Timothy Egan writes at NY Times.com:
Beware, they told us in the train stations of northern Italy, of the Gypsy baby trick — an old ruse by Europe’s most reviled underclass. A woman will suddenly ask you to hold her child, and then just as you fumble to respond another Gypsy will grab your wallet.Watch out, they cautioned us in the lovely Turkish port city of Kusadasi, for the Gypsies who prey on tourists along the waterfront. And old lady will bump you, while a teenage hooligan grabs your bag. The Gypsy old-lady trick.
Those Gypsies, known by the less pejorative term of Roma, are getting kicked around the continent again, hardy perennials of European scapegoats. Unspoken characterizations based on ancient stereotypes — they are shiftless, clannish, prone to petty thievery and to begging, prostitution and dark motives — are now out in the open.
In the early days of a Mediterranean fall, one finds open hostility toward the Roma, encouraged by governments in a Europe that likes to think of itself as enlightened. France, following the lead of the Italians, Danes, Austrians and Swedes, is trying to expel the Roma in their midst.
"They" told me the same things about Gypsies when I backpacked around Europe in 1980. So, therefore, what "they" said can't be true because so many people have noticed the same pattern that it is a stereotype.
But, unlike Egan, I actually think "they" don't deserve to be dehumanized by anonymity. In my case, "they" were typically genial Australians backpacking around Europe for a gap year, who, coming from a country with very few Gypsies, had naively fallen for venerable Gypsy scams. "They" amiably passed on their hard-earned new knowledge to naive American travelers like myself.
Posts
70 comments:
Repeat after me: Hitler killed gypsies and Jews. If anyone says anything bad about gypsies they are neo-nazis. Sure there are some bad gypsies, but aren't there bad Americans, too? And anyway it isn't ALL gypsies who are bad. Most gypsies are good. Don't blame an entire group for the bad acts of a few. They aren't "gypsy pickpockets", they are "pickpockets who happen to be gypsies".
These entirely false claims about Gypsies have been around for some time. From a 15th century Italian chronicle:
"And amongst those who wished to have their fortunes told, few went to consult without having their purse stolen, and women had pieces of their dress cut off. The women of the band wandered about the town, six or eight together; they entered the houses of the citizens and told idle tales, during which some of them laid hold of whatever could be taken. In the same way they visited the shops under the pretext of buying something, but one of them would steal." (quoted in "The Gypsies" by Angus M. Fraser)
It's a modern liberal axiom that all people are basically the same, and that all cultures are good (except, of course, white conservative culture), so allegations that Gypsies are predatory and parasitical as a group are necessarily false. Gypsies as they actually are simply cannot exist in the liberal imagination.
They tried it on me Milan.
The NYPD has had a Gypsy squad for years, described in the New Yorker.
The Roma have been abused for years, but they are not a race of saints. There's no such thing.
Don't forget kidnapping.
hardy perennials of European scapegoats
Scapegoats eh?
So, either somebody else commits these crims but the Roma get the blame - in which case who are these other un-named criminals?
Or...
These crimes dont take plac at all, people just like making up these stories.
Either way, this author should do his journalistic duty and tll us which of the above is happening.
My progressive friends often quote 'they' as undisputable authorities. For instance, I've been told "They say global warming is the greatest threat to humanity." So there. End of argument. (Might be a different 'they', tho.)
In Russia in the 1990s life was simpler. No complicated Gypsy scams - just hordes of dirty Gypsy children waiting in the shadows of pedestrian underpasses to jump the unwary and steal whatever they could.
In fairness to the NYT readership, the comments are running about 4:1 against Egan's clueless assumption that gypsy behaviour has no role in creating anti-gypsy sentiment.
Here's an anecdote I read a few years ago. I can't remember the source (or, obviously, every detail).
A documentary filmmaker was filming in eastern Europe. Just before the end of his project, someone breaks into his van and steals everything, all his equipment, all his film. A complete catastrophe.
A couple of days later, he gets a phone call. A guy who runs a used-car lot says he found film canisters in the ally behind his business, with filmmaker's name on them. The filmmaker goes to the car lot and gets his precious film back. Project saved!
