>"The response to violence is never violence, it's always to de-escalate it. Only six shots were fired by Japanese police nationwide [in 2015]," says journalist Anthony Berteaux. "What most Japanese police will do is get huge futons and essentially roll up a person who is being violent or drunk into a little burrito and carry them back to the station to calm them down."
How telling. Reminds me of the cop who quit the police force after witnessing drug crime escalation as a direct result of increased criminalisation[0][1]
There was another article on the FT that questioned why Japan has not fallen prey to far-right extreme populism[2]. The explanation is, of course, extremely nuanced but one thing that doesn't seem to be discussed much in mainstream media is the positives of having a highly homogeneous country.
Nations which are ethnically homogeneous are also typically culturally homogeneous and this is conducive for high levels of social trust. See nations like Sweden, Norway and Switzerland. The ideas of social trust are discussed in Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt[3] (a book recommendation I picked up on here). Of course, it is not immediately constructive to say multicultural countries like the USA or UK should instigate mass deportation and ethnic purging, but it bothers me that it seems like even discussing the issue of ethnic homogeneity (not purging!!!) straddles the border of being taboo.
For instance, would it not be productive to discuss how to achieve high levels of social trust in a culturally colourful society? Nations like Singapore seem to have made some steady progress in this dimension...
> Nations which are ethnically homogeneous are also typically culturally homogeneous and this is conducive for high levels of social trust. See nations like Sweden, Norway and Switzerland.
I'm not sure you can say they're ethnically homogeneous. 15% of Swedish and 24% of Swiss residents are foreign born, for one.
I suspect that the difference between European countries and the US isn't that there's more homogeneity but that the various cultures and nations have been so close to each other for so long that they've just got over most of their problems. While the US has only been a civilised nation with its own identity and culture for a bit over 200 years, many European cultures and countries have been developing, warring, making peace and exchanging territory with each other for over a millenium.
The US is very very young and its people are still learning to accept each other and get along. Remember, slavery only ended 150 years ago and segregation only ended 60 years ago. It takes time to fully move on from things like that.
I wouldn't go as far as calling the people of the US savages but they certainly haven't learned how to get along as well as the Europeans do.
Slavery of local peoples (the people near Sweden) ended in 1335. Slavery of Africans ended in 1847. Unlike the US, Sweden doesn't appear to have a significant number of recent former slaves that need integrating, so I think my point still stands.
How telling. Reminds me of the cop who quit the police force after witnessing drug crime escalation as a direct result of increased criminalisation[0][1]
There was another article on the FT that questioned why Japan has not fallen prey to far-right extreme populism[2]. The explanation is, of course, extremely nuanced but one thing that doesn't seem to be discussed much in mainstream media is the positives of having a highly homogeneous country.
Nations which are ethnically homogeneous are also typically culturally homogeneous and this is conducive for high levels of social trust. See nations like Sweden, Norway and Switzerland. The ideas of social trust are discussed in Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt[3] (a book recommendation I picked up on here). Of course, it is not immediately constructive to say multicultural countries like the USA or UK should instigate mass deportation and ethnic purging, but it bothers me that it seems like even discussing the issue of ethnic homogeneity (not purging!!!) straddles the border of being taboo.
For instance, would it not be productive to discuss how to achieve high levels of social trust in a culturally colourful society? Nations like Singapore seem to have made some steady progress in this dimension...
[0]https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/26/neil-woods-u...
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12365667
[2]https://www.ft.com/content/987dddda-bbe2-11e6-8b45-b8b81dd5d...
[3]https://www.amazon.com/Ill-Fares-Land-Tony-Judt/dp/014311876...