Many people are awful. I’d be fine with Afghan refugees moving in. Even if we accept the premise that Afghan culture is “awful,” wouldn’t the fact that they’ve fled the country indicate they’re not exactly in sync with that culture?
I live in an extremely diverse area with many immigrants on my street and it’s fine.
They could have fled for any number of reasons- that doesn't mean that they aren't exactly in sync with the culture they are coming from. And even if they aren't in sync with the culture they are fleeing- they very likely still hold radically different values than you.
I met a man from Afghanistan sometime last year, however, once we got past the introductions and realized we shared things in common- he opened up to me and began trying to make me realize the value of Sharia law in America, and how much better it would be here if it became the cultural norm.
That makes perfect sense. But clearly Switzerland, unlike America, barely has any proponents of Sharia-like Biblical law. This is a large cause of misunderstanding in threads like these by fellow Americans. Because the US has very similar people at home, it just looks like "potentially a little more of something there's already lots of, they'll never outgrow that existing group anyway, what are they even complaining about".
My point is not actually "potentially a little more of something there's already lots of," but rather that the shittiness of people is not well correlated with what country they're from. I'm sure Switzerland has plenty of shitty locals, even if it might manifest in a different way.
The reason I'm not afraid of Afghan refugees moving in isn't because I think their love of Sharia law will be drowned out by my other neighbors' love of Christian Sharia, but because I don't think it's particularly likely they're going to love government-imposed Sharia law in the first place.
>but rather that the shittiness of people is not well correlated with what country they're from.
Would you say it even doesn't correlate in the US with what church they go to?
Whether they go to a Fundamentalist Baptist church or are Quakers? I find that hard to imagine to be true in a meaningful way. And if it can be, then it can also hold for villages, cities and countries.
>I'm sure Switzerland has plenty of shitty locals, even if it might manifest in a different way.
The way it manifests is incredibly important and cannot be waved away. That's an entire half of what makes up the issue.
As far as their desirability as neighbors, I have no idea how it correlates to church membership. I mostly don’t know what churches, if any, my neighbors go to. The old Trump-loving Catholics who used to live next door were fine neighbors. I don’t know the religious proclivities of anyone else in the neighborhood that I can think of.
Sharia law is quite big! So big that I'm fairly certain that there is at least one aspect of Sharia law that you would agree with, even if (as it sounds like) you are overall against. If you accept that, you can have a honest discussion of the merits and detriments.
I find it's best to break these things down and discuss them individually (or discuss how multiple rules combine to produce a particular effect, as the case may be): then it's easier to tease out which arguments are honest ("I genuinely think X is better, for Y reasons") and dishonest ("I think X is better for Y reasons, but I believe you'll find Z more persuasive, so I'll say Z"). There's also a phenomenon where people attribute beneficial (or detrimental) properties to one, visible part of a system, when they're really due to another: consider the arguments about capitalism versus communism, which are rarely actually about economic policy, and are more often about other (on the face of it, unrelated) policies of the state: your interlocutor might realise this after detailed discussion, if that is what is going on, when otherwise they might have gone their whole life without noticing the misattribution (as many people do).
Cultural exchange can be mutually-beneficial, even if you both go away thinking "wow, that other guy was an idiot".
Yes, I'm well aware of how big it is, and of course there are aspects of it that I do agree with. What I came away from the conversation with was "wow, this other guy has zero understanding of how important individual liberties are in the United States"
I know people who have been victims from these far-right cultures being brought into my community. I have no tolerance for it. If you wish to call that xenophobia then so be it.
I'd highly recommend not visiting places like Afghanistan, not because the weather isn't nice, but because the people are awful. That's not just me saying that either, most Western governments will tell you not to visit either. Perhaps that's xenophobia, but either way I think it's correct.
According to PEW research 99% of Afghan's support Sharia Law. If you wish to present an argument for why this kind of cultural diversity is good for my community, then be my guest.
I too know people who have been victims of the far-right culture that has festered amongst native-born Americans.