Now, what actually here? A friend native to the country explained: It's gypsies. Gypsies [unassimilated gypsies, if you insist] see themselves as dispossessed people who have a right to live off the societies around them, if necessary through crime. [Hence the gypsy girl's "Stealing is beautiful."] But it's nothing personal. The gypsies who stole the filmmaker's stuff realized that the exposed film - of no use to them - represented his livelihood. They decided to give him a break. The used-car dealer was the go-between; he was also a gypsy. In olden days, horse-trading was one of the legitimate gypsy occupations; today it's selling used cars.
Liberals believe you "can't generalize". By that they don't mean that generalizations aren't true but that is is UNFAIR and bigoted to treat a member of a class as if he had some attribute that most members of the class have. Generalization is a survival technique and Liberals develop in environments where they are sheltered from the need to exert themselves to prosper.
I'll never forget the time I tried to change money with a Gypsy on a bridge between Buda and Pest (this was Spring of '90). He tried the old switch a hundred into a one dollar bill trick but my friend and I noticed his clumsy efforts and grabbed his arm and wouldn't let him go until he gave me back my Franklin.
I Eurailed in the late 80s and can say "They" were right but understated the problem. I had both these scams run on me by Gypsies in Northern Italy over a very short period.
They should've also warned me about several other Gypsie scams I ran into as well.
Being a poor American college student wearing Goodwill and surviving on bread, cheese and cheap wine I really didn't have anything worth stealing. Plus, I was at the peak of my physical aggressiveness and probably appeared far too much trouble as a mark.
You're not allowed to call them gypsies here in Europe or you will be jumped on for violating political correctness, but you also can't identify them as Roma in the police blotter. So, euphemisms ("mobile ethnic minority", "rotational Europeans", "land-farers") or obfuscations ("Romanians", "southlanders", "Balkanese") are used instead.
Statistics on their staggering propensity to crime (burglaries, pickpocketing, preying on the elderly, squeegee gangs, welfare fraud, ...) used to be kept by some police units and may still be kept but the public is not granted access.
In 2013 all Romanians and Bulgarians (this includes their gypsies, of course) will get total freedom of movement in the European Union. I expect sharply rising crime rates due to a heavy influx of Roma to Western Europe.
Gee, I can't imagine why the New York Times Co.'s stock price has fallen from $50 to $7 over the past few years.
You don't link to the actual article.
>>> Unspoken characterizations based on ancient stereotypes....
"Unspoken"??
I thought the article was all about how "they" can't STOP speaking about it.
Did I mention I was preyed upon by these poor, unfairly stereotyped people within...oh...three minutes of arriving in Rome?
I'm only too happy to speak about this promptly, frequently and thoroughly confirmed stereotype.
Nothing unspoken about it.
Sloppy writing, AND sloppy thinking.
Those Gypsies, known by the less pejorative term of Roma....
How is "Gypsy" pejorative? And if it is pejorative, why do Gypsies (at least the ones here in Dallas) refer to themselves as such?
Gypsies IQ is around 75. They are a big problem here in Europe.
Semantic evolution is so interesting. Take the word "scapegoat". In my day, it referred to an innocent on whom the guilt of others was unfairly laid. In recent years I noticed it morphing, in liberal goodspeak, into an all-purpose castigation against getting angry at the proximate (and remediable) cause of a problem, rather than focusing all one's indignation and energies on the ultimate causes. (You know, the causes that can't be corrected except by total restructuring of all existing human systems.)
E.g., you're "scapegoating" if you complain to the zoning authorities about the single-family dwelling next door being noisily used by forty single illegal immigrant males as a flophouse, whereas an enlightened and non-bigoted person realizes that NAFTA, Big Ag, or global inequality is the culprit and would not dream of bringing an action against his neighbors. In other words, "to scapegoat" now meant "to act locally".
But I see, as exemplified by Mr. Egan, that semantic evolution flows ever onward, and that libspeak has managed to completely strip "scapegoat" of the earlier necessary connotation of innocence, while at the same time retaining the implication of "victim". Impressive. Will they be successful in holding "scapegoat" above the common fate of eupehmizing efforts - irony, mockery, and finally adoption of the euphemism to mean the very thing it was employed to obfuscate?
