Confused Danish radicals

There is a group in Europe called SIOE (Stop the Islamisation of Europe). A few days ago a disgusting attack took place on a few Danish members of the group, the details of which have been reported here.

It appears that the thugs who carried out the assaults are "autonomists". Autonomism is a current of radical left-wing thought in Europe, embraced by both anarchists and some Marxists. The theory involved is described in wikipedia as follows:

Some of the most discussed issues in autonomous groups are the questions of self-determination, self-organisation and militancy ... In the understanding of the autonomists it is not ultimately possible to be autonomous (independent in the sense of being self-determined). Every person lives in a web of dependence, which is normal for a social creature. The main emphasis is on the question of how far these dependencies are other-determined or self-determined, the struggle being to live wherever possible without being other-determined ... The "triple oppression" (racism, sexism and class) belongs to the theoretical foundations of the autonomists ...

Reading this, I can't help but think that the autonomists are deeply confused. They have set themselves up as radicals and revolutionaries, but their ideals are the same as those of the establishment. They are followers of liberal autonomy theory, just like John Howard, Kevin Rudd and any other mainstream politician you care to mention. When the autonomists declare themselves to be in favour of voluntary social associations, rather than inherited or unchosen ones based on race, class or sex, they sound little different from your average Australian Liberal Party MP.

It is confused, too, for autonomists to support the growing influence of Islam in Europe. Do they really expect self-determination and autonomy to flourish in an Islamic Europe? The word Islam means submission, and it forms, as Omar Bakri Muhammed puts it:

a complete way of life that could not yield to any other way. “Islam is a complete system of living, the Sharia system. Islam has political beliefs — it cannot co-exist with another political belief.”

To underline this point, there has been a split in the German autonomist movement: one faction since 2001 has become critical of Islamic fundamentalism and suicide attacks - which is the more logically consistent position for an "autonomist" group to take.

So the Danes who were violently attacked ran into the wrong group of autonomists - those who, unlike some of the Germans, haven't figured out that Islam is incompatible with their own political beliefs.

In the meantime there have been more riots in European cities: in Amsterdam (see here and here) and in Brussels.

The silent riots

If you've been tuning into the mainstream media for the past week you wouldn't have heard the following news. There have been riots by the Dutch in the suburb of Ondiep in Utrecht.

Ondiep is a working-class suburb with a population that is roughly 70% Dutch. Locals have complained to the police about harassment and intimidation by groups of Moroccan and Turkish youths, but no effective action was taken.

Last Sunday, a 54-year-old local man, Rinie Mulder, witnessed a pregnant woman being harassed and intervened. He either took a knife or wrestled one from one of the youths. When the police arrived he raised the knife and was shot dead.

There followed two nights of rioting by the Dutch in which riot police were stoned, a former police station was set on fire and windows were smashed. 135 rioters were arrested and the suburb has been locked down by police.

After the riots, Ondiep residents organised a march to commemorate Rinie Mulder which was attended by 2000 people. They have also established their own protection group, reportedly 200 strong.

Significantly, the police and local authorities are supporting the formation of the protection group.

Conclusions? First, it's notable that these events have taken place in Holland, a country thought of as a model of the modern liberal state. If things aren't working out well there, there's little chance they will elsewhere. (Who would have thought of the Dutch rioting 20 years ago?)

Second, it's also noteworthy that the police aren't able to cope with the kinds of problems associated with multiculturalism. Rinie Mulder had rung the police to complain about harassment 30 times before he took things into his own hands. We saw this too in the case of Cronulla when there were complaints that police hadn't tackled Lebanese harassment of locals.

Third, what will happen if the EU admits Turkey as a member? Won't the kind of problems occurring in Holland become more widespread and more difficult to contain?

Finally, why is the mainstream media missing in action? As far as I know, I'm the only Australian "media outlet" to report on the riots. In fact, if it weren't for a Dutch blogger, Snouck Hurgronje, it's possible that the news wouldn't have travelled as far as it has.

Riots in Brussels

The mainstream media doesn't seem to want to report this; there was nothing about it in the Melbourne papers this morning.

So let me fill the gap: there have been three nights of rioting in the Belgian city of Brussels. 53 Muslim youths were arrested last night, following the arrest of 45 the previous night. Stones have been thrown at cars and pedestrians, windows of cars have been smashed, cars have been set on fire, a youth club has been set ablaze and two molotov cocktails were thrown into one of the city's major hospitals.

