Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Fascinating, and worrisome.

This paragraph jumped out at me because of the numbers involved:

"Starting in 2012, 34 people went from Aarhus to Syria. As far as the police know, six were killed and 10 are still over there. Of the 18 who came back home, all showed up in Aarslev and Link's office, as did hundreds of other potential radicals in Aarhus — about 330 in total."

If a small town like Aarhus harboured 34 people that joined ISIS and 330 potential radicals in total that does not bode well for the rest of Western Europe.

Those numbers, when extrapolated make the problem a lot larger than I thought it was (and I actually thought I was over-estimating).

Aarhus has a population of only ~320K, so that's 1:1000.

View on HN

Aarhus is the second-largest city in Denmark. Copenhagen is only ~562K. But still, that's a lot of people for what most countries consider a small city. "Potential radical" can be anyone who goes to a mosque with a militant iman. That may not be a meaningful designation. Only about 1 in 10,000 tried to join ISIS.

About 250 Americans have tried to join ISIS, says the FBI. That's about 1 in a million for the US. Around 100 made it to the battle zone. NBC has a profile of 15 of them.[1]

[1] http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-uncovered/americans-15...

> "Potential radical" can be anyone who goes to a mosque with a militant iman.

That oversimplifies a bit. You do not simply walk in a well adjusted individual and walk out a radical.

If you check the background of all the people mentioned, i bet you that you will find history involving social services, trouble at school, possibly a rap sheet.

Again and again, no matter if a person is muslim, christian, or something else entirely, the common denominator is that they feel themselves not fitting in with the society around them.

Just like all those other confused teenagers that end up shooting up their highschool and similar.

Having a different skin color, being ostracized by society for whatever reason, ignored by the girls the media suggest they should be interested in, it's not easy being a young male in any society.

We used to have military service but that path is not without problems of its own.

"Just like all those other confused teenagers that end up shooting up their highschool and similar."

They are related but it would be wrong to equate them.

One is an ideological movement with leaders, propaganda, formalized groups, $$$$, ethnic orientation and nationalism etc..

It would be like saying the Nazis were just a bunch of angry men. Obviously, they were that, but it wasn't the primary driver. ISIS, radical Salafism/Wahhabism etc. are organized forces.

That's true, and it is a big differentiator. But if you think of the dis-enfranchised youths as the fertile ground then the 'leaders' (aka cynical old men) are simply reaping what is already there.

Nothing easier than giving a frustrated young kid a sense of purpose and a way to make a name for themselves. Their background makes that even easier because they already perceive (quite often rightly so) that the deck is stacked against them.

The US military no longer hires losers. About 75% of the young US male population does not meet the recruiting standards of the US Army. Too fat, too dumb, criminal record, drug history, medical problems.

It is very interesting, given that the US is directly involved in Syria, whereas Denmark is not.

It has much to do with how people integrated into Europe v America.

Europe is very difficult to integrated into - they are ethnic groups. You can mostly 'become American' but it's almost impossible to 'become Danish' unless you are there from a very early age.

Americans in particular have a hard time with this, because they don't 'see' ethnicity, and often use the term 'race' which is the wrong term to describe groups. 'Race' is genetics, not particularly meaningful. Ethnicity is a set of values, behaviours, cultural norms, i.e. attitudes towards, family, government, education, religion, etc. etc..

Most nations outside the Americas are simply formalized governments of ethnic groups.

An American passport pretty much makes you American. A Danish passport makes you a Danish citizen, but not necessarily Danish.

Also - Europeans are more intellectually open minded, but more behaviourally cloistered, whereas Americans are sometimes a little less intellectually open (i.e. popular ideas, policies), but in practical reality, almost always more 'open'. Euros talk benevolence but hang out with their own kind. Americans sometimes talk anti-immigration, but they are pretty fluid in terms of social and business relationships.

There is a very strong kernel of truth in what you write. At the same time racism is alive and well in the United States, at a level that I've never seen here.

Integration into an EU country is harder for another reason as well: America is founded on immigration, everybody - even if you may have to go back a few generations - is from somewhere else. In Europe that really isn't the case, people's origins are usually 'over the horizon', lost in the time before record keeping.

So in America you don't easily stand out as a stranger. This is compounded by the fact that in America it is fairly normal to relocate for work, whereas in Europe that is much more rare (but becoming more normal). Ironically, that is one of the main drivers behind the whole 'brexit' thing.

I don't think it's the ease of integration into the USA, but the fact that the Muslim immigrants to the USA tend to be better educated and more well off than the immigrants and refugees heading into Europe.

