Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, has performed a survey of 10,000 people from 10 European countries. The results are depicted in the graph above.
Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, has performed a survey of 10,000 people from 10 European countries. The results are depicted in the graph above.
I wonder how Trump finds the time to be president of Europe as well as here.
Even THEY are on his twitter feed.
Not surprising to anyone who has spent any time in Europe. Despite the outward multiculturalism, Europeans are generally a lot more racist than Americans and it’s not just about skin color. Eastern Europeans, Poles in particular, aren’t favorably viewed across large parts of Europe. From what my brother tells me, there is even still a bias against East Germans by West Germans, though that is fading.
Is the height of those blue lines due to racism, or because people socially cogeal better when cultural values don’t radically differ from each other, leading to a more orderly assimilation process?
I suspect you have to allocate most of that ‘neither agree nor disagree’ number to the ‘agree’ number. (Isn’t it amazing how liberal Spain has become? Definitely not the Spain I used to run around in 45 years ago.)
I have never been happy that Muslim immigration is where the battle lines have been drawn. It’s a dangerously extended position, vulnerable to flanking attacks by jihadis. If I were general for a day I’d have kicked the can when refugees became an issue and instead framed the fight around Mexican and Central American immigration, specifically the cruel destruction of families in this country by ICE. As I said the other day, I don’t think liberals have a plan or an agreed policy, just an emotional tug.
I look at this as a once-and-likely-future expat myself. Is it easier for the UK or Italy to integrate me into their society than it is a Syrian refugee? Of course. If you do a Venn diagram of my basic beliefs and those of Brits you get a 95% overlap. But I lived in Italy for seven or eight months and there the dissimilarities were more pronounced, and it was clear from early on that my American notions of individuality, of indifference to ritual, secularism, intolerance of inefficiency, my ambition and my preference for diversity over monoculture would doom any long-term love affair with Italy. And yet a Venn diagram of me and Italy would still be a solid 80% overlap.
This issue has been framed in religious terms, but as an atheist I see religions as ideologies. And we have, in my opinion, a perfect right to exclude people whose ideologies are too far from the American mainstream.
IMO in most of the countries in which a majority of the population profess Islam “Islam” is synonymous with “the way we do things here” and, as such, it’s perfectly legitimate for Americans to be suspicious of it. Said another way there’s a much greater overlap between Islam as a religion and Islam as a culture than there is between Christianity or Judaism as a religion and Christianity or Judaism as a culture.
” If you do a Venn diagram of my basic beliefs and those of Brits you get a 95% overlap. ”
I lived in the UK for almost 4 years. I’d be surprised if your assertion was true unless you’re only talking about the London metro area. Similar to the US, there is a significant urban-rural divide in Britain specifically and the UK generally.
Andy:
I’d expand that a bit to include not just London but Oxford and Edinburgh. But it’s also a bit beside the point since I’m talking people roughly in my socio-economic group. And I’d be willing to bet (no idea how we’d prove it, though I suspect it should involve a pub and some whiskey) but the overlap between me and the population of Muleshoe, Texas would be substantially lower than that between me and the population of Great Snoring, Norfolk UK. Religiosity and membership in the gun cult would be major dividers.
I wouldn’t be surprised. That’s pretty rarified territory. No more than 50,000 Britons are in your socio-economic group.