one reason why.) 3. Accordingly, asking "what can we do to stop unassimilated Muslim immigrants killing and raping and robbing?" is a bad question in the following senses: (a) if it's the main question you're asking about relations between Muslim immigrants and the rest of the population, that probably means you have an unbalanced view of what's going on, and (b) asking it loudly and publicly is liable to do more harm by encouraging anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry than it does good by promoting measures that reduce crime by Muslim immigrants, and (c) actually taking the measures one might come up with when answering the questions is also liable to do more harm by making Muslims' lives harder than it does good by reducing crime. A few notes. First: I don't know whether the parenthesis in #2 is actually correct. My impression is that it is, but I don't have all the statistics that would be needed to check. Regardless, I would guess that most of the lefty types you have in mind share my impression that it's correct. Second: something can be a bad question as in #3 but still be a question it would be good, in principle and all else being equal, to know a good answer to. Third: appreciating the European-lefty mindset on this may be easier if you try replacing "what can we do about violent crime by Muslim immigrants?" with "what can we do about financial malfeasance by The One Percent?" or "what can we do about computer crime committed by evil hackers?". In all these cases, there are some actual crimes (and not-actually-criminal wrongdoings) that we'd be better without. In all these cases, people unsympathetic to the group being targetted are liable to overestimate the actual magnitude of the threat, and there are unscrupulous journalists and politicians stirring up fear to further their own agendas. In all these cases, trying to prevent those crimes and other wrongdoings runs the risk of messing with people's civil liberties. (But, for the avoidance of doubt, I am not claiming that these cases are parallel in every respect.)

yummyfajitas 11y ago
How large is the issue? I don't know. There don't seem to be much in the way of good crime stats. A quick google search suggests rape has risen 15x in Sweden since they started letting in large numbers of immigrants. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3317978/Torn-apart-open-door-migrants-Sweden-seen-Europe-s-liberal-nation-violent-crime-soaring-Far-Right-march-reports-SUE-REID.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3317978/Torn-apart-o... The issue is being lied about because rather than giving out stats to answer the question of how much of that 15x is due to immigrants, the Swedish authorities decided to stop tracking ethnicity of perpetrators instead. Similarly, witness the attempts by the mayor of Cologne to blame the victims and avoid disclosing the identity of the attackers. (A quick google search suggests similar incidents happened in a Stockholm music festival and other places.) The fact is that left wing Euro politicians control access to the data and are locking it down. They also make claims like "overestimate the actual magnitude of the threat" - but if the data supported that claim, wouldn't they release it rather than hide it? I'm not proposing any solutions. I'm not even claiming to have a solid grasp of the statistics (unlike, say, a similar discussion of US crime). If I'm wrong and Muslim immigrants to Europe actually commit crimes at the base rate, by all means post stats proving me wrong. I'm only saying that it looks like there is a real problem, and it looks like it's being hidden from us. Under such circumstances, people turning to the racist right is a pretty natural thing to do. At least these guys aren't liars, and see our problems, right? (Again, that last sentence is not my view. A quick search of my comment history will suggest that I'm pluralistic to a degree that only an extreme capitalist can be.)
- gjm11 11y ago
  > dailymail.co.uk If the Daily Mail published an article saying that snow is white, I would check the next winter in case I've been wrong all these years. In the present case, even if it weren't an issue perfectly calibrated to suit the Daily Mail's preferred varieties of shit-stirring, that 15x figure should cause doubt. Those immigrants would have to be impossibly rapey, or else the previous inhabitants (even though some of them were presumably immigrants) would have to be startlingly un-rapey. A more likely hypothesis is that something else changed; perhaps the Swedish authorities changed where they draw the boundaries between rape and other sexual assaults? Or perhaps some procedural change has made Swedes more willing to make accusations of rape? I can think of several other hypotheses, all of them more likely than that immigration made the rate of rapes go up by 15x. So, let's look a bit further. First of all: this comparison is between 1975 and 2014. Forty years is a long time, and many things have happened in Sweden (and everywhere else) since 1975. Why blame it on immigration? Well, because someone wants to blame it on immigration, so far as I can tell. Well. Did Sweden change its definition of rape, or its treatment of people who report rape, or its thoroughness in collecting statistics, or anything of the sort, since 1975? Yes, apparently they did. For instance, near the start of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden you will find this: "Sweden reformed its sex crime legislation and made the legal definition of rape much wider in 2005, which largely explains a significant increase in the number of reported rapes in the ten-year period of 2004-2013." And, a little further down, this: "Sweden also applies a system of expansive offence counts. Other countries may employ more restrictive methods of counting. The Swedish police registers one offence for each person raped, and if one and the same person has been raped on a number of occasions, one offence is counted for each occasion that can be specified. For example, if a woman says she has been raped by her husband every day during a year, the Swedish police may record more than 300 cases of rape." I know you've got a data-science background. Put on your analyst's hat for a moment and think about that claim of a 15x increase. Do you really find it credible? At all? There may indeed be lies being told about immigrants and crime. I would not advise you to assume that they're all coming from the same side.

