On 14-8-2011 20:39, Warp wrote:
> andrel<byt### [at] gmailcom>  wrote:
>> Are you talking about the same Europe that I am living in?
>
>    Maybe it's exclusive to Finland.

That would be strange.

>    The general attitude of left-wing newspaper columnists and commentators
> (which forms the majority of the Finnish press) is that the average Finnish
> man is extremely sexist, chauvinistic, nationalist, xenofobe, racist and
> very propense to resorting to violence. "Wife-hitting" is considered an
> unofficial national sport. (If you were to believe what these people write,
> you would think that domestic violence would be a very widespread and common
> problem in Finnish society. Actual statistics be damned.) Another very clear
> aspect of this attitude is that the Finnish culture is very backwards, closed
> and nationalistic.

The interesting thing is that this is sort of what, at least in the 
netherlands, populist (or conservative/right wing, whichever name you 
prefer, although all are wrong) say the left wing people are saying. 
Funny thing is that by and large this is not true. Sure, you can always 
find some columnist that says something in an exaggerated way and claim 
that is what everybody says, but actually there is no evidence of it to 
be true in general.

An example is that after the killings in Norway our main populist 
(wilders) started complaining that all these left wing people were 
attacking him because the guy referred a few times in his papers to him. 
His line of though was that because Breivik admired him, he now had to 
defend his rhetoric where he was asking for getting rid of the muslims 
and the multicultural maffia in the netherlands. Of course he said that 
in such a way that he never implied to take that so literal. Long story 
short, 'the left wing was taking advantage of the deaths in norway to 
attack him'. Back to my point: almost all reactions by the actual left 
were very moderate and the more direct demands for a reaction by wilders 
came from the right.

The short short version: never believe anyone who claims that some other 
group is manipulating the media. (or believe all sides do).

This is probably not the right place, but there is something related to 
Breivik that might be worth mentioning. I think I pointed to this TED 
talk before:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html
If you think about Breivik: he was part of a group of like minded people 
that constantly feeds one another's rage with stories how 
multiculturalism leeds to outrageous things. With facebook and google 
filtering your results on what they know 'interests' you, the likelihood 
of getting a different opinion diminishes. It will become more and more 
easy to believe that you are right and that another group, including the 
media, do not understand the real problem and are actively trying to 
suppress your point of view. Because: when *you* ask for information the 
result will always support your POV. From that to the idea that if the 
media are not listening to you, you (especially you, because nobody else 
seems to take action) need to do something drastic is a small step.
Disclaimer: I am not saying it worked this way for Breivik or for any 
muslim terrorist in particular. Yet, I have this feeling that these 
inbred subcultures that send one another real and faked youtube videos 
and reports of atrocities by a perceived enemy just to enrage the 
recipient, will produce more and more of these man made disasters.
(Ok, perhaps not very well worded, but I hope you get my point).

>    And you don't just have to take my word for it. You simply have to read
> some Finnish newspapers.

Unfortunately my Finnish is not what it used to be. ;)

>    AFAIK Sweden has a similar phenomenon going on (possibly even worse).
>
>> But things don't get true simply by repeating the same nonsense
>> over and over again.
>
>    I wish those leftist columnists would understand that. The thing is,
> repeating the same multiculturalist propaganda over and over *does* have
> an effect on the population, which is why they do it.

Here leftist columnists tend not to be so leftist when you actually read 
them, there is quite a range of opinions. Also: all sorts of ways to 
deal with immigrants have been discussed over the years, with some 
people advocating one way to solve associated problems and others other 
ways. In practice there are still problems and a certain group now 
claims to have the real solution and groups everything in the past 
(including all diametrically opposite ideas) as 'multiculturalism'. Come 
back in a few years and you will find that the problem is still not 
solved (basically because it is unsolvable), that there is still a group 
that claims it has the only solution (either the same as today or 
perhaps a fresh group), and that people simply seem to refuse to listen 
to them.

Short short version: you can not blame someone for not solving an 
unsolvable problem.

-- 
Apparently you can afford your own dictator for less than 10 cents per 
citizen per day.

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