Tag: Germany

guardian.co.uk: North Carolina’s reparation for the dark past of American eugenics

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: When we think of pseudo-sciences like eugenics we usually associate them with Germany. However, eugenics was widely accepted in other European countries as well as in the United States. The story below published by the Guardian shows how eugenics led to forced sterilization in the United States and how such practices continue to impact its victims to this date.

The following documentary, The Occult History of the Reich, gives a grotesque view of how eugenics got wide support from medical establishments and how it served fanatics like Adolf Hitler to set his country on a ruinous crusade. 

Even if sensible people know that eugenics is baloney with a capital B, associations like Suomen Sisu continue to flirt with such ideas through their views of “racial purity.” This is odd because Nazis like Eugene Fischer considered Finns of Mongolian stock. 

Apart from not having any scientific foundation, the legacy that eugenics left us is war and mass-murder in the name of racial purity.

Thanks to JusticeDemon for alerting me about this story.

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By Edwin Black

North Carolina’s compensation to victims of forced sterilisation is a chance to illuminate a gruesome US tradition of racial ‘science.’

Twenty-seven American states joined a decades-long pseudo-scientific crusade to create a white, blond, blue-eyed, biologically superior “master race”. Their misguided utopian quest was called eugenics. But only one state, North Carolina, is now readying a massive plan of financial repatriations to its surviving victims. Just how much North Carolina should pay is now the subject of a historically wrenching debate.

Read whole story.

guardian.co.uk: This multiculturalism debate is not about culture

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: The story below is a good attempt to dissect the “state-multiculturalism-has-failed” affirmation in February by Prime Minister David Cameron. Certainly when a prominent political figure like Cameron or German Chancellor  Angela Merkel claim that multiculturalism has failed, it emboldens those in Finland who believe the same despite our underwhelming immigrant population compared with the latter two countries. 

The problem with such arguments, as the Guardian story correctly highlights, is that they are based on an assumption that the host society is not multicultural.

The Guardian writes: “In all the fevered comment, the assumption seems to be that British culture should be counterposed with other alien cultures, which are problematically separate from, and should be assimilated into, it. Unfortunately for this assumption, it is a truism of anthropology that cultures vary as much within themselves as between each other. Very few are homogenous.”

If multiculturalism has failed, according to Cameron and Merkel, with what do they want to replace it with?

You will never get a comprehensive answer to that question, especially from politicians.

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By Peter Guillam

The idea that there is a distinct set of British values is a myth. All cultures are multi-cultures – this debate is being used as a proxy. The debate about multiculturalism is hotting up. It also clearly splits the coalition, as the contrasting speeches of David Cameron and Nick Clegg have shown.

Read whole story.

Aamulehti: Ylänurkka: Maan tapa leviää Euroopassa

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: Here is a column published in the Tampere-based Aaamulehti that attempts to give credibility to Angela Merkel’s, David Cameron’s and Jutta Urpilainen’s statements that conveniently blame immigrants for not integrating.  Fine, thank you Merkel, Cameron and Urpilainen.  Now tell us what we have to do? Did you have a plan before you pinned the blame on immigrants? Are your statements only a ploy to hide the failures of present and past governments?

Aamulehti has become one of the most reactive dailies in Finland with respect to immigration. I always thought that the structure of a good editorial, and even a column, is the following: statement of problem, background information and solution. We have the first two in the column but there is nothing, absolutely nothing, on how to move forward.

When you read about the anti-immigration rhetoric, keep a close watch for solutions. Why are they missing? Because they have no credible plan to offer.

Here is a rebuttal to Cameron’s statements by Migrants’ Rights Network.

Do you agree?

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Suomen sosiaalidemokraattisen puolueen puheenjohtajalla Jutta Urpilaisella, Saksan kristillisdemokraattisella liittokanslerilla Angela Merkelillä ja Britannian konservatiivisella pääministerillä David Cameronilla on ainakin yksi yhteinen piirre.

Continue reading the column by clicking here.

Muslims are not the real enemy to European democracy

Posted on by Migrant Tales

It is quite significant when EU heavyweights such as France and Germany take a stand on an important issue like immigration and diversity. Recent statements by German Chancellor Angela Merkel are a good example of the disturbing trend, when she stated that multiculturalism had “utterly failed” in Germany.

The statement by Merkel, which does nothing to promote greater integration between different groups in Germany, does not bring anything constructive to the table. At the best, it ends up polarizing Germans of different ethnic and religious origin even more.

A critical journalist would ask why Merkel is making such affirmations at this particular moment. The answer is simple: Germany will hold elections in a number of states in 2011.

Merkel’s statement even caused a reaction from UN Secretary Ban Ki Moon, who warned against a “dangerous trend” of intolerance emerging in Europe especially against Muslim immigrants.

“A dangerous trend is emerging, a new politics of polarization. Some play on people’s fears,” he said. “They accuse immigrants of violating European values. Yet too often it is the accusers who subvert these values and thus the very idea of what it means to be a citizen of the European Union.”

What is the danger of ever-greater intolerance and polarization in Europe? For one it paves the way for other minority groups to become targets and victims of intolerance. It would be naive to think that the only “enemy” are Muslims.

The greatest threat to Europe is not any particular ethnic or religious group but those who want to draw us apart from our diversity.

If the worrying trend continues in a global climate of economic uncertainty, it has the ability of impoverishing us in many ways. Instead of reaping benefits from our diversity we will be spending too much time hating each other.

Two questionable eras in Europe with the same message

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Two posters (apologies for the offensive content) from different eras: One that is anti-semitic from Germany in 1940* and the other from a referendum in Switzerland in 2009 on a ban of building minarets on mosques.  Even though these posters were printed in different periods, the message is the same: barbarization of a group.

*The first source I used claimed the film was released in 1937. It was released in 1940. If you wish to see this horrible film, click here. Note the claims that the German narrator makes: “Jews are lazy, criminals and incompatible with our Aryan way of life.”  Sounds familiar, no?

If you still disagree, go to about 18 minutes of the film and pay close attention to these claims:

The parasite nation of Judah is responsible for a large part of international crime.

In 1932 the Jews, who made up only 1% of the world’s population, accounted for 34% of the world’s dope peddlers, 46% of robberies, 47% of crooked games of chance, 82% of international crime organizations, and 98% of dealers of prostitution. The most common expressions from the jargon of international gangsters and criminals… stem from Hebrew and Yiddish words.

At the end of the film the narrators affirms:  Keeping one’s race pure is one of the legacies of the National Socialist movement leaves to the German nation forever. In the spirit the unified German people march on into the future.