Here in Finland the majority (53%) would either want to limit the number of refugees to the level that is now or to stop altogether accepting any new refugees. The majority also favours that the refugees would get a lower social security and welfare status at least for the time being before accepted. The number of foreigners or people with foreign background living in Finland is a whopping 5,5% of the population, 300 000 people. The amount of refugee applicants (is that the proper term?) is as high as in 1990, estimated to be a staggering 6 000 this year.

The Media is as sensationalist as ever and try to milk everything from the events. Unfortunately this kind of reporting creates hysteria (like an incredible estimate of 200 000 refugees pouring into the 5+ million country of ours, or that "Troops are stationed on the Swedish Border" when the police at the Swedish border asks help from the military to put a small detachment of conscripts to act as guides in the refugee center). As the Media has understood that the majority take a negative view, the tones in the media and the Opeds have become critical and opposing of the refugee income. The Prime Ministers announcement that he would offer his vacant home (as he now lives in the Capital) for the refugees was a one day story (that got much positive coverage). The Media also finally understood that the influx of Iraqi asylum seekers from Sweden to Finland happens because Sweden can transfer back Iraqis to Iraq, Finland cannot as it doesn't have such an agreement with Iraq.

Some individual attacks have happened against the centers. In a positive move one leading newspaper put dozens of ordinary WW2 veterans to condem the violence and plead for people to restrain from violence and hatred. A smart move as the veterans are very respected and it's extremely important that patriotism and patriotic discourse isn't taken over by the right-wing extremists. Now the media is reporting that the inflow is decreasing, which lowers the level of the hysteria.

Here luckily the anti-immigration party, the True Finns party, are in the administration. Thank God, actually. Their supporters have finally gotten them into the administration and hence they have no desire to immediately resign from the administration (hence the Greek deal went through, of course, and so is this refugee crisis). This naturally tones down the political rhetoric because the parties that would be the most pro-immigration are in the opposition (the greens, the leftists) and the one that would ride on this issue has to handle the issue.

If it was other, and some social democrat or green party female politician would be acting as the interior minister, it would be extremely ugly.

(Btw. here we are being told that the Dutch are aghast by the Syrian men coming into the Netherlands with underaged wives.)

This makes me think that a good amount of people does not care about facts (and their interpretation), they just want to stick to their prejudice. — Πετροκότσυφας

This is something that has happened because of the way social media and the internet works. You find yourself easily with like minded people going over the same discourse and typically venting your anger on a stereotypical and unrealistic image of those who have an "opposing" view. The discourse that prevails is the stupid "either totally for or totally against" juxtaposition.

For what it's worth, I just had a detailed conversation with a good friend of mine who lives on the Austrian/Slovenian and works with the OSCE.

Yesterday, the Slovenian authority were recently confronted with over 300,000 refugees and have organized buses and 'dumped' many of them on the Austrian boarder.

Now I understand Slovenian reaction. This was as if your population increased by 15% in a matter of a few days. They just cannot handle it.

Indeed the refugees are trying to get away from a bad situation, but here was, well... mass stupidity in action.

Since no one was ready or honestly could have been ready for this Tsunami, the condition the refugees are confronted with are not really that favorable. Instead of being somewhat relieved at getting into Europe, the refugees started a mass protest and set the tents the Slovenians provided in a pinch on fire.

OK...

This is like complaining about bad room service in a hotel and making a protest in taking a big shit in your bed, but then realizing that you now have to sleep in a shit bed.

This sort of 'set off' the locals in Slovenian and the government officials decided that the only way to 'solve the problem' quickly was to ship them off to Austria and other lands.

It gets even better.

The buses loaded with refugees arrive at a board town (population of about 977) with over 8000 refugees. The board control there is really not that active and never has been. They have the ability to process maybe 4 to 6 refugees daily. Seriously... this is a road less traveled than many people's driveways.

OK...

... the authorities set up what they could... guess what? Tents!

Needless to say, this pissed off the refugees, as this was a 'bad situation' just before in Slovenia and now upon arriving at the Austrian boarder, they had the same situation, except that it was about 8°C colder and raining. Also, it is Austrian law that all refugees must be processed. Like it or not, one needs some sort of control as well as 'firewall of safety'.

Great...

... so now we have tents again, bad weather and a longer processing time to get anything done.

Some idiot put out the rumor that the German board to Austria was only a few kilometers away.

