Hundreds of women assaulted in German NYE celebrations

[Casually Red]

In the 90's I attended an anti racist meeting with various groups including a few trotskyists. A girl from an NGO spoke briefly about being groped at a morrocan immigrant celebration in town. The room fell silent. When she left the room the militants relieved the tension by saying; "Did you hear that? What a fucking racist". It was a shit reaction then and it's even worse now.

It'll be the absolute fucking end of them . This stuff . They should have a look at the catholic church in Ireland if they want to see the fate that awaits them for engaging in pretty much institutional denial on this issue . Like its not just casual denial . It's blanket . The left are to one degree or another actively hostile to reports of this stuff . Their reaction is pure knee jerk because reality comes into direct conflict with their fantasy . They simply can't handle it .
All their talk of women's rights and dignity has been stripped bare now as an absolute load of old bollocks . It's all predicated upon whos doing the raping, not the rape and assault itself . And that's been demonstrated right across the lefty board .

What's also laid bare is the lefts intellectual mediocrity , it's complete lack of political and social self awareness , it's abject dishonesty and it's political and moral cowardice . It's moral compass is all over the place . useless, in fact worse than useless . They're part of the problem .

 

[Casually Red]

ETA - it probably goes without saying, but I think it's also the role of far-right movements to perform damage control for capital along dimensions that are less available to the official media and parties.

As far as I can see that's been the lefts role . From Algeria in the 50s to Rochdale to cologne .

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Sure, you've made it pretty clear where you stand.

 

[DotCommunist]

repeatedly. And smeared half the thread as apologists for the events. Of trying to sweep it away. All so he can stand on his soap box proclaiming about liberals, and the left. Him and dimble have been a disgrace with that smearing.

 

[bimble]

I feel smeared! All I've been saying is that to respond to this and similar stories by just expressing your fear about them playing into the hands of the far right is not a satisfactory response.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I feel smeared! All I've been saying is that to respond to this and similar stories by just expressing your fear about them playing into the hands of the far right is not a satisfactory response.

You're putting a lot of weight on 'just' there and it won't take it.

 

[Pickman's model]

You're putting a lot of weight on 'just' there and it won't take it.

the centre cannot hold

 

[Vivity Report]

It'll be the absolute fucking end of them . This stuff . They should have a look at the catholic church in Ireland if they want to see the fate that awaits them for engaging in pretty much institutional denial on this issue . Like its not just casual denial . It's blanket . The left are to one degree or another actively hostile to reports of this stuff . Their reaction is pure knee jerk because reality comes into direct conflict with their fantasy . They simply can't handle it .
All their talk of women's rights and dignity has been stripped bare now as an absolute load of old bollocks . It's all predicated upon whos doing the raping, not the rape and assault itself . And that's been demonstrated right across the lefty board .

What's also laid bare is the lefts intellectual mediocrity , it's complete lack of political and social self awareness , it's abject dishonesty and it's political and moral cowardice . It's moral compass is all over the place . useless, in fact worse than useless . They're part of the problem .

#not all leftists

This post is toxic and full of generalisations based on anecdotal accounts, but I will bite (spaghetti monster give me strength)

Ok I must ask do we have any opinion polls taken from left wing people that states they are ok with rape as long as it is minorities doing it? From my experience the lefties I hang with tend to have a problem with the way folks use accounts where a minority has done something horrible to generalise and paint the entire group they are from as whatever thing the person has been accused of doing. What also does not help is that newspapers like the daily mail and facebook groups run by organisations like Britain first actually spread dubious factually incorrect information which unfortunately poisons the well.

Below is a link to a video made by a feminist academic who seems to be on the left of the spectrum and I don't think she ever says that the sexual assaults did not happen in cologne. She also chastised the mayor for engaging in victim blaming.


I am not saying that there are not any left wing people who act as you describe but it kind of pours water on the "across the board" claim.

Also the protesters in cologne were protesting the sexism that resulted in the sexual assaults the police handling of the situation and the fact that rabid right wing nut jobs decided to hijack this messed up situation for their own political ends.

The below link is from the telegraph which you might approve of as it is a right wing organ;
Germans protest over wave of sexual assaults on women in Cologne

My own personal reaction to Cologne was that the perpetrators needed to be caught and punished for their criminal behaviour, also that police did not do enough to stop this from happening and the victim blaming was really fucked up. There are also many posts on this forum thread that contradict your assertion but that did not fit your narrative either. If you find left wing calls for nuance and a measured response so triggering I have no idea what you are doing on a left wing forum but I am glad you are here to share your opinion as if it was fact.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

the centre cannot hold

Apparently ...

 

[Pickman's model]

I feel smeared! All I've been saying is that to respond to this and similar stories by just expressing your fear about them playing into the hands of the far right is not a satisfactory response.

is that really all you've been saying?

