They're not refugees, we're being invaded

[goonthenflameme]

I admit, the Syrians have got it bad. There is a war and those boys who haven't been shot by ISIL are being conscripted by the President.

But if life is that bad, why do they only want to go to Germany and if they can't go then then they'll go back to Syria.

Why are we now seeing people from Kazakstan joining the throngs?

I agree that people from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria need help. But the thougsands and thousands of people coming through can't all be refugees in dire need of help if they are so picky as to where they will live.

They're invading Europe. And we are letting them. What's going to happen in 20 years? Will Christianity and western ways be swept under the carpet?

kate that photo is enough to make you want to weep. You could find similar photos of Syria, Iran and Iraq. It's as tragic as it is terrifying.

Olivepip does this Swedish friend exist and do you have a link to the change of law,'please? A quick Google search suggests that the recent change is intended to remove race as a construct in Swedish law (on the reasonable grounds that there is no genetic basis for race in the human species). I can't find much information on whether or how this has been applied.

noeffingidea I absolutely agree that some communities have problematic attitudes towards women, often encouraged by religion, and there may well be issues of crimes not being prosecuted or pursued adequately. But several of the links that have been posted on here HAVE been from far right and in some cases overtly facist sites, reporting incidents that NO mainstream news outlet has reported - to the point that I've honestly wondered whether there might be some coordinated far-right trolling on mumsnet in the way that you see on other sites which allow commentary on political issues (and in Facebook, with groups like Britain First which is basically the old BNP).

I have been in Iran and I know how women are treated and how their positoin in society has changed since 1979 for the worse because of radical Islam. We are not making this up. However yes some of the refugees are atheists or keen on equality for men and women. No one is saying otherwise. However if 1m come (they won't as Cameron and whoever else is in power knows the views of most people here who cannot get jobs or pay rent easily as we are a bit crowded in places where there are jobs) that is not likely to improve women's rights. If we could remove all religions from all schools, require everyone to speak English and solve the issue of white flight so that communities integrate then that would be a good start.

Mistigri, I have not read the far right blogs whoch exist, so can't really comment on those but do you not think it's possible that mainstream news outlets don't always report these stories because they don't want to admit there is a problem. I wouldn't have belived it before Rotherham or the Saville cases came to light, but now, who knows?

Or it could be more simple - we live in an inherently misogynistic society and issues which predominantly affect women are not seen as important enough to give lots of news coverage to.

beaucoup that might be true of (say) the Guardian, but don't you think that migrant rapes would fit perfectly with the narrative of, say, the Daily Express or the Telegraph? I imagine that they read these reports (which are quite widely disseminated in the Internet) but come up against the problem that there is no evidence. Now maybe there is no evidence because the voices of the victims aren't being heard, but do you really believe that these victims are prepared to talk to blogs that disseminate far-right propaganda but not to the local or national press?

I don't think there is any parallel with the Saville rapes (and rumoured abuse by high standing politicians) where there was clearly an incentive for the establishment to protect reputations. Rotherham is a bit different, I guess a mixture of local cover-up for political gain, and the fact the victims were considered sub-human not just by their abusers but by the people who were supposed to protect them. And I concede that this latter issue may also be a factor in reporting of migrant rapes, where migrants are the victims. But in this case I wouldn't be looking to facist websites to give me accurate news on the subject as they are the very people in whose interest it is to paint migrants as subhuman.

Also, beaucoup, crimes that really happened and where the perpetrator was a migrant have been widely reported, eg the killing of that poor teenager by an east European in the UK, and the rape of a girl by a Polish migrant in (I think) the Calais area. So there is no "omertà" on this subject in the media, quite the opposite! (These crimes have both had a lot of coverage and the migrant angle was used to sell papers).

I agree that looking at far right groups, with their particular agenda, is not the best source of accurate information. That said, there is a problem regarding attitudes to women, which does need addressing. The info from Sweden is not made up.

I think that protecting women's rights as a priority, doesn't seem to be on anybody's agenda and that needs to change.

