European Politics

It is sickening if you realize what people have voted for. "Enjoy" this good article everybody (1 year old but still relevant):

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/20/the-new-dutch-disease-is-white-nationalism/
The New Dutch Disease Is White Nationalism
An upstart far-right party in the Netherlands threatens to entrench xenophobia in one of Europe’s most progressive countries.

As voters in the Netherlands gear up for local elections, to be held across the country on March 21, the old adage that all politics are local is being turned on its head. For the Dutch, the opposite is equally true: Local politics are national. Since all cities and towns vote on the same day, prominent national politicians intrude, elevating mundane local elections that used to center on debates about bicycle paths and garbage collection into a national spectacle.

After last year’s nasty campaign that involved sitting Prime Minister Mark Rutte arguing that his rival Geert Wilders, the leader of the nativist Party for Freedom (PVV), would plunge the Netherlands into chaos and Wilders countering that not a single Dutch citizen believed Rutte anymore, the incumbent Rutte defeated Wilders in the March 2017 national election. The results were welcomed by European leaders such as Angela Merkel as a “good day for democracy.” But, as more critical observers have noted, Rutte’s win wasn’t a definitive victory for sensible centrism; indeed, he managed to triumph over the Dutch far-right by moving consistently further to the right himself — by dog whistling to anti-immigration voters and adopting positions similar to Wilders’s own.

If the biggest electoral headline from the Netherlands a year ago was Rutte’s success in fending off a challenge from Wilders, the less trumpeted but equally noteworthy news was the success of a new player in town — the self-styled far-right intellectual-turned-politician Thierry Baudet. Presenting himself to his audience on at least one occasion draped over a grand piano, Baudet, who is 35, combines a sentimental attachment to European high culture with the spirit of an online culture warrior. He has expressed support for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, both of whom he views as strong leaders. He has also cast doubt on investigations showing that Russia was responsible for the 2014 downing of a Malaysia Airlines jet over Ukraine that killed nearly 200 Dutch citizens.

With a talent for manufactured outrage and victimhood, Baudet exemplifies the politics of the 21st century. Last year, banking on the irresistibility of his persona to journalists, Baudet’s Forum for Democracy (FvD), a think tank reconfigured as a political party, entered parliament with two out of 150 seats — a modest but remarkable result for a party that didn’t exist in the previous election. Since then, Baudet has captivated the Dutch in the same way that Wilders benefited from the media’s obsessive attention to his every move since he founded his own party in 2006.

Baudet’s two-man party has, in recent polls, tied or even overtaken Wilders’s PVV, drawing voters from among Wilders’s supporters as well as Rutte’s center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). The local elections will be the first big test for Baudet and the FvD, which is fielding candidates in the Netherlands’ two largest cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

The predictions look promising for the FvD. If the polls are correct, Baudet will achieve something that Wilders has never managed nor attempted — to secure a foothold in Amsterdam’s city council. Because Amsterdam is known to have a political culture and electorate that are predominantly leftist, the PVV simply never bothered fielding candidates there, fearing that it would not win any seats and might be humiliated. However, the FvD may win as many as four seats in a city that has long thought of itself as the “Republic of Amsterdam,” bucking the racist and nativist sentiments that have swept the rest of the country — much like the Californian cities that have defiantly resisted Trump’s policies.

Many Dutch politicians and journalists have long hoped that once Wilders ran out of steam, the problem of nativist populism would fade from the scene. Baudet, however, plays a long game. He is building an ideology for the 21st century that seeks to re-establish the nation-state in the form that 19th-century Europeans imagined for it while simultaneously ridding the political space of both internal and external enemies. Liberated from European bureaucrats, Muslim immigrants, and feminists alike, it is the culture war of the American alt-right cloaked in the garb of European intellectual history

Baudet’s FvD is different from Wilders’s PVV in several ways. First, there is a distinct difference in style. The PVV has long been characterized as populist, and it depends on leeching off and perpetuating popular frustration to win votes. Though the PVV has been consistent in the harshly Islamophobic content of its rhetoric, its ideological grounding always seemed hodgepodge at best, oscillating between the paranoid style of its chief ideologue, Martin Bosma (a Dutch David Horowitz of sorts), and naked opportunism.

