Category Archives: Politik

Why are Intellectuals so Clueless about Islamism?

In 2016, a Danish team of journalists conducted a series of undercover visits to Danish mosques. Pretending to be a devout Muslim, and using a hidden camera, a mole asked Muslim leaders across eight Danish mosques how to respond to a series of domestic problems. Strikingly, the mole was told to commit welfare fraud, to accept domestic violence, that she would have to accept the sexual advances of her husband at any time, and that stoning to death is the proper Islamic punishment for female infidelity.

The program caused a stir of controversy, far too vast for us to cover all of it here. In this video, we will merely cover a recent criticism by four ethnically white university researchers who purport to find fault with the documentary.

First, the researchers comment on an incident in which the mole asks the imam Abu Bilal what she should do about her violent husband. The imam tells her not to go to the police; that her husband taking a second wife is not a valid reason for her to file for divorce; that she will not be allowed to live alone if she does seek separation; and that, as a separated Muslim woman, her only option will be to become the second wife of a much older man.

The university faculty defend the imam by saying that a part of his counselling that was omitted in the final documentary. In their eyes, this omitted segment has the imam say what any Western couples’ counsellor would say. So what does he say? Well, the imam asks the woman why the husband is hitting her. He wants to know if the wife has been in error to provoke it. It is unknown what kind of couples’ counsellors the researchers are seeing, but they might want to ask for their money back.

Then the researchers claim that the whole premise of the interview is distorted, since the imam does not say that the mole cannot get a divorce, only that doing so wouldn’t be advisable. However, divorce in the context in which the imam is speaking does not carry the same connotations as divorce in a Western context: What the imam is speaking of is khula, which is the Islamic separation arrangement for females. For males, the appropriate variant is talaq, which refers to the man’s right to disavow his wife at any time and for whatever reason. However, women are not the equals of men in this regard. To achieve their variant of divorce, they must have the permission of their husband, or of a council of Islamic scholars, and are then obligated to pay back their dowry to the husband. Being subjected to domestic violence does not change these terms – the woman must still wait to be granted khula by her husband or by a council of Islamic scholars who are usually all men. So the imam is not saying that the mole has the option of getting divorced; he is saying that she can get khula, which is not the same thing.

Another point of contention raised by the researchers is that a clip reveals the same imam talking about stoning to death as the proper penalty for female adultery. The researchers interject that the imam is really talking about stoning as a metaphorical practice, just like how Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount talked about cutting off one’s hands if they lead one into sin.

So how metaphorically is the imam speaking here? Well, we have already seen that on the subject of khula, the imam advised the woman in accordance with mainstream sharia practice. And just like khula is practiced in the Islamic world, so stoning to death is practiced in 15 countries across the Islamic world. And if we look to Denmark, according to the newest report on what imams believe and practice, only one imam of those covered by the report agreed that Islamic punishments can be understood figuratively. That imam is from the Ahmadiyya denomination, which no other schools of Islam in Denmark accept as true Muslims, and which are persecuted as heretics by other Muslims across the Islamic world. In that same report, an Arab imam says that stoning women to death is a sad thing but that it nevertheless has to be done. Another imam, a Pakistani, says that the first rule of interpreting Islamic punishments is that one must always read passages as concretely as possible and that the prophet himself implemented stoning as a punishment. Since Muhammed himself condoned the practice and understood it literally, others cannot argue that it should be understood figuratively.

So why is all of this important? Well, as we said in our “How to Think About Minorities” video, Muslim communities are not one bloc. Within the Muslim communities, there is a minority who believe in secularism, Western values and human rights and who want to escape the stranglehold of the dominant sharia conservatives within their group. By attempting to legitimize the behavior of the radical imam and others like him, the Western university researchers are no doubt thinking that they are ‘helping’ Muslims as a whole. But in fact, they are crushing the liberal minority within Muslim communities underfoot. This is also what the author of the aforementioned report, Tina Magaard, found on the basis of hundreds of hours spent talking to Muslims in Denmark.

So how could the four university researchers be so ignorant? To answer that question we must turn to the work of another researcher, Ulla Thomsen, who in 2012 conducted a review of the academic literature that university faculty are generally expected to read on the subject of Islam.

