a Swedish response to nutcase Greta Thunberg

Here's a must-watch for you:


At one point, she stumbles over an English phrase and leaves an apologetic caption on the screen about how English isn't her first language. As a language teacher, I'd say she's quite fluent in English, with a nearly flawless US English pronunciation. (That's actually fairly common among Scandinavians, though, so this probably doesn't qualify as high praise. The seriousness with which Scandinavians approach the learning of English is, however, something for us Americans to look into—especially those of us Yanks who seem to think it's fine just to get by with English as the global lingua franca instead of taking other languages and cultures seriously enough to study them.)

As for the substance of the video... I found it to be quite commonsensical. As one commenter points out, "It's not racist to protect your ancient land and culture." Exactly: it's not racist at all. It's not racist to want and appreciate boundaries: would you peel off your own skin because you think pathogens have a right to enter your body at will? If you deplore the idea of a wall, then please go peel off your own skin. After all, boundaries are bad!

The modern left is confused about which doctrine it wants to preach. On the one hand, it wants to affirm racial diversity by according to every race, culture, and ethnicity an absolutely equal place on the world stage. No privileged perspectives, no one culture any better than any other, and every culture (except white European, I guess) to be respected for its origins, its mores, its beliefs, and its practices. On the other hand, the left wants to steamroll everything together into one big, monochromatic mishmash, which is why the left has no problem with boundless, uncontrolled immigration. TV shows must feature racially diverse casts; everyone must be thrown together to promote a blind sort of oneness that isn't a reflection of any sort of reality. A sort of turbulent self-contradiction results from the tension of these two incompatible desires; this is why leftists love seeing cornrows on black people's scalps, but cry "cultural appropriation!" the moment a white person styles his or her hair into cornrows (or dreadlocks, or whatever) as a tribute to that culture. Adding to the hypocrisy is the asymmetricality inherent in "intersectionality." Double standards abound. It's wrong for two white women to go to Mexico and learn new culinary techniques (they're stealing from people who are Mexican and female!); it's fine, however, for a Korean chef to train in French cuisine in Paris (or in Seoul, under a Frenchman's supervision). Cultural appropriation in one case; none in the other. The only reason for the asymmetry is white = bad. How stupid.

Anyway, the lady's point, above, is that Greta has utterly missed the point, and that Sweden, in its attempt to be self-righteously politically correct, is collapsing under its own lack of an immigration policy. This is where the real problem is, but Greta Thunberg and her heedless cohort of morons are too obtuse to notice the real elephant in the room.

Or is elephant speciesist?