Well, it is only about 250 km and you'd have to walk over the Alps to get there, but this ain't the 'Sound of Music'. This would take about 56 hours of non-stop walking.

Anyway...

... the result of this was a mass crowd of over 3000 refugees deciding to simply walk across Austria to Germany. Seriously!

The authorities went into panic mode as it was only 45 minutes until the sunset and it was supposed to be anywhere from 2 to -8° C last night. They'd die plain and simple.

They did manage to get nearly everyone back, but some of them just would not stop and the authorities are still searching at this moment for people in the hope that they survived the night.

This is far from over. My wife is in the OSCE today and will try to get me an update.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

How do people in Austria react?

This issue has polarized the Austrians.

On one side they have a lot of sympathy and are trying to help. I cannot be too sure how much of this is all that sincere as most of the refugees as just passing through and want to go to either Germany or Sweden. (Odd with Germany, as they have more paperwork and refugee hatred than in Austria, but hey... it's not my choice).

On the other hand, our hardcore conservative party... hell... call them what they are... the Nazi party... has made great gains on the back of this fear associated with the refugees. The city of Vienna has a vice-Mayor now who's father was a convicted Nazi and this guy has attended many neo-Nazi like organizations as a keynote speaker, but as our liberal society allows freedom of speech as long as it doesn't deny the holocaust, we are stuck with this guy.

Anyway...

This political party (the FPÖ) has managed to make people in Vienna think that the City of Vienna is somehow responsible for the refugee crisis... easy to fool the fearful and lazy, eh... and thus made huge gains in political status. Fear that all of these refugees are (many) better qualified workers and will take away our jobs and 'Islamify' everything.

The people here did the same protest the refugees did in burning the tents. They voted for this FPÖ as a protest against the ruling parties, as if they had any real direct say in the matters of the crisis, and basically decided to 'shit in their own bed' and now have to sleep in a shit bed.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I borrowed the 'shited bed' idea from Stewart Lee...




... it was very funny, but now it's a bit too prophetic.

________________________________________________

Personally I have tried to help out with what little I can, but at the moment the problem seems to be far larger than any plan can cover at the moment.

To stop the flood, one needs to turn off the tap. Until that happens we have to try to find enough containers for all the fluid gushing out... problem is at some point or another many containers are either overfilled or unattractive, but one needs to realize that just finding containers is not an answer to the problem. The problem is the tap and not the flood it has caused.

Meow!

GREG

This is the real problem...

... this number is the total of refugees that have collectively attempted to reach the boarder there in Slovenia recently, as in the last few months.

No one is really going to have official numbers in newspapers...

... remember when you read such an article as this below indicating that only 2500 refugees can be processed a day, this does not indicate how many refugees are there waiting, have arrive just now, about to arrive or will be there within the next day or two. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/10/151019052823464.html

Think about it...

2500 a day is 25,000 in 10 days and this with people waiting for weeks and even months to be processed. Oh... and this is just a single station that processes refugees.

300,000 is not really unrealistic or off the mark. (personally, I think it is an underestimation)

Estimations within the OSCE human trafficing section are in the 7 figures at the moment. It's as if the entire city of Vienna took what they could manage to carry and walked away.

Meow!

GREG

This is a source that is, well... not as up to date as it seems... as these are the number of refugees processed. It takes weeks to get those numbers updated.

http://migration.iom.int/europe/

When these countries cannot process them (or simply get fed up with processing them or cannot afford to process them any more), they simply 'push them forward' to the next location for processing.

Slovenia has basically been 'dumped on' by both Croatia and Serbia, as they have reached their processing maximums and now Slovenia is 'dumping on' Austria... along with Hungary, where recently police there guarding a border location to Austria simply walked away and left it uncontrolled allowing the flow to keep on flowing. (as sad as this is, essentially tossing the garbage over the fence into the neighbors yard... believe me, I'm not suggesting they are garbage, but this was the tactic employed).

Remember, these are simply people working at borders and not holders of PhDs in Philosophy.

Truth is... no one knows the real numbers, as to know those numbers they have to be processed. Most of them are yet to be processed; thus the frustration and the loss of patience making refugees take matters into their own hand.

The media paints the situation as horrid, but honestly it's a massive underestimation of the real problems.

Meow!

