What Is A Terrorist Threat, And How Should One Respond To It?

The other day, following the recent horrid events in Paris, linked to several temporally closely aligned similar attacks by Daesh, e.g., in Lebanon and Iraq, apparent intelligence on several other planned attacks throughout Europe, and specifically that a possible Daesh operative had entered Sweden to organise a large.scale attack of some sort, my country raised its official terrorist threat level from 3 to 4 on a scale that ends at 5. One named suspect of preparation of terrorist crime has now been apprehended, but the police and security organs apparently continue to search for others, and the government has been clear that this single factor will not by itself motivate downgrading the threat level. At the same time, several voices criticise the development either for coming much too late (claiming, among other things, that the knowledge of the presence of Daesh sympathisers in the country should have been enough), or for being misdirected, as actual terror attacks in Sweden (save one) tend mostly to be domestic extreme right wing nationalist/racist (targetting refugees and street begging EU migrants, people of visibly Muslim or Roma identity or Middle East or African descent, their living quarters, and so on), or is exaggerated and bound to create more problems than what it prevents or fixes. It struck me that many of these reactions seem based on ignoring or fixing on only selected aspects of what is technically known as a risk analysis. For this is basically what the assessment of the level of terrorist threat by a state is about: assessing certain risks and cost of events classified as terrorist attacks, as well as various actions possibly to take in response to various such levels of risk, and to evaluate on that basis what to do.

A disclaimer before I start: the putative facts about the seriousness of typical types of terrorist attacks, and the likelihood of different types of such attacks, are, of course, open to revision in the face of facts – although, as will become clear, less obviously according to what standard of evidence. All of the aspects described are part of the discussion of the ethical basis of environmental and technological risk policy that I undertake in my book The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk.

First, there is the two main dimensions of the concept of risk itself: the probability and harm dimensions. A risk is always the possible (and to some extent likely) occurrence of some type of variably harmful event. In risk analysis, the magnitude of a risk is determined by a combination of these two dimensions, so that a low probability may be balanced by a serious harm-level, and the other way around. Already this simple analytical unpacking points to a factor that may seem to be at work in the reaction to the raised Swedish terror threat level. Some people focus mainly on the likelihood dimension, and then would hesitate to criticise that new evidence and circumstances changes the assessment, or would rather have seen an earlier raised level in view of the actual wave terror attacks in the form of typical "lone wolf" deeds, and thus a concentration on extreme right wing violence rather than its Islamistic sibbling. Others focus instead on the harm dimension, and then lets the demonstrated vastness of the damage of attacks such as the one in Paris dictate the risk assessment, also when the evidence of likelihood is very weak. This may then motivate the position that, knowing that Daesh and similar groups do have had attacks such as the one  in Paris on its theoretical agenda for a long time (and carried out i the Iraq and Syrian theaters). With the notable exception of Anders Behring Breivik, although much more frequent and actually realised rather than merely theoretically imagined, the right-wing extremist deeds, while clearly terrorism in the sense of attempting to spread fear for political purposes through the use of violence against civilians, tend to be more restricted in its consequences than the large scale massacres that have now occurred and known to be on the Daesh agenda.

Second, there is the way in which different such combinations and magnitudes of risk are evaluated, or seen to support various courses of action. Here, a number of additional issues linked to the assessment of the risk magnitude is actualised, namely:

Third, how the constituents of the risk (its probability level and its harm level) are evaluated in terms of how much we should care about it. This gives another way in which we may get a similar output that was just described above, even if all agree of the risk magnitude. This since risks with the same magnitude may still be evaluated differently, e.g. due to being made up of very low probability, or very serious potential harm. here, one may also want to pay attention to the context, such as if one is making the assessment from the position of already being burdened by much risk of different kind. So if the potentially worst terror threat are the least likely, and the most likely ones the least serious (relatively speaking, of course), we may again get differences of opinion of a similar sort, but now more clearly based on differences of values rather than appraisal of fact.

Fourth, how the opportunity costs of different actions in response to a risk assessment are evaluated, that is, what is lost and risked by taking these various actions rather than other ones. Here we may spot a number of ways in which assessments may differ, although not basically disagreeing on the risk assessment (such disagreements may, of course, also be added to other disagreements). For instance, several argued against extensive action in face of the wave of apparently extreme right wing nationalist attacks against Swedish actual or in preparation asylum shelters that it would not be worth the costs it would mean to have effective guarding of each one of them. At the same time, there has been no or very little hesitance to mobilise extensive police and security forces to guard potential targets and just demonstrate the presence of the state organs to effect public calm in the wake of the new threat level. But there has been some criticism, for instance, from one of the country's most prominent terrorist experts, Magnus Norell, who claimed that even if there is a raised threat, the actions in response to it and the very act of public threat level raising itself mostly creates unnecessary worry and fear, that is the very effect aimed for by terrorists. One may also wonder how effective the guarding by police of places like train stations and main squares of large cities are, provided that combatants such as those responsible for the Beirut and Paris attacks are set on targeting them. In both cases, this would also mean that these resources are, in fact, wasted. In that light, posting armed guards outside every asylum shelter to guard against a wholly different kind of terrorists targeting these may suddenly seem as a more effective and less costly measure. This aspect, of course, has many more sides, but this only goes to show how the evaluation of options in response to a described threat, and the opportunity costs attached to them may be used to inject the issue with limitless complexity.

Fifth, there is the issue of the evaluation of evidence, underlying the probability estimates at work in all of the considerations pointed to above Here, we may see a number of differences on what type of evidence is to be given the most credence: Actual similar past events is one model, following the "frequentist" ideal in decision theory. That would, in the present case, probably speak in favour of a much higher probability for more extreme nationalist right wing terrorism against refugees, migrants and their quarters in Sweden, as this is what wa have mostly had in the past (especially the very close past). Another model is to instead trust qualified estimates, by appointed experts, who may then, if they so prefer, let other reasons than frequentist ones affect the probability estimate. For instance, even if there has been no, or relatively very few, attacks of the type known to be on the Al-Qaeda and Daesh agendas, the fact there are such attacks on this agenda combined with the presence of people who sympathise with these movements in the country, and maybe witness statements that some such person in the country has been mentioned to plan or want to plan such an attack, may be used as evidence. Some of that evidence may be broken down into an indirect frequentist argument, as it points to factors believed to have been active in relevantly similar past events elsewhere. But a substantial portion would also seem to be about subscribing to certain qualitative and evaluative assessments, such as choosing to trust certain bearers for information as credible, viewing certain events as relevantly similar in spite of notable dissimilarities, and so on. The point is that the more of this latter sort of probability grounding is used, the more room to assess as probable also events of which there have been no very similar precedent.

Sixth, there is the issue of the how much evidence (given some standard of its quality of the sort just described) should be required for a credible estimate, and for taking action. This factor is basically about how long we should wait and amass evidence to have a more well-founded risk assessment, in view of the potential costs of being to late to act effectively against the threat (if there is any). Also this aspect seems to be at work in the Swedish debate, as those who complain about the threat level not having been raised and associated action taken earlier seem to be prone to care less about the evidence of the threat, and rather have action on looser grounds to be "better safe than sorry", but the of course also downgrade or ignore the opportunity costs of this. Those who require more evidence will, on the other hand, want to wait longer even in the face of potential dangers such as the present ones, and some of these might be content with the balance made by Swedish authorities, while others would find the actions premature and would prefer more evidence to assess the raised level and the linked actions justified.

The idea that, inside this vastly variable complex of factors and possible positions on how to do a risk analysis and act on its results there exists one, simple and self-evident alternative is, of course, utterly ridiculous.