For one thing, Thomsen found that the books and academic articles contained no mention of Islamism, terrorism, elevated Muslim crime levels compared to other minorities, support for sharia values, hostility towards non-Muslims, no-go zones, riots, or assaults on police, firefighters, social workers and paramedics. None of these things were mentioned in the academic literature on Islam in Denmark that is standard reading for university faculty and researchers.

Instead, the problems with Muslim migrants were explained with reference to the ruthless exploitativeness of capitalism and the racism of ethnic Danes. As opposed to the report we just mentioned, little to no actual evidence was used in the literature. Instead, the writers referred to other writers who also believe that the problems are caused by capitalism and the racism of white people. Several of the writers whose word was taken as if they were neutral authorities on the matter are avowed Marxists.

Thomsen also conducted a count of the examples used in a prominent Danish work on Muslim migration to Denmark in order to see who was cast as the victim and who was cast as the oppressor. In 100% of the cases, the Muslims were presented as victims and ethnic Danes as the oppressors.

Finally, and most damningly, Thomsen presented an evaluation of the articles and books written by these professors at the top of the academic food chain. The evaluations were given by people studying to be elementary school teachers, social workers, and teaching assistants. Among these people, who actually had to interact with Muslims on a daily basis, dissatisfaction with the academic books and articles was overwhelming. Specifically, the biggest gripe of the students was that the theory they were taught by the academic researchers did not match the reality they encountered in practice.

So while on the face of it, it can seem odd that four university researchers with fancy academic titles could be so misguided and that a few journalists and a mole with a hidden camera could uncover what they could not, the whole situation becomes a little less strange when you consider that most of the researchers probably have very little actual experience with Muslim migrants and the problems that unfold every day in day care centers, elementary schools, with social workers, with the police, and so on. Many of them are theorizing in a closed loop in which they are mostly reading and commenting on the work of other researchers who again are theorizing on the basis of more theory. When they do talk to Muslim leaders, it is usually in the form of polite intercultural dialogue, seeking consensus. Of course this approach is not going to reveal the undesirable sides of the Muslim community.

If one looks at similar instances of intercultural dialogue throughout Europe, it is actually not so surprising that intellectuals are utterly clueless while practical men are more on the money. In 2003, the soon-to-be French president Nicolas Sarkozy and the Swiss-born Muslim theologian Tariq Ramadan partook in a televised debate. Prior to the debate, Ramadan had been hailed by scores of intellectuals across Europe as a “bold reformer” and moderate Muslim by whose hands we would soon see the advert of a secular “Euro Islam.” Yet what happened in the exchange was that Sarkozy – an utterly practical man of reality – was apparently the first European interlocutor with the audacity to truly pressure Ramadan on what he really meant. Although he was repeatedly pressured to condemn stoning, Ramadan could not bring himself to do so. Instead he spoke of a “moratorium,” about the need to discuss things, about the necessity of a pedagogical posture and so on and so forth – but he could not bring himself to unevouvically renounce stoning.

Ramadan tried to obfuscate and speak around Sarkozy’s demands, but Sarkozy remained implacable: Stoning a woman is monstrous, so there is no need to have a debate. If you cannot bring yourself to renounce it, that fact is hugely telling of your moral standpoint in and of itself.

Ramadan’s standing in the eyes of mainstream European society has never quite been the same since. The extraordinary thing here isn’t really that Ramadan could not bring himself to denounce stoning, or that Sarkozy kept pressuring him until it was revealed that Ramadan could not do so. No, the really telling fact is that prior to this debate, Ramadan had spoken to scores of university intellectuals for years on end, and almost none of them had detected that something was amiss. Like the Danish university researchers who felt that imams advocating domestic violence had simply been misrepresented, intellectuals who pursue intercultural dialogue with Muslim leaders usually come away from the conversation believing what they want to believe. When one is too polite to really pressure imams on whether they truly condemn stoning, flogging, polyandry, and so on, precarious illusions about Islamists being moderate Muslims are preserved, and Muslim power figures can go on oppressing women, homosexuals, and adherents of Western, liberal values within their own communities. With the intellectuals having failed in their role as educators on Islam, the true scope of Islamism within Western Muslim communities is left for more reality-bound journalists and politicians without fancy academic titles to uncover.

