EU stops advertising on X over hate speech. Fines could follow next year::The European Union is pulling its advertisements from Elon Musk’s X for now, citing an “alarming increase” in hate speech and disinformation on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
I don’t want to get in the middle of a flame war, but as someone who’s seen the culture of his small town shift over the last couple decades, I can’t help but have some sympathy for those who worry about this happening in their local (Admittedly, in my case, it’s watching a town where the suburban drops off to rural slowly be subsumed by city sprawl, so this might be a false equivalance).
But I think the real issue is that that’s not an evenly distributed 11%. People will naturally bunch up in groups along cultural lines. I could see a city developing a single Arab/Muslim neighborhood over the course of a decade being of no note, but it sounds like some are developing multiple over just a couple years.
I have no real data to back that notion up, but from what I hear from Europeans, that’s the general feel. I think that’s the real issue: things are changing and they feel like they’re changing fast, and that’s freaking people out. Telling people who feel that way they’re crazy only “others” them and I feel that’s really how the situation gets worse.
But also, the towns the guy above mentioned feel like bigger cities (I’m American and haven’t been to Europe, so I also might lack perspective), and so I do feel like they’re overstating the point.
Yeah, and Americans in general once felt that the Irish or the Italians would take over the country because they were emigrating in large numbers. Guess what never happened?
Mamma mia!
I suppose, the point I mean to make is that belittling this guy does nothing to solve the problem.
There is a big difference though. Their beliefs were compatible with Americans, everyone believed in Jesus, not killing people and such. And most importantly, the next generation mingled and married locals and they were almost fully assimilated by the third generation.
Where I live, and other places, most of the Muslim population (not all, mind you) keep their children from others as much as possible. The children are taught what they can and can’t do because they are Muslim. And they can only marry Muslims (conversions are allowed but the family must live Muslim lives under those rules. They are not allowing natural assimilation. Places like Denmark have laws forcing immigrant children to attend day care with locals, because otherwise they won’t.
Okay, but they’re still a tiny minority. They will not be implementing sharia law in Europe any time in the foreseeable future because they just won’t have that power.
Also, if you’re going to say belief in Jesus is a requirement for being European, you’re going to have to do something about the Jews who live there too. And considering they’ve lived there for thousands of years, maybe that isn’t a defining characteristic of Europeans.
Nobody said they will. But they WANT to. Read my original text and please reply to the points that I ACTUALLY made, instead of putting words in my mouth…
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I think this is largely a consequence of the rate of change.
Going from 50 generations back to 40 generation back (call it 750 AD to 1000 AD) very little would have changed for people, especially those limited in their means of transportation. I think this is largely, if not exactly, true of any generational gap (the exceptions I feel can be found at those bridging the rise and fall of empires)
Meanwhile, 10 generations ago (call it like 1750) wouldn’t recognize the world today. Hell, 2-3 generations ago (thinking of those born ~1925-1950) barely recognize the world of today.
The way I see it, the rate of change we experience in the world today is simply beyond the rate of change we were bred for over the bulk of humanity’s history.
With that perspective in mind, it feels wrong to hold it against people to resist parts of that change.
Yeah, in my ideal world, we’d all get along and be able to deal with these things in a civilized manner, but that feels super dismissive of the Human Condition and the real lived experience of people in the real world.
Looping back to the point I want to make: coming at people hard for having a negative reaction to a changing world doesn’t make their acceptance of the changing world any better.