There's the Atlantic Ocean between the USA and the Middle East/North Africa, so they can be a lot more picky about who they choose to let in.

It's very easy to blame Europeans for not rolling the carpet to a group associated with misogyny and anti secularism.

What you describe also affects the immigrants. In america, immigrants generally look to get in and probably settle down. Immigrants in europe are often shopping for jobs in different countries, maybe a year in country A , another year in country B, always looking to move north. In the meantime they don't grow roots any new country but keep hanging out with their kin or other immigrants.

You 're right however, cultural barriers are high in europe, even for EU immigrants. Europe should have thought twice before carelessly declaring an open immigration policy.

Scandinavian countries host more refugees per capita than most nations on Earth, so that's probably why numbers look so high. Also, this sort of programs inevitably carry a physiological amount of fraud (problems affording a flat? Pick up the phone and declare yourself ex-jihadi...).

Sweden, yes, they are very far from the norm in this, but Denmark is actually not that much different (or in fact, lower than) .de, .nl, .fr and quite a few other Western European countries.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_refugee_p...

"Than most nations on Earth" is probably right though, but it's a bit of a weird metric because Denmark is more affluent than 'most nations on Earth' and also part of Europe, which tends to absorb a relatively large number of refugees when compared to other parts of the world.

So it would be better to compare Denmark with the countries surrounding it.

Going to Syria isn't necessarily joining ISIS. There are many rebel groups, some directly fighting against ISIS.

Good point, I missed that. Among others, there's Rojava (feminist anarchists) vs. ISIS (fascist right-wing militia). Those two almost make Bernie Sanders & Donald Trump look identical.

That's true, but it is a fairly small portion as far as I'm aware.

If you assume none of the ~30 that went to Syria joined IS, that leaves ~300 "of other potential radicals in Aarhus".

That's an enormous amount of _potential_ harm even with low tech attacks like knives in crowds.

I keep hearing this and it does not comfort me much.

Remember how the West had a problem with...

The Taliban... then Al-Qaeda...... then ISIS.......... then ??

The names are changing but something else remains constant or is getting worse.

One constant factor is strife in the region. Provides a constant source of enraged youngsters seeking revenge after being hard done by an outsider (death in family, unemployment, living under an authoritarian govt, illiteracy, etc).

This will continue until weapons need to be sold. Military Industrial complex is a thing and it needs blood to lubricate its wheels.

There are plenty of other countries which are considerably poorer than the middle east. Circa 2010 Syria wasn't a "bad" place, the average income was greater than that say of India, it was about equal to that of Moldova and the Republic of Macedonia both which are both EU accession candidates.

Syrians (and Saudis) who joined the insurgency in Iraq weren't disenfranchised infact they were from the elite, often dropping out of university to go and join the "cause". Osama Bin Laden who founded AQ was born into one of the richest families in the world, had higher education and really had no hard done to him by anyone.

Europeans who join ISIS are mostly 2nd and 3rd generation "immigrants", often to mixed families and "fresh converts", they aren't particularly disenfranchised either.

Geopolitics and economics do have a role in conflicts everywhere, but the sooner you stop blaming everything on people being poor, oppressed and "western expansionism" the sooner we might actually be able to start working on a solution.

Last time I've checked Tibet is effectively poorer than Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, not to mention the smaller gulf states (and I'm not counting the average which is skewed because of how the wealth is distributed) and it's quite objectively oppressed but I have yet to see Tibetans blowing up restaurants in China.

If you read enough old books you'll notice that the authors ascribe a general temperament to each European nation. The word temperament today is not in common use except in animal breeding and the nearest equivalent we have today is the word stereotype, which captures some but not all of the meaning.

Here is a formal example of what I mean:

http://i.imgur.com/r3bom1c.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Qen8lBA.png

While some of this is hilariously old fashioned or historical period specific, it is also interesting just how many traits are consistent enough that we recognize them centuries later.

This could be astrology or tea leaf reading, but I think it merits a genuine scientific investigation. It may be anecdotal but far too many people agree the Italians are very fond of chatting, including the Italians.

All of this is to say, while it is true that Islam is dominant in countries where periodic religious warfare breaks out, it is possibly Islam is derived from collective temperament and not the other way around. It should definitely be treated seriously as a hypothesis.

The Taliban and AQ are two very different problems. The Taliban is a regional force, who don't have international ambitions, they are/were faction in a civil war.

What is your solution to this?

Not being sarcastic downvoter! I really want to know.

You're not going to like it, and it's not much of a solution anyway. Time. Many generations and quite possibly civil war or outright war between nation states.