Immigrant Crime in Denmark

A Swedish cop named Peter Springare took to Facebook, claiming that the majority of serious crimes in his precinct are committed by immigrants from Muslim countries and that the problem of Muslim crime is now so serious that the police are losing control. Since then, Springare has been reported for racist hate speech, which is a punishable offense in Sweden, and several Swedish officials have accused him of distorting the facts.

But as we detailed in our ‘The Number Sweden Doesn’t Want to Know’ video, no one – neither Springare nor the Swedish officials – knows the real numbers, since the Swedish authorities have decided not to calculate the crime rate of immigrants. Talk about wanting to have it both ways: The authorities don’t want to release statistics on immigrant crime rates, and when police officers who work with crime every day take a guess at what those rates might be, the authorities attack them for not having any statistics.

Well then – let’s try and help Sweden out. As we mentioned in the previous video, Sweden’s brother country of Denmark does publish statistics on the crime rates of immigrants from Muslim countries. Not only does Denmark have some of the best statistics in the world on this matter – the Danish authorities release figures on it every year. So let’s look at some numbers.

According to the Danish figures, immigrants and descendants of immigrants from countries like Somalia, Morocco, Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and Lebanon, as well as displaced Palestinians, are noticeably more criminal than ethnic Danes. They are also noticeably more criminal than immigrants from other Western countries. In fact, among the group of immigrants and their descendants from the non-Western part of the world, the crime rate is almost 2,5 times that of ethnic Danes. However, the Danish dataset groups Muslim countries with other ‘non-Western’ countries such as China, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines. But the data actually shows that immigrants from East Asian countries are less criminal than even ethnic Danes! In other words, the real crime rate of immigrants from Muslim countries and their descendants is even higher than the reported figure.

The Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Phillipino immigrants prove that there is nothing about being an immigrant that predisposes you to commit crimes. When we see immigrants from Muslim countries committing so much more crime, it must be due to some other factor.

What could that factor be? One popular explanation is poverty. But as mentioned, the Danish statistics are some of the best in the world. They take care to observe best practices in social science and adjust the figures for age, wealth, and educational status. Even after adjusting for all of these things, immigrants from Muslim countries are still far more criminal than ethnic Danes or from other Western countries or non-Muslim East Asian countries.

Another purported explanation is that migrants from Muslim countries commit crimes because they’re refugees. But again, this explanation doesn’t hold up, since many of the Vietnamese people living in Denmark are also refugees.

In other words, it’s not the fact that they are immigrants or refugees that makes migrants from Muslim countries more likely to commit crimes. Nor is it poverty or the lack of education. Even when correcting for all of these things, migrants from Muslim countries still stand out as uniquely criminal and violent.

In our video ‘The Number Sweden Doesn’t Want to Know’, we mentioned that Sweden has not released data on immigrant crime since 2005. An interesting aside here is that the Danish figures place Muslim crime somewhere in the same ballpark as the last official Swedish figures did. The Swedish report found that foreign-born Swedes had a crime rate of twice that of domestically-born Swedes. The Danish stats say that the figure for non-Westerns is closer to 2,5 times that of ethnic Danes. However, both of these numbers are likely to under-report the true scope of immigrant crime. For Denmark, the figures do not distinguish between Muslim countries and other non-Western countries. For Sweden, the numbers do not even distinguish between Western and non-Western migrants to Sweden. In both cases, this means that the real crime rate of immigrants from Muslim countries is actually higher than the already elevated rates the stats are reporting.

So how elevated might the real rates be? 5 times… which is incidentally also what the Swedish figures from 2005 said

Finally, a point about correcting the figures for age, wealth, and education: Correcting figures is immensely useful when you want to find out why a given phenomenon unfolds the way as it does. For example, the way the Danish authorities have adjusted the figures through regression analysis rules out that Muslims commit more crime because of poverty or lack of education. But in a political context, it can also be misleading to correct the figures, since the raw numbers reflect the amount of crime that is actually taking place in the country

Is Bill Gates Right That Robots Should Be Taxed?

If robots are poised to take over billions of jobs worldwide, isn’t it wise to tax robots to ensure the state’s continued survival? That is what Bill Gates recently suggested. Bill Gates is an extremely smart guy. But in this instance, he doesn’t understand economics.

