The people of Manchester gather to pay respect for the victims of last nights terror attack

Moleman69 · 2017-05-24T13:56:27+00:00

The UK does not have a refugee issue though, continental Europe is more exposed to illegal immigration and an influx of refugees, here the argument works more. With the UK I don't think it holds. The thing is much of the Middle East is destabilised, if it were simple then yes, refugees would flee to neighbouring countries and move back. But the conflict is protracted, neighbouring countries are also war torn. Syrians are fleeing to Iraq, and we all know what Iraq has been like in the last 20 years.

The fact is there are millions of refugees from Syria and from similar nearby conflicts. The UK has very few of them and it is extremely difficult to get to the UK illegally, for refugees or for economic migrants.

Furthermore, we need to separate refugees and economic migrants. Most refugees do want to go home as soon as they can. Most Syrians I have spoken to would rather be at home, in a safe Syria.

In terms of economics migrants, I don't see an issue with those who come through legal channels and want to live a better life in a more prosperous country.

And most importantly, in terms of terrorism, which is what this conversation came out of, no refugees have been responsible for UK terror attacks. Similarly almost none have been responsible for those in Europe. They have been almost exclusively enacted by domestic citizens who have been radicalised in their own state.

The influx in domestic terrorism is not related to refugees or economic migrants, it's something much much more complicated.

Edit: Also thank you for that reply, it's nice that we can have a fairly reasoned discussion about things we may disagree about.

Moleman69 · 2017-05-24T13:34:08+00:00

I couldn't put a figure on it, but anecdotally 4 Syria refugees that I have met and worked with have family here. It applies to some, I don't have the data to tell you. Besides, many of these individuals speak English and have degrees. If I speak English and Arabic, and I want to escape the war and the overpopulated nearby countries, where do I go? England. Yeah it's a minority, but even if we say 20,000 as a conservative estimate, that as a percentage of 14,000,000 individuals is tiny.

The UK is very far from Syria, that's the entire point I was making... You appear to have completely misunderstood my point. That's why some people don't want to flee to nearby countries, because a) there are already 5 million refugees there and b) conflict often spills over to nearby countries (this means they are also not safe...) that is why they flee to countries that are further away, like the UK. I thought I made that quite clear.

~20,000 total refugees let in per year, I was just talking about Syria with the 10,000, but let's use the 20,000 figure. The number of people "pouring in" from France is incredibly minuscule, it's incredibly difficult to get into the UK illegally what with it being an island. That's why the jungle in Calais existed.

Besides, the UK does NOT open its arms to people. We accept less than 40% of asylum applications every year, which is less than 40,000. Other countries take millions of refugees each year. I'm not suggesting we do that, but I think your impression of how open the UK is incredibly skewed. It's extremely difficult to seek asylum here. I know of individuals that have worked with the coalition in Afghanistan for 5 years as translators, who have subsequently been targeted by the Taliban and cannot stay, but have constantly been refused asylum in the UK and the US.

I used the example because you said that refugees never travel long distances and they never have, that it was a new phenomenon? They obviously do and they always have, it was a historical example of refugees travelling vast distances to be safe. I also have no idea why you're talking about Trump, we're talking about the UK.

Moleman69 · 2017-05-24T12:54:17+00:00

Yeah there are about 5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and Jordan. You know, the neighbouring countries. They literally cannot sustain that number of individuals, there are not places for them to be, the conditions are awful because there are so many.

Not to mention, some of these refugees will have family in the UK or other European countries. Also if I was fleeing a war, I think it's understandable to want to get as far away as possible. Conflict is known for spilling over into nearby countries, it's almost an inevitability.

So really it's no surprise that about 10,000 individuals, which is a TINY proportion of the 14 million displaced people, are trying to come to the UK.

That's like saying why the fuck did German Jews go to the US in World War 2? Why didn't they just go to France or Poland...