Humanity does not have a very good track record when it comes to learning from the past, so we are set to repeat history a couple of more times before we get it right. Let's hope I'm wrong about this, but the rate at which all the stable parts of the world are de-stabilizing is uncanny.

People keep pointing to studies that prove that the world is becoming less violent but I'm reminded of the sailors proverb that a real storm is preceded by a sense of calm.

A interesting proverb, as it fits economics just as well as meteorology.

Are you being sarcastic? I've never heard that it applies to demographic movements.

No offense, but you are discounting studies for what sounds like your intuition, which I'd argue is the entire point about science, to better inform us against our biases.

I'll take what science says over what the media hype is any day.

You're more than welcome to.

But there is a ton of evidence that the foundations of many societies are shifting and not for the better. That doesn't immediately reflect in the statistics (death tolls, crime rates) until a certain critical mass has been reached.

Just like you can't tell a tsunami from a small wave visually until it reaches the shore.

There isn't a country in Europe that has not moved substantially towards nationalism in the last decade or so. The foundations of Europe are being attacked and countries that were relatively stable (Turkey, Greece, Spain, UK) are all facing internal forces strong enough to change those countries in substantial ways. Then there is Ukraine (which is far from over) and Syria.

All in all, 'science' is in this case mostly tallying up the dead a couple of years after the bodies hit the ground. It's lagging behind the curve considerably and it doesn't even log places like Iraq and Syria in those statistics because they are anomalies.

Is shifting in response to what you experience a bad thing? If you're not seeing much good coming from an external focus, then maybe it's worth pivoting and focusing on the needs of your own people for a while.

Of course, I'm an American, so I don't see nationalism as a dirty word. You're supposed to be proud of your country and support it first and foremost.

> You're supposed to be proud of your country and support it first and foremost.

If that doesn't come at someone else's expense, then maybe yes.

But 'nationalism' to me equates with stupidity. Putting a flag and other symbols above reason, supporting the troops, even when they're committing war crimes and so on.

Nationalism is a dirty word in Europe for a reason, every time it rears its ugly head we have another war to deal with.

America is lucky in that sense, it has only had two wars on its own soil (if you count the Canadian incursion), and none of those were because of foreign invaders (if you ignore the position of the Native Americans), and none of those in recent times.

But imagine if America had been the stage of WWI and WWII, I wonder how you'd feel about nationalism if that had been the case.

War is cheap if you export it, very very expensive to import. The scars of WWI and WWII still run very deep through Europe, it doesn't take any effort at all to find them, even if all for WWI and most of those that took part in WWII are now dead.

I really think that the media is giving us an impression that emphasizes sensational stories over more mundane but relevant ones. One is far more likely to die in the US from petty gun violence than a terrorist attack, as gruesome as the recent attacks have been, nothing has changed that statistic. Moreover, I'm more likely to die from a car accident than gun violence, and probably more likely to die from heart disease than both.

If you look at most metrics normalized over the whole Earth, yes we are in an unprecedented era of peace, and we should be thankful. There are issues and there is room to grow. Daesh is an example of forces that threaten to unravel that peace, but are we going to kid ourselves into thinking that Daesh is anything like the beginning of the twentieth century? Let's not fall into recentism and forget what we learned in world history.

When it comes to values/nationalism and such, I think it sounds like your argument then is there is a potential for the reversal of such trends and I agree. But it's discussions like this that hopefully will keep us from repeating the mistakes we make in the 10's or 30's. We are live actors and we have a chance to change things for the better. You can tell that I'm pretty much an optimist.

I used to be an optimist as well.

But the last 10 years have slowly but surely made me wonder if we're really as stupid as it seems that we are.

Just some samples: A couple of days ago there was an article about Duerte here on HN, the newly minted presidente of the Philippines. Whose primary solution to everything seems to be a well placed bullet, oh, and never mind a couple of rapes, as long as he's the first one in line.

In the UK, we have a bit of a situation at the moment, with lines being drawn at the level of 'we reserve the right to kick out your citizens' or to use them as bargaining chips. Northern Ireland and Scotland may break away from the UK, or they end up leaving the EU. Either way, that's bad news for a very large number of people. As an immediate result of that violence against people of other races (even the ones that have been in the UK for many generations) or from different nationalities is up to levels unprecedented for many many years (decades).

In NL, Belgium, France and Hungary we have nationalist movements that would all love to destabilize the EU further for personal gain and never mind the consequences. Power hungry 'strong men' (and some women) are in vogue all over, and people lap it up, using their words as covert signals to engage in violence and open hostility.

