The Politics of Sex and War in the European Refugee Crisis

By Peter Baofu, Ph.D.

Photo: Source: Pravda.Ru photo archive

INTRODUCTION

The mass New Year's Eve sexual attacks on women in Cologne, Germany by more than 1,000 men of "Middle Eastern and North African origin" reveals an uncomfortable truth about the politics of "sex" and "war" in the European Union (EU) in recent decades (often unspoken of in European mainstream media).

THE POLITICS OF WAR    

The refugee influx into the EU (via the entry points of Italy, Greece, and Turkey for the most part), especially from war-torn countries like Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan (not yet including Libya, Yemen, and others), could not have happened in the first place if the EU, in cooperation with the U.S. and its allies, had not initiated the war campaigns, time and again, one after another, against these regimes in the last decades. 

Instead of encouraging a peaceful resolution of conflicts in the region, the EU, together with the U.S. and its allies, had time and again resorted to devastating wars against these regimes (while funding, training, and supplying the opposition groups with weapons), as they arrogantly believed in their military superiority over these backward forces and wishfully opted for a "regime change" strategy to create "pro-Western" countries, as part of the recurrent "expansionism" of the "free world" (in the ever new euphemistic names like "democracy," "liberation," "war on terror," etc.).

Yet, after all these years of "bombing" these poor countries to "hell," with the destruction of properties and infrastructures everywhere (and the death of countless civilians as "collateral damages"), the region continues to be in flames. The enemies do not stop fighting back, with ever new groups emerging to replace the old ones, be they the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIL, or now the diverse fighters in Yemen, Libya, Mali, and the like.

Meanwhile, millions of ordinary folks in these poor countries are helplessly caught in the midst of the fights between these opposing forces and have to flee from their homelands to "safe havens," wherever they can find, by any means necessary, be they in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Italy, and the list can go on.

Yet, poor and small countries like Jordan (with a population of only 6 million) and Lebanon (with a population of only 4 million) already accept a few million refugees each and do their best to take care of them -- but rich and big countries like Germany (with a population of 83 million and one of the richest economies on Earth) are already complaining about taking lesser refugees (than these poor and small countries have taken) and even shamelessly asking the refugees to pay for the costs. Is this the way that the "free" and "rich" world wants to teach the rest of the world how to treat the "unfortunate" - keeping in mind that this refugee influx could not have happened in the first place if the EU, together with the U.S. and its allies, had not encouraged and initiated the war campaigns, time and again, one after another, against these poor countries for "regime change" in the past decades?

In any event, these unfortunate folks become the new "refugees" in our era, just as there are countless refugees like them in the past episodes of wars at other historical times. As history unfolds, a few millions of these refugees are now "knocking" hard at the doors of Europe (as a "blowback" of the war campaigns by the EU in the Middle East and North Africa), and some of these refugees now end up in Cologne, Germany -- so this leads us to the second part of the story: the politics of sex.   

THE POLITICS OF SEX

In Germany, after the sexual attacks, feminists appeared on TV (like the Deutsche Welle channel) and blamed the allegedly "patriarchal" upbringing of the Middle Eastern and North African male refugees for the attacks. Their "scapegoating" argument is that, only if these Middle Eastern and North African males are "taught" some core "German" (or "European") values, these attacks will likely not happen again, or at least, will largely decrease.

So now, there are "German rulebooks" designed to "teach" male (and also female) refugees some "German" or "European" (meaning = "un-Islamic") values, such as "homosexuals are allowed to show their sexual preference in public," "it is ok to show affection in public," and, as the British magazine The Economist recently put it on Jan.16, 2016: "European women cherish their rights to wear what they like [meaning = wearing skimpy clothing in public space or being topless in public beaches], go where they like and have sex or not have sex with whom they please. No one should be allowed to infringe these freedoms."

This European cultural arrogance (in bashing the allegedly "patriarchal" upbringing of the Middle Eastern and North African male refugees as the "scapegoat"), with the blessing of the feminists, is profoundly ignorant, for two main reasons.

The first main reason is that, even in Germany, well before the sexual attacks in Cologne, there were already sexual attacks on German females by German males, in spite of the core "German" (or "European") values on equality, as Frank Jordans wrote for the AP on January 29, 2016 that "sexual violence is a feature of German society too" - and The Economist shared the same assessment on January 16, 2016: "Women have complained for years that German police are slow to stop sexual harassment in the drunken crowds at the Munich Oktoberfest."

In fact, sexual violence has occurred in all cultures, be they Eastern or Western (or Northern or Southern), in our era or in other historical eras, and in human society or in the animal kingdom. In fact, in those countries with a lot of cats (or dogs) on the streets, if only one pays close attention, one can observe sexual assaults in the fights among cats (or dogs). There are fundamental biological differences between males and females, whether in human society or in the animal kingdom, but this is something that many European feminists are afraid to confess and unwilling to admit. In the field of biology, there are solid scientific evidences on the behavioral differences between males and females (in regard to sex), based on the biological evolution of "sperms" (for males) and "eggs" (for females) - and also of the physical (biological) inequality between the two groups (with males as "stronger" and females as "weaker," on average of course).