GREG

I used to think that such numbers were absurd, but this year I've been to both Nickelsdorf (7 times) and Spielfeld (5 times) to help out. Also, I work directly with situation in Traiskirchen (it's next to a baseball field I play at often)...

It's mind blowing!

Politics is in this day and age run nearly exclusively upon fear and this just plays into the hands of those who profit most from such fears. It is also a day and age of 'pass the blame' as well as 'pass the responsibility'.

On thing that is quite often lost in the matter is that no government, in spite of all the tell tell signs and knowledge of what is going on in the lands where these people have fled, had the foresight to set up any provisions or have an 'if it happens' plan.

Honestly, I really feel for the refugees, but why are they refugees?

Who put the people into the positions of power to make them flee?

I often wonder if we are not indeed self-willing victims of prefered cults of personality?

Anyway...

Nearly none of them wanted to leave and become refugees, but they more or less had too... be it for political, religious or economic reasons, but there was (in their eyes) no other choice.

There is now more and more the confusion that dealing with the refugee flood is the problem, where indeed it is just a symptom. I really fail to see where any government, be it individual governments, the EU or even opposition has really made any comment that would deal with the actual cause for this symptom.

The result of confusing the symptom as being the cause has make hyper nationalistic spin win the upper hand with the fearful and uninformed. My fear is that this might indeed result in an even larger problem than the current issues of dealing with immigration /refugees. Personally, I've grown very weary of a 'blame the government' for people who have individual bias, fears and found those upon ignorance blindly following a cult of personality rather than taking responsibility to think things through for themselves.

I'm starting to rant now...

... I need to get some work done. (the local authorities are trying to track down the where abouts of some 200 to 300 refugees that simply walked away from the processing station last night... it was freezing cold last night and they might not have survived... seems I'm leaving the house in about 30 minutes. It's not nobel. It's not political. It's just common sense.)

Meow!

GREG

Immigration is always a scary proposition because it upsets the democratic balance, especially when the immigrants have differing ideologies. The response from the current residents is usually aimed at preserving that balance, either through limiting the immigration or enforcing some sort of assimilation mechanism, like language, dress, or behavior enforcement. There's no question that each side misstates the consequences, with one side screaming the world is coming to an end and the other side screaming it's just racism. The truth is that the significance of the immigration will depend upon the actual number and how prevalent they'll be in the specific area where you live. There's no question that concentrated areas of immigrants have changed the socioeconomic and political structure of certain areas, leading to migrations within the country.

If you are the US, with a population exceeding 100 million where mobility is fairly easy, and a history of immigration since its founding, it might be easier to deal with than in smaller, more homogenous countries.

A significant part of the OP relates to the overstatement of the number of refugees, which seems to tacitly accept the fact that the raw number of immigrants is relevant in terms of maintaining a certain way of life. That is, it concedes (at least to some extent) that immigrants are bad, but then offers consolation by saying that the nation is big enough to absorb it, so stop worrying.

Let's simply admit that not all immigrants offer something positive for a nation and that a nation is not being racist or nationalistic when it protects its borders. A basic tenant of being a sovereign nation is that it be able to protect its borders. There is no reason to be apologetic about that as long as the prosperity of the nation is truly being considered, as opposed to simply eliminating people based upon ethnicity or another irrelevant consideration.

The Netherlands, for example, is more prosperous, more fair, more progressive, and more enlightened than pre-ISIS Syria, and it has every reason not to want many of those Syrian values carried over by the immigrants made part of the fabric of the Netherlands. That's not racist or nationalistic. That's just trying to protect the good thing you have. You will control the fears of the current residents by accepting that some of their concerns are valid and offering them assurance (through the passage of laws if necessary) that they and their children will be able to continue to live in the same comfortable, safe environment. Telling them that they're over-reacting will only identify you as a political opponent who they will feel motivated to weaken in the next political election.

I thought this thread was about us philosopher migrants :-}

Which is to ignore my post and the question of the OP entirely, which is how to handle the crisis. So, let us tell the Dutch that there is a critical difference between an immigrant and a refugee; therefore all their concerns about maintaining their way of life don't apply, and offering consolation about the minimal numbers is unnecessary. Yes, they are ethically bound. Just tell them that and all will be well and there won't be any political opposition because even if the nation is overrun and forever negatively changed, ethics demanded the acceptance of the refugees.