 

[DotCommunist]

the centre cannot hold

the widening gyre of casually reds 4 am spittle flecked screeds.

 

[goldenecitrone]

Do you think there are no violent attacks ob transgendered people here？ Or that transphobia is purely a Muslim thing?

Also the stones in question were gravel, not nice, but not the rocks of the Orientalist cliches.

Pebbles, not gravel. A nasty attack for sure, but hardly the 'stoning' the JP and Bild Zeitung are making it out to be.

 

[Pickman's model]

Pebbles, not gravel. A nasty attack for sure, but hardly the 'stoning' the JP and Bild Zeitung are making it out to be.

read the thread yet?

 

[J Ed]

Ok I must ask do we have any opinion polls taken from left wing people that states they are ok with rape as long as it is minorities doing it?

I have never met anyone, regardless of political affiliation, that has said that minorities raping anyone or anyone raping anyone is okay. What I have met is people on the organised left who absolutely refuse to discuss the issue and call anyone who does want to discuss it racist. I'm not accusing anyone of that here but it has undoubtedly gone on surrounding Cologne, particularly while the story was being mostly successfully suppressed by the media and police.

I have mentioned Rotherham upthread a few times and the fact that meetings were being held by 'Hope not Hate', the SWP, 'community leaders' and Labour lashup about 'Racist grooming myths' well after most people knew that systematic rape of kids in Rotherham was taking place.

 

[Vivity Report]

I have never met anyone, regardless of political affiliation, that has said that minorities raping anyone or anyone raping anyone is okay. What I have met is people on the organised left who absolutely refuse to discuss the issue and call anyone who does want to discuss it racist. I'm not accusing anyone of that here but it has undoubtedly gone on surrounding Cologne, particularly while the story was being mostly successfully suppressed by the media and police.

I have mentioned Rotherham upthread a few times and the fact that meetings were being held by 'Hope not Hate', the SWP, 'community leaders' and Labour lashup about 'Racist grooming myths' well after most people knew that systematic rape of kids in Rotherham was taking place.

Agreed to a certain extent I have a friend with a youtube channel that wanted to do a video on this incident but was afraid to do so because they did not want to enable racists. I don't believe in covering things up I just feel that people need to find a way to put this information across and discuss these issues otherwise the right get to monopolise these incidents for their own political point scoring and it undermines the fight against sexism and racism.

I have not met anyone that thinks people who discuss this issue are automatically racist. But I am wary of claiming that my experience is the only one that matters.

 

[J Ed]

Agreed to a certain extent I have a friend with a youtube channel that wanted to do a video on this incident but was afraid to do so because they did not want to enable racists. I don't believe in covering things up I just feel that people need to find a way to put this information across and discuss these issues otherwise the right get to monopolise these incidents for their own political point scoring and it undermines the fight against sexism and racism.

I have not met anyone that thinks people who discuss this issue are automatically racist. But I am wary of claiming that my experience is the only one that matters.

I appreciate that you are not denying what I am saying, but I think it's worth emphasising the fact that I'm not talking about individuals calling me racist for talking about this, what I'm talking about is multiple organisational structures holding (albeit extremely poorly attended) meetings to disseminate a party line that systematic rape of children was not taking place and that anyone who said it was was perpetuating a racist myth.

 

[Vivity Report]

I appreciate that you are not denying what I am saying, but I think it's worth emphasising the fact that I'm not talking about individuals calling me racist for talking about this, what I'm talking about is multiple organisational structures holding (albeit extremely poorly attended) meetings to disseminate a party line that systematic rape of children was not taking place and that anyone who said it was was perpetuating a racist myth.

Firstly thank you for sharing your experience/thoughts/opinions and please do not hesitate to do so in the future. I hope nothing I have said discourages you from speaking your mind. On the internet things often become acerbic I try hard to lay of the sarcasm but fail often.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Sure but the flip side of that is that if you're trying to talk about e.g. austerity or class issues or imperialism or sex attacks committed by people the far right doesn't have it in for, in the context of something like Cologne, you're going to be lumped in with a bunch of idiot swappies and corrupt nuLabour councillors and systematically misquoted and misrepresented in order to facilitate a bunch of far right talking points about 'liberal left cover-ups' which is really quite annoying after the n-th time it occurs.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that everybody behaving like that is actually fash. I'm saying that the far-right have been allowed to set a media agenda within which this sort of crap becomes commonplace.

 

[J Ed]

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that everybody behaving like that is actually fash. I'm saying that the far-right have been allowed to set a media agenda within which this sort of crap becomes commonplace.

