BF2S Forums Race relations thread

Both are interwoven. Have I mentioned Diyanet yet? Better known as the Turks' 'directorate of religious affairs'. Maybe you should read up on the garbage they're exporting since Erdogan started using it, which by the way is also often expressly anti-western. It is an arm of Erdogan's AKP.

Also, why would my opinion against Erdogan imply that I tolerate PiS in Poland or Orban in Hungary? Fuck all three of them.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-10-27 07:05:38)

Larssen wrote:

Both are interwoven. Have I mentioned Diyanet yet? Better known as the Turks' 'directorate of religious affairs'. Maybe you should read up on the garbage they're exporting since Erdogan started using it, which by the way is also often expressly anti-western. It is an arm of Erdogan's AKP.

Also, why would my opinion against Erdogan imply that I tolerate PiS in Poland or Orban in Hungary? Fuck all three of them.

so are you suggesting that polish migrants living in, say, the UK, should be repatriated because of their dodgy conflict of allegiances?

So the leader of a country that isn't yours, who is known for his oppressive behaviour back home (among which jailing journalists en masse, using goons to intimidate protesters, bombing the shit out of another ethnic minority, removing all opposition from government & politics) creates chapters of his government religious organisation in other countries. The leaders of those chapters are trained and educated in the 'home country' and have a mission to export the party policy and their distinct nationalist version of the religion. Those chapters are also put to use as an intelligence network to keep tabs on 'anti home country activists' among the emigrant population, and religious texts are pushed that outlaw events or norms in the host countries. All the while the home country is very much idealised, particularly Dear Leader, for whom you must all vote.

The both of you look at this and say to yourselves 'there's nothing wrong here'. Better yet if someone does say that it's foreign influencing ops you act as though you've been put in a room with a supremacist.

Do you have your heads in your asses?

Last edited by Larssen (2020-10-27 07:34:35)

Fuck turkey and fuck russia

Larssen wrote:

So the leader of a country that isn't yours, who is known for his oppressive behaviour back home (among which jailing journalists en masse, using goons to intimidate protesters, bombing the shit out of another ethnic minority, removing all opposition from government & politics) creates chapters of his government religious organisation in other countries. The leaders of those chapters are trained and educated in the 'home country' and have a mission to export the party policy and their distinct nationalist version of the religion. Those chapters are also put to use as an intelligence network to keep tabs on 'anti home country activists' among the emigrant population, and religious texts are pushed that outlaw events or norms in the host countries. All the while the home country is very much idealised, particularly Dear Leader, for whom you must all vote.

The both of you look at this and say to yourselves 'there's nothing wrong here'. Better yet if someone does say that it's foreign influencing ops you act as though you've been put in a room with a supremacist.

Do you have your heads in your asses?

i don't approve of erdogan. but i don't approve of incriminating all turks living in western countries and accusing them of 'secret alliances' or 'conflicts of interest'. frankly you have never had to negotiate dual-identities or growing up in a culture other than your native one, so i think you should lay off a bit with the accusatory and inflammatory rhetoric. if they want to retain pride in turkey and show support for their country of origin, that's their prerogative. it does NOT mean that they're all radical islamist terrorists in training, or are somehow 'subverting democracy' and impeding progress, etc etc.

it just seems unfair to me that we have historically invited these people over, asked them to contribute to our societies (which they have), and now you want to punish them because they still wish to retain some of their origins or roots. a turkish family living and abiding by the law in the west for generations isn't enough for you? they have to decry erdogan too? maybe renounce their traditional garb and start wearing cocktail dresses? re-prove that kemalism and a secular turk identity isn't an impossibility, again and again? it's entirely in their right to show support for a nationalist turkish leader that wants to guide turkey to more international prominence, and so on and so forth. it's complex, to be sure, but that's the nature of having both national citizenship and an ethnic identity. something, again, that you've never had to negotiate or test.

of all the countries to finger for extremism and having a role in breeding terrorists, turkey would be somewhere near the bottom of my list. yes, it has undoubtedly got worse under erdogan -- but he is contemporaneous with 'hard men' figures in hungary, poland, britain, the US, russia, etc, who have similarly stoked the blue-collar, little-guy element to great success. not a unique and worrying sign about the future of islam in europe, if you ask me. i doubt that many terrorist attackers have been inspired to violence by erdogan and not, say, fundamentalist sunni clericism. turkey is still, again, at least notionally a secular democracy. you can make worrying noises about religious groups' influence but the same situation pertains in america, or france, or denmark, or any other avowedly 'secular' country that in fact has (very) powerful religious lobbies and influential churches. i am seeing far more worrying evidence of your so-called 'religious-nationalism' in poland, a neighbouring country with many millions of residents and patriots in western countries, than turkey.

