andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> 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.

  It's certainly possible that when one follows the heated debate between
devoted left-wing multiculturalists and right-wing opponents one easily
gets the idea that the multiculturalists do nothing more than preach all
day about the subject, always spouting the most ridiculous things, while
in reality it might be significantly less prominent.

  However, sometimes the multiculturalists go to egregious extremes to
paint the local culture as racist and propense to hate crimes.

  For example some years ago a Finnish newspaper published an article
about how a "wave of racism" was sweeping over Tampere (a city here).
The relatively lengthy article cited exactly one alleged hate crime in
the city as an example of this. It alleged that recently (at the time of
the publication of the article) a Finnish man had stabbed an immigrant
with a knife in the city in question.

  The Finnish police had to publish an official rebuttal to the story,
as they had not heard of such a happenstance.

  The story was fabricated. A complete asspull. (I don't know if this
journalist was reprimended for fabricating a story, but at least I never
heard that this was the case. I wouldn't be surprised if it was just
ignored.)

  Or take another example: Last year there was a case of arson against
a restaurant owned by an immigrant. Three people who lived in the same
building (I think they were all Finnish) died because of the fire.

  When the news about this got out, a member of the Finnish parliament
rushed to make a strongly worded public statement strongly condemning
such a hate crime, and strongly demanded zero tolerance against racism
and for harsh measures to be taken to immediately stop such acts of
racist violence.

  She was later asked where did she get the information that it was, in
fact, a hate crime (because the police had yet not made any statement about
this). She didn't. She just assumed it was. Yet again a complete asspull.

  She wasn't the only one. The Finnish press went wild with the story,
writing in length about the widespread of racism and hate crime and whatnot.

  Later it turned out that the crime was committed by the two sons of the
owner of the restaurant, seemingly in an attempt of insurance fraud.

  (Curiously, although not surprisingly, the tone of subsequent newspaper
articles changed considerably, and basically a small-scale whitewashing
campaign was performed. Articles were published about how hard the life
of immigrant restaurant owners is, working long hours in harsh conditions
yet barely earning a living, and so on. It seems that everybody forgot about
the three Finnish victims as they were seldom mentioned after the culprits
were found.)

> 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. 

  I have to admit that the Finnish press acted surprisingly neutrally in
this case and didn't take it as an opportunity to launch a full force
attack against the "populists". (Or at least I haven't seen any such
thing.)

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

  Perhaps the problem is unsolvable, but I'm sure that it can be alleviated
somewhat. However, the way to alleviate is not to ignore the existence of
the problem.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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