Then there was a coup in Turkey, and the displacement of very large numbers of people in Syria with all the associated misery (and death toll).

Note that none of this is about 'terrorism', I fully agree that statistically it is - for now, and let's hope it stays that way - insignificant.

I think the main problem is that we have our heads contaminated by too much "news". We live in constant fear, even when statistically we are less violent than ever.

For instance, terrorism works when its actions are published for the more people to see as possible. Statistically you have more probabilities of chocking to death on your breakfast or slipping in the shower than dying from a terrorist action in Europe/US.

Rational thought is on the backseat... So hence the pessimism and thoughts that something bad is comming.

Please take a look at this: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro...

> Statistically you have more probabilities of chocking to death on your breakfast or slipping in the shower than dying from a terrorist action in Europe/US.

I already acknowledged that so there is no need to make that point again and again.

I understand that is a real problem but you should know terrorism is not like the others. It's almost never about the absolute numbers of injuries or deaths.

Acts of terror (the number of them) follow an exponential curve culminating in civil conflict. The objective of terror isn't to kill large numbers of enemies, it is to stress society into dragging one faction into battling the other.

That is why you should be more worried about terrorism than slippery showers. It scales differently. Violence is a contagion.

People's intuitions about this are actually correct. Bear in mind I dislike both the media and democracy! Sometimes what the 'man in the street' thinks is more accurate than an expert opinion, and that is because intuition is more holistic than a collection of expert opinions in specific fields conjoined together.

I can't dissuade you and it's not my place to, of course, but even in the midst of darkness, I see a couple of things to hope for. From certain movements here in the US to other political decisions and developments that seem to step in the right direction even when many are not, I have hope that on net there is still hope for the future.

Also, I am 26 this year, so I will probably have to deal with the ramifications of whatever happens today for longer than many who are deciding will. One would think that would be more reason for me to be even more fearful then but the way I see it is that it pushes me even more to be optimistic for my future, because I have more to lose. Plus, the stereotype that goes with youth and over-optimism, etc.

Science only works predicatively if the sample size n > 1.

You can run counterfactuals but you can't run experiments on history.

By studying history you can discover recurring patterns but these are more like heuristics than laws of nature.

Did you know that Germany had a similar reproduction problem pre-1914?

It was also held to be the most civilized culture in Europe at the time.

Or that France was the strongest nation before the Revolution? This was before a financial crisis and failed harvests tipped the balance suddenly.

Point is that when things go tits up it is always less than obvious to the people involved. Even when you find evidence of 'cracks' developing that led up to that situation, they hold little predictive power when discovered in other situations.

Consider this prediction for example.

Right now France is receiving the brunt of attacks by Islamic extremists. Logically any public outcry and counter-reaction should start there, yes?

But I think it is actually more likely in Germany, Holland or Denmark because of national psychology. They tend to go one way, or the other, you should know the Germans don't do half measures.

Can I measure that scientifically? Hell no. I'd still put money down on it.

No, I largely agree with everything you've said in this thread.

Some answers aren't considered acceptable merely because they aren't convenient. Well, truth doesn't have to be.

Despite being NRx and other esoteric political affiliations associated with the right, I cannot call myself a nationalist for the reason you described. We lost too many of the best in the world wars and I don't think our European society has recovered even now.

I hope for an improved complex, something post-nationalism which can solve for systemic threats without the costs of meat grinder-like machine wars swallowing up the population. Nuclear weapons have solved for most inter-state conflict but internal sectarian conflict is far from solved and is in future extremely likely in my view, most obviously between Islam and westerners in the home countries.

Solution is organic development of a nation. Assad was an imposed ruler. The kept growing in power until he felt he could equate himself with God.

He has killed far more than Daesh can ever hope to.

The Iraq invasion was a major debacle as well. A functioning state (although a hostile one to the US) was invaded and it's societal structures torn down.

A power vaccum in Iraq and civil war in a neighboring country were the perfect ingredients for a despicable "organization" like Daesh to be formed.

> Solution is organic development of a nation.

check: does this include arming of dissidents by foreign powers?

> Assad was an imposed ruler. The kept growing in power until he felt he could equate himself with God.

check: need just /one/ citation for this assertion.

> He has killed far more than Daesh can ever hope to.

check: need just /one/ citation for this assertion.

> Assad was an imposed ruler.

He succeeded his father, and his father was one of the original coup members:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_Syrian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

Quite a messy page in history, I don't think it is fair to say he was 'imposed'.

> He has killed far more than Daesh can ever hope to.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/islamic-state-has-kille...

Hope that works for you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com