His idea is that as machines replace workers, the tax burden should start to fall increasingly on machines. There are however several problems with his reasoning.

The first is the lump of labor fallacy. This is the assumption that more machines must mean fewer jobs. It’s called the lump of labor fallacy because it assumes that the number of jobs in an economy is a static lump of fixed size. The reality is that the labor market can absorb any amount of labor, as long as the salary corresponds to the productivity of that labor. Furthermore, as we also made clear in our ‘Will Robots Steal Our Jobs’-video, more machines will not necessarily mean fewer jobs. Although the number of jobs may fall in some sectors, new jobs will most likely open up in others.

More and better machines usually also lead to higher wages. In every instance of world history so far, machines have made labor more productive. This is because machines are complementary to labor. A man with excavator has higher productivity than a man with a shovel, and a woman with a PC can edit and produce text faster than a woman with paper and pen.

Furthermore, labor’s overall share of income and capital’s overall share of income is almost always constant in an economy regardless of the amount of labor and capital. So as the amount of machines in an economy grows, incomes will rise at a fairly equal rate for employees and capital owners. Thus, the tax burden and tax structure of the economy will not change. But let us assume for the sake of argument that wages will somehow remain static instead of rising. Well, then capital is still taxed!

Another point is that machines are already paying tax – several times over in fact. Or rather: The owners of the machines pay taxes on their returns from capital; capital which is in fact taxed twice over in many Western countries, since capital was originally income, which was also taxed as such when it was earned in that form.

Okay, but what about the argument that robots will become so good that they can do every job a human can do cheaper and better? Then, instead of robots complimenting human labor, robots will outright replace it. Alright, let’s assume this happens.

This still won’t make the economy poorer, but will however shift income from workers to capital owners. However, in such a scenario, states can still earn money by doing the same thing capital owners do – that is, saving up. If the relative income of untaxed machines vis-à-vis taxed workers will grow, then the return on savings will rise, since savings can be used to buy new machines.

All in all, though the future is uncertain, economic theory presents a better model for thinking about what will happen than the one employed by Bill Gates or indeed that of most science fiction writers. Of course one could argue that unlike Bill Gates, the job of science fiction is not to predict realistic futures, only to create captivating and dramatic ones. Nonetheless, most people’s thinking about the economics of our robot future seem to be far more influenced by sci-fi flicks than economic theory – and perhaps that is even true of Bill Gates.

Do fourth wave sex acceptance feminists have a point?

During the last 10 to 12 years, scholars, theorists, and feminist activists have started talking about a fourth wave feminism. However, there is not much agreement on what the content of this forth wave is or whether it has any new ideas to offer that have not already been encompassed by previous versions of feminism.

It is important to note that this critical assessment of fourth wave of feminism is not something we have cooked up, nor some anti-feminist caricature, but in fact an assessment shared by even feminists themselves. They also disagree on whether the fourth wave should be considered a thing. And as stated, they also hold contradictory views of what the fourth wave is even about, insofar as it exists.

In this video we’re going to focus on a recent statements made by self-identified fourth wave sex acceptance feminists. Their argument is that there’s a gender imbalance in the way our culture views the sexual exploits of men and women. According to them, if a man sleeps around with tons of women, he is a stud and worthy of admiration, whereas if a woman sleeps around with tons of men, she is disparaged as slutty. One is positive and the other negative. According to the feminists, this exposes a cultural sexist double standard.

Do the feminists have a point? Let’s look at the arguments of their opponents. They have generally objected that according to evolutionary psychology, men have traditionally not been able to know whether they were the fathers of children their wives gave birth to, whereas women could always be sure that they were the mothers. According to this line of thinking, it wouldn’t be a big deal if a man slept around, since the child, carrying his genes, would be raised at someone else’s expense. But if a woman slept around, her husband would end up expending resources raising a child that wasn’t his. It would therefore make sense for traditional societies to evolve a social order which placed a greater premium on female chastity than on male chastity.

In other words, the opponents do not deny that there exists a separate set of sexual norms for each gender, but they believe this evolutionary reasoning can justify the differing moralities.