***

Next Step in Hungary's March Back to Dark and Brown Political Legacy: Official Historical Revisionism to Hide Pro-nazi Past

This was brought to my attention by my friend and colleague at the University of Gothenburg, distinguished political science professor, Bo Rothstein. As some of you may know, after a brief time of emerging out of its Soviet satelite past and joining the EU as a liberal democracy, Hungary has for some time been moving in an increasingly extreme rightwing, nationalist, anti-liberal and anti-democratic direction. Led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban of the Fidesz party, increasing assaults have been made on basic democratic principles – to the extent that the EU has been reprimanding some of the plans harshly, short of threatening of expelling the country from the union altogether. Earlier this year, Orban declared that he viewed China, Russia and Turkey as rolemodels to follow, and that he wants to abandon liberal democracy in favor of an “illiberal state”. This follows a process starting in 2002, of cooperating with openly nazi racist organisations and semi-militias over several years to deliberately dismantle and undermine Hungarian democratic institutions and freedom of opinion and speech, as well as weakening basic principles of ascertaining rule of law and legal security. Some further reports are here, here, here, here, here.

Therefore, it should perhaps come as no surprise that this march towards the darker regions of modern central European history is now being complemented by a historical revisionist agenda, aiming to hide Hungary's dirty past in this area. Bo's open letter (published as a Swedish debate article here) to the Swedish Hungarian ambassador describes it as it is – an image of the monument is seen above (view a larger version by clicking the image):

The lie that Bo here uncovers should come as no surprise, as one of the few things that have potential of tripping the populist far-right nationalist politics pursued by Fidesz is its obvious links to the nazi-past of Hungary. Hence, that past needs to be erased, and into the Hungarian collective mind should be installed a lilly-white version of the innocent maiden, where the blood stained hands of mindless butcher, selling out its country for a slice of the cake of the promised 1000-ear Reich, belongs. That's Victor Orban and Fidesz for you in so many words.

Dr Jean-Claude Worms of the European Science Foundation Threatens Critics of ESF Policy: He Should Resign or Be Sacked - Effective Immediately.

Obviously the European basic science funding flagship, the European Science Foundation (ESF) is in a sorry state if anything even akin to this can happen. I have the story from my math colleague here in Gothenburg, Olle Häggström's blog, and he refers further to Retraction Watch.

In short, astrophysicist Amaya Moro-Martin published an opinion piece in Nature, criticising current European and EU science policies (in particular funding cuts), among many other things mentioning the ESF as an peripheral actor in the dismantling of Portuguese science institutions:

There are too many examples to list, but here are some of the most prominent: since 2009, Italy has seen recruitment of scientists fall by 90% and the amount spent on basic research drop to nothing. In Spain, the amount of money spent on civilian research and development has dropped by 40%, and fewer than 10% of researchers who retire are being replaced. Since 2011, the budget of Greek research centres and universities has halved, with a freeze on hiring. Already reeling from budget cuts of 50% for universities and research centres, Portugal may now have to close half of its research units because of a flawed evaluation process supported by the European Science Foundation.

To this, the head of the ESF’s Science Support Office, Dr. Jean-Claude Worms reacts badly. But does he then send a reply to Nature, or even post a comment in the open commentary field attached to Moro-Martin's article? He does not. Instead, he behaves in astonishingly fable-like similarity to what you would expect by the animal suggested by his surname, sending the following letter to Moro-Martin (originally made public here):

Dear Amaya Moro-Martin,
The European Science Foundation hereby requests that you retract the following allegation contained within your opinion piece published on 8 October in Nature (Volume 514, Issue 7521). [Portugal may now have to close half of its research units] because of a flawed evaluation process supported by the European Science Foundation. The European Science Foundation refutes any allegation that the process was flawed and considers that the statement cited above is slanderous, as the independent work performed in the framework of the evaluation of FCT research units followed the best international practices. http://www.esf.org/serving-science/fct-rd-units-evaluation-by-esf.html. While the European Science Foundation is cited in your paper, it is highly regrettable that no one from our organisation was interviewed and no request for clarification made. In addition, and as you may be aware, the Portuguese national union for higher education has launched a formal legal action on the evaluation process, and this has not yet come to a conclusion. If your allegation is not publically retracted in Nature, the European Science Foundation will be compelled to take appropriate legal action.
Dr. Jean-Claude Worms
Head of Science Support Office European Science Foundation
jcworms@esf.org

That's right, a high representative and manager of a supposedly leading international science organisation is responding to criticism (the very blood of science) of this organisation's policies with threat of a libel lawsuit. This is not only way lower than any slimy worm would ever venture into the manure, it is formally completely unacceptable behaviour by a person in Worms' position of office. My colleague, Olle, is overly polite about it when asking the ESF chief executive, Martin Hynes, to have Dr. Worms' letter "retracted". My bid is this: Dr. Worms has conclusively proven that he has no place in any sort of science leadership position and should resign his office at ESF, effective immediately. If he does not, he should be be swiftly removed from this position of honour and trust, which he has so gravely abused.

Will Sweden Withstand the Planned EU Tobacco Directive Rules on Cigarette Packet Warning Labels?

News just broke that the current Swedish government is planning to try to resist the planned implementation of a new EU tobacco directive application according to which cigarette packets must have warning labels covering 75% of the packet's surface space. Why on earth would the government of one of the world's top non- and anti-smoking and pro public health countries in this way want to do the tobacco industry's dirty business for them, one might ask. But according to the government, this matter is nothing of the sort. The reason given for why the government plans to resist the proposal is that it allegedly in conflict with the Swedish constitution, more specifically The Freedom of the Press Act (FoP, the original Swedish version of the act, Tryckfrihetsförordningen, or TF, can be read here).

I suppose that what the government think is problematic with regard to the EU tobacco directive proposal in relation to this, is the very strong ban on censorship in the FoP and a very tightly regulated possibility to prosecute for misuse, expressed in the first four articles of the 1st chapter of FoP. However, I very much doubt that any of these generous liberties can be convinsingly argued to apply to cigarette packets. First, altready in article 5, the scope of the act is defined to apply...

...provided:
1.    a valid certificate of no legal impediment to publication exists in respect of the written matter; or
2.    the written matter is supplied with a note indicating that it has been duplicated and, in association therewith, clear information concerning the identity of the person who duplicated it and the year and place of duplication.

Most cigarette packets will be excluded already st this stage. However, tobacco companies may of course come to have the packets designed so that this condition is met. This will not help the argument of the government much, however, for in article 6 the scope of the act is further limited with regard to what written or printed matter it regulates:

Printed matter shall not be deemed to be such unless it is published. Printed matter is deemed to have been published when it has been delivered for sale or dissemination by other means within the Realm. This does not however apply to printed documents of a public authority to which there is no public access.

Are cigarette packets published?, one may ask. Well they are produced through printing and then publicly offered, aren't they? Well, incidentally they are, but they are surely not sold or otherwise disseminated in the sense intended in the law. First, what is sold are the cigarettes, the packet is a container that is not for sale, albeit accompanying the sold product. We could, of course, imagine tobacco companies try to claim that it is the packet that is the product, and that the cigarettes are just an incidental appendice. However, I hardly think that such a move would exempt them from paying tax on tobacco sales. Therefore, the packet is not what is sold. Neither is it disseminated, since that would imply, e.g., that the address label attached to or any sort of scribbling on a packet of newspapers, books et cetera would be protected by the FoP. Surely they are not.

However, I need not rest my case on that argument alone, for if we continue reading, we come to the crucial article 9, wehre it is said that....

The provisions of this Act notwithstanding, rules laid down in law shall govern:
1. bans on commercial advertising insofar as the advertisement is employed in the marketing of alcoholic beverages or tobacco products; /.../

3. bans on commercial advertising introduced for the protection of health or the environment in accordance with obligations pursuant to accession to the European Communities;

What this implies is that as long as the cigarette packets qualify as either "marketting of .... tobacco products" or "commercial advertisement", FoP readily allow either any sort of censoring ban to be applied, or allow such a ban "for the protection of health or the environment in accordance with obligations pursuant to accession to the European Communities". What was this all about again, please? The European Union tobacco directive?? Uh Oh!

