I’m less impressed with his victories than I am saddened by the ineffectiveness of the opposition.
Well, it’s a bit more than that. Brexit wants to regain control of immigration, but their advertising and rhetoric on this appeals to people’s disssatisfaction with immigration of the kind which the UK already controls - namely, the immigration of non-EU nationals. Their posters dealing with immigration contain lots of images of middle-eastern types, and I can’t avoid the impression that they’re trying to suggest that all these dangerous darkies are coming in because EU. And they do that because they expect it to find more traction than pointing to the (much larger) groups of Poles, Irish people, etc who are the ones actually exercising EU free movement rights.
Have you seen the actual campaign material of the Leave side?
“Breaking Point” isn’t being conflated with racism. It is racism.
Again ,because this shouldn’t be a difficult point but it seems to be: the Leave campaign had plenty of non-racist arguments they could have made. But they choose to make racist arguments. This isn’t a few discontented old men in a rural pub being a bit politically incorrect. This is national politicians, some of whom are even now being talked about as our potential next Prime Minister, broadcasting naked lies about foreigners coming here to take our health care and rape our women.
Does that genuinely not strike you as an unpleasant development in our politics?
It’s not all that long ago that this would have been comical hyperbole. Now it’s literal truth. Let that sink in.
Yes it does.
There is also the issue of commonality of belief and scale. We have polls to tease these things out, we don’t have to guess. The beliefs from many muslim sub populations are deeply illiberal, is it wrong to be wary of importing more people that have a higher tendency toward illiberal beliefs? I think not, this is not a direct assumption about individuals, but it is taking into account differential population characteristics and applying it to things like the wisdom of unchecked immigration from some parts of the world. Is this discriminatory? Yes, the good kind.
No, the bad kind. The whole thrust of equality law is that people are to be treated according to the characteristics that they themselves possess, not the characteristics imputed to a group to which they belong (however accurate that group imputation may be).
For example, it is true that women, as a class, take more sick leave from employment than men do. But it’s unlawful to discriminate against an individual woman in employment on that basis. If a woman and a man are in competition for a promotion say, the woman’s own record of absenteeism may (or many not) be a legitimate consideration, but the absenteeism record of women as a class is not.
Likewise it’s true, in the United States, that black people are more likely to be convicted of a crime attracting a sentence of imprisonment than white people are. While you can consider a candidates own criminal history in an employment context, making a decision on the basis of the criminal history of the race to which he or she belongs would certainly be unlawful discrimination.
And these examples could be multiplied.
Hence, treating “being a Muslim” as a relevant consideration in immigration decisions would be just as objectionable as treating “being black” or “being a woman” as a relevant consideration in employment decisions. It’s exactly the bad kind of discrimination.
Sympathy for terrorists is nearly as common as racism?
And now, for something completely different…
I can’t link directly to the photos, but here’s the article where they appear. They’re under the heading “There was a mock sea battle on the Thames - really” a few pages down. It seems there was a ‘naval battle’ on the Thames last week between a small flotilla of boats festooned with “Leave” paraphernalia on one side and Bob Geldof and some supporters on his yacht sporting “In” flags on the other. One of the “In” folks is holding his flag upside down so that it reads “Ni.”
The most ridiculous Moments of the EU referendum
Coincidence? I think not. 
Brexit in itself might be good or bad. But the leaders of the Leave campaign are pretty bad.
When Boris said he’d apologise publicly if Brexit led to a recession, I thought that was hardly reassuring.
Spare you what? That the question you asked was so easily answered but you providing an example so fragrantly?
On the one hand you posture as if you want to have a discussion. Then on the other want to run off in a huff because of your own lack of insight.
Good job, Champ.
Oh Gods. If you honestly interpret the words “A vote for Brexit shouldn’t be a vote for bigotry” as “Everyone voting for Brexit is racist” then conversation is going to be a struggle. If you ignore any clarification I offer so you can pretend I mean something I don’t, conversation is stymied. If you tell me you don’t feel the need to read the words I write, the conversation is over.
Claim victory and quit the field. And may the road rise to meet you.
This is why you don’t explicitly ban muslims or restrict muslims, you do something more indirect, limit immigration from specific countries, which most nations do. They have differential immigration levels depending on the country, and can impose standards that weed out a lot of riff raff.
If you consider this too vulgar and against some idealized notion of equality and liberal values, so be it. Choose not to. Allow rampant unfiltered immigration in, and don’t you dare complain if another mass assault happens like happened in Cologne.
have the EU powers that be ever thought that people don’t want mass Muslim immigration to change the social and political dynamic of countries? The EU brought it on itself; the best example of this was after Paris, the French letting even more of them in. People have had it.
Cite for the claim that “most nations” do that?
And, even if they do, that’s exactly the kind of discrimination that we consdier offensive. It’s discrimination on the grounds of national origin rather than gender or race, but it’s a clear example of treating somebody on the basis of characteristics imputed to the group into which you have classified them, rather than on the basis of characteristics that they themselves are observed to have.
If you really think that the only possible alternative to discrimination on the basis of national origin is “unfiltered immigration”, this conversation is not going to go well.
God forbid Britons should want Britain to remain British. That would be racist! Of course, it’s only white, Western nations who aren’t allowed to preserve their own, unique ethnocultural identities. No one is attacking Japan for not allowing in millions of Filipinos.