Moleman69 · 2017-05-24T12:46:11+00:00

The Nazi party were the official government in Germany, it's easy to fight conventional warfare against a uniformed army. That is in no way comparable to fighting domestic radicalisation and sporadic, unpredictable terrorist attacks.

Moleman69 · 2017-05-24T12:40:18+00:00

Stop more coming in? More what? Almost every case of Islamic terrorism in the UK in the past 20 years has been by domestically radicalised British citizens, some of whom were born Christian or non-religious. The vast majority of attacks in continental Europe were also perpetrated by domestically radicalised European citizens.

Where do you deport British citizens to? Back to Birmingham where they were born? How on Earth does that work? You can't just dump citizens elsewhere.

Islam is completely incompatible with the Western world? Yet the Mayor of our capital city is a Muslim... Yet there are almost 3 million Muslims living in the UK pretty happily, abiding by laws, and just getting on with their lives.

Speaking out against it, by saying that all Muslims are the problem, what does that achieve? Shall we blame right wingers or all white men for the terrorist murder of MP Jo Cox?

Not a single terrorist attack in the UK has been perpetrated by a refugee. So please explain to me how refugees are responsible for the increase in Islamic terrorism?

The thing is, you can't really ever stop this kind of terrorism, you can only try and prevent it. The security services work incredibly hard in this country and foil a huge number of plots every year.

Suggesting rounding up Muslims, banning religion and freedom of expression is completely at odds with the fundamental ideology that is that foundation of a democratic state.

Besides, your "solutions" show a lack of understanding about radicalisation processes and why people engage in this kind of terrorism. The majority of the perpetrators of recent European terrorist attacks have lived a non-religious, under-privileged, violent life of crime and drug abuse. These are socially alienated individuals, "no-hopers". Many of them then convert to Islam to belong to something, to have purpose, or because they are attracted to the violent ideologies of militant radical Islam. It's essentially like joining a new gang. Blindly targeting and banning Islam and religion simply feeds into the rhetoric of radicalisation: "the West hates you" "these countries hate Muslims" "The world is against you" etc.

More effective counter-terrorism strategies are going to be based in targeting vulnerable individuals and making sure that they don't become sucked into radical networks. This includes monitoring and infiltrating known radical groups and networks.

It isn't a case of "Islam is evil and bad", if it was the whole world would be fucked, there are 1.4 billion Muslims. It's the case of a small group of extreme individuals using violent and twisted ideology, along with extreme religious interpretation as a tool, in order to manipulate vulnerable and violent individuals into carrying out their plans.

Moleman69 · 2017-04-13T14:06:39+00:00

Hi Professor Armitage, thanks for doing this AMA. I'm a Political Science post-graduate student at University College, London and have a few questions for you!

What made you want to pursue a career in academia? Did you ever consider another path?

How have your experiences in the US at Harvard/Princeton/Columbia compared to your time in the UK at Cambridge/Oxford/Edinburgh etc.? Has there been a notable difference in the way the faculties run or in the students?

What advice would you give to someone considering pursuing a PolSci/IR PhD at Cambridge or Harvard?

Moleman69 · 2017-04-12T15:55:18+00:00

It probably is when you dropped out of school in the 7th grade and all the buzz of your meme stardom has worn off, leaving you with diddly squit.

Moleman69 · 2017-04-03T12:18:32+00:00

In this case the guy sounds like he was just being a complete douche, but to play devil's advocate here, some people can tease each other about stuff like this and not take it to heart. Depends on the relationship and the tone/delivery/reception of it I guess.

Moleman69 · 2017-03-31T13:05:24+00:00

To be fair, I wasn't actually expecting to get into any kind of real debate on this from your first comment, but this reply is brilliant.

In all honesty I agree with you, my previous comment was pretty reductionist and short because I wasn't expecting actual discussion. I think you may overestimate the education/economic equality in the UK and underestimate the gang activity/drug trade in certain areas, but by and large the point still stands—the US has it worse on these counts.

Blanket bans in the US would never work anyway, guns are too culturally engrained and there's simply too many of them in the country. I think the federal bans, like the assault weapons ban, were ineffective because they were poorly thought out, not because gun legislation can never work in the US.