Now, I may have gotten all of this terribly wrong and perhaps there is a nice government memo somewhere describing a superb argument for why the EU tobacco directive regulation regarding warning text on cigarette packets is unconstitutional in Sweden. More likely, however, is that if such a memo ever existed it is fundamentally flawed and very possibly a product of sloppy analysis, and will soon find itself crumbling in the waste paper basket of the responsible minister's office. My own proposal is that said minister should inquire his/her legal advisors closely of however they could come up with such folly, and maybe take the opportunity to ask a question or two about their links to the tobacco industry as well.

So, what was the other hypothesis? That the Swedish government is doing the dirty business of tobacco companies for them? It can't be can it?! Especially not since the second argument of the government is that these companies will only have 25% left of the surface space of packets to expose their brand markings. Truly, truly poor them little innocent ones being so unjustly attacked by the vile European Commission!! So it is definitely not a question about that at least - phew!

Video: The Philosophy of Hate Crime: Concepts, Values and Tensions in the European Context

As some may have noticed, from time to time I have posted materisls and ideas coming out of a European research project on hate crime policy of which I have been a part. The project When Law and Hate Collide is now officially over, but material will keep coming out throughout this as well as the next few years. For instance, at the moment, me and my philsopher colleague in the project, David Brax, are in the process of preparing a special issue on the philosophy of hate crime of the cross-disciplinary research periodical Journal of Interpersonal Violence, to appear in 2014, and earlier this year, we made public our report on the philosophy of hate crime, available open access for online reading and download by clicking the link above.

Now you can also view online videos from the final conference of the project, held in Brussels, January 29, available via youtube here, and the presentation of our philosophical perspective, The Philosophy of Hate Crime: Concepts, Values and Tensions in the European Context, is embedded for direct viewing here below (the slides are not very visible on the video, so these can be downloaded separately via the link above)!



All earlier posts connecting to this project, including videos from earlier symposia on the philosophy as well as psychology of hate crime, are here.

Follow the 4th Hate Crime Symposium via web streaming!

As you may recall, I have now and again posted in connection to the project When Law and Hate Collide, where I and my assistant David Brax have been active since two years, collaborating with researchers at the law school of the University of Central Lancashire and psychologists and special education researchers at the Göthe Universität Frankfurt. These earlier posts are all assembled here, and among other things they link to videos from symposia arranged within the project in 2011 and 2012.

We are now in the final stages of this project and on tuesday we will hold the final and 4th of these symposia. This will take place on Tuesday, the 29th of January, starting 9 a.m. (CET) in Brussels, but for anyone who wants to follow it, it will be streamed on the web. To do this, 9 a.m. on tuesday, you simply click this link, and the live streaming should start. If there is a problem, wait a while and try again.

The program includes the following presentations:

Bogusia Puchalska (Uclan): European-wide policy and initiatives on hate crime

Christian Munthe & David Brax (Gothenburg): The philosophy of hate crime: concepts, values and tensions in the European context

Michael Fingerle & Caroline Bonnes (Frankfurt): A different perception? What NGOs and victims think about hate crime legislation

Michael Salter & Kim McGuire (Uclan): Issues concerning the victim's recollection of hate crime: avoiding revictimisation

- Keynote invited comments from:
Paul Iganski (Hate crime scholar, Lancaster University)

Joanna Perry (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the OSCE).

Paul Gianassi (Hate crime law enforcement expert, UK Ministry of justice)

Henri Nickels (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, FRA)

See you on the web, if not in Brussels!

Videos from The Philosophy of Hate Crime Symposium.

As some of you may recall, in a post earlier this fall, I shared videos from a symposium arranged by a project I'm working in on the basis for European hate crime policy, and informed about a 2nd symposium on philosophical issues actualised in that context that we arranged here in Gothenburg. Even earlier I have made a few posts on issues actualised by the project (on the relation between hate crimes and human rights and on the role of prevention in a sound hate crime policy) and pointed to many more at the blog of my colleague David Brax.

We are now happy to be able to share videos of almost all of the presentations and attached discussions that took place during the Philosophy of Hate Crime Symposium, arranged by David and me at the University of Gothenburg a few months ago. As I myself fell ill on the 2nd day, you will only see me appear in the introduction, but David does a splendid job of holding together by himself what was originally our shared presentation on such short notice in the last video below.

One of the more nice things that I noticed when watching this footage right through was how surprisingly well it captures the atmosphere and spirit at what was a bona fide research workshop, rather than a public engagement event put together for that particular purpose. What you see is an example of what goes on in the laboratory of a research unit in the humanities and social sciences, basically. Welcome to take a peak!

1. Anthony Mark Cutter & Christian Munthe: Introduction to When Law and Hate Collide


2. Paul Iganski: How Hate Hurts: The Moral Philosophical Basis of Hate Crime Laws 



3. Barbara Perry: Moving Beyond "Hate" Crime 



4. Neil Chakraborti: Targetting Vulnerability - A Fresh Set of Challanges for Hate Crime Scholarship 



5. Heidi Hurd: Criminalizing Hate, Criminalizing Character



6. Mohamad Al Hakim: Hate as an Aggravating Factor in Sentencing 



7. Antti Kauppinen: Two Kinds of Expressive Harm 



8. David Brax: A Tentative Philosphical Framework for Hate Crime Policy Across the European Union

European Court Rules Against (almost all) Patenting of Embryonic Stem Cells

Yesterday, the European Court publicized its ruling on the controversial case of the patentability of human emryonic stem cell lines (hESC) in European law. I have discussed this issue in two former posts: here and here. The complete ruling can be found here and is quite long, but the conclusions are clear:

On those grounds, the Court (Grand Chamber) hereby rules:

1.      Article 6(2)(c) of Directive 98/44/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 6 July 1998 on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions must be interpreted as meaning that:

–        any human ovum after fertilisation, any non-fertilised human ovum into which the cell nucleus from a mature human cell has been transplanted, and any non-fertilised human ovum whose division and further development have been stimulated by parthenogenesis constitute a ‘human embryo’;

–        it is for the referring court to ascertain, in the light of scientific developments, whether a stem cell obtained from a human embryo at the blastocyst stage constitutes a ‘human embryo’ within the meaning of Article 6(2)(c) of Directive 98/44.

2.      The exclusion from patentability concerning the use of human embryos for industrial or commercial purposes set out in Article 6(2)(c) of Directive 98/44 also covers the use of human embryos for purposes of scientific research, only use for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes which are applied to the human embryo and are useful to it being patentable.

3.      Article 6(2)(c) of Directive 98/44 excludes an invention from patentability where the technical teaching which is the subject-matter of the patent application requires the prior destruction of human embryos or their use as base material, whatever the stage at which that takes place and even if the description of the technical teaching claimed does not refer to the use of human embryos.

In short, hESC lines can indeed be patented, but as part of a procedure for "for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes which are applied to the human embryo and are useful to it". In other words, patenting of hESC lines for the purpose of regenerative medical purposes or research is ruled out within the jurisdiction of European patent law.

The Philosophy of Hate Crime Symposium

On Monday and Tuesday the coming week, I and my colleague David Brax, will be hosting the 2nd European hate crime symposium, arranged within the EU project When Law and Hate Collide, on the theme The Philosophy of Hate Crime. The program of the symposium can be viewed here (click pic to enlarge):

During the two days of the symposium, a hand-picked collection of international scholars and experts on the underlying philosophical and ethical issues actualised by the phenomenon of hate crimes and the challenges of designing hate crime policy will present their views. They will, furthermore, discuss with us in the project basic such issues related to the challenge of designing an overarching European hate crime policy with regard to criminal law, monitoring, prevention and public awareness. The symposium will be documented by the University of Gothenburg TV and audiovisual department, for eventual broadcasting through Swedish TV and the internet.

During the symposium, you can follow the action on twitter, using the tag #H8Crime

While waiting for that, it may be of some interest to watch some of the footage done at our first symposium, held in Strasbourg this spring. Below, you find some of the presentations plus a part of the roundtable discussions we had with interested members of the European Parliament (this video has some image damage at the end, but the sound is clear all way through).