In contrast, the FvD likes to think of itself as a party that has a solid intellectual grounding. (It was recently announced that Paul Cliteur, a well-known professor at Leiden University, will head the party’s “scientific institute.”) Long before entering politics, Baudet donned the cloak of the public intellectual, penning polemics on topics including modern art and the European Union, often repeating on loop that it was all connected to oikophobia. Baudet defines this term, taken from the conservative British philosopher Roger Scruton, as a “pathological aversion” to the national home. Oikophobia, he insists, is destroying the nation-state through its concerted support for feminism, cultural Marxism, modern art, immigration, the European Union, and whatever else can be cast as the vague yet menacing bogeyman of the paranoid right.

This focus on an omnipresent and all-encompassing threat is the second shift from Wilders’s immigration-centric form of politics. The two men have a past working relationship, and Baudet has advised PVV politicians behind the scenes. However, when it comes to ideology, Baudet casts a far wider net. The hallmark of Wilders’s platform is a mix of nationalist kitsch and calculated cruelty toward the country’s Muslim population and immigrants, couched in the language of civil war. Wilders offers Dutch voters a form of politics based on persecution and perpetual resentment of immigrants and minorities. And while his rhetoric has escalated to even more rabid extremes in response to the electoral threat Baudet represents, there is also something impotent about it. Baudet, though equally obsessed with Islam, is reinventing the nativist platform in a way that anyone familiar with the American alt-right will instantly recognize; it is a political brand built around an imagined assault on ethnically white people and their culture — and the need to fight back. Significantly, Baudet is also popular among a sizable section of the younger generation — much more so than Wilders ever was.

Finally, Baudet represents a break with recent Dutch political culture. In many ways, he seems to channel the legacy of Pim Fortuyn, the iconic populist politician murdered in 2002. Fortuyn carried the torch of the Dutch tradition of anti-clericalism. In the 20th century, anti-clericalists targeted the church’s influence on Dutch society; it was only logical that this tradition of extreme secularism would set its sights on Islam next. And while Baudet seems to play a role very similar to Fortuyn — that of the dandy intellectual, able to upset and fluster his opponents with a flurry of theatrics and eloquence — his ideology represents the next chapter in the ever-escalating nativist resentment that has the Netherlands in its grip.

Where Wilders introduced a religious crusader’s fanaticism to the debate about Islam, Baudet is casting himself as the country’s lone defender of Western culture and as a champion of white people in particular. Even before entering politics, Baudet spoke of wanting to ensure that Europe remained “predominantly white and culturally as it is.” Last year, he claimed that Dutch society was being “diluted homeopathically” by an influx of refugees and migrants. He attributed the fall of the Roman Empire to mass migration (a myth long since debunked by scholars but popular on the far-right), explaining that the marble busts of Roman emperors in museums “look like us” but that modern-day Italians clearly look very different. In other words, immigration and ethnic mixing are the harbinger of political decay.

Baudet has suggested that the West suffers from an “autoimmune disease,” turning the body politic against itself and that “malicious, aggressive elements are being introduced in unheard numbers into our societal body.” He defended a mob smashing windows and threatening politicians at a local town hall meeting about taking in refugees as an “act of self-defense” against an “injection of criminality.”

Baudet consistently uses rhetoric that conjures the people as an organic being, poisoned by both external and internal enemies — language that clearly resembles that of fascist intellectuals in the early 20th century who were obsessed with the ethnic hygiene of their society. It is worth recalling that after the fascist intellectuals came the politicians who decided that this language needed to be matched by policy.

Most of the time, Baudet chooses his words carefully. In the speech to launch his political party, he called for the restoration and protection of “Boreal Europe.” To most listeners, the term seemed archaic and quaint. Boreal Europe stems from the myth that Europeans are of Aryan and polar descent and is used to envision an ethnically white space north of the line from Gibraltar to Vladivostok.

But the term also has a clear political lineage. It appeared on the margins of French intellectual life right after World War II and was popularized from the 1980s onward by the French ethno-nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front and father of its current leader, Marine Le Pen. Apart from his French inspirations, Baudet is cozy with American thinkers of the racist right: A few months ago, he sat down for a long dinner with Jared Taylor, the self-proclaimed race realist and proponent of scientific racism.