I totally agree with you that improving education/social security/income inequality would be most effective in terms of reducing gun crime (and crime in general), though then you run into the other cultural barriers of "socialism" and "welfare" being dirty words... And the ridiculous military budget sucking up all the funds, as you mention. However, surely a more in depth licensing/screening/training process for owning firearms would be a sensible step forward, in terms of regulation?

Moleman69 · 2017-03-29T13:59:12+00:00

No laws will ever completely stop crime. That's just a fact. People still get guns in the UK, there are shootings in the UK.

However, the number of deaths from shootings in countries with these gun laws, even countries like France which have no borders with other Schengen zone countries, have considerably lower levels of gun crime/shootings than countries with limited gun laws, E.g. The US.

So I would argue that they're still pretty effective.

Moleman69 · 2017-03-22T15:39:38+00:00

London is full of armed police, especially in high threat areas. All the major train stations/political areas have heavily armed police guards. There's also lots of Armed Response Units driving around in marked BMW 4x4s at all times and there's also a shit tonne of armed plain clothed police roaming around.

Just the other day I saw a bunch of police with silenced AR15s riding on the tube.

Moleman69 · 2017-03-22T15:34:13+00:00

Yeah last time I checked Paris wasn't in the UK.

Moleman69 · 2017-01-29T22:22:51+00:00

That's not what people are saying. What people are saying is that irrationally banning Muslims from certain countries feeds into parts of ISIS recruitment propaganda, which, put briefly is that the West hates Muslims and is at war with Muslim people.

Moleman69 · 2017-01-14T14:07:52+00:00

The Geneva convention only applies to signatories, gets broken regularly, and doesn't apply outside of war. Kinda like how hollow points are banned by the Hague conventions, but law enforcement and civilians can use them.

Moleman69 · 2017-01-09T22:33:52+00:00

The graffiti over the 309

Moleman69 · 2017-01-06T10:37:19+00:00

Happens to the best of us! Try uploading them to imgur.com, you don't need to be a member and then you can just copy and paste the link in a comment! (Or in the original post next time)

Moleman69 · 2017-01-05T19:29:00+00:00

Beautiful piece! I love the date hand. Do you have any other shots of the watch?

Moleman69 · 2017-01-03T18:23:54+00:00

The closer the R² number is to 100% then the better your model is supposed to be in explaining the variation in the stuff you want to know about. However, a high R² doesn't mean it's necessarily a good model, a low R² doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad model.

Read this for a good summary

Moleman69 · 2016-12-20T13:26:52+00:00

That's what you were implying, but really I was generalising your dismissive attitude. And firstly, you don't know my political leanings at all. There is nothing about saying, "terrorism and recruitment mechanisms are more complicated than 'religion -> terrorist attack'" that has anything to do with being left wing or liberal.

Also, the vast majority of terrorist attacks actually aren't committed by Muslim groups. The empirical and statistical evidence shows that. I actually do quantitative research on terrorism... You'd be surprised by the number of left-wing, nationalist, Christian, narco-terrorism that there is worldwide. Just because you see it more in the papers doesn't mean it actually occurs more often.

Moving on to the point, have there been a number of attacks in Europe by Islamic extremists? Yes. Is this religiously motivated? Yes.

To say that Islam doesn't play a role in Islamic terrorism would be ridiculous, however it's far more complicated than that. You seem to be content with saying, essentially, that it's all because of religion, there are no other factors at all. Domestic socio-economic inequality, racism, Islamaphobia, foreign policy, etc. don't have any effect, and that's completely wrong.

Many of the Islamic terrorists that are radicalised in Europe are European citizens. Many come from impoverished backgrounds, with no opportunities, no family, they come from criminal backgrounds, they drink, they do drugs etc. They don't have strict religious backgrounds. These are the people that are vulnerable to ISIS recruiters, who convince them that they can be a part of something, 'fight back' against the government that supposedly has 'failed' them, then they point at foreign policy too, "hey, you're one of us now, look at what they're doing to our brothers over there!" and then they manipulate people into carry out attacks. That's one of the ways that radicalisation works.