Let’s assume that the evolutionary argument is correct. Would it then justify the position of the opponents? There are reasons to be sceptical.

  • One is that technology has long since caught up with the reasons for maintaining this morality. Now that we have birth-control and DNA tests, the original reasons for upholding this morality have gone. That is not to say that the dispositions that have been handed down to us through evolution are gone. There are scientific studies showing that men are on average more prone to sexual jealousy and rage at their spouse’s promiscuity than women are. And since we know from modern behavioural genetics that every human trait is heritable to some extent, it is safe to assume that this sex difference is not just brought about by culture, but also by genetics. So yes, even if we could completely change our culture overnight, men are probably going to be more uncomfortable with their lady friends sleeping around than the other way around. However being made uncomfortable by something does not give you a right to avoid it. There are also studies showing that religious people get extremely aggravated at seeing their prophet mocked or religion insulted. But that does not give religious people a free pass from having their religion satirized.
  • Another reason is that saying “evolution made it that way,” without further elaboration, is an instance of the naturalistic fallacy, that is, the tendency equate the state of nature with moral goodness or the way things are meant to be. But as scientific studies have detailed, evolution most likely also shaped us to be uncannily likely to neglect or harm our stepchildren as opposed to our own children. Rape is considered to be a natural phenomenon by the majority of evolutionary psychologists too. In other words, to simply say that “that’s how evolution arranged for things to be,” can also be used to justify every kind of atrocity that evolution primed us with during humanity’s long and violent past.

Now interestingly, the sex acceptance fourth wave feminists don’t actually engage with the evolutionary argument – at least not as far as we have seen. They just argue as if the whole of the problem were cultural, which – as we have seen – is unlikely. But nonetheless, they do have a point that the sexual morals concerning men and women amount to a kind of double standard. Their opponents will have to do better here.

How to think about groups

In Sweden, urban-dwelling, liberal-minded ethnic Swedes opposed organizing a gay pride parade through Muslim areas. They wanted to keep the march in the ethnically white areas of town, claiming that purposefully making the pride march through Muslim areas would be insensitive to Muslims. (Oddly, the very same people also claim that there’s no basis for discriminating between Muslim migrants to Sweden and ethnic Swedes, but I digress.)

Anyway, the point here is that public discourse in Sweden held that making the gay pride march through Muslim areas was racist and insensitive to Muslims. But Muslims are not one group. And in fact, what happened in Sweden was that gay and/or liberal-minded Muslims who were being oppressed by their own community spoke out against these misguided attempts at tolerance. In their eagerness to get along with Muslim migrants, ethnic Swedes fell into the trap of thinking that all Muslims have the same interests, likes and dislikes, simply because they are Muslims. In fact, the Muslim community in Sweden has its own internal fights over acceptance of homosexuality and Western values vs. Sharia values. If you as a liberal-minded Westerner want Muslims to integrate successfully into Western society, you might think you’re doing Muslims a favour by respecting what you perceive as their beliefs, but in fact, you are not respecting the beliefs of the group, only of the dominant, Sharia-conservative forces within the group. In this way, you’re actually making things worse for the Muslims in your country who share your values and who could otherwise have been part of a coalition between liberal-minded ethnic Swedes and liberal-minded Muslims living in Sweden.

The same point could be made about Denmark and the Danish Muhammed cartoons. When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published them, many liberal-minded ethnic Danes accused the paper of bullying Muslims. Few read the thoughtful op-ed that accompanied the cartoons. At any rate, the logic was the same – a minority of Danish Muslims welcomed the cartoons as a challenge to Sharia power within their community. And the conservative clerical powers within the Danish Muslim milieu saw the cartoons as a challenge to their status within the group. They undertook lawsuits against the free press and cried offence on behalf of all Muslims. They didn’t want to see their power base challenged like this.

So again, the liberal-minded ethnic Danes who sympathized with what they perceived to be the whole of the Muslim community were actually helping an extremely conservative and intolerant minority within that community retain its power base. It would have been better for secular Muslims if the liberal-minded Danes had supported the cartoons.