I lived in Europe for a time. No one fed me any stereotypes about gypsies. I picked them up from my lived experience. I witnessed a couple of these scams in action, plus others:
go to densely populated areas early on Saturday and Sunday mornings and have a singer with massive speakers 'sing' for tips. After enough tips are recieved, the nuisance goes away.
Mutely hand out sprigs to tourists outside a church. Loudly and filthily insist on payment from anyone who takes them. Grab wallets and other valuables while distracted in the argument.
And Jews have been telling us the same about Palestinians.
And the biggest smear today is that whites are evil and to blame for all social ill. So, if gypsies rob and steal, the problem is not with the gypsies. It's with evil whites.
The real scapegoats today are whites, and those doing the scapegoating are Jews.
Just consider a movie like MACHETE funded by liberal Jewish Hollywood.
If one belongs to a 'victim group', he is never at fault no matter what he does. (Like Omar Thorton was portrayed as someone DRIVEN to kill by 'racist' whites.)
But if one belongs to a 'oppressor' group, he is ALWAYS wrong even when he's voicing legit concerns about social problems.
However, if Jews believe that gypsies are their brethren and have so much in common--especially being hated by evil Europeans--, Israel should declare itself a Jewish-gypsy state and open its arms to all gypsies around the world. If Jews care so much about the plight of Gypsies in Europe, let them have the gypsies.
This is when journalism becomes not fact-based but purely ideological and based on old assumptions. Indeed, this TIMOTHY idiot is the one who is prejudiced and blind to reality.
Instead of opening his eyes and looking at what's really happening, he just falls back on OLD ASSUMPTIONS about evil 'racist' whites and poor hapless gypsies(who are supposed to be like the modern Jews).
Yes, there were old European canarads about Jews and gypsies--and vice versa--, but the notion that all the problems in Europe are the result of European prejudice is just so much BS. It too is a myth, a superstition, a caricature, and a lie.
Too many NY TIMES 'journalists' prefer to fall back on these 'progressive' stereotypes and age-old assumptions than really look at reality on the ground. Do gypsies commit a lot of crime? Are they socially backward? Do they have lower IQ? Do they have bad attitude? But these questions cannot be asked because they violate the progressive myth and superstition that non-white minorities are automatic saints and victims. (Gypsies, like Jews, are of course mixed whites but not quite.)
NY TIMES weasels don't seem to understand that it takes two to tango, or for both sides to move away from stereotypes. There must be a mutual effort. For example, the governing or dominant majority must try to put aside prejudices and try to tolerate and accept the minority, BUT the minority must also try hard to respect the majority, work within laws and rules, do away with its negative or prickly attributes, etc. Both sides must try to be 'a credit to its race'.
But THE ENTIRE burden today is only placed on whites. So, if blacks mess up and ruin a city like Detroit, it's entirely whites' fault and never blacks'. And if gypsies continue to steal and rob and piss off Europeans, blame European perceptions but never gypsy reality.
Do liberals really think that social reality is simply a matter of perception? So, if whites pretend that blacks are not dangerous, there will no more black street gangs, thugs, and Omar Thortons? And if Europeans simply repress or abandon all their negative feelings about gypsies, gypsies will all be wonderful citizens? And if Sarrazin just convinced himself that Turks in Germany are hardworkers and an asset for Germany, that will be the case?
What does this have to do with reality or journalism, which is supposed to look for truth, not simply editorialize and push a dogma. (Btw, do you suppose the Palestinian problem will simply go away if Jews simply abandoned all their bad feelings about the Pallies?)
Well, let us use the liberal logic on the liberals. You see, the problem with all these 'racist, reactionary, nationalist, homophobic, sexist, neanderthal' whites and Europeans is that liberals see them in that manner. If liberals drop their prejudiced assumptions and simply tolerated and accepted these 'racist' whites and Europeans as fellow 'progressives', that will be the case almost overnight. It's all in the mind.
So, how to fix the gypsy problem? Pretend there is no such problem and it will go away.
And how to fix the white reactionary problem? Pretend ther is no such problem and it will go away. Tea Parties shall vanish into the air and we shall, each of us, all love Obama.