Whenever Baudet is called out, he is quick to play innocent — but he never quite convinces. Two weeks ago, one of his party’s top candidates in Amsterdam stepped down after having repeatedly suggested that black people simply have a lower IQ than white people and arguing that same-sex marriage had rendered society less intelligent (the claim being that gay people are smarter than straight people and that the marriages they used to settle for at least produced smart babies). Pressed for comment, Baudet made contradictory statements, refused to disavow his candidate, and insisted that differing IQ scores among different races were simply a matter of scientific fact.

In the Netherlands, vulgar racism is widely considered unacceptable. But Baudet’s brand of matter-of-fact racism, which consists of claims about the natural differences among entire ethnic or racial populations, often derived from bad science and discredited theories, is on the rise. Add that to the idea that white Europe is moribund due to the twin assaults of migration and cultural self-loathing and you end up with a dangerous mix — an ideologically coherent worldview.

More troubling is the fact that this worldview is gaining mainstream legitimacy. Several Dutch media outlets ran articles and reports on Baudet’s claims about IQ as if they were a legitimate academic debate. Indeed, the FvD is spearheading a culture war that targets a population that has in recent years been receptive to the aggressive political proselytizing of Wilders. For such voters, Baudet’s party represents the logical next step.

In the early 2000s, the Netherlands was one of the first countries, along with Austria, to experience the rise of anti-establishment populism. Now, as the country witnesses the umpteenth wave of further radicalization, it is once again becoming the bellwether of Europe.

Local elections may seem insignificant, but they are now the primary battleground where openly racist politics and politicians, cloaked in eloquence and intellectual pretension, are establishing electoral footholds and hijacking Dutch political debate. Those concerned about the re-emergence of ethnic nationalism and white supremacist politics in Europe should pay attention. Thierry Baudet’s rise to national prominence signals more darkness to come.

Thanks for this. Scary (and disgusting at the same time) situation when the far right begins to intellectualise their racist arguments. :puke:
 
I think regional IQ differences speak to the assumptions of intelligence made by those who defined the IQ examination styles. It goes without saying that such designers were overwhelmingly white and Western.

I have been working in academia for nearly 20 years and lectured/supervised students from all over the world. Based on a big sample, I have not been able to appreciate any differences in intelligence based on race, country of origin, religion, etc.
 
I have been working in academia for nearly 20 years and lectured/supervised students from all over the world. Based on a big sample, I have not been able to appreciate any differences in intelligence based on race, country of origin, religion, etc.

This is not a relevant argument. No study asserts that it's impossible for a member of a certain ethnicity to have a higher IQ than the average number found. It's obviously possible for a Sub-Saharan African to be more intelligent than an East Asian or European, it's unscientific to argue otherwise.
 
This is not a relevant argument. No study asserts that it's impossible for a member of a certain ethnicity to have a higher IQ than the average number found. It's obviously possible for a Sub-Saharan African to be more intelligent than an East Asian or European, it's unscientific to argue otherwise.

That is not what I said and I am obviously not basing my comment on one subject, but on observations from nearly 20 years. :rolleyes: Feel free to disagree.
 
That is not what I said and I am obviously not basing my comment on one subject, but on observations from nearly 20 years.

You don't get it. Academic circles is a qualified environment. People there are above a certain threshold of intelligence already, regardless of their origin. So it won't give you meaningful data about averages across the population.
 
You don't get it. Academic circles is a qualified environment. People there are above a certain threshold of intelligence already, regardless of their origin. So it won't give you meaningful data about averages across the population.

Of course I know that and I am well aware it would not give me the whole picture (you probably would need to test hundreds of thousands of people for that, but I do not think there is any paper that has gone to that extent to test this), but definitely counterbalances any preconceived racist bullshit that some people in Europe have about the intelligence of those from a different ethnic origin.
 
definitely counterbalances any preconceived racist bullshit that some people in Europe have about the intelligence of those from a different ethnic origin.

Nobody here gives any validity to the claims of ignorant racists. LC's post that you quoted was a response to my post regarding academic studies done on IQ which merely presented the academic debate on the issue, not a response to "preconceived racist bullshit some people in Europe have about the intelligence of those from a different ethnic origin", so I don't see the relevance.
 
Nobody here gives any validity to the claims of ignorant racists. LC's post that you quoted was a response to my post regarding academic studies done on IQ which merely presented the academic debate on the issue, not a response to "preconceived racist bullshit some people in Europe have about the intelligence of those from a different ethnic origin", so I don't see the relevance.

