German cabinet agrees to fine social media over hate speech

[DavidB.]

Europeans on the right should start learning Hungarian or Polish -- or Hebrew, for those who echo Relocation may be necessary someday.

[DavidB.]

Europeans on the right should start learning Hungarian or Polish -- or Hebrew, for those who echo Relocation may be necessary someday.

funny thing is, my more conservative hungarian and polish friends are starting to doubt the extremism/corruption of their ruling parties and are looking for alternatives.

I don't disagree. The type of European right-winger that thinks Fidesz or PiS are ideal is similar to the type of right-wing diaspora Jew who thinks Likud is "based" -- informed people know better. I know all about the Polish and Hungarian ruling parties' corruption and how they ignore many of the real problems in their countries, and I will be the last one to idolize them. What I'm saying is that despite this point (and many other disadvantages of these countries), Western Europe may be worse off at some point in the future.

[DavidB.]

Europeans on the right should start learning Hungarian or Polish -- or Hebrew, for those who echo Relocation may be necessary someday.

Reported for wishing a psychical harm on me.

You'll be in Berlin or Paris by then

[DavidB.]

Can't wait for the Ministry of Truth to finally decide on what is or is not fake news.

Hope you've started saving up already? Your posts on Atlas will soon be a thought crime.

[DavidB.]

Ironically enough, you're inadvertently making a case for EU open borders. Everybody can sort themselves to a political scene and culture that suits them best.

I don't oppose Poles or Lithuanians moving here, or Italians moving to France, or Greeks moving to Germany (as long as this does not put natives at a disadvantage on the labor market, of course). I just think nation states should decide on who they take in and who should stay out, not the EU -- and I think they should be allowed to do so on the basis of criteria that would currently be off-limits due to EU and other international agreements. For example, Hungary (and the Netherlands, for that matter) should have the right to say yes to Christians and no to Muslims. But as far as I'm concerned most people from within the EU should be and are welcome here (though Romania and Bulgaria are borderline cases). Europeans have so much in common.

[DavidB.]

Seeing as there are no Muslims countries in the EU, the Netherlands or Hunary pretty much do have the right to limit immigration by Muslims.

Of course not. There are more Muslims with EU citizenship than there are Dutch, and all these people have the right to move around. Not that they are ever collectively going to decide to move to Hungary, but theoretically they do have that right.

It's also interesting that intra-EU migration has only ever really been an issue in the UK (and Switzerland). Le Pen or Strache's big thing isn't Polish migrants in the way it was for UKIP.

I agree that it was more of an issue in the UK than anywhere else, but I'd definitely say it was a political issue here too. The PVV once received a lot of attention for starting a hotline to complain about any trouble caused by "MOE-landers", which stands for people coming from Central or Eastern European. There used to be quite a lot of prejudice against these people, which I didn't like at all. Former PvdA alderman Marnix Norder in The Hague, where a lot of Polish immigrants ended up, made some rather harsh comments about them as well ("a tsunami", "I don't have anything against them, but there are too many of them").

[DavidB.]

How much immigration of Muslims between Western European countries is there though? I mean, Muslims living France get blamed for about half the crime in the Geneva region (Roma get blamed for the other half), but that was something I always thought was quite specific to the region. I would have assumed that most Turkish or Moroccans in Holland migrated directly rather than via another part of Europe?

Oh, there is almost no Muslim immigration from other EU countries to the Netherlands afaik. It's very much a theoretical point.