The core question is: what should a society do about a groups in its midst that emphasizes an extreme in-morality?
For example, I think that, say Korean-Americans or Greek-Americans would very slightly favor other K-A or G-A's (for jobs, socially, etc). But it's not a big deal, since no harm is committed -- just slight and natural favoritism.
But what about a group like the Roma, who have a culture that explicitly states that you can steal from the out-group? This is a far different situation.
What should the nation do in this case?
Timothy Egan has been writing ludicrous apologias for gypsies in the New York Times for almost 20 years.
All the way back in 1992:
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/14/us/police-raid-and-suit-open-window-into-gypsy-life.html
yes, but don't you feel sorry for the GypsY?
This is their culture and it's bad but they can't help it
and also, Hitler tried to committ genocide against them.
they are a protected group, are they not?
what of Gypsy women?
Thomas Egan knows next to nothing about gypsies. *sigh
True story:
In modern-day Hungary, the police are afraid of gypsies. A friend had some trouble with a group of them not so long ago, he called the police, and managed to calm them down. After the gypsies left, the policeman showed up.
Where had he been?
By his own admission: Hiding around the corner, safely out of sight. This is not a joke nor an exaggeration.
One reason for this is not only that he fears, correctly, that the gypsies will take retribution on the policeman's family ---- but due to nonsense European equal force self-defense laws, if a gypsy attacks you, me or even a policemen, with say a, pitchfork, and said policeman defends himself with his sidearm. Guess who is going to jail?
-Varangy
My favorite part of the article was this:
"Unspoken characterizations[of gypsies] based on ancient stereotypes — they are shiftless, clannish, prone to petty thievery and to begging, prostitution and dark motives — are now out in the open."
He didn't have the guts to say "baseless" stereotypes so he had to go with "ancient".
It's easy to see from the article who the "scorned class" really is, because of course stereotyping is worse than stealing.
But this is nothing new. If they are the Other, victimizers have been elevated to victim status throughout the West for some time now. And white Westerners, no matter how often or brutally they are actually victimized by those Others, have been devalued to the status of victimizer.
By the way, I have no first-hand knowledge of gypsies. The only person I know who has was an elderly Russian woman who as a child was stolen by gypsies.
Wow, I just perused the comments section for that article; nearly all the most recommended are critical of Egan's BS posturing. Hope and Change?
"Those Gypsies, known by the less pejorative term of Roma [...]"
I suspect it won't be less pejorative for long.
Steve, the most destructive meme for America is the meme that says
all ethnic groups are equal when it comes to inherent genetic IQ.
This meme has led to massive immigration of low IQ people in to the USA.
It seems that Sarko has come to the realization that Roma IQ is lower than the French average and that France is better off without Roma.
But has Sarko ever explicity said that high IQ immigrants are good for France? In other words, has he indicatd that at the same time he is in favor of kicking out groups with an IQ of 90 he is in favor of allowing in groups with an IQ of 130?
I mean, I believe that a "citizenist" here in the USA would enthusiastically accept immigrants with the genes that produce IQ of over 130. I just don't think there is any question that an incremental ten million people here with IQ over 130 would not contribute to our success as a nation
We all know that IQ is genetic and that on average super high IQ families who move to the USA will stay out of jail and actually pay taxes over the next few hundred years. Putting it another way, high IQ families produce high IQ offspring and high IQ offspring on average contribute mightily to the society.
One plan I have heard described is that every person that wishes to immigrate to the USA must arrange for responsible authorities like the consulate in their home country (or some outpost of ETS in their home country) to give an IQ test to their parents, grandparents, and siblings (if alive) Only allow in to the USA people with an IQ over 130 who ALSO have parents, grandparents, and siblings with IQ over 130.
If we follow this rule, we wind up with immigrants that generally contribute to our economy rather than detract from it.
Anyway, my question is, can I find a blog anywhere on the web that is advocating my plan - massive immigration of super high IQ people with zero immigration of anyone with IQ under 130
I would guess that Theo Sarrazin is enough of a citizenist to strongly advocate this plan for Germany, but is there anyone out there explicitly endorsing this plan for the USA or for France?
