Turning tide

Woolly liberal

Woolly liberals must face truth about migrants  (Times £)

Hugo Rifkind has written an interesting piece.

“ It’s no good embracing refugees without accepting that some of their values are beyond the pale and must change.I find myself discombobulated over migration and Europe. Do you, also?”

“Do you, also?” sounds as though he's speaking with a German accent. 

“Perhaps not. Perhaps, back in September, when the tiny body of Aylan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach, and Angela Merkel declared that Germany would take 800,000 Syrians, and the Swedes said they’d take even more, per capita, and the world’s liberals — such as me — genuflected before them, then perhaps you saw, quite clearly, where it was all going. So perhaps you aren’t discombobulated at all. The opposite, even.Combobulated as anything. 

Not me though. Firmly dis. This weekend, Mrs Merkel performed her sharpest volte-face yet (and she’s performed a few of late) saying that isf Syria and Iraq should ever again know peace (a big if, admittedly)then all the refugees that Germany has taken in should leave, and say “thanks” on their way out. 

In Sweden, meanwhile, on Friday, we were told that gangs of rightwing hooligans were roaming around Stockholm looking for brown people to punch.[...]For the woolly, well-meaning liberal - again, such as me - there’s a strong temptation to not quite think about any of this. Or, if you do have to think about it, then there’s an even stronger temptation to do so a little dishonestly”

Hugo proceeds to describe Jess Phillips’s misguided comparison between Cologne and Broad Street, Brum; then:

 “No. In fact a situation far more similar to Cologne occurred in Cairo on the night when president Morsi stepped down. Scores of women in Tahrir Square were harassed, beaten and raped by a jeering mob. And it is certainly true, then as now, that a whole host of surprising western voices piped up to condemn it. 

Some of them, than as now, seemed a lot more upset by sexual assaults conducted by Muslims than they ever seemed to be by anybody else, but that’s not really the point. Although, I cannot lie, I’d be a lot more comfortable if it were. 

[...]Yet in the end, even a woolly liberal needs to stop twisting and stare an obvious truth in the face. Leaflets are now being handed out in German swimming pools.politely explaining that women in bikinis were not to be unilaterally grabbed on the bottom. If you believe in immigration (which I do) let alone the moral necessity of accepting refugees (which I certainly do) this is the bit on which you have to dwell.Can we take in new people and make them just like us?”

(Not according to Trevor Phillips, who’s come in for stick for mentioning that Muslims aint like us, and it’s insulting of us to even expect them to become so.)  (The left does not approve.) 

“sometimes, in order to figure out your own thoughts, you need somebody to say the exact opposite. In that vein I’m grateful to Trevor Phillips[..] who said last month that continuously pretending that a group is somehow eventually going to become like the rest of us is perhaps the deepest form of disrespect”  

To do so, he added, was to suggest they just “haven’t yet seen the light”’ which is patronising and unhelpful, not least because maybe they never will. But they have to.  The lesson of Europe’s current migrant trauma is that integration - and, in the end, assimilation -  is not an option but essential. 

[...]It’s not enough for minorities to just keep their heads down. They have to change enough to not even want to. A society can have any number of foods, headdresses and religious ceremonies, but it cannot have any number of values. 

[...] For Germany, and for Sweden, though, the interesting bit is what happens next. The question is not just whether their migrants can become liberals. It is also, and perhaps more importantly, whether their liberals can stay liberal while they do.

Knit me a hairy jumper. I’m wondering if some of those woolly liberals aren’t beginning  to see the light. 

Here’s something else that caught my eye.

The Guardian is getting flak and it’s not happy. All those woolly articles are attracting avalanches of criticism.

Cologne seems to be the catalyst for some kind of turning point, although the Guardian itself is sticking to its guns. For now. Silencing the opposition can’t work for very long. Who’s going to keep on reading articles they disagree with, especially if they can’t have their say?