That's all fine and dandy, Hanover. I won't comment on the Enlightened Dutch and all that. I'll just say that your post is irrelevant. Syrians are refugees, not immigrants. — Πετροκότσυφας

You mean they aren't migrant workers? I think "refugee" will be a type of "immigrant" unless some measure is taken to isolate them. Is the EU building an Israeli style refugee camp?

Honestly, I really feel for the refugees, but why are they refugees?

Who put the people into the positions of power to make them flee? — Mayor of Simpleton

The answer is very simple and logical when you think about it and is described with the words of Tacitus: atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. And where they make a desert, they call it peace.

Turning large groups of people into refugees is a well proven military tactic. It even can be a strategy. And the tactic is well known even from ancient times as is obvious from the words of Tacitus. It's a proven strategy in fighting insurgencies and in guerilla warfare. Guerillas just as any army need supplies and have a logistical tail just like an ordinary army. The local population is the source of those supplies, which are given either voluntary or involuntary. Now, if you eradicate the people from a region, either you put them into concentration camps as the British did with the Boers or the Italians with the Libyans, or kill them, both not so great ideas in modern times, you make it difficult for the insurgents to operate. And now just making them refugees is something that won't be so badly looked upon as concentration camps or genocide. The millions of Afghans that are in exile and now the 4 million (or so) refugees from Syria haven't all just voluntary escaped the war because war isn't nice, but have been deliberately forced to flee. Spreading anti-personnel mines to agricultural fields does the trick in rural areas. Afghanistan, Cambodia and many wartorn countries show this.

And back to the current topic. I wonder why it is so difficult to link the fact that Russia has joined the fight in Syria and hence boosted the warfighting capabilities of the Assad regime, which now has been on the offensive. And naturally getting the Sunni majority to become refugees is a wellcome thing for the minority rule. That then puts Turkey in an difficult position, and then one way to do it is to just for the officials to turn their back and let the refugees try for Europe. Or then (likely) it simply has become uncontrollable.

(Top of the line Russian SU-34 fighterbomber in Syria, reason why Assad is now on the offense)


Same with Afghanistan. Just a while ago the Taleban captured and held a provincial capital, Kunduz. Something that never has happened during the war that the US started. Well, basically you have the whole of Middle East has exploded: there are only two countries, Oman and Tunisia, that either aren't in war or intervening the troops or aircraft in another country.

How it works, example Afghanistan:

Syrians (and not just them) are fleeing from war and persecution. They didn’t wake up and said let’s hike to Turkey, swim in the Aegean, sleep rough, be bullied by armed forces, probably die along the road, so that we can be laborers in Europe — Πετροκότσυφας

Right. I realize they aren't migrant workers. It may be a matter of semantics. A fair number of Americans are descended from immigrants who were also refugees. A refugee is not an immigrant if he or she has no intention of settling down. Maybe Europeans define the words differently.

Of course, I didn't say anything about Syrian refugees not wanting to settle down. Here, you might find these more helpful. Refugee, Migrant — Πετροκότσυφας

Right. An immigrant can start out as either one. Some of these refugees have no intention of returning. ISIS destroyed their communities. So those people would be immigrants.

The rise of right wing politics ,in seemingly civilized European countries, is troubling.

Here in Canada we just elected a liberal government ,who are promising to significantly increase the number of syrian refugees we take in, in a landslide and booted out a party that was extremely xenophobic. I can't figure out why our populations would react in such different ways.

Syrians (and not just them) are fleeing from war and persecution. They didn’t wake up and said let’s hike to Turkey, swim in the Aegean, sleep rough, be bullied by armed forces, probably die along the road, so that we can be laborers in Europe where far-right has never been as strong as today since the 30s. Also, the status and the treatment of the refugee is not the same as to that of the immigrant according to international law, so it's not a peripheral issue. It is the central issue and if it's not resolved there can be no treatment.

As to the demographic threat, Europe has a population of 740 million. Refugees thus far are how many? 400,000? — Πετροκότσυφας

I don't know why the immigrants/refugees should be excessively bothered by 'far right' politics. Middle East politics make even the 'far right' parties of Europe look libertarian by comparison. The "migragees" aren't bringing any sort of liberal, democratic political traditions with them. the political habits they were born into doesn't make them bad people, but it doesn't recommend them as highly desirable permanent members of democratic societies either.