Back a few years ago, Italian gyspies stole a baby from her family. In response, the town rioted and forced the gypsies out.
"I mean, I believe that a "citizenist" here in the USA would enthusiastically accept immigrants with the genes that produce IQ of over 130."
You new around here? A "citizenist" cares for the citizens already here.
If that 130+ IQ immigrant cohort is putting pressure on the homegrown IQ 130+ for their livelihoods, access to affordable housing and family formation, then no.
"I just don't think there is any question that an incremental ten million people here with IQ over 130 would not contribute to our success as a nation"
Define "success." Better yet, define "nation." Because I don't think those words mean what you think they mean.
"Putting it another way, high IQ families produce high IQ offspring and high IQ offspring on average contribute mightily to the society."
Yah, yah, ceteris paribus and all that. Problem is, all other things are NOT equal. There's this little problem of ethnocentricity of alien high-IQ'ers making them prone to stuff like espionage for the home country.
Which good argument can be made they do MORE damage than 10 million dullards. With dim bulbs comes pickpocketing, but it takes a genius to bankrupt a whole country, or smuggle out its military secrets.
Intelligence =/= loyalty.
what of Gypsy women?
Horrifically ugly, for the most part.
"Generalization is a survival technique"
So is prejudice. Theodore Dalyrimple wrote a book, In Praise of Prejudice, but curiously stopped short of applying his thesis to the use of racial and ethnic "stereotypes" for self preservation. I wonder why.
From Laban Tall's blog:
Where else but a Guardian editorial could you find such a wonderful euphemism?
"Rolling caravans do not lend themselves to rooted integration, and especially when they are decoupled from standard western ideas about property rights."
Many Jewish Holocaust scholars guard the term Holocaust as exclusively covering the killing of Jews, and seperately acknowledge the killings of gypsies. But the gypsies were marked for annihilation.
TIMOTHY EGAN: "Gypsies, known by the less pejorative term of Roma"
What??? "Pejorative"? Why and since when? Gypsy is simply English equivalent of the Gitano/Tzigane in other languages. And this is how many Gypsies have called themselves for centuries.
But the gypsies were marked for annihilation.
We hear this a lot, where is the documentary evidence?
"Liberals believe you "can't generalize". By that they don't mean that generalizations aren't true but that is is UNFAIR and bigoted to treat a member of a class as if he had some attribute that most members of the class have. Generalization is a survival technique and Liberals develop in environments where they are sheltered from the need to exert themselves to prosper."
Also liberals generalize all the time. They have lots of nasty generalizations about conservatives; some of them are even true-ish.
As per usual, it's "do as I say, not as I do".
Timothy Egan's piece was pathetic. It was so loaded with childlike sentimentality and halfwitted analogies that only the dimmest of handwringing liberals would make it through without gagging.
The English-language version of TV's Euronews is the middle of a multipart hagiography of the gypsies. Elders talk softly about their hopes for integration as the camera zooms in for closeups of the forlorn and often blonde children. Euronews' finances are somewhat opaque, but the EU does contribute a nice piece of change.
Obviously our leaders are running scared in the wake of Sarkozy's moves and the public's support of them. The multicultural edifice is threatened when attention is called to large dysfunctional groups who don't even pretend to be pulling their weight.
Varangi, thanks for the policeman hiding around the corner anecdote. I'm sorry for Hungary, and I hear this kind of thing is common in Europe, usually involving Muslims. But it shows that we haven't yet touched bottom here in the U.S. Last night two of New York's Finest in an unmarked car blasted their siren stopping the car in front of them. Both officers approached the car with guns drawn. The driver's side officer's order "get out of the car" could be heard five blocks away. The perp was handcuffed within 10 seconds. It was probably a DUI (drunk driving) bust from the look of it; there was no doubt who was in charge.
The NYT article was striking in that it was an article that cost almost nothing to produce. There were no hard numbers except for a couple of numbers about how many Gypsies the Nazis murdered, not even what you might expect to be able to find with some serious Googling.
It was clear that this article also cost almost no thought--the writer could simply take his existing ideas about the world, his views on domestic politics, and what he'd read on the expulsions of Gypsies from France, and produce something passable very quickly.