This country was founded on the idea that we allow competing opinions and ideologies, even those we find distasteful. If people commit actual crimes, we have processes to deal with that.
But why do you feel we should tolerate and import far-right foreign ideologies under some notion of "competition of opinions and ideologies"? I guess I don't understand why I should want that?
Your analogy about native-born Americans doesn't seem relevant here. Obviously there are always going to be issues within our own communities, but surely that doesn't mean we should want to bring people in from foreign communities which we know to hold views that we wouldn't want?
After I left my original comment here the other day it was reported that yet another child in my city was raped by an Afghan "asylum seeker". This isn't simply competition of "opinions and ideologies", it's a social experiment which I'd rather people I care about not have to participate in.
Your ideology in my view tolerates real-world harms because you cannot admit to the fact that not all cultures are equal and some cultures hold horrific views.
I know you're well meaning and I am grateful for your pushback. I genuinely hate talking about this stuff. I know it makes people perceive me in a certain way which is why I'm being flagged for my views while people saying we must be tolerant of far-right individuals are being upvoted. I just know I must try to get through to people because I see the harm this well intentioned ideology is causing.
If this were the HN of ten years ago, I might have expressed similar sentiments.
Between the comments in this thread though, and the complete lack of moderator attention, I can only come to the conclusion that xenophobia is perfectly fine on HN - provided you couch it in the appropriate rhetoric and don't use any mean words.
i deal with uncomfortable questions regularly so obviously there will be a bias on my part for handling them. it seems to me like a lot of people believe that shutting down questions is the best idea here. can you please explain to me why it is xenophobic to ask questions? i dont really see the link and i dont see why shutting people down for asking questions is a good idea.
you must understand that I don't see myself to have bad faith here. I don't see what's stopping people from asking their own questions back instead of waving the finger. why not query me to determine my nature based on my response? making assumptions based on the way I sound, i cant believe that you people dont see the irony, this is how actual racists behave.
TODO perform natural join on concepts of prejudice/categorization, map intersecting behaviours, classify results as positive/negative relative to wider community outcomes, back propagate specific result scores to refine social objectivity circuit ... prioritize acknowledgement of personal fallibility regarding argumentative positions ... gently handle percieved conflicts ... disregard advice regarding validity of querying ...
They're partially right, some cultures are awful by any common usage of the word. The problem of course is that they're dogwhistle implying that this means all Afghan asylum seekers must be part of such cultures and therefore must be awful, which is of course not true.
if you were a gay man, why would it benefit to you, being in close proximity to a sub population that believed your violent death was the best path forward? now im not saying youre gay, or that religion is bad, or anything else. im not asking any other questions either. im genuinely curious as to how you would respond in that particular scenario.
Gromer gangs were white just as often, but instead of addressing the problem evaluating it correctly and responding right wing extremists instead focused only the immigrants didnt give a single shit about the actual abuse and made it all about leaving the EU and in general promoting ethnic violence against all braun people. Literal riots.
And of course never talk about immigrant woman that get abused who gives a fuck about them.
"
Child sexual exploitation is horrendous whoever commits it, but there have been enough convictions across the country of groups of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds to have warranted closer examination
...
Ethnicity is shied away from despite being a question for many years and is still not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators.
Rates of collection and accuracy of ethnicity data were much higher in police data from Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire. Their data shows there has been a disproportionality of group-based child sexual exploitation offending by men of Asian ethnicity in these police force areas."
thanks for clarifying your personal situation, given the stated context my initial question was not a valid method of assaying your perspective, please let me try again. what would your reaction be if you lived in a peaceful place, and a violent neighbour moved in? to be clear i am not asking any question other than this one.
I suspect you are implicitly trying to make the point that a hypothetical afghani neighbor is potentially a violent person. Regardless, my answer is the same.
Violent people live everywhere. Many of them are native-born Americans, and are already my neighbors. Many native-born Americans even actively support clearly anti-American and fascist political policies.
If my neighbors commit violent acts, I expect and assume the law will deal with them. Until they have demonstrated otherwise, why should I presume that any possible neighbor is violent?