1. Anthony Mark Cutter & Keiran M Bellis: Introduction and overview of the European hate crime situation

2. Paul Iganski on what is bad about hate crime

3. Paul Gianassi on the UK law enforcement approach to hate crime

4. Alke Get on German hate crime policy

5. Nathan Hall on what hate crime is and may be

6. Sylvia Lancaster on the Sophie Lancaster hate crime case, and the issue of the scope of hate crime policy

7. Excerpt from roundtable discussion of hate crime, policy concerns and research needs with members of European Parliament

Approaches to Preventing Hate Crime

This piece connects to two former posts (here and here), actualised by my participation in the project When Law and Hate Collide: Perspectives on Hate Crime, meant to produce a basic ethical, theoretical and factual framework for harmonising various aspects of European hate crime policy. My Swedish colleague in the project, David Brax, also has a series of posts linking to this project at his blog, Brax on Philosophy.

My former post was about the concept of hate crime – or, since the term "hate" is not really a good one: bias crime as many are starting to call it – and how it connects to the concept of human rights. That post, like so many opinion pieces connecting to hate crime, suffers (at least a bit) from a tendency to be seduced by the word "crime". This word makes us immediately think about criminal law-making, court proceedings, police-work, punishment, and so on. And those aspects of a policy addressing the phenomenon of hate crime are, of course, important. However, if you think that hate crime is a serious matter – serious enough to motivate special legal provisions, at that – you should in fact be more interested in another aspect, namely, what a good preventive policy related to hate crime should look like.

Now, since I am a philosopher and ethics researcher, what I have to say about this will not be very hands on or immediately practical. It will, however, be of interest for those pondering more concrete preventive issues connecting to hate crime and possessing the qualification for doing that in a good way. What I will do, is to set out four different approaches to how one may go about pondering such issues – within what theoretical frames and assumptions the development of preventive hate crime policy strategies may proceed. I will present four such frameworks for preventive thinking in this area, and then conclude by pointing to some important ways in which these frameworks connect and may promote each other.

1. Effective General Crime Prevention
As explained in my former post, hate crimes are not a special type of crime. Hate crimes are ordinary crimes with an additional element: the occurrence of the crime is connected to some sort of factor signalling that the perpetrator commits the crime in conjunction with holding or expressing a particularly biased or disparaging attitude or view towards the victim in virtue of a perceived membership of this victim in some particular social group. This immediately implies that an obvious strategy of prevention as regards hate crime is to effectively prevent crime in general.

Now, many people believe that there is a connection between retributive responses to crime and the occurrence of further crime, and that may very well be so. At least in the individual case, if a perpetrator of a crime is sentenced to imprisonment for some time, this person will not have much opportunity to commit further crime while locked up (at least not outside of prison). However, it is also well known that such retroactive individual prevention strategies are a rather minor part of the tools available to a society that wants to reduce crime rates. Philosophers of law and punishment have often pointed out that, as a matter of fact, such reduction is probably most effectively reached by simply de-criminalising some of the most common crimes. While this is a logically valid point, I will, however, not consider it further here, since it so obviously misses the point about crimes that they are considered crimes due to some reason; for instance, that they tend to seriously harm people. Still, the philosophical point helps us to see that there are other ways of thinking about crime prevention than merely reflecting on fitting responses to people who commit crimes. Instead of becoming caught up by the individual case, where the idea of prevention is practically applicable only once we know that we are dealing with a person to some extent likely to perform a criminal act, we can think about prevention on a more overarching scale, in terms of general factors that appear to be linked to the general frequency of crime in a society.

There are several factors of this type that are well-known. One, of course, is the level of poverty, destitution, and similar conditions. Another factor that has been highlighted more recently through the book The Spirit Level, is social inequality. A further, very important factor, is the level of legal security and quality of government – the latter presently a major research theme at my university – factors which involve not only that societal systems of regulation are marked by formal efficiency, transparency, clarity and so on, but also by them being trusted to a high degree by the general population. All of these factors, in turn, point to a further one: the inclusiveness, recognition and equal treatment of a society as regards the various social groups found in it, at the same time as individuals are not as a rule treated primarily as representatives of such groups. The latter is added in order to make clear that I am not here alluding to some sort of mindless "anything-goes-as-long-as-it's-part-of-your-culture" relativism.

General prevention strategies to reduce crime that work with factors such as these become more important to consider the more a society contains people who live their lives in severe circumstances, the wider the inequality of a society is, the more of corruption and legal insecurity is pestering the lives of citizens, and the more culturally pluralistic a society is. On a European level, where wide variation in all these respects is to be found, it would thus seem that general crime prevention is, in fact, an important – if not central –part of a sound hate crime prevention policy.

2. Prevention of "Hate" or Bias Against Social Groups
The other rather obvious approach to shape a prevention strategy with respect to hate crime connects to the other defining component besides crime, the "hate" or "bias" component. If hate crimes are crimes linked to the perpetrator entertaining a biased or disparaging view against the victim in virtue of perceiving the latter as member of some social group, preventing such attitudes in the first place seems the thing to do, doesn't it? In order to become clear about what that may involve, and to what extent it should be seen as a desirable or important part of a hate crime prevention policy, we need to make some qualifications.

First, trying to prevent the appearance and occurrence of these sort of attitudes is not necessarily only about fighting antagonism or prejudice between different social groups. Attitudes of the sort in focus may very well occur within such groups – and may thus be expressed between individuals who are members of the same group. A simple example would be person A saying to person B: "you are not behaving as a member of group X should", when both are members of group X. There are a lot of examples of crimes seemingly being committed on grounds such as these, such as harassment of people who do not conform to some religious or moral rule of their culture, assaults or infringements to discourage or impede socialising or forming relationships with members of other social groups, and so on. Some of these instances may, of course, belong to the cluster of problems which hate crime policies are aimed to target, but it is not obvious that all of them do. When it comes to the attitudinal component, hate crime as a societal problem foremost connects to inter-group antagonism.

Second, we have to distinguish between two conceptually separate pieces of the attitude. One of the pieces is the attitude towards the group. The other piece is the tendency to judge individual people on the basis of that attitude due to their (perceived) group-membership. Both of these seem to be necessary in order for a hate crime to ensue. However, it would seem that a preventive strategy targeting one of these pieces of the attitude would have to be rather different than a strategy targeting the other piece. Moreover, it is far from obvious that it should be the business of society to try to influence the first piece of the attitude. Suppose for instance, that the disparaging attitude towards the group is based on certified presence within that group of some phenomenon towards which it is perfectly legitimate to hold a disparaging attitude. This could be a custom harming members of the group, a traditionally held worldview containing obvious falsehoods, or something else in that vein. While society may have good reasons to fight and prevent prejudice, this would not apply in such cases. The second piece of the attitude, seems much more apt as a target of societal action. For even if the attitude towards the group would be well-founded and legitimate, it is still a fundamental flaw to judge individuals, who may very well themselves be victims of the feature of the group that explains the dislike. Simply put, preventive policy as regards hate crime targeting the attitudinal component should focus primarily on the phenomenon of overgeneralisation occurring when people project collective patterns of behaviour on single individuals.

This line of reasoning may not look immediately acceptable to everyone. Why? it may be asked, shouldn't society care about antagonistic attitudes between groups as such? Didn't you just say above that this is what is problematic about the attitudinal aspect of hate crime from a societal point of view? Indeed I did, but what has now been added is the observation that this component is complex, and that not all parts of this complex appear to be equally important. For sure, if strongly antagonistic attitudes between different groups in society develop, this is something for society to care about. But the reason for why that is so mainly seems to connect to what may follow such a development. It is not a societal problem as such that people hold prejudiced or biased views about each other. In fact, in a liberal democracy, it would seem that one of the core values that we cherish is that we are allowed to hold whatever views about anything we want. Society has some interest, of course, to try to promote an educated and rational approach to the formation of such views (which is, partly, where action to prevent overgeneralisation and projection comes in). But we cannot escape that in the end, people will form their own opinions about each other, factually as well as morally. Society is also, of course, entitled to push this basic moral message – forming as it is the basic motivation for this society in the first place. However, as just observed, that would seem to entail primarily fighting the overgeneralisation and projection tendency, since that phenomenon runs directly contrary to basic ideas about the equal value and respect owed to each individual person. We all owe each other the courtesy of judging and assessing each other on the basis of individual features and merits - that is a basic cornerstone of a liberal democratic society, and it is indeed the business of society to promote such an attitude.