Of course he exists, what an odd question! We met up at a wedding so he neglected to supply full documentation for his thoughts.

Iirc, it was to do with the removal of the idea of race along with the 'nethater' law which he felt was being misused. He also talked about the female foreign minister whose remarks about human rights/female abuse in KSA were buried.

Not far right, no conspiracy theory, two old schoolmates (ironically, we went to school with many people from the countries we are debating, they are our friends) chatting and catching up.

Let's not forget, it wasn't just Rotherham Rochdale, Newcastle, Oxford, Derby, with more ongoing investigations.
Same old shit, eh?

beaucoup I think we are in complete agreement there, and also on the problem that religion is often complicit in propagating anti-woman attitudes.

Re cover-ups of sexual abuse, I assume we're not just talking about Muslims or migrants any more? It's a wider problem that is by no means limited to particular ethnic groups (recent coverups have also involved MPs, teachers, celebrities and Catholic priests, most of whom were white and nominally Christian), but where the consistent feature is the painting of victims as deserving and complicit in their abuse.

Wrt the sexual abuse, obviously that is a problem within all communities. The Catholic church has been severely damaged by its covering up of these things, and rightly so imo. If any other authority figures colluded to cover it up they should be in prison.

Wrt the Rotherham cases the police and authorities knew it was going on and did nothing out of fear of being accused of racism. We cannot have a society where children get raped and the authorities will do nothing because the fear of being accused of racism outweighs their obligations to uphold the law and protect the victims.

It doesn't bode well for women generally.

Mistigiri But several of the links that have been posted on here HAVE been from far right and in some cases overtly facist sites, reporting incidents that NO mainstream news outlet has reported - to the point that I've honestly wondered whether there might be some coordinated far-right trolling on mumsnet in the way that you see on other sites which allow commentary on political issues (and in Facebook, with groups like Britain First which is basically the old BNP).

Can you link what these are please and:

(1) the evidence you have for your claims of far-right affiliation and facissm
(2) the evidence you have for the former being problematic when reporting sexual attacks
(3) the point you are trying to make i.e. are you saying these rapes are not in fact done by the perpetrators the victims claim, or that it should not be possible to describe the ethnic origin of a rapist? Logically, one or the other must be correct, so which one are you saying it is? Clearly, the women were raped by men, and those men must be identifiable.

The link that I posted has been attacked in the past on similarly vague terms (right wing), however it reports quantifiable evidence in terms of case law reported in the Swedish case reports. This can be very easily verified, and I'm surprised you have not done so since it answers one of your questions in your post about a change in Swedish law. Perhaps you are referring to legislation, however Swedish law of course incorporates case law too, and the article refers to the conviction of Michael Hess for the new crime of "denigrating ethnic groups", because he referred to certain cultures as being more likely than others to be involved in raping Swedish women.

The difficulty is circular, because there simply isn't any research being done which could contribute to the protection of women and which would be sensible when the make up of our society is being so drastically altered. Pretending that race doesn't exist or contribute to a person's outlook, culture and attitudes is simply nonsense and if I were to be as dumb as to ascribe a political bias to it and to ignore the far more real issues of rape and abuse of one gender, I would say its a left wing ideology gone mad. Of course its actually irrelevant what political affiliation is involved, but turning it into a political issue and using that as an excuse to stifle academic research so it cannot be discussed is unlikely to lead to a happy society.

did nothing out of fear of being accused of racism

I suspect this was post-justification. The contemporary records of police and social services reports, which have been published, show victim-blaming. The victims were called troublesome and their abuses described as a lifestyle choice. There was nothing about fear of being thought racist.

Iirc, the enquiry started out on the basis that this was true but rapidly found the real problem was lack of interest in the girls' safety.

*olivepip59 Of course he exists, what an odd question! We met up at a wedding so he neglected to supply full documentation for his thoughts.&

Even in the unlikely event that you asked him to supply it, he would have struggled to do so, since in Sweden and in most countries, there is a total deficit of statistics and research on the very real issue of whether immigrants from misogynistic cultures which devalue women by law are involved in more sex crime and denigration of women.