What would be interesting in this context?
a. Are the stereotypes broadly true? Hard data is your friend here, and it's not plausible that there's no good data from *any* of the well-governed European countries that have had these problems. But it might take some work to gather the data.
b. Are there other examples of Gypsy-expulsions and such, and how have they worked out? Does the crime rate actually fall? Do the Gypsies just come back next year?
c. How *do* you deal with an identifiable group that imposes lots of costs on the surrounding society? The standard US answer for this is to get mad at the guy who asks the question. But there's a genuine issue of individual justice vs. social benefits here, one that comes up also with immigration policy, welfare policy, etc. Addressing this would require both thought and risk for the writer, which is why it wasn't brought up.
Spend any time travelling about Europe and you will soon run afoul of Gypsies. They are a bane on all of Europe. They especially like to prey on tourists who are often naive and unfamiliar with local areas. They tend to frequent train stations and historical sites, anywhere tourists are likely to be. You should be very wary of them. Gypsy children often operate in packs too. Japanese tourists seem to be their favourite mark as they are very naive.
Reply to Big bill:
It must be comforting to be so full of yourself and so consumed with self-righteousness. The rest of your post is unworthy of reply.
We don't hear much of Ceausescu's attitude towards gypsies. I understand he had a policy of expanding the Romanian population radically, but did not seem to be too organised in an HBD sense on who got to do the expanding..hence the orphanage crisis.
I would have thought he would have 'settled' the gypsies in order to keep an eye on them...or even paid them to keep an eye on everyone else.
Go look up and read.
Leesony, 2010. Gypsies.
Abstract
"Gypsies believe the lower half of the human body is invisibly polluted, that super- natural de…lement is physically contagious, and that non-Gypsies are spiritually toxic. I argue that Gypsies use these beliefs, which on the surface regulate their invisible world, to regulate their visible one. They use superstition to create and enforce law and order. Gypsies do this in three ways. First, they make worldly crimes supernatural ones, leveraging fear of the latter to prevent the former. Second, they marshal the belief that spiritual pollution is contagious to incentivize collective punishment of antisocial behavior. Third, they recruit the belief that non-Gypsies are supernatural cesspools to augment such punishment. Gypsies use superstition to substitute for traditional institutions of law and order. Their bizarre belief system is an e¢ cient institutional response to the constraints they face on their choice of mechanisms of social control."
It must be comforting to be so full of yourself and so consumed with self-righteousness. The rest of your post is unworthy of reply.
I think Big Bill was being ironic. Taking the piss as we say here in the UK.
I believe that Timothy Egan is what passes for a hard-headed realist at the New York Times, too.
It is something one learns with age that good people can on occasion be wrong, and that people who have been wronged are not necessarily good people. We are supposed to feel sympathy for the gypsies because the nazis murdered them. Well, the nazis murdered lots of people. They murdered communists too, but that doesn't make me sympathetic towards communists (not, as such, anyways). As strange as it might seem to Mr. Egan, a rational person can deplore the nazis genocide of gypsies and yet at the same time neither like nor trust gypsies.
When I was 12, a Gypsy snuck into my room in a Leningrad hotel when I was on a glasnost trip (1987). I don't know for sure how he got in, but I assume one of his female relatives must have had a job there provided by the progressive Bolshies. My roommate, Cody, caught him with his Walkman and we all got to wrestling over the thing.
It was very early in the morning, so I was pretty groggy, but I remember that the Gypsy was very surprised that we kids put up a fight over the Walkman. Ultimately, the Gypsy retreated and Cody got his Walkman back.
The Russians seemed more amused by the incident than anything else.
The fact is.. even most European leftists don't like gypsies.
Europeans are overly sensitive toward gypsies because they fear Jewish power--though there is far less sensitivity in Eastern Europe because (1) they have more gypsies and more experience with them (2) tend to be less PC--ironic since they were under communism(which oddly proved to be more nationalist) and (3) they tend to be poorer, and poor people feel less sympathy; in the US, civil rights movement gained momentum only after majority of whites comfortably entered the middle class.
And Jews 'care' about gypsies to the extent that they can use the issue to morally browbeat and intimidate, thus control, Europeans.