This understanding of the "biological" roots of the problem is important to find a realistic solution, since the rigid feminist "scapegoating" cultural argument is essentially "ideological" (and thus "unrealistic") - just as a doctor cannot find the cure of a patent's illness unless he succeeds in diagnosing the "correct" roots of the problem.

And the second main reason is that the Europeans are arrogant enough to be interested only in "teaching" the Arab and African refugees the "right" (or "correct") values to live by. But is there something that the Europeans can "learn" from these Arabs and Africans too in a "globalized" world of ours - or are these refugees supposed to be so "primitive" and "backward" that the "superior" Europeans have nothing to "learn" from these "inferior" refugees about "values" in return? Can the "teacher" learn something from the "student" too? If a "host" has rights, does a "guest" have rights too? If the majority has its own distinctive "values," does the minority have its own "values" too? And if the two groups disagree, should the minority always have to "accept" what the majority dictates, as part of the "tyranny" (or "dictatorship") of the majority in a so-called "liberal democracy"? Otherwise, this would dangerously degenerate into a form of cultural "neo-imperialism" without examining the "darker" side of European values themselves.

To understand this further, here is a good (but notorious) example for thought: Consider the warm beaches in Sousse, Tunisia during the summer months. Although tourism in Tunisia is now suffering from a serious setback after the terrorist attacks on foreign tourists last year (in 2015), the beaches used to be crowded with European tourists, especially during the "warm" summer. But these European tourists also drew a lot of attention from local Arab and African men, because, unlike the local Arab women (who dressed very conservatively and regarded "nakedness" in public beaches as "indecent" and "decadent"), many European women (tourists) were often "topless" (and sometimes completely "naked") in those Arabic beaches and earned the scandalous nickname "fucking whores" among those conservative (male and female) locals (meaning that these so-called "liberated" European women easily became the targets of Arab and African men aggressively chasing after them, even in broad daylight, with the crowds looking on, and using them for "sex," "money," and "migration"), especially in the busy "hotels" and "nightclubs" along the beaches. Quite a number of "mixed" children were born out of these sexual encounters in the weeks, months, or years afterwards.

In the Middle East and North Africa, there is still a widespread perception that European women are "loose," "promiscuous," "eager to get laid," and "easy to get" for sex; local men simply do not give them the same "respect" and "restraint" as they do towards their own local women, who are protected by their families, clans, tribes, or other social networks in a conservative tradition which treats "sex" as something private at home (not in a public beach) and serious enough for married couples or for those in engagement. Since European women arrogantly consider themselves as "liberated" and therefore "superior" over the "backward" Arabs and Africans, they do not accept and respect the local tradition, so local Arab and African men do not give them the same "respect" and "restraint" as they do to their local women. Surely, there can be occasional violations, and things also start slowly changing for some "Westernized" local women in the new generation, but they still constitute the exceptions (not the norms). And this widespread perception about "loose" European women also exists in the rest of Asia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

After the sexual attacks in Cologne, Germany, a German city mayor, as shown on the RT channel (on Feb. 04, 2016), suggested in a local meeting that one way for German girls to avoid being sexually attacked is to wear less exposed clothes and to refrain from walking into areas full of male migrants. But he was immediately silenced and yelled at by many in the meeting for being "un-German," because of their insistence on the European value of "freedom" to dress as she pleases, to go where she likes, and to have sex with whom she prefers (in her own town or elsewhere).  

The flexible "common sense" approach of this German city mayor can do more to help reducing sexual assaults than the rigid feminist "scapegoating" cultural argument, which is as much "ideological" as "unrealistic."

CONCLUSION

There is an old saying, which is that "your arrogance is your worst enemy." Perhaps the mass New Year's Eve sexual attacks on women in Cologne, Germany by more than 1,000 men of "Middle Eastern and North African origin" can "teach" the "teacher" a thing or two (in this "globalized" world of ours), namely, this politics of "sex" and "war" carried out by the Europeans in the past decades (often unspoken of in European mainstream media).

Peter Baofu

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Dr. Peter Baofu was a U.S. Fulbright Scholar and had taught as a Professor at different universities in America, Western Europe, the Caucasus, the Middle East, the Balkans, Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia (besides having lived in more than 70 countries around the world). He was educated in the states, with 5 academic degrees (including a Ph.D. from M.I.T. in Cambridge, Massachusetts), was a summa cum laude graduate, and was awarded the Delta Sigma Pi Scholarship Key for being at the top of the class in the College of Business Administration, with another student. He is the author of 84 books and 86 new theories (as well as numerous articles), all of which provide a visionary challenge to all conventional wisdom in the social sciences, the formal sciences, the natural sciences, and the humanities, with the aim for a "unified theory of everything" -- together with numerous visions of the mind, nature, society, and culture in future history. He can be contacted by email: [email protected]