I’m not trying to convince “people”, I’m trying to convince you. Don’t start in with this “if you were a politician justifying policy, some people might say” bullshit. Your argument is rapidly disappearing up its own hypothetical arsehole. Do you think accepting refugees is a good idea, or don’t you?
Nope, that’s not it. I’m denouncing you as racist because out of all of the risks that we face on a day-to-day basis, this is the one you’re afraid of. The most deadly attack on French soil since world war two, and still it will only make up about 15% of this year’s murders, which in turn will make up some small fraction of a percent of all deaths. That’s the thing you’re afraid of enough to suggest a zero-tolerance policy over (or is it just something “people” might suggest, now?), and yet given a cursory glance at the breakdown of risk in the modern western world we can surely say that your fear is not rational. Don’t make me type out the fucking car analogy again. Scroll up, read it again, and explain to me how a guy who wants to ban all cars is a technophobe but a guy who wants to ban all refugees isn’t a xenophobe.
I want to say it again, I’m not fucking well strategising. I’m arguing over the right thing to do, now suddenly you’re arguing over the right way to argue for the right thing to do. Stop it, will you? Gives me a headache. Just tell me what you think. Me, I think the fact that you’re citing risks without properly understanding their magnitude, and assessing arguments based on their appeal to voters, says that none of this is particularly real to you. Listen:
That’s not a hypothetical, that’s a friend of mine. He’s a computer programmer from Iran. A couple of friends of his were budding young journalists, full of idealistic vigour. He helped them to set up and run a blog where they published citizen-journalism, truth-to-power type articles, hoping to make some small stand against an oppressive regime. Then one day, while my friend was visiting his uncle here in Paris, his two friends disappeared. Nobody knows what happened, except of course everybody knows what happened. They were detained. They were tortured. Now they’re probably dead, and their bodies are in a mass grave. He went to the French government and told them he feared for his life if he returned, and after a typically long bureaucratic turnaround he was granted citizenship.
He’s an electrician now. Says after what happened the thought of doing anything programming or IT-related makes him feel sick. To me he’s a hero who stood up to injustice, for him though I guess there’s a lot of survivor’s guilt and I can’t imagine what other dark thoughts. Still though he’s self employed, got his qualifications and a bit of business coming in, enough that he has a paid employee now. All in all his life here is going pretty well, except that he may never see his family again and he can’t contact any of his friends in Iran lest they be “questioned” over it.
Certainly as an Arab looking dude (Persians are basically Arabs, right?) with an Arab sounding name, I’ve seen this place weary him in a way that it doesn’t when you’re a white boy from Hobbiton. Still, the idea that I would say to such a guy “sorry but you can’t stay here. It’s nothing against you personally, there’s just some non-zero chance that your children will grow up to be violent radicals,” is so fucking stupid and bigoted that I can’t even countenance it. The idea that I would look every single person fleeing Syria in the eyes one at a time and say the same thing is horrifying. The idea that you would say it without looking any of them in the eye at all, that’s pretty fucking galling too.
That is some weasel-faced crap right there. Are you pointing it out, or aren’t you? Turkey can’t possibly be expected to sustain the full brunt of this crisis. They will necessarily put the majority of them into processing camps, and it has certainly happened before that the birth rate in such a camp outstrips the rate at which inmates can be properly placed into society, making a supposedly temporary camp permanent. What’s more the camp will necessarily be close to the border, meaning that if Isis continues to gain territory the processing camps could very suddenly turn into abattoirs.
To do what with? There are no fucking shops in a processing camp. There are enough refugees coming out of Syria to fill a reasonably large city. Are we going to build a city over there? In Turkey? In the desert? On the edge of a war zone? Going to need to send more than money to do that. Doctor Manhattan, maybe.
What a stupid idea. Glad you didn’t suggest it.