A third variation on this point can be found if we look to Switzerland. Last year the Swiss voted on legislation that would have automatically deported foreigners who committed major crimes, drug trafficking, or social security fraud. The legislation was rejected, and one argument on the no side was that it would be harsh on Muslims, since Muslims in Europe commit more crime. But would it really? If you are of the mind-set that you want to see immigration to your country succeed, letting criminal migrants stay is likely to cause your countrymen to associate migrant groups with crime. But if you deport offenders, you will – all else being equal – have more law-abiding migrants in your country to represent the group. In other words, you might think you are helping the migrants as a whole by not deporting the criminal elements within their group, but you are actually helping the criminal migrants at the expense of the migrant group as a whole.

Immigrant Cost in Norway

In the fall of 2015, the Norwegian parliament decided almost unanimously that the politicians and the population ought to have some figures concerning the cost of immigration from non-Western countries. The results have just been published.

From the age of 25 and to the date of his death, a male immigrant from what the Norwegian government calls “Group 3” – that is, Asia and Africa – will cost Norway 6.2 million Norwegian crowns, which is the equivalent of 740,000 US dollars.

From the age of 25 and to the date of her death, a female immigrant from Asia or Africa will cost Norway 11.6 million Norwegian crowns, which is the equivalent of 1.4 million US dollars.

The Norwegian report details several prospects for what non-Western immigration will cost Norway in the coming years.

In the medium-level scenario non-Western immigration to Norway will cost the Norwegian society 104 billion Norwegian crowns, which is the equivalent of 12.4 billion US dollars. That might not sound like a lot by a US yardstick, but Norway is a small country of only 5 million people.

Another way to say it is that, from the year 2035 and till 2100, all growth in wages and productivity for Norwegian citizens will be lost, as it will have to be taxed away to pay for non-Western immigration to Norway.

That is, if non-Western immigration to Norway is allowed to continue, the country is looking at 65 years of no improvement in the lot of ordinary citizens. And that’s only the economic side of the matter. That’s not factoring in the increased crime rate brought about by non-Western immigrants.

One final point is that the statistical methods used in the report are rather conservative and take an extremely cautious approach. For example, they assume that the second-generation descendants will be fully integrated into Norwegian society, even though the data actually shows that second-generation descendants are more troublesome than their first-generation parents. That is to say, it is far more likely that that the report is underestimating the true cost of immigration than overestimating it.

Is Daisy Ridley Right that Calling Rey a Mary Sue is Sexist?

You might remember that when ‘The Force Awakens’ came out, the screenwriter Max Landis faulted the character of Rey for being a Mary Sue. A Mary Sue is a trope that is commonly seen in bad screenwriting and fanfiction. It refers to a character who, with little to no explanation, is so awesome that he or she has unrealistic and overpowered abilities that are not supposed to the movie’s own backstory; that he or she is better than all of the established characters at the things that make them unique for no apparent reason, and so on.

When Landis said Rey was a Mary Sue, many women accused him of sexism. Recently, these women have been joined by Daily Ridley herself who said that “The Mary Sue thing in itself is sexist because it’s the name of a woman. … Everyone was saying that Luke had the exact same [capabilities.] … So for me, it was just confused.”

Is Ridley right about this?

The Mary Sue trope does indeed carry the name of a woman. But there is nothing in the definition of a Mary Sue that necessitates that such a character would have to be female. If you switched Rey’s gender in ‘The Force Awakens,’ but kept everything else the same, the male Rey would also be a Mary Sue. The name itself is nothing to get hung up on. In fact, male Mary Sues are often referred to as Larry Stus and Gary Stus by screenwriters – and of course, that wouldn’t happen if Mary Sues were always women.

Ridley has a point that there is no reason that a gender-neutral screenwriting trope should be named after a woman. But if you think about it, many terms and tropes in common parlance have somewhat misleading names. Feminism, for example, is quite the misleading name for a movement that seeks to do away with gender differences. But it carries this name for historical reasons. Similarly, the Mary Sue trope carries this name because the original piece of writing that criticized the trope happened to revolve around a female character. It’s called a Mary Sue for historical reasons, not because only women can be Mary Sues – and it was actually a woman who came up with the original criticism of the Mary Sue trope.

Just like you could switch Rey’s gender to male and she’d still be a Mary Sue, so you could switch the name of the Mary Sue trope, and Rey would still be a Mary Sue. None of this has anything to do with gender. She seems to be confusing the surface phenomenon of the name with the motif that the name refers to.