Note, the target is not the nationality, it’s a poisoned idea set in peoples minds.
I suppose if you were getting ready to have someone come over from a nation with an ebola outbreak, you would think it wrong to single people such a nation out before they were allowed free reign to see if they were infected? This greater scrutiny towards the people of some nations over others just because some nations were more likely to have ebola infected individuals is offensive?
Of course no reasonable person would be against such precautions, but when it comes to paying closer attention and raising the scrutiny higher towards some groups of people that are part of a faith that has a higher percentage of people that are willing to murder others, it’s off limits. No sane society should look with complete neutrality towards different people when it comes to who enters and stays in a country. The failure of such a reasonable stance is a large part of why people want the UK out of the EU.
I’m less ethnically based than you are, coming from the US. I don’t care what peoples race is. I don’t care if they have different cultural and religious practices in and of itself. I DO care if any of those cultural and religious practices are discordant with the larger common American culture. Because THEN we have a problem. I’m pretty sure the UK is a net benefit from indian Hindus and Japanese/chinese immigrants. Same goes from many middle eastern immigrants of a certain type. But others? Some bring cultural/religious values that are in opposition to the larger culture and it causes problems.
Not all cultural differences are a negative thing, in fact I assume most are harmless and fine. I am not jewish, or latino, but I think those groups having bar mitzvas and quincineras are great. Nothing about those cultural practices goes against anything I value about America. But some cultural/religious attitude that women are second class citizens? That their testimony is worth less than a mans? That they should be covered up and not sit near the men folk in a mosque? That OTHER people who are NOT Muslim are to be chastised for not dressing as conservatively as THEY think they should be dressed?
…No. Just no. You can take that Trash and #$% off. On a person/superficial note, I think it’s such a waste of a people. Middle easterners and persians are some of the most ridiculously good looking people on the earth, but too many have been saddled with this poisoned and backwards ideology, an ideology that conflicts with my own and if too many come and gain a critical mass will actually retard the hard won progress against the right wingers we’ve fought against for so long. I am actually more pro immigration in terms of different ethnicity of people than most, I just want the values to be simpatico with the larger culture, and too many liberally minded people ignore that as if it’s no different than being against someone of a certain skin color.
Yes, and when you discriminate against women your target isn’t gender, it’s absenteeism. When you discriminate against Blacks your target isn’t race, it’s criminality.
I’m not interested in your “target”, or your assumption that you can hit that target by aiming at gender, race or national origin. I’m merely pointing out that that you in fact are discriminating on the basis of gender, race or national origin in precisely the way that is offensive to western notions of equality. Why do you hate western values? 
I have no problem about controlling entry by testing people to see if they have been infected with ebola, or by quarantining people known to have been exposed to ebola. A relevant factor there might be the country or countries in which they last spent time, but gender, race, national origin, etc wouldn’t enter into it. Whatever controls you apply, you apply them to your own citizens travelling from an infected area just as much as you apply them to non-citizens. And, while you might apply controls for the purpose of establishing whether someone is infected, you don’t exclude them unless it turns out that they actually are infected.
As long as it’s rational and proportionate, no.
I’ll await your evidence that Muslims belong to “a faith that has a higher percentage of people that are willing to murder others”. From this Wikipedia page we see that the US has a higher murder rate than Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and many other notably Islamic societies. But the peddling of prejudicial stereotypes that pay no regard to evidence is a common method of trying to justify discrimination. Just ask Donald or Nigel.
Maybe they do if everyone around them is muslim, and if not? Like populations flooding into Europe?
How are Christians and Jews treated in the middle east?
And in an ironic twist, many are quite open with their beliefs, tell people like you what it is they believe (and you must understand that such views are not simpatico with your understanding of a secular state).
That video is relatively short, he is trying to make the case that most of the muslims in the room believe all sorts of things (things I assume both of us find illiberal and not something we want propagated in society), he then asks if they are radical muslims or regular muslims? The point he was trying to make is that if all these beliefs are held by so many muslims there, and they are not radical (their own estimation), then it's not radical islam that endorses such things, it's Islam. And since they can't all be radical, why focus on them and seek to deport them (I agree deportation is not an answer).The irony from a secular/kafir point of view (which I take as opposed to your point of view, the Islamic apologist point of view), is that it highlights that it’s not just some small pockets of radicalization that we should find troubling, the illiberalism runs deeper throughout the culture and beliefs of the general population. Something worth considering when it comes to dialing the scrutiny of people up or down from muslim majority countries.
If you want to import masses of this kind of CLEAR antagonism towards liberal ideas, you deserve everything you get. You cannot let in throngs of people who latch onto these ideas that are discordant with the larger society and culture, and not have increased problems. In smaller doses I think things can be contained and our culture can overtake theirs with less strife, but too many and you get the kind of londonistan effect people talk about with no go zones.So the best you can come up with is maybe, in some circumstances, Muslims have a higher percentage of People that are willing to murder others. And on the basis of that “maybe”, you’re arguing for discrimination against Muslims in entirely different circumstances.
‘Nuff said. When you have rational argument, sustained by empirical evidence, to show that your position is not offensively discriminatory in the way that I have outlined, come back. Until then, probably best to stop digging.