Competing goods
On the one hand: in general, welcoming immigrants is a good thing, and welcoming refugees and asylum speakers is a moral imperative. On the other hand: there are genuine reasons to think it’s not possible to welcome all immigrants who would like to immigrate.
For one of those reasons, we have what seems to have happened in Cologne and elsewhere in Germany. I emphasize “seems” because accounts differ.
As 2016 neared on Dec. 31, however, some 1,500 men, including some newly arrived asylum seekers and many other immigrants, had instead assembled around Cologne’s train station. Drunk and dismissive of the police, they took advantage of an overwhelmed force to sexually assault and rob hundreds of people, according to police reports, shocking Germany and stoking anxieties over absorbing refugees across Europe.
“We were just pressed on all sides by people,” recalled one victim, Johanna, 18, who agreed to speak by telephone from Lake Constance, Germany, where she lives, only if her last name was not used, fearing hostility, particularly over social media. “I was grabbed continually. I have never experienced such a thing in any German city.”
It’s not a trend anyone should want to introduce, is it.
Much is still hazy about that night. But the police reports and the testimony of officials and victims suggest that the officers failed to anticipate the new realities of a Germany that is now host to up to a million asylum seekers, most from war-torn Muslim countries unfamiliar with its culture.
Working from outdated expectations, the police made a series of miscalculations that, officials acknowledge, allowed the situation to deteriorate. At the same time, both the police and victims say, it was not a situation any of them had encountered before. This was new terrain for all, and just one taste of the challenges facing Germany and its leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel, to assimilate a huge new population in an atmosphere of dwindling tolerance and volatile politics.
Lale Akgun, 62, a Turkish-born analyst who has lived in Cologne and worked on integration issues for decades, said in an interview that the New Year’s Eve incident highlighted the growing tension between those who see the new arrivals as a source of enrichment and those who see them as a burden, or even a danger.
What about the people who see them both ways? What about the people who think some of the new arrivals will enrich while others will burden? What about the people who frankly don’t know which will be dominant?
Another woman who was there, Sara, a 25-year-old from the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg, said the situation was still precarious at 4 a.m., when she arrived at the station with a girlfriend. Hundreds of what she described as “foreign” men “began to circle around us,” she said, agreeing to speak only if her last name was not used, also for fear of being attacked over social media.
“I grabbed my girlfriend — I do social work with women who are affected by violence — and told her: ‘Don’t look any of them in the eyes. Keep hold of your purse.’ Then I got frightened, told them ‘Leave me in peace’ with a hand gesture — anyone in the world understands that.”
Sara said that she and her friend decided to seek safety outside the station with police officers, who were themselves helpless. “I never experienced that a policeman says, ‘I would love to help you, but I can’t.’ That was really the worst,” she said. “Who should I turn to as a woman? What should I do?”
Wouldn’t it be nice if women were considered and treated as human beings everywhere in the world? So that male immigrants and refugees would be no more likely to gang up on women than anyone else?
If one society generally teaches men that women who don’t cover themselves are immodest and “asking for it” while another society has far more sympathy with the idea of bodily autonomy for everyone and no problem with nude beaches, it’s hard to imagine that cultural assimilation would come easily when exchanging population between the two.
I don’t know if people use that argument much anymore, but in Ye Olde Days women were considered natural victims because they’re generally smaller and weaker. It’s just the law of the jungle. Blah blah blah.
I bring it up because somehow I feel that old tripe coming up when you say “Wouldn’t it be nice if women were considered and treated as human beings everywhere in the world?” I can feel the Well, sure. In Civilized Countries™ we’re way ahead (and don’t point out that we’re far from there yet). But in Those Countries™, what do you expect? Law of the jungle. Blah blah blah.
But even sumo wrestlers couldn’t fight a mob. Nobody, nobody at all, is big enough or strong enough to swat away dozens of people. It’s got nothing to do with jungles and never did. People together decide which groups can be picked on. And they need to decide to stop.
Damion – no shit. That’s what the post is about.
We are in violent agreement, Ophelia.
No doubt it feels weird for us both.
I do think support and education for refugees/immigrants in adapting to and assimilating into their adopted country’s culture would help a lot. At the moment we see large numbers of displaced people, some of whom will not understand (or care) that the values of the country they are now in are very different.
We can welcome migrants and refugees while accepting there are certain aspects of their culture we will not allow to be imported. That’s not suggesting migrants and refugees must become fully culturally “European” – that’s probably not possible anyway in less than one generation, more likely two. But we can say, “These things we will not accept. These acts will get you jail time or possibly deportation. These are our laws and they must be kept.”
Of course, that requires that European authorities actually act to protect women. We aren’t exactly perfect on the misogyny front ourselves.
A quibble. Yes, we know that many of these migrants come from misogynistic (not to be more specific) cultures. But we should be wary of limiting our “de-misogynization” efforts to western borders. I realize that there are issues of practicality, but I feel very uncomfortable saying to women – western or, especially, Muslim – that we will only defend them “over here”. Or to certain men, in effect, that if they want to oppress women they should stay “home”. The message should be strong and universal. This is the 21st century. Certain behaviour is plainly uncivilized not to say criminal. Everywhere. Otherwise we lapse into a “Dear Muslima” position.
‘…they took advantage of an overwhelmed force to sexually assault and rob hundreds of people,…’
People? How many men did they sexually assault? Or is the Times worried about oppressing trans-folk?
We can welcome migrants and refugees while accepting there are certain aspects of their culture we will not allow to be imported. That’s not suggesting migrants and refugees must become fully culturally “European” – that’s probably not possible anyway in less than one generation, more likely two.
That, I’m afraid, is never going to happen.
I will neither allow my sense of generosity nor my altruism to be used and abused until they morph into instruments of cultural suicide.
It is utter foolishness to import millions of migrants from cultural backgrounds, the characteristics of which constitute major impediments to even superficial integration.
In some of these waves of migrants young single males outnumbered females by a factor of 11 to 1; not 10 to 1, but 11 to 1.
If we continue to import millions of young single males, chock full of hormones, from cultures irretrievably misogynistic, then we can expect to see some serious erosion of the rights and freedoms of women, and we can expect to see much more violence against women. As a society we need to make some hard choices before it’s too late.
The bankers tell us sans cesse that massive numbers of young immigrants are needed to ensure our economic well being, but if youth was the key to prosperity, then the entire Third World be awash in cash and Japan the economic poop-hole of the planet.
And for what it’s worth, in the space of only a single year Germany’s gender imbalance, it’s male to female ratio, has been rendered worse than China’s. Countries with huge gender imbalances ( in favour of males) are condemned to very violent futures, so why are we doing this to ourselves? Why is the mayor of Cologne issuing ‘modesty’ instructions for young and not-so-young German women?
Would someone pinch me….I’m have a very bad dream…
Damion @ 4 – no, it doesn’t feel weird for me. I don’t think about you.
John @ 8 – I read an interesting piece about the gender imbalance yesterday. I think I’ll share it here later. (Spoiler: it makes the same point you make, with input from someone who’s been studying the subject for 20 years. Societies with a lot more males have bad problems.)
@ 10 I’m looking forward to reading that.
Below is an article by an atheist Pakistani whose been living in Germany for quite some time. He expresses some very honest opinions about all of this.
http://www.dw.com/en/opinion-cologne-attacks-on-muslims-show-incompatibility-of-cultures/a-18971622