As a fellow Scandinavian, DHH is just writing what the vast majority of us think. And it isn’t racist. That word is being misused until it soon has no value left; you sure you want that?
I've been thinking about whether "$some_country rape gangs" seems racist to me. I've come down on "yes".
The reason might seem odd. But it ocurred to me that if you want to use immigration to reduce crime, including rape, the obvious solution is to ban all male immigration.
That shocked me because it seems so wildly discriminatory. Yes, most violent crimes are committed by men. But very few men commit violent crimes. Banning male immigration would punish a large group for the appalling actions of a few. Making it about "$some_country's men" doesn't seem a whole lot better. It's still unjust to punish someone for someone else's crime.
If anyone is curious about the exercise, I recommend trying it. It was disconcerting to sit with the idea of banning male immigration, really seriously consider it and realise how viscerally shocked I was by the idea.
Edit: for context, in the UK right now, phrases like "rape gangs" are part of the debate/argument about immigration.
Your solution of banning male immigration makes perfect sense to me. Maybe not ban it entirely but at least ensure a 1-1 ratio of men to women (male surplus has a tendency to turn countries into shitholes).
Disallowing someone from immigrating is not a punishment because there is no right to immigration anyway. In fact I believe we should go even further and see immigrants as investments. If the immigrant is unlikely to have a net positive tax contribution (or at least not being a rapist, for a more realistic target), I don't see any reason to allow him or her to be here. If you accept this idea, there is nothing wrong with training a neural network on characteristics of existing immigrants to predict the future value of a particular potential immigrant.
The Grooming Gangs feature a lot of nationalities, but some more than others.
There's nothing racist about the facts. How one responds to it can indeed be racist -- ie. "all people of one of said nationalities are like these ones" would be racist. But observing that a nationality of immigrants are vastly overrepresented is just using your eyes to observe reality.
I'm happy to say that ~80% of Sweden and Norway don't vote for right wing populist parties like SD and Fremskrittspartiet, so "vast majority of us" might be a bit of a stretch.
That's a misrepresentation of statistics though. FRP is the second largest party this election, with 23,8% of votes, only second to AP who got 28%. But many people won't vote based on the immigration issues, because so far, other issues are more pressing.
But my point was that I am absolutely sure the majority of Norwegians _want Norway to remain a country that retains its cultural history_ while not being exclusive to one ethnic group. It's about retaining a majority.
I don't understand why that sentiment is so problematic here on HN, because simultaneously people are clamoring for a Palestinian state for the Palestinian people.
Why can't Norway have a Norwegian state for the Norwegian people? Or Denmark? Or the UK?
> That's a misrepresentation of statistics though.
I can't speak for Norway, but in Sweden the only party worth keeping an eye on that adheres to the usual combination of pro-Russia, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, anti-EU rhetoric etc is Sverigedemokraterna (formerly Bevara Sverige Svenskt, a party based solely on the idea of an ethnostate). They're hovering around 20%.
> But my point was that I am absolutely sure the majority of Norwegians _want Norway to remain a country that retains its cultural history_ while not being exclusive to one ethnic group. It's about retaining a majority.
Is the existence of history dependent on the ethnicity of the person reading it? I'm sure you've met non-native people who are in all other respects very much Norwegian.
Unless you mean to imply that culture is constrained to genetics. I deeply hope that that is not what you meant.
> I don't understand why that sentiment is so problematic here on HN, because simultaneously people are clamoring for a Palestinian state for the Palestinian people.
How many Norwegian cities were leveled by bombs this year? How many were murdered by foreign military?
> Why can't Norway have a Norwegian state for the Norwegian people? Or Denmark? Or the UK?
Frankly, I might be sympathetic to this view, except for a few countries: The US, the UK, France, Belgium and maybe a few others. The US is a country of immigrant, so none of that cultural history nonsense holds, except maybe for the Native Americans. As for France and the UK, yeah no one told them to go colonize a bunch of countries around the world and impose their culture on them. They don't get to complain about retaining their cultural history. Belgium doesn't get to complain either after the atrocities they committed in Central Africa.
The word racism is not diluted. It is that just some full on racists feel like it says something negative and thus don't want the label put on racists stuff they like.
So do you consider what the Danish PM said racist?
> There are really a lot of us Danes who believed that when people came to this ‘world’s best country’ and were given such good opportunities, they would integrate. They would become Danish, and they would never, ever harm our society. All of us who thought that way have been wrong.
That's objectively observed reality in Denmark. And in Scandinavia in general. It's not about race, it's not about skin color, it's about cultural heritage and values.
All we're saying is that to retain a country's cultural heritage and carry it -- and obviously shape it -- into the future, you have to retain a majority of that heritage, and integrate newcomers. Otherwise it's no longer Denmark.
you have to retain a majority of that heritage, and integrate newcomers. Otherwise it's no longer Denmark.
what you are asking is not possible without rejecting immigration.
that is the delusion. it is the same all over europe. people expect 100% integration. yet at the same time, prejudices will reject them if they are not completely invisible. that is not possible, and it is not the integration i would want. i have written about this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44746099
London is no longer the city I was infatuated with in the late '90s and early 2000s. Chiefly because it's no longer full of native Brits. In 2000, more than sixty percent of the city were native Brits. By 2024, that had dropped to about a third. A statistic as evident as day when you walk the streets of London now.
Copenhagen, by comparison, was about eighty-five percent native Danes in 2000, and is still three-quarters today. Enough of a foreign presence to feel cosmopolitan, but still distinctly Danish in all of its ways. Equally statistically evident on streets and bike lanes.
But I think, what would Copenhagen feel like, if only a third of it was Danish, like London? It would feel completely foreign, of course. Alien, even. So I get the frustration that many Brits have with the way mass immigration has changed the culture and makeup of not just London, but their whole country.
No it's not. Stop diluting terms. You're making this problem worse for everyone, even the people you think you're on the side of, whoever they might be.
The reason might seem odd. But it ocurred to me that if you want to use immigration to reduce crime, including rape, the obvious solution is to ban all male immigration.
That shocked me because it seems so wildly discriminatory. Yes, most violent crimes are committed by men. But very few men commit violent crimes. Banning male immigration would punish a large group for the appalling actions of a few. Making it about "$some_country's men" doesn't seem a whole lot better. It's still unjust to punish someone for someone else's crime.
If anyone is curious about the exercise, I recommend trying it. It was disconcerting to sit with the idea of banning male immigration, really seriously consider it and realise how viscerally shocked I was by the idea.
Edit: for context, in the UK right now, phrases like "rape gangs" are part of the debate/argument about immigration.