3. Prevention of the Tendency of Acting Out Prejudice and Bias
Now, if we look closely at the concept of hate crime we see that the most important feature of hate crimes is fact neither the crime nor the attitudinal component, but the conjunction of the two. In effect, I argued in my former posting that one of the most salient reasons for society to have a hate crime policy is not the presence of bias and prejudice, not the presence of crime, but the presence of behaviour where people act out prejudice and crime in the form of criminal acts. In effect, it would seem that the most apt target of a preventive strategy would be exactly that.

Such a strategy is basically about building and promoting a clear and widely embraced culture of tolerance. While we may dislike each other and hold prejudiced views about each other, there is a limit to what we are licensed to do on the basis of that. This limit is not special, it is the same limit that we are not allowed to cross for any other reason as well (such as purely selfish ones). Thus, it is defined by criminal law. However, as society becomes culturally and socially more pluralistic, instances of people stepping over these limits due to bias and/or prejudice based on group-membership becomes more and more important to address from a basic societal point of view. Again, liberal democratic ideology basically celebrates difference. Thus, it is only to be expected that intra-societal socio-cultural variation is increasing. The same effect is equally (if not more) expected when several liberal democratic countries join up to form a union, like the EU. But even then, there is a limit to how much of difference is compatible with a decent society. We may think whatever we like about other people and groups, but we may not break the law because of such thoughts. This is the minimal portion of toleration that has to be in place for civilization to endure.

4. Preventing the Damage of Hate Crime
Now, quite obviously, preventing the aspect of hate crime mentioned in the former section comes down to the interest of society to prevent serious damage – in that case to basic building-blocks of a decent society. However, equally obvious, this is not the only damage done through hate crimes. Hate crimes do damage also by increasing the harm to crime victims (a view pursued foremost by Paul Iganski), but also by attacking the collective confidence and security of whole communities (as argued by, e.g. Barbara Perry). Moreover, we need to consider how patterns of hate crime may create negative spirals of self-reinforcing mechanisms. At a workshop in our project in Strasbourg in May this year, one of the several members of the European parliament that we spoke to pointed to how the acting out of bias and prejudice based on group membership against individuals of the targeted group can be expected to give rise to a similar outlook in the group to which the victim belongs towards the group to which the perpetrator belongs. This is a damage of sorts that connects closely to the aspect of hate crime addressed in the preceding section. We will meet both Barbara and Paul, in addition to a number of other scholars of the philosophy and theory of hate crime and related subjects, at a workshop in Gothenburg in just over a week from now, and I'm sure that more nuances and details on these aspects will appear in our discussions.

What is interesting to note, is that these damages may by themselves be targets of preventive policy. That is, even if hate crimes cannot always be prevented, the damage they do may be possible to at least mitigate. What I want to hold out here is that such prevention may come down to two rather different things. What is more, me and my German colleague in the project, Michael Fingerle, are hypothesising that, actually, some of these different approaches may be in severe latent conflict.

Roughly, we may distinguish, first, between preventive policies aiming for damage control and policies aiming for what in public health is known as primary prevention. Damage control is about going in when the damage is already under way and mitigate it is some manner. In the case of hate crime, an example of damage control would be if, for instance, society offers special counseling and support to hate crime victims. A primary prevention strategy, in contrast, works with the aim of having all potential victims (that is, virtually everyone belonging to a group at risk) prepared beforehand. We may also distinguish between applying such strategies at the individual or collective level. In the latter case, the strategy would work with not only the (potential) victim, but with the entire group, membership of which is what explains (potential) victimisation.

Michael likes to talk about these things in terms of resilience, a notion popular in social psychology and sociology. To be resilient is, basically, to be such that even when you are under strain, you hold up and is able to continue functioning in a good way. The idea, then, is to mitigate or prevent damage caused by hate crime by strengthening the resilience of individuals and/or groups. However, Michael has pointed out that this may mean very different things.

A classic idea about resilience of individuals or social groups is that they are equipped with psychological, cultural, social and other resources that help them stand up to external threats. However, in later decades a rather different approach to resilience has emerged, where the notion of coping has come into focus. This latter notion is markedly different from the classic resilience idea. To manage strains or external threats by coping is, basically, to give in and accept. Now, what has struck us when discussing this is that this latter strategy, at least in the hate crime case, would seem to go against the former one. If you respond to external strain in the form of hate crime by continuously accept the situation and adapt you may indeed succeed in mitigating some of the damage of the crime. However, in other respects you will actually add to this damage. In the individual case, maintaining resilience through coping can end up in the situation where you never leave your home due to the acceptance of the situation that you are a potential hate crime victim. In the case of entire groups, the coping strategy becomes quite ugly, meaning basically that oppressed people accept and adapt to the whims of the oppressor. In both cases, the end result seems to be that, first, hate crime does more damage than it would otherwise have done and, second, the chance of establishing a sort of resilience where individuals and groups are less prone to be damaged by hate crimes in the first place is considerably weakened.

Since the coping approach to resilience is currently very popular, this has given rise to some concern about what sort of preventive hate crime strategies are currently being deployed across the EU. Everything said above points to the importance of such policies being anything else than short-sighted.

Now, it is probably as obvious to anyone who reads this as to us in the project that the various aspects of hate crime that may be targeted by preventive policy connect to each other in various ways. One example is the last aspect discussed, where it is obvious that ideas about preventing or mitigating damage from hate crimes needs to be considered in the light of how the attitudinal aspect and the acting out aspect may be targeted. Another example is how the first aspect (general crime prevention), if successful, would seem to provide us with a situation where all of the other aspects become less problematic.

Bad Arguments on All Sides in the European Embryonic Stem Cells Legal Circus, part 2

So, this is the second part of a post begun a few days ago. I'll repeat the bare bones of what it's all about:

In March, Nature News reported, a judge at the European Court of Justice (the decisions of which are binding for all EU member countries) named Bot (forename unknown) brought forth the proposal that patenting embryonic stem cell lines would be unlawful, since they have been produced through a process involving the destruction of embryos. Thus, the judge argued, (as reported by Nature News) "they are tantamount to making industrial use of human embryos", which (quoting the judge) would be contrary to "ordre public and morality". The proposal follows a motion made by Greenpeace to repeal a patent application made by German researcher Oliver Brüstle. The European court is expected to make a ruling "in a couple of months".

In my former post, I analysed the proposal of ECJ judge Bot in quite negative terms – concluding it to be a covert attempt to smuggle into European case law legally unsupported and controversial views on the moral status of embryos. However, I also stressed that the many faults of that proposal did not imply that the idea of patenting embryonic stem cell lines is a very good one. To get to the reasons why that is so, I'll now have a look at the response to Bot's proposal from the embryonic stem cell research crowd.

April 27, BBC reported that leading European researchers in the embryonic stem cell field have protested against judge Bot's proposal in a letter to Nature. According to this report, the researchers make three arguments against the proposal – two of a pragmatic nature, and one factual. The pragmatic arguments are that a patent ban on the basis suggested by the judge would imply a disparaging moral message about embryonic stem cell researchers and their activities, and that the ban would undercut investor interest in research on stem cell based therapies, which is now entering the stage of clinical trials. I'll get back to these arguments in a moment.