The riots have taken place soon after two police officers were ambushed by about 20 immigrant youths in Paris and brutally beaten. The French police union has complained that "these explosions of violence against the police are a kind of guerrilla warfare aimed at getting the forces of law and order to leave certain areas in order to immerse them in a logic of sedition and terror."

Somalis invade Melbourne school

(I don't often report on crime, but I'll make an exception for this story as I doubt that it will be covered in the mainstream media.)

Yesterday, a teacher at Macleod College in the northern suburbs of Melbourne found his classroom invaded by a group of Somalis armed with baseball bats, seeking vengeance on a Year 8 boy for comments allegedly made to a Year 10 boy at the school.

What's truly astonishing about this story is that the Somali gang did not consist of teenage friends of the Year 10 boy, but of parents!

It's disturbing, really, that members of a group of refugees who have been in this part of Melbourne for such a short period of time (just a few years) feel so bold as to stage an armed invasion of a classroom.

More violence

It's happened again, this time at Australia's most famous beach, Bondi in Sydney.

A group of six young people, including a female, suffered multiple stab wounds after being attacked by a large group of men "of Middle Eastern appearance" armed with knives and bottles.

More here.

Cronulla - media blames who?

A week has now passed since the events at Cronulla in Sydney. Where are we now?

First thing to mention is the large-scale police response. Two thousand police were assigned to guard the beaches today (Sunday), and six popular beaches were declared unsafe for public use.

Most remarkably, an entire suburb, Brighton-le-Sands, was placed in total lockdown under new laws, after five men (it’s not specified whether Australian or Lebanese) were arrested driving a car laden with a large drum of petrol, police scanners, and equipment for making molotov cocktails.

A police statement declared that there had been “an escalation in anti-social behaviour,” though newspaper reports have described the beaches themselves as quiet.

That, briefly, is the situation on the ground. But what of the political response?

There have been at least three major lines of thought circulating through the Australian media. The first is the one I have already described, namely, that Sydney is different and that the events at Cronulla couldn’t happen elsewhere in Australia.

After the course of the week I have further reason to doubt this claim. Listening to talkback radio in Melbourne during the week, there were many calls from young working-class Australian men aggrieved by bashings at the hands of Lebanese, or at the mistreatment of local women. One man rang in to explain why he and twenty of his mates were planning to go to Sydney “in solidarity”. A work colleague, too, told me that his son wanted to go to Sydney to support the Australians, and some of my students indicated the same thing.

The second political response has been a debate within the political class about whether or not Australians are racist. This debate is significant because it touches on important ideological differences between left-wing and right-wing liberals in this country – but I’ll go into this in a future post.

Which leaves the third political response. Increasingly the media is blaming Cronulla on the activities of what they call neo-nazis or white supremacists. There is a mood in the media and among the police to attack these “far-right” groups.

For instance, a story in today’s Herald Sun is headlined “Neo-Nazi link in race riots” and begins by informing us that “Australia’s intelligence services are investigating the role of neo-Nazi groups in Sydney’s race riots”. Another recent story in The Age was headlined “White supremacists hide in quiet suburbs” and began by claiming “The shadowy far-right may be behind Sydney’s race riots”. Academic James Jupp has written an article for The Australian in which he declares that multiculturalism won’t work unless “poisonous racist groups are crushed with the force of laws”.

Which is all very odd. The groups being talked about here are minuscule, poorly organised and are probably best described as white nationalist groups rather than white supremacist or neo-nazi. They themselves claimed to have fifteen people at Cronulla, which is probably a fair assessment of their numerical strength.

The Age article I cited above, in which two intrepid reporters tried to track down white supremacists in Melbourne, is particularly revealing. The journalists found a defunct post office box, a woman living in the country town of Shepparton and a man rumoured to be living in a Melbourne suburb. Not exactly a revolutionary force.

And yet we are supposed to take seriously the idea that such forces were responsible for an unprecedented rally of 5000 people at Cronulla and that the might of the Australian state should be mobilised to counter the challenge of the “far-right”?

It’s absurd – so much so that it poses the question of why the liberal political class should arrive at such an irrational response.

Was Cronulla left unprotected?