Then there is Ridley’s claim that Luke Skywalker had the same capabilities as Rey, the implication being that supposedly, in a world devoid of sexism, if Rey were a Mary Sue Luke would then also be one. Ridley is right that Luke had many of the same capabilities as Rey. But she neglects to mention that Luke only had these capabilities by the third movie and after having been trained by both Obi-Wan and Yoda. Rey demonstrates abilities on par with, or better than Luke’s by the first movie and without any training. So Ridley is leaving out some preeeeeetty important details when she says Rey is no more overpowered than Luke.

Furthermore, recall that one of the features of a Mary Sue is that the character is better than all of the established characters at the things that make them unique for no apparent reason. For example, we never actually see Luke being better than Han at fixing or flying the Millennium Falcon, but that (and many other things) is just what we see with Rey, with no explanation given for her prowess.

Some people have said that maybe Anakin was a Mary Sue then, because Anakin also had many overpowered abilities that he hardly had to train to acquire. It would certainly be tempting to grant this point so that we could have a clear example of a male Mary Sue in the franchise and lay the accusations of sexism to rest. But recall another point about Mary Sues – they have overpowered abilities that are not supposed to the movie’s own backstory. Anakin had overpowered abilities, yes, but the prequels actually take care to explain that he is a virgin birth and a child of the force with a midi-chlorian count higher than Yoda’s. Now, this is also really bad screenwriting. But it isn’t the Mary Sue kind of bad – the movie does explain why Anakin has such extraordinary abilities. Nor is Anakin better than all of the established characters at everything. He is a whiny brat who needs Obi-Wan to discipline him. He needs Padme to help him understand grand scale politics. And he needs Yoda to bail him out after he gets chopped by Count Dooku.

So no – neither Luke nor Anakin are Mary Sues. But Rey invariably is. And Daisy Ridley’s arguments don’t hold up.

Frihandel og det nye højre

Mange på det nye højre begynder at spejle venstrefløjens position om, at frihandel er skadeligt for suverænitet, selvbestemmelse og demokrati. Har de ret?

 Af Ryan Smith

Overalt i den vestlige verden har nye højreorienterede strømninger medvind. Et utal af politiske spørgsmål, der før blev betragtet som afgjort, genåbnes, og nye svar forfærder de gamle eliter.

Meget af det liberale idegods, der bare for 20-30 år siden blev anset som fremtidens ufravigelige verdensorden, fremstår i dag blåøjet, bizart og altmodisch. En oprykkelse er i gang, hvor både højre- og venstreorienterede gradvist indser, at Vesten må revidere sit verdensbillede. At løsninger, der unægteligt er i strid med fordums konventionskonsensus og liberaldemokratiske principper, gradvist må accepteres, hvis Vesten skal få bugt med migrationspresset.

Men hvor langt bliver vi nødt til at gå? Hvilke af fortidens vedtagne sandheder må kasseres, og hvilke får lov at bestå?

International frihandel er den tanke, at hvis to lande handler med hinanden, vil den samlede velstand blive forøget, selv hvis det ene land er markant rigere end det andet. Frihandel er et af de spørgsmål, som gennem mere end et århundrede er blevet betragtet som afgjort blandt eliten både på højrefløjen og blandt Vesteuropas socialdemokratier, med kun det yderste venstre som undtagelse. Men i løbet af 2015 og 2016 er mange på det nye højre begyndt at spejle det yderste venstres position om, at frihandel er skadeligt for suverænitet, selvbestemmelse og demokrati. Mest kendt er nok Trump, men vi har også hørt lignende røster herhjemme.

Oveni de approprierede venstrefløjsargumenter om ”selvbestemmelse” lægger det nye højre så argumenter om folkeslag, der er politisk forpligtiget på sig selv, og som der må forene sig mod det migrationspres, den vestlige verden oplever fra henholdsvis Latinamerika (USA) og Mellemøsten (Europa) i disse år.