 The factual argument is that, contrary to what the judge seems to assume, therapeutic procedures involving the use of embryonic stem cell lines would in fact not imply any "industrial use of human embryos". This since the lines are already in existence and that, therefore, all that is needed for the continued use of them is the proliferation of the cell lines themselves. For sure, once upon a time, a number of embryos were destroyed to create these lines, but once that was done any further destruction of embryos is unnecessary. Now, while this argument seems to be sound and valid as regard the particular patent application of Brüstle, it is limited as a response to the principled claims made by judge Bot in his proposal. What the factual argument implies is that this proposal may not apply to Brüstle's application and possible other applications for about 100 cell lines already in existence. However, if the proposal was to pass the ECJ, it would seem to apply to all future attempts to secure patent protection in conjunction with the launching of attempts to produce new embryonic stem cell lines. That is, the factual argument may perhaps get Brüstle and a number of other potential patent applicants in the stem cell field off the hook, but it would allow judge Bot's main idea that producing stem cell lines through the destruction of embryos equals the exploitation of mass murder for organ trafficking purposes to pass into European case law. So, let's move over to the two pragmatic arguments.

Both these arguments seem to me rather weak as they stand. First, if the judge were right about the moral status of embryos according to European law (which he is not, see part 1, but that is not argued by the researchers), sending a disparaging moral message about embryonic stem cell researchers would not seem misplaced. In other words, this argument presumes an argument to the effect that Bot's claim regarding the moral and legal status of embryos is mistaken, but no such argument is given by the researchers.

Second, it is highly debatable if it is actually true that patenting of stem cell lines is either a necessary or a sufficient form of commercial protection for private investors to be attracted to funding the development of stem cell based therapies. What these investors need are patents guaranteeing the exclusive commercial rights to the product ensuing from such research and development, that seems to be true. However, while patenting of cell lines might provide such protection in some cases, they need not do so in all cases – it all comes down to what the product turns out to be. If the product involves using said cell lines, there will be protection. However, the product may also turn out to be a procedure not involving the use of any cells at all (rather, these cells have been a research tool for discovering mechanisms which the product – e.g. a drug – is able to manipulate). More important, even when the product in fact would involve using the cell line in question, the cell line is not identical to the product – the product is the entire procedure in which the cell line is used. In other words, what is necessary is to patent that procedure (insofar as it meets the criteria for European patent protection). This, however, is compatible with having the cell lines themselves unprotected, and thus freely available for use by others for other purposes, such as important basic research.

This brings me to why I actually strongly oppose the idea of allowing patents for all stem cell lines – be it embryonic or adult. First, stem cells are not inventions, they are naturally occurring phenomena – just as (non-synthetic) genes are. The mere fact that the cells have been moved from their original location inside an embryo or the body of an adult doesn't change that. If I move a flower found in the forest into my garden, the flower has not thereby been transformed into a human invention. I may claim, of course, that my garden or the entire flowerbed is my invention – but that does not imply anything about the flower itself. Likewise, if I happen to have developed a unique method for moving the flower, that method is my invention, but the flower is not, wherever it happens to be located as a result of using the method. So, once again, in analogy, while it makes sense to allow patents for various procedures involving stem cells, or whereby stem cells may be transformed into useful products, this does not imply that the patenting of the cells themselves is warranted.

In addition, as we have seen, whatever procedures that may be coming out of stem cell research, it can have its (pragmatically) necessary commercial protection without having any cells or cell-lines patented (unless, of course, all processes are already in the public domain). In fact, granting patents for cells or cell-lines would, in fact, be a disservice both to society and to medical research. Just as we have seen so many nasty examples of in the case of patent on genes in the US, awarding commercial exclusivity rights with regard to "stuff" rather than processes and procedures leads to the result where research and innovation is halted rather than stimulated. The only benefit of such patents befall those individual parties owning the patent and while it may be understandable that, as a friend of mine put it, potential landowners endorse the idea that they may bar parts of the commons for their own private enjoyment, it is hard to see why society should allow – let alone assist – them in realising that ambition.

This brings me to my final point, which is connected to the fact that the ones that seem most enthusiastic about the idea of patenting cells and cell-lines are themselves belonging to a group – representing a field – that I just claimed have the most to loose from having such patents granted. It is actually rather strange to have esteemed scientists and research institutions cheering at the notion of making (a) medical research more difficult and expensive, and (b) thus less likely to produce new breakthroughs (using the resource of stem cells and cell lines). Perhaps they have been blinded by the false idea that cell or cell-line patents are a necessary evil if innovative therapies are to ensue? Or is it perhaps, that they happen to be sitting on some of these precious cell-lines and have let the prospect of making a buck shield their mission as scientists? The gene patent morass in the US has for sure exposed enough of the latter, but there is still time for the European stem cell science community to demonstrate that they are, in fact, better in that respect.

Bad Arguments on All Sides in the European Embryonic Stem Cell Legal Patenting Circus, part 1

I have been commenting generously on what I see as the most profound folly of the legal debates and proceedings concerning (a) embryonic stem cell research (here, here, here, here) and (b) patenting of genes and similar things (here, here, here) in the USA. Might be that I have thus come off as a rather smug European and maybe I was – in any case, here's an apparent redeemer for that. I will do this piece in two parts, starting with the chronological beginning of the story.

In March, Nature News reported, a judge at the European Court of Justice (the decisions of which are binding for all EU member countries) named Bot (forename unknown) brought forth the proposal that patenting embryonic stem cell lines would be unlawful, since they have been produced through a process involving the destruction of embryos. Thus, the judge argued, (as reported by Nature News) "they are tantamount to making industrial use of human embryos", which (quoting the judge) would be contrary to "ordre public and morality". The proposal follows a motion made by Greenpeace to repeal a patent application made by German researcher Oliver Brüstle. The European court is expected to make a ruling "in a couple of months".

I read through the proposal of the judge today (you can download it via the link above) and was actually stunned by its content. Seldom have I seen such an ill-conceived, poorly researched and structured chain of reasoning (I'll soon explain why) provided by an esteemed legal official and expert. And, as if that wasn't enough, it turns out that the foundation of the whole argument is – hold your breath! – an analogy between producing pluripotent stem cells through embryo research and the mass murder that took place in former Yugoslavia, where some victims were harvested for organs intended for transplantation. In spite of being a basic (as in unsupported) premise of the argument, the reasoning revealing this assumption is made very late in the text, just before the judge goes on to summarise his conclusions.

So what, you may wonder, is the judge doing in all those pages before that? Well, actually, mostly irrelevance (a totally misplaced and longwinded discussion about how totipotent cells compare legally to embryos ending with the judge concluding that it has no bearing on the matter at hand) and smashing in doors that have been wide open for at least two decades while holding himself out as some sort of intellectual pioneer; such as "proving" that the term human embryo signifies all stages of the human organism from conception (or the completion of a nuclear transfer – so-called therapeutic cloning) until the implantation is completed. The purpose of these exercises in futility seem to be to "prove" that the production of pluripotent embryonic stem cells involves the destruction of human embryos. Surprise!

So, how does the argument proceed from that stage? To answer this question, we need to backtrack a bit to the many places in the just related discussion where the judge underscores that he will not make any claim on morality that deviates from any law or received public opinion of any of the EU member states. The judge ponders whether the strategy of his argument should....

....be that we ask in what respect the precursor of life deserves less protection than that in which it will naturally result?
82.    Put in this way, the question would then refer to a solution directly inspired by philosophical or religious considerations and would therefore seem impossible to formulate in a way which is acceptable to everyone.
83.    This will not be my approach.

This he must say, since this is how the European legislation regarding embryos is constructed – e.g. in the Council of Europe Convention on Human Rights in Biomedicine: While stating that the human being in all its stages is to be legally protected, it leaves open to member states to legislate on the nature and extent of that legal protection. And since said legislation indeed varies from the very conservative to the very liberal as regards embryo research, the judge rightly draws the conclusion that a valid legal argument on the European level cannot be based on any assumption regarding the legal or moral standing of the human embryo.

