Police: please don’t sell milkshakes to anti-fascists

[AllanO]

When I said that a high proportion of Muslims in the UK want homosexuality outlawed and Cmd King talks about opposition to LGBTQ* education, he's talking as if I'd mentioned Muslims opposing LGBTQ* education, and I hadn't. What I said about Muslims in the UK isn't a straw man argument, because I never argued against anything Cmd King hadn't said as if he'd said it.

Here is the thing from context and subsequent comments, CmdrKing was trying to establish there are identifiable groups of conservative Christians in the UK who have similar attitudes about LGBTQ* people to the Muslims and you are claiming such attitudes (plus ones about sharia law etc.) explain and to some extent justify Farage et al's call for extra scrutiny and limiting of Muslim immigration. If your explanation is right either they believe such groups (conservative Christians etc.) are also at odds with general UK opinion and their immigration to the UK should be limited or they don't think it is those attitudes that constitute sufficient conditions for such treatment but something else.

So, where are the policies that show that Farage an co are equally committed to limiting all similar threats to general UK values, not just those from Muslim immigrants. My vague sense is they don't have them, which makes it hard to see how the values mismatch can be the sufficient reason for their policies, which as far as I can tell was CmdrKing's point...

[Darth Wedgius]

When I said that a high proportion of Muslims in the UK want homosexuality outlawed and Cmd King talks about opposition to LGBTQ* education, he's talking as if I'd mentioned Muslims opposing LGBTQ* education, and I hadn't. What I said about Muslims in the UK isn't a straw man argument, because I never argued against anything Cmd King hadn't said as if he'd said it.

Here is the thing from context and subsequent comments, CmdrKing was trying to establish there are identifiable groups of conservative Christians in the UK who have similar attitudes about LGBTQ* people to the Muslims and you are claiming such attitudes (plus ones about sharia law etc.) explain and to some extent justify Farage et al's call for extra scrutiny and limiting of Muslim immigration. If your explanation is right either they believe such groups (conservative Christians etc.) are also at odds with general UK opinion and their immigration to the UK should be limited or they don't think it is those attitudes that constitute sufficient conditions for such treatment but something else.

So, where are the policies that show that Farage an co are equally committed to limiting all similar threats to general UK values, not just those from Muslim immigrants. My vague sense is they don't have them, which makes it hard to see how the values mismatch can be the sufficient reason for their policies, which as far as I can tell was CmdrKing's point...

That makes more sense than what I thought CmdKing kept trying to get to. But there's a pretty obvious difference between handling a troublesome minority (people in the UK who think homosexuality should be outlawed) and allowing unlimited immigration of more people with that same problem. I'm not aware of any group comparable to Muslim immigrants who pose that kind of threat to the norm of UK values who aren't being checked in some way, even to the extent of genocidal pugs.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

When I said that a high proportion of Muslims in the UK want homosexuality outlawed and Cmd King talks about opposition to LGBTQ* education, he's talking as if I'd mentioned Muslims opposing LGBTQ* education, and I hadn't. What I said about Muslims in the UK isn't a straw man argument, because I never argued against anything Cmd King hadn't said as if he'd said it.

Here is the thing from context and subsequent comments, CmdrKing was trying to establish there are identifiable groups of conservative Christians in the UK who have similar attitudes about LGBTQ* people to the Muslims and you are claiming such attitudes (plus ones about sharia law etc.) explain and to some extent justify Farage et al's call for extra scrutiny and limiting of Muslim immigration. If your explanation is right either they believe such groups (conservative Christians etc.) are also at odds with general UK opinion and their immigration to the UK should be limited or they don't think it is those attitudes that constitute sufficient conditions for such treatment but something else.

So, where are the policies that show that Farage an co are equally committed to limiting all similar threats to general UK values, not just those from Muslim immigrants. My vague sense is they don't have them, which makes it hard to see how the values mismatch can be the sufficient reason for their policies, which as far as I can tell was CmdrKing's point...

I don't really see that as the point that CK was making.

Wedgius said two related but distinctive things: A large minority of UK Muslims want Sharia law enforced; and a large minority of 40% want homosexuality illegal. He was kind enough to be referring to a study, and was kind enough to drop a link to a 70+ page document without providing any references to back up his claims.

A couple of days later, CK addressed the first point about wanting Sharia law enforced; the study admittedly characterized it as something that Muslims generally prefer as part of their identity and upbringing, not something that they were politically active about, and that the notion of it being at odds with UK's broad societal values and a barrier to reasonable assimilation is frivolous considering it describes immigration patterns cross-generation everywhere; a conservative contingent generally believes in such ideas, but their descendents are considerably less partial to them. That's something I'm familiar with when studying immigration patterns for the US.