Europe has 740 million people, but the distribution of middle-eastern migragees is going to be nothing like even. Ten million Mexicans might not be a lot of migragees in the US either, if they were evenly distributed, but they are not. (And a lot of the migragees here didn't get processed when they arrived, either. They just walked in and made themselves at home.)

Foresightedness would be a good idea. The world is going to see more and more spontaneous and all-round unwelcome movement of populations across borders as climate causes insurmountable negative change, and as wars and economic adversity disrupt life. Plans are needed. For instance, how are India and Burma going to cope with Bangladeshis who will eventually be flooded out of their low-lying lands? Planning should begin when there is time to plan carefully, but prudent foresight is not generally our species' specialty.

Generous, joyous, and open handed acceptance of waves of people arriving on one's doorstep (for an unknown duration of residence) isn't characteristic of our species either. It isn't that we never do, or can't, but it isn't reasonable to expect it to happen just because some people think that's what we should do. Foresight and planning will mean that migragees will hear "yes" sometimes and "no" at other times.

Btw, MOS, we do agree that that’s the symptom and not the problem. We probably don’t agree on the specifics of the problem, I guess. — Πετροκότσυφας

This is probably the case.

I need a bit of time to settle my brain after yesterday.

We (the group that I work with in Traiskirchen) only dealt directly with ca. 400 of the refugees yesterday of the ca. 5000 and I was relieved this morning just as another ca. 6000 - 8000 new ones arrived. Another 14000 are expected over the weekend and possibly over 50000 over the next 10 days. Truth is, there is only space to deal with maybe 3000, so this situation is beyond any realistic controls.

Most of the refugees cannot seem to think clearly anymore, due to physical and mental exhaustion. The efforts to explain why they need to be processed is difficult to explain. Most come from a country or a culture that has no understanding of the how's and whys of this concept of processing. Add to this mix various bad experience with police and military... these are the people who have to do crowd control for the sake of public safety (both local and refugee public)... I think you get the picture.

On top of this, I found myself speaking with many official, both police and military and had to make effort to get them to see that this is not an invasion... truth is... it looks like one, but really isn't.

They, for the most part, have been far too close to the situation for too long to see that they are dealing with a symptom.

Anyway...

... everyone, refugees, processors, police and military are trying to be patient. The problem is it is not really stopping and seems to be snowballing more and more.

I feel on thing that is lost in this debate is the reality for individuals vs. the political/theoretical concepts and models.

Anyway...

... I'm going back on Monday. We have to take atleast 2 days off before we are allowed to help again. Burn out is really something that has to be taken into consideration and fortunately is being taking into consideration.

There is now talk of building a physical border around Europe by many politicians. I need to look into what that entails, but it somehow sounds more like panic than realistic policy.

WOW!

Meow!

GREG

edit: for what this is worth, the majority of the refugees yesterday were not from Syria, but from Eritrea.

Officially the Eritreans are not considered refugees. This is messy, but public opinions about Eritrea vs. Syria might matter here too.

Any country that participated or supported the destruction of that region of the world in 2003 should be accepting these refugees with open arms and pockets. They should be given automatic entry, access to public housing, support in finding a job and social assistance until they can find a job.

A portion of this reply has been posted on The Philosophy Forum Facebook page. Congratulations and Thank you for your contribution!

Thanks Tiff... all I need now is a Facebook account.

Please quote some of the other people here... I'm not really that good at this sort of philosophy thing.

Meow!

GREG

I always make mention to the poster (you) in the event that you do not wish to be cited. I would like to use the words to spur the conversation and your first hand experience in this topic is oh so relevant. What I wrote was the following.
On "Refugees'
Mayor of Simpleton wrote "On top of this, I found myself speaking with many official, both police and military and had to make effort to get them to see that this is not an invasion... truth is... it looks like one, but really isn't.
They, for the most part, have been far too close to the situation for too long to see that they are dealing with a symptom."
and then linked it back to here. It has a chain reaction but I can delete your name and use your words as a "TPF member" said or I can delete it all together, your call.
And that goes for anyone that I quote, if you don't want the credit, please let me know. Feel free to message me at anytime~
Tiffers

If you think anything I ever say has enough merit, feel free to let my rants go public.

I just feel I'm more qualified as a comedian than I'm qualified as a philosopher.

Please... no one comment on that.