So, then what is his basis? This, it turns out, is a clause in European patent law (present in most if not all such laws worldwide) stating that a patent application that otherwise meets all requirements can be denied on the ground that it regards something that is contrary to "ordre public and morality". In layman's tongue: popularly well-established and widely shared custom or moral views. But, of course, it is now that trouble begins for real – for what well-established and widely shared European customs or moral views might he invoke in the case of patenting embryonic stem cell lines? It is at this stage that the judge starts a chant about the wide European consensus on the absolute moral horror of the mentioned events in former Yugoslavia that – to much surprise – is directly turned into a conclusion about embryos:

104. The pluripotent stem cell in the present case is removed from the blastocyst which, as I have previously defined, itself constitutes an embryo, that is to say one of the stages in the formation and development of the human body which the removal will destroy.
105. The argument put forward to the Court at the hearing, that the problem of patentability which hinges on the removed cell, the way in which it has been removed and the consequences of such removal do not have to be taken into account seems unacceptable, in my view, for reasons connected with ordre public and morality. A simple example will illustrate my remarks.
106. The current judicial activity of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia shows us, obviously subject to the presumption of innocence, that in the course of those events prisoners were killed in order to remove organs for trafficking. If, rather than trafficking, there were experiments which resulted in ‘inventions’ within the meaning of the term in patent law, would they have had to have been recognised as patentable on the ground that the way in which they were obtained was outside the scope of the technical claim in the patent?
107. Such blinkered thinking cannot result in a solution acceptable to the greatest number.
108. Consequently, even though the claims under the patent did not specify that human embryos are used for the exploitation of the invention, when they actually are, the patentability of such an invention must be excluded.

 In other words, the whole argument can be summarised as follows:


1. A European patent application must be denied if it concerns something in opposition to popularly well-established and widely shared custom or moral views throughout Europe.
2. To approve patent for a procedure that involves or presumes actions similar to the killing of prisoners in former Yugoslavia for the purpose of organ trafficking would be in opposition to popularly well-established and widely shared custom or moral views throughout Europe.
3. The removal of pluripotent cells from embryos involves the destruction of said embryos, and thus of human bodies.
4. THEREFORE: The removal of pluripotent cells from embryos involves an action that is in opposition to popularly well-established and widely shared custom or moral views throughout Europe.

But of course, the conclusion does not follow from the premises. Here is the missing premise needed for such an outcome:

The destruction of the human bodies of embryos is morally similar to the killing of prisoners in former Yugoslavia for the purpose of organ trafficking according to popularly well-established and widely shared custom or moral views throughout Europe.

However, this claim is false, so even if the premise was to be included in the argument, this argument would be unsound. What is more, the judge cannot include this premise on pains of violating his own earlier statement that his argument will not be based on any particular view of the moral status of embryos not shared throughout Europe. Even worse (for the judge), would he to drop that constraint on his own argument and simply make the claim that the destruction of human bodies in the form of embryos is morally similar to the killing of prisoners in former Yugoslavia for the purpose of organ trafficking, he would make a claim that is invalid in European law, since it assumes a particular view of the moral importance of embryos (they are as important as adult human beings) that member states enjoy the right to deny in their own legislation.

So, in conclusion, behind the carefully constructed smokescreen of page after page of trivialities and irrelevancies, the argument made is a textbook of elementary logical, legal professional and scholarly errors. In totality, though, it is even worse: it is a judge that gives the impression of trying to smuggle into European case law the statement that destroying embryos in research or for medical purposes is morally on a par with murdering adult human beings for the purpose of organ trafficking. And this while he is fully aware that this statement contradicts current European law, since he willingly acknowledges the difference between member states as to embryo and stem cell research legislation. The only alternative explanation I can see is that this judge is extremely bad at his job.

In either case, the esteemed position of the judge as Advocate General at the European Court of Justice is less than well deserved. None of this, however, means that I am in favor of the idea of patenting human embryonic stem cell lines. On the contrary – and in part 2, I will present my case for that view through a critical scrutiny of the reactions of stem cell researchers to the judge's proposal.

The New European Political Racism, Pt. 3: From Nationism to Conditionalised Citizenship to Ethnic Cleansing

In the first part of this series, I distinguished the rhetoric of the new racism from its actual ideological core, as it appears from analysing original, concrete and comprehensible policy suggestions. These being mainly about conditions for citizenship, what transpired was that the ideology of the new racism is about, what I called, Nationism; the idea that states have a basic moral reason to make a fundamental moral distinction between people who are born of citizens of this state (or who meet some similar immediate citizenship condition) and other people (who need to perform according to some conditions to attain citizenship). At the same time, the new racism is indeed wielding a lot of classic ethno-racist rhetoric. However, as it turns out, this is only a smokescreen for what is the real deal. This is shown, besides the fact that the rhetoric makes no comprehensible mark on what is actually suggested with regard to policy, by the way in which the new racists immediately back down from the ethno-racist claims as soon as they are being challenged. On this basis, I made the point that one of the reasons for the recent success of the new racism in elections is that the nationist ideology has not been adequately seen, exposed, explained and distinguished from ideas about making a difference between different people with regard to citizenship for purely pragmatic reasons (the latter supporting far less drastic conditions for citizenship for people who do not become immediate citizens). The new racists have been able to triumph simply because of the uncertainty of voters and political opponents on this basic point.

In the second part of the series, I continued to demonstrate that this, what looks as the new racists' best political weapon, is actually also their weakest point. This since the strategy of ducking away from objections to the ethno-racist rhetoric is only smart as long as the nationist ideological core is not clearly visible and thereby provides a sort of political hideout camouflaged as something far less sinister than what it in fact is. When we see it for what it is – nationism – we can also see that the joint political message of the new racism is genuinely paradoxical. Nationism is, as a matter of fact, contradicting ethno-racism, and vice versa.

So, suppose that the nationist ideology is effectively exposed (as it surely will be, eventually). Where will this lead (besides having the new racists loosing votes faster than you can say "citizenship test")? Well, the new racism will then have to face the nationist - ethno-racism paradox head on. Facing a contradiction they will, of course, as Robert Nozick once observed, have the option of remaining inconsistent. That, however, will surely lead to the effective end of this sort of political movement for a long time. Simply put, being openly inconsistent is not a trait being favored by very many people - not even with regard to immigration policy. And I'm sure that the leaders and strategists of the new racism are perfectly aware of this. So, then, what will they do?

Well, besides remaining inconsistent, the only available way of reacting to a contradiction is to reject one of its sides. That is, the new racism will have to purify its message into one that is about nationism, and nothing more than that, or drop the nationist ideological core and wander down the more well-known ethno-racist route.

My suggestion is that an openly nationist political movement with no access to further rhetorical sources will not win the hearts of many voters. This for three reasons. First, nationism, when seen clearly is a basic moral position as reprehensible as the idea thatpeople have a right to treat other people much worse just because they happen to have another hair colour, another birthday date, living on another street, et cetera, compared to oneself. It doesn't help very much here that the new racists perform the universalisation trick and thereby avoid the most obvious objection of being simply arbitrary in singling out themselves, their own group, yard, neighbourhood (or what have you) as enjoying a moral privilege that nobody else does. This was one of the factors that made the racism of the first half of the 20th century unsustainable under any other condition than war (which tends to make us all into infantile 1st person egoists). When universalised, nationism avoids this by acknowledging the same moral privilege to all states visavis their own citizens. But since we are not here talking about favors to citizens based on the need for pragmatic adaption to the condition of a multinational world, but of nationism (see part 1 for more about this) clearly spelled out, I suggest that not many people would be attracted to this evolved version of the new racism. In particular, and this is the second reason, they would understand immediately that nationism actually professes measures that are clearly against the national interest as well as the interests of most citizens! How this is so is developed in part 1 as well. Third, part of the success of the new racism surely has to do with the pull that the ethno-racist rhetoric exerts on some people. Without it, the new racists have lost a significant lever of popular seduction.

