As a liberal, I feel let down by the liberal-left. The way politicians and media in that spectrum have dealt with this issue has been a disaster. I am and remain a supporter of taking in political refugees who have struggled to come to our borders. And the behavior of the liberal-left makes me doubt that they are prepared to deal with this crisis. Examples of its failures have already been posted in this thread.
Their main failure has been the unwillingness or inability to name and address the core issue. We are letting huge numbers of people into our society who come from a comparatively regressive cultural background. Most of them are not used to the lack of oppressive modesty and the fact that women can dress and act as freely as they wish without being slut-shamed. Many of them may naturally think that this is an invitation to treat women as they wish. This analysis should be obvious and uncontroversial to liberal-minded people who are aware of the decades of feminist struggles to change these chauvinistic attitudes in our own societies. How could we expect that people from cultural backgrounds that did not have this level of social activism and progression wouldon averagebehave according to such modern values? Obviously, rape is generally sanctioned in their own culture as well, and the majority of Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Albans, etc., act like the decent human beings that they are, just like people in our own societies did decades and centuries ago, before we had our own feminist evolution. But it is equally obvious that their cultural background will lead to *comparatively* more chauvinism and mistreatment of women.
However, the liberal-leftat least the part that I sampled over the last days by reading articles and listening to statementshas bend over backwards to refuse to accept this sober and obvious analysis. Their motivation seems to be an irrational desire to not be confused with racists, as well as a desire to not play into racist narratives who claim that all refugees are problematic, that their behavior is inherent to their ethnic group, or that rape is socially/religiously accepted by them; all of which is obviously untrue. But why do we have to focus on that conversation? Why do we even have to have it like that? Why cant we just treat these people like Holocaust deniers and focus on the actual issue without the fear of being mistaken for racists? For instance, I have read very little about how we plan to address the issue of cultural integration and education going forward.
A failure to do so has dire consequences for potential victims of sexual assault in the future, for the treatment of refugees in our countries, and for the general political landscape in Europe going forward. The liberal-left does not realize that they are hurting liberal causes. While many tens of thousands of refugees on their way to Germany are literally eating grass to survive, they are allowing the right in this country to rise in the polls, just because they are making themselves unelectable with all their bullshit. They are in large parts to blame for the scary rise of the right in Europe.
When the only responses to these challenges are either denial or racism, then we have a problem.
