Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

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> On the whole it's a very low key, mind-your-own business culture but it has a small but vocal cohort of ultra-nationalists who are vocally opposed to Islamic faith symbols, people of colour, you-name-it.

If the shoe was on the other foot—and it was African or south Asian refugees moving to the Muslim countries these immigrants came from—it wouldn’t be a “small but vocal minority” of nationalists. The government would be moving them to a remote island, like Bangladesh is doing to the Rohingya: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/25/bangladesh-resumes.... They wouldn’t be allowed to teach kids—they’d be relegated to manual labor. In Saudi, for example, 90% of teachers in girl’s schools must be citizens, and it’s virtually impossible for non-Saudis to get citizenship.

The Dutch are just acting like normal people. It’s a small minority of people—mostly white Europeans—that actually seem to enjoy foreigners coming in and creating economic and cultural conflict and challenges.

Indeed. On a related note, I find the criticism of US leadership (often much older folks as leader usually are) being “too white” a bit odd when the US was almost 90% white up until the 1970’s.[1]. Which actually surprised me as I thought it was much lower.

So just assuming most leaders are 50+, just by probability you’d assume 80%+ would be white if they were educated in the 1980’s.

Obviously there is work to do in term of women leaders as well as African Americans who have been underrepresented, but it’s odd to expect the people running the country and businesses who were educated in 1980’s to reflect 2020 demographics.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic...

Whilst not denying it, this is a very Dutch argument: yea, we're a bit shitty, but not as shitty as the other guy!

I loved my time in the Netherlands. I'd love to go back. But I think it's good to be eyes-wide-open about things. What I read about Denmark is not dissimilar: hugely tolerant as long as you put your dustbin out with the handle the right way round on the right day, at the right time. Otherwise, you're in for a fight.

Oliebollen forever!

For me it comes from Asian anti-utopianism. “No point getting so worked up about the way humans just are.”

Thank you! I don't understand why we're supposed to live in a democracy, except when it comes to mass immigration, on that topic you are not allowed to have an opinion because it makes you a straight up nazi. I live in Brussels and I can see first hand what mass immigration does to a city. Specifically immigration from outside of Europe, bringing in droves of people from a culture and religion which is simply incompatible with western values. The proof is that even 3rd or 4th generation immigrations still haven't integrated, let alone assimilated, most often living in ghettos with massive unemployment, high crime, drug dealing, where ideas and culture run rampant which can best be described as medieval (with respect to homosexuality, work ethics, religion, women, behavior in public, ...).

My own country has a VERY generous social security system, which combined with mass immigration for decades, and little to no effort spent on integration & assimilation, leads to destruction of society, total lack of support for politics and a general pessimistic view on the future.

Yeah, but there are two completely different circumstances. Europe dosent have to deal with the absolute cluster fuck mess colonialism was. They just took money and resources and moved on.

"Hey broken country do want another million people?"

If the shoe was on the other foot? Gtfo your talking about highly corrupt administations propt up by western interests, that only providing aide for un-repayable loans. Look up what the IMF or World Bank has done and its failures.

Why do you think these people are refuguees?

They are usually running from their own country, they are running from situations from Muslim countries. How can you possibly extrapolate how billions of people would react?

You say muslims, most muslims are in Indonesia, Saudi is hardly representative of most Muslims.

Islam is far less organized or a pancea that you see it as. Muslim countries dont follow the spirit of any Islamic law, except when it suits their needs, Saudi is famous for this.

Its just too easy to paint broad strokes. You mischaracterize the situation to fit your own narrative.

Can we finally state as a fact that Europe is only democratic and fair for its own citizens?

Makes sense people in this world are selfish, and self concerned. I get your prespective but your Dutch way of life isnt even close to being threatened.

Next time you hear in the news about how progressive and equal your country maybe you ahould add that aestrix, then maybe less people will come.

> Europe dosent have to deal with the absolute cluster fuck mess colonialism was.

England is the product of many waves of colonization. Spain was colonized by the Muslims.

Why were the Europeans able to colonize these places in the first place anyway?

> Gtfo your talking about highly corrupt administations propt up by western interests, that only providing aide for un-repayable loans. Look up what the IMF or World Bank has done and its failures.

LOL! I’m from Bangladesh. The World Bank is the best thing that ever happened to the country. It basically teaches developing nations to get rich the same way European countries got rich. It’s native and organic cultural dysfunction that stands in the way.

Blaming Europeans for the dysfunction of the developing world is a false kindness. Ordinarily, you get better by copying the people who succeeded. People study how Steve Jobs built Apple. Blaming colonialism makes it easy for developing countries to falsely imagine that if they could only overcome colonialism, they would have been prosperous too.

At the risk of setting off pyrotechnics I’m going to point you to this op-ed (I am assuming you can read Bengali)

http://archive.prothom-alo.com/detail/news/67517

e: hmm it seems to be down but one of the things it states was how much money Pakistan federal government spent on upgrading education system in erstwhile East Pakistan holding it to high standards

> Why were the Europeans able to colonize these places in the first place anyway?

But why was she assaulted? What was she doing? What was she wearing?

> Blaming colonialism makes it easy for developing countries to falsely imagine that if they could only overcome colonialism, they would have been prosperous too.

anthropomorphization much?