Så hvor langt bliver man nødt til at gå? Bliver man nødt til at indføre protektionisme for at beskytte nationens egne ufaglærte, sådan som Morten Uhrskov Jensen, landsformand for Dansk Samling, har plæderet for? Eller kan man, som Pernille Vermund, forkvinde for Nye Borgerlige, stå på mål for en position, hvor grænserne lukkes for migration, mens frihandelen bevares?

Frihandelsmodstanderne blandt det nye højre begrunder især deres skepsis med to argumenter: (1) At den ufaglærte arbejder i Danmark vil få værre kår af frihandel og (2) at frihandel vil medføre øget indvandring til Danmark. Men er det nu også rigtigt?

Hvad angår det første argument, så ved vi reelt ikke, hvordan det vil gå. Erfaringen taler for, at danske lavtlønsarbejdere vil opnå en samlet velstandsforøgelse ved frihandel, fordi det, de taber på at blive udkonkurreret på arbejdsmarkedet, bliver genvundet gennem stadig lavere priser på stadig bedre varer. Dvs. man kan have en højere levestandard på overførselsindkomst med råd til iPads og de rigtige californiske rødvine end at være fabriksansat og kun have mulighed for at købe Harboe-pilsner og varer fra Fakta. Men frihandelsmodstandere som Uhrskov baserer netop ikke deres argumentation på betragtninger om et samlet velstandsniveau, men  derimod om væsentligtheden af at være i job. Her har Uhrskov m.fl. unægteligt ret i, at den værdi, man oplever ved at varetage et job (mening og retning i tilværelsen såvel som anerkendelse og værdighed), ikke kan opgøres i kroner og øre, og derfor kan spørgsmålet om frihandel ikke reduceres til et spørgsmål om, hvor mange (velfærds)kroner Danmarks ufaglærte i fremtiden vil have mellem hænderne.

Til gengæld lader frihandelsmodstanderne til at misse en af den østrigske nobelpristager i økonomi, F.A. Hayeks, væsentligste økonomiske indsigter: Når nutidens jobs forsvinder, ved vi ikke, hvor fremtidens jobs skal komme fra. Og det har vi aldrig gjort. Det gjorde vi heller ikke i 1617, 1717, 1817 eller 1917. Men økonomien har altid tilpasset sig, så fortidens fyrede ufaglærte igen er kommet i job. Det betyder ikke, at vi kan være sikre på, at det samme vil indtræffe i 2017, men som Hayeks økonomiske arbejde har vist, så vil økonomisk intervention (i form af eksempelvis toldmure og omfordeling) destruere grundlaget for, at økonomien kan tilpasse sig de nye vilkår. Med andre ord ved vi ikke, om økonomien kan tilpasse sig, og vi finder heller ikke ud af det, hvis vi ikke giver den en chance.

Endelig er der spørgsmålet om, hvorvidt frihandel vil medføre øget indvandring til Danmark. Spørgsmålet opstår som følge af en manglende skelnen mellem frihandel forstået som varer og kapitalens frie bevægelighed og frihandel forstået som folkeslag og arbejdskraftens frie bevægelighed. Det er unægteligt sandt, at de to ideer hænger intellektuelt sammen og kan retfærddiggøres med henvisning til de samme argumenter, sådan som den østrigske økonom Ludwig Mises påpegede. Nogle økonomer taler endda om varers fri bevægelighed og folks fri bevægelighed som to faser af samme udvikling. Men blot fordi de to praksisser er intellektuelt forbundne, betyder det ikke, at de ikke kan adskilles i praksis. Der er intet politisk til hinder for, at man kan acceptere varer og kapital, mens man vedbliver at afvise indvandring (sådan som Pernille Vermund stod på mål for i Danmarks Radios Debatten).

På nogle punkter kan man endda argumentere for, at frihandel vil styrke det nye højres egen dagsorden: Jo større velstandsforskel, der er på de forskellige lande, des større incitament har den enkelte indbygger i de fattige lande til at risikere liv og lemmer for at komme ulovligt til Europa. Uden adgang til det europæiske marked ved vi også, at der er betragteligt færre økonomiske muligheder i disse folks hjemlande. Vesten kan ikke løse alle de mellemøstlige og afrikanske landes problemer, men det, vi kan gøre, er at lade dem sælge deres varer på vore markeder, hvilket tillige vil tage en del af indvandringspresset.