It's all so cynical. I suppose it's kinda like some on the Left and Right pretending to care about Palestinians to challenge and undermine Jewish moral authority, thus Jewish power.
However one may feel about gypsies, BLACK CAT WHITE CAT is one hilarious movie.
They should be called Roama than Roma.
Anyway, it'd be nice if gypsies and Europeans approached one another 50/50.
After all, not every European was the victim of gypsies, and many people only heard bad stuff about them without getting to know them personally. Sometimes, negative stereotypes about a people can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you see and treat people as crap, they will be forced to live as crap and eventually become crap.... kinda like the burakumin in Japan or untouchables in India.
On the other hand, there are clearly problems of crime, hostility, vulgarity, and trashiness among the gypsies. Gypsies ought to admit and face up to their own problems as well as addressing the problems of discrimination against them. If both sides admit wrongs and make an honest effort to come together in a spirit of mutuality, things may improve greatly among both groups--unless there is something genetic that drives gypsies to be gypsy-like, which is a possibility. If gypsy DNA was selected and favored over centuries for qualities best suited for trickery, stealing, and acting like second-rate-Marx-Brothers, it's gonna be a bigger problem. I wonder if Cochran and Harpen said anything about this.
One of the problems for 'Roma', is that most westerners are no longer superstitious. In the good old days they could make a living by selling their goods and services and putting a curse on those that didn't cooperate. In modern secular Europe this isn't so much of an option.
Perhaps, the PC authorities should also ban atheism.
All negative group generalisations false, most especially those which are true
Does the European majority have a strong enough sense of self-preservation to endure as a people. What I find most interesting about the gypsie problem is that it has been going on for so long, and gypsies are such a powerless minority that it would seem the European majority would have easily done soemthing decisive about the problem by now. Expulsions or ghettos seem justified. But after 100's of years the European majority is being criticized for taking relatively tame measures to solve a very real problem within their own countries. Unbelievable.
Amazing, isn't it, how despite all the pious bromides about 'diversity', lurking within the hearts of all gypsies/ghetto blacks/cholos/Muslims is an upper-middle class white liberal just bursting to get out?
I think Big Bill was being ironic. Taking the piss as we say here in the UK.
He was indeed being ironic, and did a perfect job of summing up the bogus counter-arguments to a realistic assessment of gypsy behavior.
when I was in india my driver pointed out gypsies on the road. It was clear he did not like them.
funny this is my litmus test for liberal denial of reality
"ever been to rome"
yes
What do you do when you see a gypsie?
"umm I don't like to judge people, i am always careful when i travel you never know who... blah blah blah"
Don't call them gypsies. They are people living with gypsyism.
Why do Gypsies have to steal to live? Being victims of the Holocaust, they must get lots of money from a guilt-ridden German government.
I mean, the Germans DO pay them reparations, right...?
[Cue sound of crickets chirping.]
Ever notice college education serves more as a shield or cocoon--often for life--than as a tool used to explore and probe reality? A student of journalism is supposed to courageously, diligently, and with considerable integrity look for truth beyond preconceptions and prejudices, but too often, journalism schools produce people who are so dogmatically armored and shielded in PC that they cannot see reality even when it's in front of their faces. So, if a liberal jouranlist were to come upon 100 cases of gypsy thievery and a single case of gypsy being wronged by whites, he or she will go with the latter story and ignore the former. Why? His or her mind has been made into a PC shield than a sword of truth.
The journalist, instead of having an open mind, closes his mind to everything but that which conforms to his PC convictions and suspicions.
And there's an irony here. Liberalism pretends to fight prejudice but only replaced one prejudice with another. Liberal prejudice, as in the Omar Thorton case, presumes in almost every case that the problem must rest with majority whites--or even with who are now minority whites in South Africa.
Whites were attacked and harassed by black thugs in Zimbabwe, and whites are robbed and pickpocketed by gypsy crooks in Europe, but the fault lies only with whites according to the media dominated by journalists shielded in PC armor.