All week I have been asking people I know this question: Why were convoys of Lebanese men allowed to drive into Cronulla and other Sydney suburbs smashing cars and shops and bashing local residents? Surely, these large convoys must have been noticed by the police. Why weren’t they stopped?

My work colleagues gave me some unconvincing answers: that the police couldn’t be everywhere, or that the police could not have stopped the cars.

But now a different answer has surfaced. The Seven Network claims to have a police report instructing officers to stay away from Punchbowl Park where a convoy was gathering in order not to “antagonise” the young Lebanese men. The convoy then moved into Cronulla unimpeded by police.

I can only hope that the media pursues this incident vigorously. Who was responsible for the directive? What was the thinking behind it? It was a decision with serious consequences: it left the residents of Cronulla unprotected from a serious attack.

Police tactics will be different for this Sunday, though. A force of 1500 officers is being organised to patrol Cronulla and surrounds.

Meanwhile, there have been four attacks on churches in Sydney, the worst of which was an attack on a Catholic primary school during a Christmas carols service. Shots were fired into cars and parents abused.

Exceptions dwindling

There have been many riots in Western countries in recent times: Britain, France and America are obvious examples.

The response of the Australian political class to these events has usually been to claim Australian exceptionalism. We are different, they would assert, we are a multicultural success story the rest of the world should learn from.

I have always thought these claims to be complacent and arrogant. If multiculturalism leads to rioting in most countries which adopt it, why shouldn't the same thing eventually happen in Australia?

And now it has happened in a major way in Sydney.

So what has been the response of the political class down here in Melbourne to the rioting in Sydney? Well ... more exceptionalism. Now, though, the claim is that Sydney never got multiculturalism right, but we down here in Victoria have. It is we who are the exception and the rest of the world should learn from our example.

Our state Premier, Steve Bracks, for instance, has said that Victoria's multicultural history makes a Cronulla-like riot unlikely here. And Australian Multicultural Foundation executive director Hass Dallal said Victoria's multicultural success was an example to others.

Now, there are several things to note about this idea that Victoria is exceptional. First, the territory claimed by exceptionalists is always shrinking. Which parts of the Western world haven't now been hit by multicultural hostilities? Canada and not much else, it seems.

Second, Victoria is not so different to Sydney. Two months ago, 17 Muslim men were arrested in Melbourne and Sydney, many of them Lebanese, because they were planning major terrorist attacks in both cities.

And if you read through this article you find mention of recent ethnic brawling in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine (no Anglos involved, but Africans, Asians and Maoris) as well as long-running tensions in the country town of Robinvale (Aborigines vs Islanders).

Third, one of the experts who claims that Melbourne is different, does so because Melbourne has fewer ethnic enclaves. Melbourne, for instance, has only about 14,000 Lebanese born immigrants compared to about 50,000 in Sydney.

The problem with this argument, though, is that Premier Bracks has announced plans to use mass immigration so that Melbourne's population overtakes Sydney in the next 20 years. He wants to add an extra 700,000 migrants to Melbourne during this time.

So, if Mr Bracks has his way we won't even be different to Sydney in this regard either - our ethnic enclaves will grow to an equal size.

What then is needed as a political response to the events in Cronulla? Well, we should not continue to cling to vain hopes that things will somehow work out for the best in our part of the world, despite the policy of multiculturalism having failed elsewhere.

Eventually the defects built into multiculturalism will catch up with us all. So we need to do what hardly anyone in the political class is doing right now. Instead of accepting multiculturalism as something untouchable, and doing ever more of the same to try to make it work, we need to reject the policy itself as being misguided and mistaken.

Why force people of different races, cultures and traditions to live together? Why should we accept that this policy is the only "moral" one to adopt?

Isn't it actually more logical to follow the older ideal, in which each culture and tradition could reproduce itself within its own homeland?

Multiculturalism is a false ideal. It is time to recognise this openly and to reform the policy of mass immigration into Western countries.

What's happening at Cronulla?

This story has received a great deal of publicity in NSW, but none that I know of so far in Victoria.

It seems that groups of Middle Eastern men have been journeying from west Sydney to Cronulla beach and attacking locals, including the surf lifesavers. After the bashing of three lifesavers, locals are responding.

There is now a major police presence on the beach.

A report on the situation is available here.