I don't think that the far-right have set any kind of media agenda on this or any related issues. It took DAYS to hear about Cologne and years to hear about Rotherham which the media rarely mentions now despite the trials related to grooming there continuing, and I don't remember much if any media coverage that emphasised the role of the left of covering things up just institutions.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

If you use Google search custom date range to exclude NYE and after, and search for relevant terms e.g. 'refugee rape gangs liberal cover ups Germany' you'll see precisely that set of talking points being rehearsed within their circles (and fellow travellers like conspiraloon sites), starting back in September 2015.

What happened when the Cologne witness accounts appeared on social media (that Spiegel link you provided a while back talks about this) is that the far-right jumped on in and created a media shitstorm while everybody else was still going "WFT?"

What I'm arguing is that because they'd already been talking to each other about it, they were able to get ahead of the media narrative with a clear set of talking points.

 

[J Ed]

I'm not saying that they weren't talking to each other but surely rather than coordinate some kind of far-right conspiracy they could just talk about what happened in both cases which was a cover up by institutions and liberals.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Did I suggest a coordinated conspiracy? I don't think I did.

ETA - My guess is that it was actual events that set them off, like that stuff about the Swedish concert and that the far-right / conspiraloon echo chamber acted as a sort of incubator for these talking points, they're a natural fit for their views after all. No conspiracy required (except of course for the "liberal leftist" ones they were going on about.)

 

[J Ed]

Did I suggest a coordinated conspiracy? I don't think I did.

What are you suggesting then? If it's snowing in Sheffield and Frankfurt at the same time the residents of those cities don't need to talk to each other to know that it is snowing, they can just look out the window. Why is right-wing people talking to each other relevant at all?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Because when the NYE stuff went mainstream, the propaganda lines that had been incubated within those circles heavily influenced mainstream discourse. Relying on a certain amount of genuinely questionable behaviour, denial of the sort you're alluding to, to smear everybody on the left. To make it virtually impossible to have a sensible conversation about any of this stuff without continually having to explain to people who are very clearly arguing in bad faith in many cases (don't mean you), that you aren't in fact denying that the attacks happened, or minimising their significance or whatever.

ETA - I'm getting really strong deja vue here, back to the days when any attempt to say something like 'Don't you think creating a bunch of failed states in the Middle East will make terrorism worse?' required you to wade through a bunch of right-wing trolls going 'Aha so you support terrorism then?' etc.

 

[J Ed]

Because when the NYE stuff went mainstream, the propaganda lines that had been incubated within those circles heavily influenced mainstream discourse. Relying on a certain amount of genuinely questionable behaviour, denial of the sort you're alluding to, to smear everybody on the left. To make it virtually impossible to have a sensible conversation about any of this stuff without continually having to explain to people who are very clearly arguing in bad faith in many cases, that you aren't in fact denying that the attacks happened, or minimising their significance or whatever.

I'm sorry but I think that media reporting here is just reflecting reality here because continuing not to was unsustainable to the point that it hurt credibility. People aren't saying this stuff because Pegida or the EDL or whoever has a stranglehold over the media they are saying it because a thousand strong gang went on a spree of sexual assault and rape in Cologne and gangs of hundreds did similar in other cities, with similar incidents in other countries, and we didn't hear about it for four days because there was a cover up. If these far-right groups had any influence at all over the media there would have been no cover up, even during the GDR the media would have to report on things the authorities did not want them to because not doing so would irrevocably damage their credibility.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I think you underestimate the impact that flooding social media with a legion of people arguing in bad faith along more or less the same lines can have on the corporate media's reporting of a phenomenon, once it has begun to be reported, and on subsequent public discourse about it.

Look at Gamergate for example ...

 

[bimble]

I just want to quote this again.

The so-called "left" have forgotten their original purpose of improving the lot of the average person on the street and got sidetracked down the "calculus of oppression" rabbit hole whereby some people are automatically assumed to be more "worthy" than others, not on account of any individual merit, but simply on account of being in a certain "oppressed" category. In this case those thought/assumed to be the perpetrators are in multiple "oppressed" categories - immigrant, ethnic minority, muslim, and so they must be more "worthy" than an ordinary native woman. So they couldn't possibly be guilty of this crime. The cognitive dissonance is huge.

 

[Idris2002]

I'll just leave this here:

Victim of the Cologne sex attacks tells how she was rescued by refugees

 

[crossthebreeze]

Refugees and Migrants protest against sexual violence and racism:
Germans and refugees protest sexism and racism in wake of cologne attacks 16.01.2016
Cologne sex attacks: Syrian refugees take to streets to condemn mass assaults by migrants on New Year's Eve
'No to sexism, No to racism': Syrian refugees hand out flowers in German protest
Fair play to the people who took part in this.

 

[likesfish]

The kenyan rape "investigation" was a farce following a agent going round an african country claiming the British would give you money Suprisingly vast amounts of evidence was made up if their was any evidence it was throughly crayoned over
the same firm that bungled "the battle of danny boy" enquiry by acts of criminal fraud and is still trying to take cases to court