🇦🇹 Austria General Discussion

[parochial boy]

They come over here, they steal our Wifi...

[parochial boy]

As usual, anti semitism is almost exclusively a symptom of the far right and radical Islam. Left wing anti Zionists are, in my experience, some of the most decent, accepting people out there.

I don't think it is possible to be anti-zionist and not be anti-semitic, because the entire position relies on the argument that Jewish nationalism is somehow uniquely unacceptable.

That said, right wing anti-semitism is clearly a thing and people should recognise this.

[parochial boy]

As usual, anti semitism is almost exclusively a symptom of the far right and radical Islam. Left wing anti Zionists are, in my experience, some of the most decent, accepting people out there.

I don't think it is possible to be anti-zionist and not be anti-semitic, because the entire position relies on the argument that Jewish nationalism is somehow uniquely unacceptable.

That said, right wing anti-semitism is clearly a thing and people should recognise this.

Question: is it anti-semitic or anti-zionist to fully recognize that Israel should exist and that it is in fact better on human rights than many other nations in the area, but also to say that it might want to treat Palestinians better?

I think Anti-zionism as a position tends to hold that a Jewish state in Israel is illegitimate, which is a whole different kettle of fish to criticising Israel's policy with regards to Palestine.

Conflating the two is a useful trope for both the anti-semites of the world as well as the Israeli ultranationalist right.

[parochial boy]

The stats that tender posted seem to indicate a low and static crime rate (a brut increase of two murders is hardly a trend), and even if a straight out majority of murders were committed by foreigners, they would still have a murder rate well below any comparable US city

[parochial boy]

..it's a cheap political strategy...

Sounds like a lot of the Kurz-Strache government to be honest, lots of symbolic identitarian stuff, but very little to address the underlying cause behind why certain immigrant groups, even after three generations, have not succesfully integrated into Austrian (or German, Dutch, French for that matter) society.

But then, Europe is a big and diverse place, and the experience of one migrant group in one country does not necessarily set a template for the experiences of every immigrant group on the continent.

[parochial boy]

I played soccer in Berlin-Neukölln this afternoon, with a Nigerian man and a German woman among others. The Nigerian didn't rape the woman, but he won the match. Afterwards I had spinach cake in some hipster coffee shop and it did in fact taste a bit like spinach.

Careful, I once mentioned that I sat next to a Somali girl at work and got called an "emotional leftist" as a result