As for 40% wanting homosexuality illegal, CK did not find anything about that in the provided study, so he made sense of what he could to connect it to what Wedgius said.

Does the UK still have gender-separated schools? Sure. And that's a non-sequitur. You keep addressing issues I haven't brought up. You didn't read up on straw-manning, did you? It's a shame, because you typed a lot without actually changing anything. I spoke of how many Muslims want to make homosexuality illegal, and you keep pointing toward other things. Feel free to talk about other things, but I'll just keep bringing up how many Muslims in the UK want to make homosexuality illegal.

You didn't provide a source on that statement. So I used the source provided to find similar conservative cultural attitudes and drew a logical inference. Because it turns out that viewpoints about homosexuality are nearly always tied up with other views on gender and sexuality norms, so it's reasonable to suggest that how you look at those things are indicative of the overall sentiment toward LGBTQ people as well.

Now, CK can be PretTy abstract in freezing over lakes to embark across, but the fact does remain that Wedgius made the claim, dropped the link, and did not support the claim with any reference in the link. At this point I'm more of the mind that CK made a good faith perusing of the material. If not, then that probably does change things quite a bit. That being said, I'm not certain what the outcome of that was and am somewhat intrigued to comb through things myself.

To which point, Wedigus responded in keynote fashion to his broad claim that Muslim values just don't match up with UK's broad societal structure...

[AllanO]

Now, CK can be PretTy abstract in freezing over lakes to embark across, but the fact does remain that Wedgius made the claim, dropped the link, and did not support the claim with any reference in the link.

Yeah but it seems clear to me CmdrKing was providing that information as a way of in addition establishing that Muslim immigrants are not unique in providing a challenge to conventional British values and yet they were uniquely singled out by Farage et al. It was not just offering confirmation of what Wedgius said it was making further logical inferences If Farage and the like are targeting Muslims because of concerns over values they should be targeting other such groups for their values...

That makes more sense than what I thought CmdKing kept trying to get to. But there's a pretty obvious difference between handling a troublesome minority (people in the UK who think homosexuality should be outlawed) and allowing unlimited immigration of more people with that same problem. I'm not aware of any group comparable to Muslim immigrants who pose that kind of threat to the norm of UK values who aren't being checked in some way, even to the extent of genocidal pugs.

I suspect there are other groups of immigrants, like Christians from nations where homosexuality is still illegal, who probably have similar levels of hostility to homosexuality as Muslims and may have a similar lack an appreciation for the division of church and state as Muslims (to be fair I am sure many of Farage type people are worried about people from such countries because they are often much poorer less developed nations of the kind often disparaged in the rhetoric, but not sure whether they will call them a "fifth column" etc. for some reason). Also how tolerant do they have to be before they are no longer treated as a threat. American Mormons are probably less tolerant than the average Brit of LGBT*, should they be kept out and so on.

[Darth Wedgius]

That makes more sense than what I thought CmdKing kept trying to get to. But there's a pretty obvious difference between handling a troublesome minority (people in the UK who think homosexuality should be outlawed) and allowing unlimited immigration of more people with that same problem. I'm not aware of any group comparable to Muslim immigrants who pose that kind of threat to the norm of UK values who aren't being checked in some way, even to the extent of genocidal pugs.

I suspect there are other groups of immigrants, like Christians from nations where homosexuality is still illegal, who probably have similar levels of hostility to homosexuality as Muslims and may have a similar lack an appreciation for the division of church and state as Muslims (to be fair I am sure many of Farage type people are worried about people from such countries because they are often much poorer less developed nations of the kind often disparaged in the rhetoric, but not sure whether they will call them a "fifth column" etc. for some reason). Also how tolerant do they have to be before they are no longer treated as a threat. American Mormons are probably less tolerant than the average Brit of LGBT*, should they be kept out and so on.

It's not just lack of tolerance, but numbers as well. If American Mormons start to immigrate into the UK in similar numbers and most of them want to make homosexuality illegal or want similar changes made (deny women the vote, outlaw sex before marriage, ban tea...) then yes, absolutely immigration of American Mormons should be controlled.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Now, CK can be PretTy abstract in freezing over lakes to embark across, but the fact does remain that Wedgius made the claim, dropped the link, and did not support the claim with any reference in the link.

Yeah but it seems clear to me CmdrKing was providing that information as a way of in addition establishing that Muslim immigrants are not unique in providing a challenge to conventional British values and yet they were uniquely singled out by Farage et al. It was not just offering confirmation of what Wedgius said it was making further logical inferences If Farage and the like are targeting Muslims because of concerns over values they should be targeting other such groups for their values....

