4 ms·

A more reasonable fear / complaint would be change / deterioration of local culture, in case the immigrants refuse to assimilate.

• fabianhjr 8y ago
  That is even more unreasonable, culture is constantly produced and changed, there isn't a "local culture" to assimilate to and a culture is richer the more diverse and exploratory it is. On the other hand if you are using "culture" as a proxy for "they don't behave like us the colonizers of New Zealand" it is even worse. < https://www.wikiwand.com/en/M%C4%81ori_people https://www.wikiwand.com/en/M%C4%81ori_people >
  • masonic 8y ago
    culture is constantly produced and changed, there isn't a "local culture" That's a mindset that the Maori, like many other Aboriginal peoples, have already suffered.
    • fabianhjr 8y ago
      That statement isn't meant as to say that people don't have or produce culture, specially first nations. Instead it is a statement about the non-locality of culture. (In the lines of https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Deterritorialization https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Deterritorialization) Even more, the attack on first nations have been mostly on economic aspects, mainly the land trough colonization. (See Mariategui Seven Essays on the Peruvian Reality, specifically the third essay https://www.marxists.org/archive/mariateg/works/7-interpretive-essays/essay03.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/mariateg/works/7-interpreti..., original in spanish: http://resistir.info/livros/mariategui_7_ensayos.pdf http://resistir.info/livros/mariategui_7_ensayos.pdf ) The Maori culture is maintained by Maori people engaging in culture not merely by a museum exposing "the Maori cultre" and a society disenfranchizing Maori.
  • tomp 8y ago
    I’m using “culture” to mean “respect of democrcy, women and rule of (national, not religious) law”. Obviously some cultures are better than others (in my and many other people’s value system) - do you prefer to live in NZ or Saudi Arabia?
    • pavlov 8y ago
      I would rather live in Saudi Arabia today than as a Maori in NZ 50 years ago. “Ah, but that was then, minorities have it better now.” So the culture (by your definition) has changed then? Perhaps thanks to immigration and globalization?
      • tomp 8y ago
        Probably not by immigration by folks with reactionary dogmatic non-democratic beliefs... Look, the very simple fact is, religions stand in stark contrast to the liberal, enlightened Western democratic beliefs. Once the religion gets watered down enough (like mainstream Judaism and Christianity) so that it's nothing more but a set of sayings, it becomes (barely) compatible with the liberal society, but the more hardcore the beliefs (Orthodox Jews, Amish, Islam), the more problems they cause (violence, oppression of women, opposition to vaccination, etc).
        • pavlov 8y ago
          You're posting this in a thread which commemorates a deceased person who seems to have been the exact opposite of everything you write about. He was gunned down while practicing his religion. Yet we're supposed to believe that his religion is the problem here.
        • erklik 8y ago
          Yet we have an example of a man practising his religion and living completely ( seemingly ) compatible with the liberal society until he was gunned down. However, you are now saying that it's actually his religion that's the problem.
        • dang 8y ago
• throwaway-hn123 8y ago
  mate, seriously. fuck you and your alt-right cowardly ideology. you ignorant, autistic, bullied loser.
• tchaffee 8y ago
  Acting like the locals - acting like the European colonizers - is ironically what this and other white supremacists fear. In order for Muslims and other immigrants to assimilate, they would have to act very differently from how European immigrants acted when they first came.
• kaitai 8y ago
  I'm a child of immigrants 'refusing to assimilate', in that I am teaching my kid the language of my parents, which is not the language of my country. We have books & videos in this language and go to a Saturday school for the language that teaches about ethnic traditions. I get nothing but praise for this, even from the people who grouch about "refusing to assimilate", even from people grouching about "refusing to assimilate" while eating hummus on tortilla chips. In my experience, it's because I'm white. Like Trump's "good immigrants" from Norway.
  • tomp 8y ago
    No, that's not what I meant. Most cultural diversity is good, amazing even. I refuse to accept the concept of "cultural appropriation" (e.g. a non-Arab eating or making hummus), and replace it by "cultural appreciation" instead. I wish there's more mixing of cultures, languages, clothing styles, cuisines (fusion is the best!), worldviews, etc. The problem is when cultures disagree on the fundamental principles that run society. For example, Western civilisation (according to current mainstream views, which are not necessarily correct or sustainable) clashes mainly on freedom of speech (with Islam), rule of law (with China and other totalitarian cultures), rights of women & minorities (with Islam and Orthodox Judaism), sex (with Islam & Christianity), marriage (with Christianity & Islam) etc. I don't really see a solution except for one side to give up their principles, and I sincerely hope it's not the Western Civ (except when it comes to marriage, I'm very live and let live so I see nothing wrong with polygamy)!