The reasons for this in Sweden are not part of some right wing plot but are in fact twofold:

• second and third generation immigrants are not counted as anything other than Swedish, even though they may share the anti-female culture of their recent immigrant family
• it is strongly discouraged by law and severe penalties to discuss or research the racial origin of criminals

So we can only guess the result of such a culture on recent immigrants from Sharia law cultures, since proper research is discouraged. I should imagine that its very encouraging for the would-be rapist.

I submit that the endemic sexual, physical and financial abuse of women & children by the Catholic and Anglican churches is sufficient evidence that rapists don't have to be Muslim to use their religion as a cover.

mistigri But in this case I wouldn't be looking to facist websites to give me accurate news on the subject as they are the very people in whose interest it is to paint migrants as subhuman.

Honestly, I'm intrigued. Just who are these facist groups and where are these facist websites you keep finding? Can you identify them? I certainly want to avoid facism!

Can you explain your evidence for right-wing groups being less trustworthy than left-wing groups, why this is relevant, and how a right-wing group moves from right-wing to facism (and why this process of political extension doesn't affect the credibility of left-wing groups in the same manner?)

Scremer, but why does it matter? If you catch a rapist, he is a criminal who gets punished. If you find someone teaching misogyny, that's a crime in Sweden (I think?) and ditto.

You can find statistics that rapists are of below-average height. Should we view all short men as fundamentally criminal?

Should we deport all Catholic priests, given their rather obvious proclivity to despise women and rape children?

*Garrick Scremer, but why does it matter? If you catch a rapist, he is a criminal who gets punished. If you find someone teaching misogyny, that's a crime in Sweden (I think?) and ditto.&

If you identify by reliable statistics a problem with a certain ethnic group because of certain beliefs they hold relating to women, then you can target resources in educating members of that group so as to discourage them in advance from viewing women in a problematic way.

I think the problem is that certain left-wing apologists are so bound up in ideology that they are forced to invent ways in which their happy-clappy ideal of everyone living together in harmony, even recent immigrants, can be achieved. Pretending that race does not exist, or that men from anti-female cultures don't exist, is guaranteed to provide that.

Scremer I'm not going to post dodgy links, but two that caught my eye were links to Pamela Geller's blog and to a site linked with a Pegida.

Pamela Geller is an American far right blogger known for anti-Muslim propaganda, and is considered so extreme that Theresa May, that well known leftie, banned her from the UK.

I hope I don't have to tell you who Pegida are :-/

I actually have no idea Mistigri, but what are your opinions on the actual case law ie primary evidence, and don't you think its a problem that there can now be no proper research on the ethnic origins of rapists in Sweden following the very recent changes in ethnic composition of the population which means it is swayed in favour of those who come from a Sharia law background and who may still support Sharia law and its restrictions on women?

Of course you don't have to be muslim to use religion as a cover. Abusers are very good at finding ways to cover what they are doing. Religion generally has not done women many favours imo - it has been used as a tool to suppress our freedom and even autonomy over our own bodies. I would go so far as to say that a lot of abusers deliberately join religious organisations because it gives them access to vulnerable people under a veneer of respectablity.

But the idea that women are less than men seems enshrined in Islam itself and written into the law itself in countries where it is the dominant religion. These places are not moving away from that view, as has happened in Christian countries. In fact, they are going backwards when you look at that photo of women in Kabul in the 1970s. Then we let people with that way of thinking come here and they don't accept that they need to adapt to a different way of thinking because their religion supercedes our law in their minds.

And also scremer you will find that I don't disagree that certain cultures and religions promote misogyny, particularly Islam and Catholicism, as well as the more extreme types of Protestantism and Judaism. This misogyny provides a fertile ground for abuse, as demonstrated in Rotherham as well as in the Catholic abuse scandals.

And our authorities are too shit scared of being accused of racism to apply the law properly.