I suppose the left will argue that gypsies steal because that's the only venue open to them in 'racist' Europe. Even Jewish success is blamed on whites. We are told Jews were pretty much forced to succeed in banking because they weren't allowed to work as honest toilers of the soil. Jewish success which causes resentment and gypsy failure which rouses anger, blame both on evil whites.
Antisemitism is the tendency to blame Jews for anything and everything, and anti-whitism, so prevalent in the Western media dominated by liberal Jews and their clones and puppets, suffers from the same malady.
One good thing about Muslims becoming majority in Europe will be the end of all this sucking up to Jews and gypsies. Muslims feel no guilt about the Holocaust nor mistreatment of gypsies. Heck, Muslims don't even feel guilt about all the infidels they killed over 1300 yrs. Unlike Christianity which underscores Western consciousness--religious and secular--, there is no guilt complex in Islam. A militant religion, it fully justifies violence and bloodshed in the name of Allah. Muhammad fought for Allah than died for humanity like Jesus did. Islam has been at times a peaceful and harmonious religion but never a guilt-filled or self-loathing one. A muslim may feel guilty before God but NEVER before non-Muslims, no matter how many infidels may have been murdered.
I was pretty surprised to see the leftist readership widely disagree with that moron Egan. It tells you how basically insane Egan is and how much of a scourge gypsies are.
Is italy particularly affected because the gypsies fled the former yugoslavia ?
Mike Courtman said...
One of the problems for 'Roma', is that most westerners are no longer superstitious. In the good old days they could make a living by selling their goods and services and putting a curse on those that didn't cooperate. In modern secular Europe this isn't so much of an option.
--
they should move to Africa :) The superstition market over there is pretty robust . Though I wonder if they could compete with the local sangomas, ngangas and other albino hunters.
While growing up in africa I remember we had this gypsy kid in our neighborhood, from rumania. His mom had married a local. They were living more or less like locals, not like the other europeans who were well off expats. I remember a few of us thinking that Rumania must have been a pretty shitty country for that woman and her child to be rather living in Africa as a non expat. I didn't know back then that they were gypsies but from their appearance, that's what they must have been.
>Egan's clueless assumption that gypsy behaviour has no role in creating anti-gypsy sentiment.<
Interesting blind spot he has. Kevin MacDonald, call your office?
"All negative group generalisations false, most especially those which are true"
Except for negative group generalizations about whites; those are always "true".
Privileged liberal elitists think, "if the masses of whites only thought and felt like us wonderful progressives, problems of 'racism' and prejudice against non-white minorities would go away."
Of course, being affluent and privileged, these liberals don't see much of real reality.
The moneyed elites, immersed in their plans to earn ever more, mightn't be too aware of the problems, but the university, thinking-type elites certainly are. Though in both cases there's an out-of-sight-out-of-mind factor at play, the latter are pretty much forced to pin the blame on white racism, because that allows them to think there's an easy solution. Anything else leaves them having to face up to the fact that there's a really Big Problem that's not about to go away, and that can be scary.
I say it's better to confront reality than evade it, since then at least you can proceed on the basis of fact instead of fantasy and delusion.
"I was pretty surprised to see the leftist readership widely disagree with that moron Egan. It tells you how basically insane Egan is and how much of a scourge gypsies are. "
I think the large scale dissent here goes to show that if the anti-white media were out of the picture, more healthy attitudes would reassert themselves quite quickly, even among liberals.
"One of the problems for 'Roma', is that most westerners are no longer superstitious. In the good old days they could make a living by selling their goods and services and putting a curse on those that didn't cooperate. In modern secular Europe this isn't so much of an option."
There is a new superstition called PC, and it's wonderfully sold by liberal Jews. Sadly, it's sold as truth and science.
Well, I guess it takes brains to sell higher superstition with its taboos and promises.
Gypsies have been in Europe for centuries and have remained unassimilated not because of white racism towards gypsies but because of gypsy racism towards white people.
assfsadf:
The common superstitions and beliefs always do that. A century ago, when you wanted to add weight to your opinions, you attributed them to God's Plan or Nature. Now you attribute them to science, for the same reasons--people inclined to agree with you will often find it convincing, no matter how flimsy the connection. Few people really understand much science, but then, few religious people know much about the theology or history of their religion.
Post a Comment