I'm not digging to attention or compliments. I just know my limits and find myself in terms of philosophy mediocre at best. We have some really good people here. That's why I like to be here... to learn.

So, enough lying on the couch with Freud...

... back to the topic at hand.

Meow!

GREG

Then I shall keep it as is. ;)

Great to have actual reports from a PF member on this, especially Mayor, but also others.

To my mind comes the idea that refugees and basically everyone understand that sooner or later Europe will close it's borders, and this drives people to try to get in more desperately.





I also remember a far more smaller emigration wave happen years ago in Italy. Then it was the Albanians. One Albanian woman described it with people just running passed her and saying that "the border is open" meaning that the Albanian police wasn't checking people anymore and right from there she joined masses to embark on ships going into Italy. I remember how that ended. With TV coverage of Italian riot police fighting with the angry Albanian men. Now, if the image is that if you try to go into some country there will be the riot police with dogs to beat the shit out of you, then that stops.

I fear that it's going to be something similar in this case, sooner or later. Or it's happening now, only slowly starting...





Here's a great interactive map about the asylum seekers in European countries... time and quantity well shown:

http://www.lucify.com/the-flow-towards-europe/

That many people suddenly moving around is bound to invite problems.
At least it's not exclusively horror stories.
Here are some tired, thirsty, worn out refugees, having made it to Northern Europe, traveling through Denmark on foot, most bound for Sweden.
Some even have infants with them.

Link to some photos (TV2, Danish News Station)

The amount of people having been displaced swiftly by ISIS is staggering.
I saw some reports a while back that we're talking in the range of 200,000 children alone.
But, the Danish right wing is on the move much like other places, regardless of the friendly police officer in the photo below.

This is just commentary... nothing more.

I ended up sick today and couldn't make it out the the border today. It was my last day of work.

One thing I can say...

... I rarely saw much Police violence and the Austrian Police have not really the best track record in that regard.

Most of what I saw was crowd control that was met with resistance only a handful of physically and emotionally exhausted refugees. The Police were not what I would consider violent. They were involved physically in breaking up fights due to frustrations among refugees trying to get at the from of the line.

My current concerns are more of the fallout this has had upon Austrian residents. The spin and buzz by the media was not slanted in too much of a negative way regarding the refugees, but what the people in general speak of is how disorderly the refugees are acting and how much trash they are leaving behind them.

Truth is...

Austria is just a transfer land. The refugees that crossed the border were somewhere around 58,000 in the past week, yet I think it was less than 200 who applied for asylum here in Austria.

Something tells me knowing that they are not staying here for good makes it easier for the Austrian to be somewhat pleasant. I really wonder what they'd say if most intended to stay.

I know that the Austrian seem to be an open and helpful folk, but I'm not too sold that they really are that indeed.

Sometime I forget that I am an immigrant as well, but I can honestly say I do not feel like I'm Austrian in spite of my 22+ years of living here. My neighbors are for the most part fine with me, but I am certainly not considered Austrian. It's clear to me that I'll never be Austrian. I'm no longer American either.

Truth is...

... I'm no longer from anywhere.

I suppose I could say it's a permanent vacation, but there is far too much that has not been a vacation.

I wonder just how many people out there think the refugees are migrant workers or on a vacation?

I would not be surprised if the number of those who believed that to be the case was a large one.

I suppose this is just one of my cynical days...

Meow!

GREG.

I can honestly say I do not feel like I'm Austrian in spite of my 22+ years of living here. My neighbors are for the most part fine with me, but I am certainly not considered Austrian. It's clear to me that I'll never be Austrian. I'm no longer American either.

Truth is...

... I'm no longer from anywhere. — Mayor of Simpleton

The truth is that a huge number of people in Europe feel that way. The truth is that the national identity that is created to wellcome people and take in emigrants like in the US or even in Canada, the identity that accepts that one can become an American, simply isn't the case in many parts of Europe. Sad truth is that a common European Identity hasn't been created and it has just been assumed that economic growth and the bureaucrats can change things. And at worst the actually very important national identity has been forgotten, has been pushed aside as some "dangerous nationalistic idea" and then it's left to the right-wing extremists to abuse it.

This is the Achilles Heel here. Now if you as an American been there for two decades don't feel Austrian, when do you think a young Iraqi Muslim man will feel Austrian? Europe tells in many ways to incoming people that this isn't their society and they are outsiders.