by gjm11 11y ago

yummyfajitas 11y ago

How large is the issue? I don't know. There don't seem to be much in the way of good crime stats. A quick google search suggests rape has risen 15x in Sweden since they started letting in large numbers of immigrants. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3317978/Torn-apart-open-door-migrants-Sweden-seen-Europe-s-liberal-nation-violent-crime-soaring-Far-Right-march-reports-SUE-REID.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3317978/Torn-apart-o... The issue is being lied about because rather than giving out stats to answer the question of how much of that 15x is due to immigrants, the Swedish authorities decided to stop tracking ethnicity of perpetrators instead. Similarly, witness the attempts by the mayor of Cologne to blame the victims and avoid disclosing the identity of the attackers. (A quick google search suggests similar incidents happened in a Stockholm music festival and other places.) The fact is that left wing Euro politicians control access to the data and are locking it down. They also make claims like "overestimate the actual magnitude of the threat" - but if the data supported that claim, wouldn't they release it rather than hide it? I'm not proposing any solutions. I'm not even claiming to have a solid grasp of the statistics (unlike, say, a similar discussion of US crime). If I'm wrong and Muslim immigrants to Europe actually commit crimes at the base rate, by all means post stats proving me wrong. I'm only saying that it looks like there is a real problem, and it looks like it's being hidden from us. Under such circumstances, people turning to the racist right is a pretty natural thing to do. At least these guys aren't liars, and see our problems, right? (Again, that last sentence is not my view. A quick search of my comment history will suggest that I'm pluralistic to a degree that only an extreme capitalist can be.)

gjm11 11y ago
> dailymail.co.uk If the Daily Mail published an article saying that snow is white, I would check the next winter in case I've been wrong all these years. In the present case, even if it weren't an issue perfectly calibrated to suit the Daily Mail's preferred varieties of shit-stirring, that 15x figure should cause doubt. Those immigrants would have to be impossibly rapey, or else the previous inhabitants (even though some of them were presumably immigrants) would have to be startlingly un-rapey. A more likely hypothesis is that something else changed; perhaps the Swedish authorities changed where they draw the boundaries between rape and other sexual assaults? Or perhaps some procedural change has made Swedes more willing to make accusations of rape? I can think of several other hypotheses, all of them more likely than that immigration made the rate of rapes go up by 15x. So, let's look a bit further. First of all: this comparison is between 1975 and 2014. Forty years is a long time, and many things have happened in Sweden (and everywhere else) since 1975. Why blame it on immigration? Well, because someone wants to blame it on immigration, so far as I can tell. Well. Did Sweden change its definition of rape, or its treatment of people who report rape, or its thoroughness in collecting statistics, or anything of the sort, since 1975? Yes, apparently they did. For instance, near the start of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden you will find this: "Sweden reformed its sex crime legislation and made the legal definition of rape much wider in 2005, which largely explains a significant increase in the number of reported rapes in the ten-year period of 2004-2013." And, a little further down, this: "Sweden also applies a system of expansive offence counts. Other countries may employ more restrictive methods of counting. The Swedish police registers one offence for each person raped, and if one and the same person has been raped on a number of occasions, one offence is counted for each occasion that can be specified. For example, if a woman says she has been raped by her husband every day during a year, the Swedish police may record more than 300 cases of rape." I know you've got a data-science background. Put on your analyst's hat for a moment and think about that claim of a 15x increase. Do you really find it credible? At all? There may indeed be lies being told about immigrants and crime. I would not advise you to assume that they're all coming from the same side.