Yeah, from a historical perspective, it’s a miracle that the modern west is not more racist.

“We have primitive instincts, medieval institutions, and God-like technology.” — EO Wilson

I didn't want to chime in because Dutch colonialism etc. but still....

There has to be a place in the global stage for whites/caucasians/etc. just as much as any other grouping. And it's OK for them to have their own culture and place. They are not the global majority in any way, either by culture or otherwise. Demanding that they assimilate to a foreign ideal is not going to work.

Western culture has taken over the world. People from all corners of the globe wear western clothes, listen to western music, watch western TV, talk about western current events, speak western languages and practice western religions. Not all, of course, but western culture is more dominant than any other. The place for white Europeans to practice their culture is called Earth.

Well Dutch care about their culture, not American Hollywood, mcdonald's, English language and American values that have taken over the world. And that goes for every European country small or big.

One might even argue that it is a bit racist to assume all white people have the same culture.

> Western culture has taken over the world. People from all corners of the globe wear western clothes, listen to western music, watch western TV, talk about western current events, speak western languages and practice western religions. Not all, of course, but western culture is more dominant than any other. The place for white Europeans to practice their culture is called Earth.

Couldn't agree more.

I see this appeal to the early common roots of western culture as a point of union and positivity.

Sadly I think the mentality of division and protagonism, as opposed to the western value of individualism, has poisoned the well of our culture and people are much more susceptible to react taking offence that their micro-tribe isn't represented in full HD.

There is value in seeing the world painted in a broad spectrum of strokes and observing the patterns that emerge from different perspectives, but this requires tolerance and curiosity.

Isn't that mostly American culture rather than Western one? "Western culture" is a huge generalization, like "Asian culture" would (what would that even mean? Japan, China, India, Israel? All of them are Asian countries).

You won't find many traces of Finnish or Austrian culture on an Indian TV channel.

Most European cultures are fairly regionally limited and, in some cases, threatened with extinction (see: Lusatian Sorbs [0]). Indeed there is some resentment in Europe against American commercial culture squeezing out and killing off old local traditions.

For a bit of a fun, last Christmas the Czech Army produced a video of shooting down intruding Santa, as we have a different traditional figure bearing gifts to children. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbs

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0TgUsUfaVE

I think you underestimate the diversity of the Old Continent. Small places like The Isle of Man, Basque Country, Flanders or Malta have their own unique culture that cannot be simply classified as a generic "white European" thing.

This isn't even a category we tend to think in, this is a very American take on things. We consider ourselves Czechs, Poles, Kashubians, Danes, Lithuanians ... not "white Europeans".

There are parts of the world that speak Dutch, that are very far away from the Netherlands. Not many, the Dutch were a bit too cruel and after independence former colonies were eager to do away with the Dutch language. Nevertheless you can find aspects of Dutch culture dotted around the planet. Be it Dutch language in Suriname, Afrikaans in South Africa, Dutch architecture in Indonesia or people who converted to Christianity because of the Dutch.

If you are Dutch, French, British, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgian, German or yes American, I don't think you can complain too much that your culture is being lost given that these countries have spread their culture all around the planet more than most. If you are Swiss or Polish then you may have more of a point.

This is a very crude division. There are way more Poles than, say, Galicians (a small and fairly unique community of Spain). As for Britain, how many people do still speak Scottish Gaelic? Etc.

At the end of the day, loss of any culture in the world is tragic and previous colonialism isn't a good reason to wish punishment of cultural obliteration on contemporary inhabitants of the same countries, who are several generations distant from the perpetrators.

Superficially. But deeper cultural beliefs and orientations different dramatically. See Lee Kuan Yew’s reflections on American culture through the perspective of an East Asian: https://paulbacon.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/zakaria_lee.pd.... Yew was pretty westernized, wore a suit, spent much time in America. Yet he recoils at American individualism and it’s consequences.

Even inside America cultural differences abound. As a south Asian immigrant raised in the American south, I’ve come to realize I just don’t get along in the Pacific Northwest. I thought my Oregonian wife was just rude and blunt, but after spending some time in the state I realized most people there just don’t have the same notions about e.g. saving face or dancing around upsetting facts that I do.

Having lived in Portland, at least you and I agree on something. I ran screaming out of there as fast as I could.

Christianity is a Western religion now? What’s next, Jesus was white?

>moving them to a remote island

You might want to look up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marichjhapi_massacre, although there are thoughts that it was because a lot of them voted for the [non-CPI(M)] RSP that was part of the Left Front in WB at the time but not the ruling party

Yup. Also, one of my earliest memories is visiting my uncle, an officer in the Bangladeshi Army, on a military base. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure it was in connection with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chittagong_Hill_Tracts_conflic...

But you ask virtually any Bangladeshi about it and they shrug. “What else are you supposed to do with hill people?”

I feel like a country that was knee-deep in the trans-Atlantic slave trade like the Dutch doesn’t get to go isolationist once it becomes convenient.

Your feelings are really not relevant here, because any country will do whatever they can get away with. See China, the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia for examples.

So if the Dutch want to "go isolationist" and their laws and European laws allow that, then they do get to do it.

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