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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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Because the common rhetoric surrounding asylum seekers and refugees is that they are almost all fleeing women and children, when this is demonstrably untrue. Additionally, if their home countries are at war and they are military aged men, should they not be fighting, as in Ukraine?

No. The sorts of was as the Syrians had, or the Lybians, or even just the Yugoslavs thirty years back, is not the sorts of war where more men on any one side would've made anything better.

I do not fault military aged men for GTFOing along with their family if they do not believe there is anything good left to defend. (Or if there is hardly any defending required of them, as is the case in Russia).

I would have gotten the fuck out if I was Ukrainian, tbh

Leave the rest of the internet at the door

Somebody, somewhere, resorting to dishonest rhetoric is not a license to retaliate here.

No, it's not reasonable to do that.

Not every man is a steelman. If the vast majority of people believe something for stupid and ill-founded reasons, then when talking about the discourse surrounding the subject, it's simply not representative of reality to behave as if everyone has only the most ironclad reasoning for their beliefs. Even in this space it's rational to acknowledge reality as it is, not only as it could be. Else all we're doing here is making hypothetical arguments that don't actually relate to the real world in any meaningful way.

I have nothing against talking about other people. I'm against using their behavior elsewhere as an excuse to be rhetorically dishonest here.

OP was specifically asking about people who are not in this space, and I was talking about them and their reasoning. I fail to see the nature of your problem.

Any thesis about ideological groups requires an array of opinions wider and more numerous than themotte posters. Allowing oneself to only have opinions about groups represented on themotte and have those opinions shaped exclusively by these representatives, would miss most and misperceive any.

I don't have a problem with reporting other people's opinions. It's saying "it's okay for me to portray my side in the most slanted terms possible here because I saw my opponents do it on Twitter" that I object to.

That the pro-immigration faction doesn't put the majority demographic of asylum seekers, young men, in a role in their public messaging commensurate to their numbers, is true. Not a weakman.

The picture of a dead kid on the Turkish? coast wasn't twitter it was mainstream newspapers.

Yes. Immigration's strongest proponents would never accept titanic rules (i.e. only women and children can come). Why not? Why do they want men? It's certainly not employment.

Why do they want men

Perhaps they don't "want" anyone. Astrahagant was referring to asylum seekers and refugees; perhaps they think that men, too, have a right to seek asylum, which should not be a surprising belief to hold, given that it is true. More broadly, perhaps they believe that keeping families united, rather than excluding husbands/fathers, is good policy.

men, too, have a right to seek asylum

It isn't "men, too" it's "men, almost exclusively".

Assuming it is true -- the UNHCR says that 40% of refugees are children -- why does that matter to the question of why proponents of admitting refugees hold that view? If Fred says, "we have a moral obligation to help refugees," how would the gender breakdown be relevant?

Since the story of the fired swedish dentist I don't take any official data regarding Assylum Seekers at face value. Do you have reason to do so (like the dentist was lying or something)?

I don't know if he is lying, but I note that he is actually a dental hygienist, not a dentist, so I wonder about his expertise. And RT is hardly the most reliable source. But, regardless, as as I noted elsewhere, the data I linked to is not about asylum seekers. It is about refugees and internally displaced persons. And, as I also noted elsewhere, the EU says that most of the asylum seekers it lists as under 18 are under 13; it is pretty tough to pass off someone that young as an adult.

but I note that he is actually a dental hygienist, not a dentist, so I wonder about his expertise.

fair, but I would assume judging Wisdom Teeth development isn't outside his expertise.

And RT is hardly the most reliable source.

Right now, no mainstream source is reliable, especially in politically charged events.

But, regardless, as as I noted elsewhere, the data I linked to is not about asylum seekers. It is about refugees and internally displaced persons.

fair

And, as I also noted elsewhere, the EU says that most of the asylum seekers it lists as under 18 are under 13; it is pretty tough to pass off someone that young as an adult.

Again, I don't really trust mainstream sources with an economic/political incentives in these types of situations. Any NGO's or European commission can write that a chicken is a dog if it's to their benefit or according to their principles.

We're talking about refugees in the west. The 40% stat on that page is of all displaced people everywhere. Most of the displaced people are displaced in their own country according to that website. And of refugees most don't end up in the West. So it could be totally true that 40% of people displaced globally are children and that the vast majority of people arriving in Europe are military aged men. I think that's the case based on videos of them arriving, and of the ones who are classified as children I think many are lying.

Yes, it is possible -- despite some of the rhetoric, I am pretty sure that males are more likely to be the victims of the sort of violence, etc, which tends to engender flight, and re those who exit looking for work, it is often young men who go out to earn money to send back -- but Pew found in 2015 that 29% of asylum seekers in Europe were under 18. Forty-two percent were males 18-34. So, overrepresented, yes, but not the majority, let alone the vast majority. And this estimates that 46% of illegal immigrants in the US are female. The DHS estimate for 2015-2018 is similar: 5.54 million female out of 11.39 million.

27 percent women so definitely overwhelmingly male. I don't trust the self reported ages of the migrants but even if true 17 year olds are military age in the US.

The claim was overwhelmingly military age male, not overwhelmingly male. And, this indicates that most of those under 18 are under 13. Twenty-five percent of the total for the EU as a whole.

As an aside, note also that it indicates that most applications are rejected.

More comments

I don't see any reason to believe that stat when pro-refugee people prove themselves to be so wilfully ignorant as to do things like this:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/asylum-seeker-uk-age-school-boy-ipswich-school-stoke-home-office-a8649696.html

Fact is, if you wash up without documents, you can say just about anything to make an asylum claim and these NGO types will nod and believe you wholly. At no point in the process is there any skepticism. Claim to be gay or have undergone a flash conversion to Christianity (right after your application was rejected, curiously!) and they will not nod and smile and submit appeals forms for you. There's no reason to suspect any kind of diligence is done at all.

You clearly don't understand what the data refers to. It is simply a count of people who are displaced (btw, mostly refugees, rather than the asylees to whom you refer). It has nothing to do with whether or not they are entitled to asylum. And btw the majority of asylum claims are, of course, rejected. See data here

Who, if you ask them why they didn't bring their family along, say the road was too dangerous, and it was better for them to stay where they were.