so i ask again: are you having brow-furrowing conversations in brussels about poland's membership of the EU? it's safety as a partner, going forward? it's future and 'compatibility' with 'western democratic' values?

why exactly do you want to blame average immigrants for the 'failure of multiculturalism'? this seems like you have your head in your ass, to me. you want to blame your average gastarbeiter for the excesses and violences of islamic terrorism but not even look twice at, say, your own benevolent technocratic EU foreign policy. it's just bizarre. most all turkish residents here in the UK are moderate, law-abiding muslims, not sleeper cells or secret agents.

Last edited by uziq (2020-10-27 08:11:21)

i do have a specific example in mind when i mention the above, which i hope will make it clear i’m not exactly a turkey fanboy. an ex of mine, with whom i keep in contact, is armenian by origin. she’s never been to armenia, though, having been raised in germany and latterly in peru. you could say, in fact, that her extended family network and friends have maintained a ‘ghetto’ of armenians wherever their diaspora have been located. but she is also undoubtedly in support of armenia’s actions in nagorno-karabakh, and would on the surface of it seem quite nationalist and chauvinist in support of armenia’s military actions.

is she a unique danger to the social fabric of her ‘home’ country? does she undermine the democracy of peru, or the united kingdom, or wherever else she is living? should she be viewed with suspicion because she wishes to preserve her armenian identity, and to even take pride in it? like what exactly do you even expect from people in pluralist, multicultural democracies, here? that they empty out their ethnic or religious identities and just become a pure, homogeneous ‘european citizen’? because, let me tell you, this concept of citizenship is repulsive to many other groups than those designated as religious or ‘ethnic’. it horrifies most patriots in the western-secular nations too.

Last edited by uziq (2020-10-27 08:24:03)

Maybe different story when you live in the UK, but in Germany it was even considered sinful to wave the flag. In the low countries less so, but apart from the far right most people aren't all that rosy about the past.

You know what's interesting? Most of those ultra nationalists and skinheads are east german. After the reunification a lot of resentment built that refueled those tendencies. In the 70s and 80s it was an absolute minority.

All things are relative. The dutch and belgians don't quite strike me anywhere close to the levels of nationalism that I see in France, in the US, or in a country like Turkey. Despite their shit tradition. There's some cultural narcissism there, but much of it is  more recent - since the late 90s.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-10-27 10:30:59)

I fucked up and accidentally edited and deleted the post, fuck it.

I'm not giving anyone a pass. We can't do anything about orban and duda. I already told you.

europe, a true post-nationalist paradise.

precis from a polish friend:

the PiS leader's statement on the [ongonig nationwide] protests [...] but the rhetoric is very resonant with jaruzelski's announcement of martial law in 1981. he's saying that the scale of the protests is dangerous because of the pandemic, but what is far more worrying is that churches are being attacked, and this is an assault on the moral system wielded by the catholic church, 'the only moral system this nation knows - this nihilism is manifested in the vulgarity and 'bad facets of 'a certain part of our society''

he says that adults are forcing CHILDREN to participate in the protests and that this is obscene. that's almost word for word with a sentence from the jaruzelski speech [from 1981].

'above all else, we have to protect and defend our churches'

but hey, /shrug. nothing the EU can do to punish poland's catholic fascists. let's stoke fear about the ottomans, instead.

Last edited by uziq (2020-10-27 14:38:06)

ok let’s just beat on the honest immigrants and ex-colonials then. even better if it gets votes. well done macron.

if it was limited to counter-terrorism and legitimate targets, it wouldn't be the excuse for a national address and an election campaign.

what does rorty have to do with it? is that your only point of reference on that entire end of the spectrum? what about levinas? why don't you go and read a little on alterity like a good little european cosmopolitan?

i am not making a case for early 2000s triumphal multiculturalism. but i don't see the sense in announcing 'fuck the turks' when they're still one of the best chances we've got yet of welcoming a moderate, and moderating, secular-islamic nation into the international order. there's more to turkey than erdogan and his anatolian cave dwellers.