Yeah I picked up on the double standard argument. It's a legitimate implication I think, but it wasn't to say that Farage is wrong because he's not going after both sides, he was saying that Farage is gaslighting Muslims, and that this was an attempt by Farage to galvanize fretting voters to establish a Fascist regimen. He did make a point to say that you should tear down that religious front, but that was a more minor point.

The point of comparison wasn't to show how Farage was biased towards UK Christians, it was to show that this is something you can't charge Muslims with when considering immigration policy. It's a little different.

[CmdrKing]

Really they're aspects of the same argument.

IF you propose exceptional restrictions against Muslim immigrants in specific, THEN you must prove they pose exceptional threat to the nation.

Evidence against:
Many non-Muslims hold similar views against minority populations within the UK, suggesting they do not pose exceptional threat to these groups, as it would exist regardless.
Existing Muslim residents show patterns of shifting values over generational change comparable to any immigrant group, suggesting they are in no way an exceptional danger compared to any immigration increase.

Further argument: The actual current annual immigration load in the UK is around 30,000. Assuming they were all Muslim (which is false, but for the sake of example), that would represent a 1% annual increase to the Muslim population. As Muslims currently make up around 5% of the total UK population, taking 15-20 years to increase to 6% is... not a credible threat.

The threat is overblown in sheer impact, the nature of the threat is not exceptional, and the means proposed to deal with the threat (excluding people from immigration application on basis of religious/ethnic/national origin), being generous, border on human rights violations and *at minimum* require exceptional justification. Which this pretty thoroughly fails at.

So if there is not an exceptional threat to justify these exceptional steps to combat it, this rhetoric is monstrous on its face. And has already contributed to demonstrable increases in violence and discrimination in its wake.
And yet we spend more time condemning direct action against this rhetoric and those perpetuating it than the rhetoric itself.

I mean really we should be turning the argument around and suggesting that NOT, indeed, allowing unlimited immigration from several countries into the UK is morally bankrupt, but eh, dudes get weird if you don't engage at the pragmatic level first.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Really they're aspects of the same argument.

IF you propose exceptional restrictions against Muslim immigrants in specific, THEN you must prove they pose exceptional threat to the nation.

Evidence against:
Many non-Muslims hold similar views against minority populations within the UK, suggesting they do not pose exceptional threat to these groups, as it would exist regardless.
Existing Muslim residents show patterns of shifting values over generational change comparable to any immigrant group, suggesting they are in no way an exceptional danger compared to any immigration increase.

Well I was fixated a bit on Wedgius's line of reasoning. Farage himself is gaslighting, but beyond doing the same thing Trump did, I don't see any effort by him to support such claims.

I think there's not much room for error in your demographics report, so it's kind of easy to disregard Farage's rhetoric as anything but sensational.

Though a thing about proving Muslims are the exception. If Farage's platform was simply put to make sure they don't allow immigration with contrary views, I don't think he'd be tasked much with proving in the campaign that he was willing to do it with all incoming demographics. That's part of what makes such stereotyping dangerous for middle east natives because they already have a constricting stereotype that can be scapegoated to elicit a broader call for conservative security.

[Darth Wedgius]

You don't have to prove Muslims are an exceptional threat to immigration into the UK. You can make reasonable assumptions based on their stated attitudes. Immigration isn't a right.

Many non-Muslims already in the UK may hold similar opinions, but they are a minority in the established population. Again (and again and again because you don't listen), number matter.

And it's not just the Muslim immigrants becoming a majority through immigration, it's that new immigrants who are Muslim should be a small minority so that they continue to assimilate. The people they encounter should be, regardless of race or religion, UK-ish.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I think there might be a communication breakdown on the cross culture comparison. I feel like CK was saying that any potential non-Muslim immigrant is going to be subject to a culture whose conservative contingent is homophobic for lack of a better word. Really not sure if they all think homosexuality should be illegal, but I don't think the distinction matters too much. Otherwise if we're just comparing it to homophobic inclinations already in the UK, then I would agree that that doesn't obligate immigration consideration.

On the last part there, I feel like a mandate for lack of a better word to assimilate is kinda complicated. It kinda starts to set a good unofficial or subsidiary reason to curb immigration, but at the same time it is kind of at odds with any free society. I know the US has strict cultural awareness vetting for conventional visas what not, so as an institutional measure that kinda establishes a good faith culturally cohesive agreement. Needless to say, I'm curious as to any official outlining of such a measure.