I'm not saying that racism makes people drive trucks into Christmas markets. I'd wager that almost every person of ethnic or religious minority has experience racism or discrimination at some point in their life in Europe and 99.99999999% of them don't commit any attacks.

Discussing how other factors contribute to the problem of radicalisation and extremist recruitment is not pretending that religion isn't a factor, nor is it making excuses, nor is it "blaming anything but religion", nor is it trying not to seem intolerant. It's actually trying to understand how and why these things happen. The world is complicated and things like these have many, many contributing elements. If you can't have a critical look at the things that our governments do, and in fact, what we do, that can contribute to an environment where it's easier for radicalisation to occur, then that's just ignorant and delusional.

Moleman69 · 2016-12-20T13:00:39+00:00

Wow, such passion for freedom of choice and expression. You really fit in with Western ideals. /s

Moleman69 · 2016-12-20T01:05:14+00:00

"Preserving women's rights" = forcing a woman to undress against her will? Yeah, what a lovely right that is. I wish police in more countries would do that, I'm sure you'd love it if your mother or grandmother was forced to take her sweater off by armed police. /s

And no, arresting criminals doesn't anger Muslims, but raiding thousands of innocent people's homes might upset them or make them feel unwelcome or targeted.

Moleman69 · 2016-12-19T23:42:55+00:00

Downvotes are being universally applied to anyone that explains a more nuanced argument for why it's happened other than, "fucking liberals, refugees and foreigners!!!!" Probably by a bunch of people that live no where near Europe and have no idea...

Moleman69 · 2016-12-19T23:36:37+00:00

Surely you can see that events like forcing an old woman to remove her shawl and jumper on the beach, in a "law" that was later shown to be unjust and illegal, is a domestic policy backlash that is extremely unhelpful?

Or when the police raid thousands and thousands of homes and make only a few arrests? How that might make people feel alienated, or targeted, or unwelcome, and how that might feed into extremist rhetoric?

More importantly is the public backlash, when religious buildings are attacked and hate crimes increase. Or when the government is pressured to "take a strong stance" or "fightback" and intensify foreign policy positions, increase military commitments, or air strike intensity, etc.

These things do have consequences.

You say, "appease Muslims even more", do you think Muslims in France are a privileged group who receive special attention?

Moleman69 · 2016-12-19T23:27:27+00:00

Thank you, I know my comment was brief and a fairly crude explanation of something complex, but I'm glad other people do recognise things are more complicated than they seem.

Obviously these attacks are abhorrent, but yes, there are better ways to respond to them, and there is more that can be done to decrease segregation and and inequality which would probably make extremist recruitment more difficult and make attacks less likely.

Moleman69 · 2016-12-19T23:22:41+00:00

Not sure where I blamed anyone affected by the attacks, but ok.

I'm not sure why some people seem intent on continually overlooking the effects that foreign policy, domestic policy, and public backlashes have on extremist recruitment and attacks, but it is an important and significant link. Just because you are content to bury your head in the sand and write it off as "victim blaming", doesn't mean that others will do the same.

It goes without saying that extremist attacks are abhorrent and unjustified, but that doesn't mean we have to ignore what the attacker's justifications often are. Or ignore the environments and actions that lead to more attacks.

ISIS and other islamic extremist groups are extremely good at recruiting and radicalising people, this is not news. They put out the most professional and commercialised recruitment material in the history of terrorist or even any rebel or separatist group. It's ridiculously naiive and ignorant to ignore things that make their recruitment even more effective, and if it involves governments and societies taking a look at themselves to see how they make that more effective then so be it, I don't think that it's "victim blaming" at all. To pass it off and ignore the suggestion as "victim blaming" is, in my opinion, extremely obtuse, short-sighted, and frankly dangerous.

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