The evidence on any paper on the issue is not conclusive enough, but some people are happy to use preliminary results to support their racist views (I am not referring to you, just in case you think that is the case ;) ).
 
The evidence on any paper on the issue is not conclusive enough, but some people are happy to use preliminary results to support their racist views (I am not referring to you, just in case you think that is the case ;) ).

I don't disagree with that, as evidenced by the first sentence in my initial post:

Touchy subject due to its possible political implications, as seen in the case of Baudet, and I do feel a bit uneasy about addressing this in a politics thread
 
My posts about the new article 13 approval:

Welcome to the article 13 era. Authors of music/lyrics in counries like Slovenia, where thieves are at the helm of the only organisation where you can register the rights to your own song, will be fucked. Hard.

Well, as an inhabitant of a stupid small country, we (Slovenians) can't do anything about it, except make another law in our country that will allow our author's rights organisation (whose boss is an "author" of a song that suspicously sounds almost exactly like Bon Jovi's Never Say Goodbye with Slovenian lyrics and pays himself travelling expenses like he is travelling home and back 28 times each working day) to sue a website because they used your song and then pocket the lawsuit money for themselves without notifying you.

The new author's rights law is suicidal for countries like us, who have big problems on a local level with them. And authors will soon be dry-fucked even more regularly.
 
It's quite an unfortunate development. I don't know about other countries, but in Germany, tens of thousands took to the street and were patronised and vilified by some of the German politicians pushing for this bill. It's not going to make people love the EU very much, I'm afraid.
 
It's not going to make people love the EU very much, I'm afraid.
PlainUnkemptFly-size_restricted.gif
 
On Youtube, I had infringement on a Bruce Dickinson TV sourced bootleg (the one in Chile) by non related entities (which were involved in AoB/Maiden studio work). Not by Sanctuary or whatever is Dickinson's management, not by TV house. I couldn't take it down. I don't monetize so don't care in the end, but there you go. It is very unfair, you need to play by the rules there or else...right now it's these sites (mediums) that dictate the price of entertainment in an agency kind of a way which isn't regulated at all.

If you want to distribute some original material that doesn't play well with content algorithms get your own server and host it from there. The procedure here for illicit material is formal and there is no chance of someone's content identification algorithm shutting you down.

Article 11 should help with big data gathering about EU residents done by outside aggregation sites. I do visit Reddit's Europe sub, and go to in-EU news sites from there, where reddit can (and possibly does) track a lot of my activity while just linking me to the content. That data can be sold.

I can't say that I really don't want a high speed version of mid-2000s web. There was a lot less noise. There's a ton of people on the web and the most used websites are bloated with code used to track what that ton of people does on the web. You need to setup your browsers, trust their developers and the developers of plugins that your personal data doesn't get in some corporate hands, know how to navigate around and avoid shady websites, it is pretty much tiresome. If the web became an all out humanity forum where people and corporations meddle, so be it. I'm not against regulation there.
 
At the first sight it may look like it helps in most regards, but how will this help a new creator of content? What if you are an amazing singer, but you don't write your own songs, so you sing covers and like to share your talent with others? How you implement such an automated filter into websites to determine what is a stolen content, what is a tribute, what is a cover and what is an original work? How do you make sure that the money from the videos actually reaches the true author, especially if they are a young band, who just started out and uploaded their song onto a platform? How do you make sure that the money from author's rights actually ends in a hand of a mildly popular band and not in the hands of a corrupt author's rights agency in the country And lastly, how can you know that those new directives won't be abused in the future by giant old-school media to make themselves relevant again? How can you know that those directives won't be abused by goverments?

It's very loose and big fish will get bigger eating little fish.
 
so you sing covers and like to share your talent with others? How you implement such an automated filter into websites

You don't build anything into your website. Don't host your content where others' rules apply(*). I know it cost next to nothing to upload your exposure video to YT today but free stuff don't last forever. Make your own site, host stuff there and share the links.

(*) in all possibility unless you have paid business accounts it's not your stuff anymore, anyway. When you write something to facebook it's facebooks unless it's harmful, then it's yours. Why should anyone work under these conditions is beyond me.
 
@Perun


We were just talking about this.
 
@Perun


We were just talking about this.

Yes, I saw that on the news. I m dead certain conversations like this happened with AfD members too, but I doubt there are any videos, unfortunately.
 
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