So, that seems to leave the ethno-racist route, but with some crucial differences to what used to be possible for the new racist movement to do politically. First, the new racism will not hold up for very long if they try to support ethno-racist policy claims with various alleged pragmatic arguments (as they have been trying to do in their recent rhetoric). Not when they no longer have have a nationist ideological core that nobody else sees clearly to hide behind. This means that, rather than a shallow rhetoric, the ethno-racist claims have to become the new ideological core. What will that imply?

As I explained in part 1, and elaborated further in part 2, ethno-racism as an ideology is about making a fundamental moral difference between people sorted in different groups in terms of some selected socio-cultural signifiers, "muslim" being the latest term of division in a long line. Also this idea can be universalised with regard to ideas regarding conditions for citizenship, effectively stating that every state has a basic moral privilege (not implied by pragmatic necessities in a multinational world, but of value in itself) to award citizenship only to people who belong to the group defined by the socio-cultural signifier selected. This is the origin of the idea of a citizenship test that needs to be passed in order for citizenship to be awarded, as well as the notion of revocable citizenship. Now, as demonstrated in part 1, recent new racist policies of such tests are in fact not ethno-racist but nationist, since people who are born by citizens are not required to take any test or conform to any standard of behavior to attain or keep citizenship. However, it is perfectly possible to modify these sort of policies so that they fit perfectly with an ethno-racist ideological core. The only thing needed is that the ethno-racist conditions of citizenship are applied to all people - also those who are born by citizens.

In other words, the ethno-racist ideological turn will force the new racism (at pains of being caught in another paradox) to advocate the idea of conditionalised citizenship all across the board. No one, born in the country or immigrant, can become a citizen unless they are demonstrated to conform to some sort of socio-cultural standard. Moreover, even if they do so and are awarded citizenship, they can be stripped of it if demonstrated to depart significantly from this same standard. This, of course, is the same cluster of ideas where we find the notion of more or less enforced repatriation programmes and, of course, ultimately, ethnic cleansing. Luckily, not many people will be attracted by such suggestions, unless we have a socio-economic meltdown of the sort occurring in continental Europe during the 1930's and a subsequent period of serious violent conflict. Hitler, in his way, understood this perfectly - thus, the gradually sharpened provocations to boost the emerging chaos of Germany.

This is where I end my attempt to understand the ideology of the new European political racism and its role in current, as well as forthcoming, politics. Hopefully, by reading this blog or by just thinking for themselves, political parties and people in general will soon pick up on the trick I tried to expose in part 1 and see what measures are needed to have the new racism caught with its pants down rather soon. This means that the sort of critical reflections on the prejudices residing within the shallow ethno-racist rhetoric so popular among anti-racist, liberal or left-leaning intellectuals are, perhaps not bad or unnecessary, but of secondary priority. Some new topics, such as the crucial difference between nationism and pragmatic accommodations to a multinational world, need to be addressed and some new tactics need to be developed on the basis of that. Godspeed!

The New European Political Racism, Pt. 2: The Nationism - Ethno-racism Paradox

In the first post of this series, I argued that – rhetoric suggesting the contrary notwithstanding – the ideological core of the new European political racism is actually about neither race biology, nor ethno-racism (or -centrism). Instead, it is about what I called Nationism; roghly, the idea that there is of some value in itself for a nation state to apply lower standards of treatment to people who are not born by citizens of this state (or who do not meet some similar condition for immediate citizenship, ICC). I contrasted this idea with the notion of applying such lower standards for pragmatic reasons connected to the fact that the world happens to be organised into a multitude of nation states, and held out the lack of understanding of the difference between this latter idea and the nationist one as a crucial factor for explaining the recent success of the new racism.

Now, even if I am right about this analysis, it would be foolish to think that such an explanation is to be found only in the ideology of the new racism and the inability of people and other political parties to spot it in time. For sure, the rhetoric employed by the new racists also plays a part. In the first post, I described how this rhetoric wields familiar ethno-racist elements, where socio-cultural signifiers (such as language, clothing, traditions, mores) are allegedly associated with features that many people would indeed find to be reasons for less favorable treatment (criminality, cruelty to others, general antiociality, blameworthy costliness for society, and so on). Moreover, I pointed to how the introduction of the nationist ideology actually has helped this rhetoric to function more effectively: whenever an alleged link between a socio-cultural signifier (e.g. "muslim" or "gypsy") and some feature held to be morally important is questioned – factually or morally – the new racist campaigner can simply drop it and retreat into the nationist position. This since the latter is, as a matter of fact, not dependent on any ethno-racist arguments or assumptions, neither factually, nor morally. So, summing up, while nationism is the ideological core of the new racism, its success is best explained by the combination of (1) an initial rhetoric making use of classic ethno-racism, and (2) an ideological core of pure nationism and political suggestions built on that.

What I want to point to now is that this combination, while indeed helping to explain the recent success of the new racism, is in fact also its Achilles' heel. For hidden inside this seemingly clever politico-tactical set-up lurks a bona fide paradox. This paradox, I suggest, is what must be exposed in a serious and convincing way by politicians, journalists and others, for the electoral support of the new racism to start to falter.

This is the paradox:

The ethno-racist rhetoric is about the idea that national states should apply lower standards of treatment to people who don't sufficiently conform to a "national culture". This is not to be confused with the idea that a nation is permitted to enforce its own laws - culture is not the same as actual single behaviors or actions, culture is composed by things like languages, worldviews, traditions and mores). Applied to the issue of what conditions for citizenship to apply (a favorite issue of the new racists), this idea implies that it should be more difficult to be awarded citizenship of a country, the more a person deviates from this country's (supposed) national culture or "identity". In contrast, the nationist ideology pays no attention to cultural belonging or identity. Its sole center of value is the distinction between those who are born by (or connected by lineage to) people who are already citizens of a country and those who are not. Applied to the issue of conditions for awarding citizenship this means that people who are born by citizens receive immediate citizenship (what I called the ICC), while people who are not need to perform according to additional requirements (what I called ACC) in order to be awarded citizenship. Now, as briefly pointed out in that context, the nationist idea implies no ideas whatsoever about the citizens of a country conforming to any particular culture or having a certain "national identity". Quite the contrary! By the awarding of citizenship via ICC, the nationist model leaves the country wide open to limitless cultural variation among citizens. In addition, people who do not meet ICC, but who indeed have the sort of national culture or identity that is valued by the ethno-racist are met by extra difficulties should they desire to receive citizenship. In short, nationism is open to awarding citizenship to exactly such people that ethno-racists want to deny citizenship to, and is open for impeding citizenship for exactly such people that ethno-racism want to award citizenship. Thus, ethno-racism and nationism are not only different, they are incompatible and, in combination, inconsistent.

This incompatibility or inconsistency appears just as clearly if we instead proceeds from a basis where the ethno-racist position is the starting point. From this point of view, then, only people who can demonstrate (sufficient) conformity to a national culture or possession of a national identity are to be awarded citizenship. That is, the fact that you are born by (or can demonstrate lineage to) a citizen is of no concern whatsoever. On the contrary, regardless of your heritage or where you come from, if you meet the ethno-racist culture/identity condition, citizenship is within reach. In other words, the ethno-racist citizenship idea will both block citizenship for people who, according to nationism, should receive automatic citizenship, and award citizenship to people, who nationism would want to impede from receiving citizenship.

Thus, combining the ethno-racist idea with nationism leads to a paradox. The message is that some people both should and should not be awarded or impeded from receiving citizenship. This paradox is built into the totality of the ideas conveyed by the new racist political movement. If the rhetoric and the ideological core is taken together, the result is a state of deepest confusion. Exposing this confusion, I suggest, is a powerful political and rhetorical weapon.

This leaves the question what wielding that weapon will result in. Hopefully and presumably, weakened electoral support of the new racism, of course – after all, voters are as a rule not prone to subscribing to obviously idiotic ideas. But where will that move the racists – those who have been engaged in these sort of parties or movements for decades? That will be the subject of the third, and last, posting in this series.