Of course, Dr.Daniel Pipes noticed the author's intention. He let us know on 2 September 2016. (Lily)
The Economist（http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21706252-visits-europes-nastiest-spots-are-becoming-popular-magical-misery-tour）
“Charlemagne” column
Magical misery tour
Visits to Europe’s nastiest spots are becoming popular
Sep 3rd 2016
by Emma Hogan
WITH its high unemployment, pervasive crime and rows of empty shops, the Belgian town of Charleroi is a “musée de la globalisation”, quips Nico Buissart, with something approaching pride. The former art student has run tours of his town, which was once voted the ugliest place in Europe, since 2009; he now conducts two or three a week. When Charlemagne took the tour, the hulking Mr Buissart led the group down concrete paths littered with scrap metal and defaced by graffiti, under the shadow of looming steelworks, through waist-high weeds and up an enormous slag heap to take in the view of old factories and piles of waste from industries that have mostly moved elsewhere.
Eccentric souls have long enjoyed exploring miserable bits of the continent. Valencia boasts a guided tour of the numerous big-ticket construction projects, some of them abandoned, launched by its corrupt politicians. In eastern Europe, fans of Soviet architecture regularly trek to long-forgotten places to uncover hidden brutalist gems. An alternative German guide to Berlin suggests spurning the Tiergarten and the Brandenburg Gate in favour of the hideous Schwerbelastungskörper, a cylinder of concrete laid down by Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler’s architect, which is so gargantuan that it cannot be moved.
Lately, such tours of urban dysfunction have become popular for new reasons. With terrorism and the alleged failures of globalisation and multiculturalism dominating many countries’ political discussions, more and more people are keen to see the benighted European places where these disasters are supposedly unfolding. Unemployment, segregation and terrorist attacks may not be the sort of thing that local politicians want their towns to be known for, but they create a brand that can serve as the basis of a small, perverse tourism industry.
In Molenbeek, a poor part of Brussels where at least two of the terrorists involved in the Paris attacks last November lived (and where Salah Abdeslam, the surviving suspect, was captured), guided tours used to run around five times a year. Since the attacks there have been 50, says Anne Brumagne, who works for the association that sets up tours throughout the capital. In late September Daniel Pipes, an American critic of Islamism, will take a group to Berlin, Paris and Stockholm to look at what he terms the “new Europe”. A highlight of the trip, he says, will be so-called “no-go zones”: places which, because of their large Muslim populations or high crime rates, are believed by anxious outsiders to be inaccessible to non-Muslims or the police.
In many ways such tours are a good thing. People who know Molenbeek only from news accounts assume it is “a hellhole”, complains Ms Brumagne. After visiting, they are surprised at how lively it is. In April a big modern-art gallery opened there (though its opening was delayed by the terrorist attacks in Brussels in March). Community centres, gardens and social projects have sprung up, aided by an enterprising first-term mayor. In general, no-go zone designations are ridiculed by those who know the areas in question. A pundit on America’s Fox News went so far as to claim that Birmingham, Britain’s second-biggest city, was one. (He later apologised. The murder rate in Birmingham, England is less than 1/20th that in Birmingham, Alabama.) Visits by non-Muslim tourists help demonstrate that the down-at-heel parts of Europe are not wastelands or outposts of Islamic State.
Nonetheless, the strange appeal of such areas hints at the magnitude of the problem facing European politicians. Many of the Belgians on the Molenbeek tour are seeing a side of their country they have never experienced before. Neighbourhoods where the signs are in Arabic, Moroccan men lounge outside tea rooms and women shop in headscarves may not actually be forbidden to them, as the term no-go zones suggests. But the fact that they find such places exotic shows how segregated their society is.
This failure to integrate is a big problem. After a year of terrorist attacks and an unprecedented influx of refugees from the Middle East, Europeans are worried about immigration as never before. According to Ipsos MORI, a pollster, Europeans are among the most likely people in the world to doubt that refugees can integrate, and they hold some of the most negative views of immigrants. Fully 65% of Italians, 60% of Belgians and 57% of French people think there are too many immigrants in their country. While over a third of Americans and Britons think that immigration has had an overall positive impact on their countries, a measly 11% of Belgians and French do.
Segregation today, segregation for ever?
Europe’s urban divides are in some ways more subtle than those in America. When Americans think of dysfunctional places they imagine cities like Detroit, where large areas are literally in ruins, says Mr Pipes. “It’s quite surprising that places like Molenbeek are pleasant-looking,” he admits. Yet this can make some issues harder to tackle. Molenbeek is linked to nearly every recent terrorist plot in France and Belgium; Salah Abdeslam lived just around the corner from its police station. The neighbourhood’s density, social life and complex informal economy may have made it harder to track him down. Jan Jambon, Belgium’s interior minister, wants to ramp up security forces in the district. That might help law enforcement, but it will not tackle the aspects of poverty that contribute to radicalisation: poor education, unemployment, lack of adequate housing—and social segregation.
By bringing public attention to problem areas, urban-dysfunction tours may help nudge the political system to address such issues. Then again, politicians may simply learn to celebrate the mess. When Mr Buissart first started his tours, local politicians in Charleroi complained that he was too negative, he says. Now the city’s website advertises jogging events through its industrial landscape and bicycling tours along disused railway tracks. Misery has officially become a marketing opportunity.
・Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelt the name of Belgium's interior minister. This has been corrected.
(comments)
・abu tayyiSep 7th, 23:55
Daniel Pipes, the "tour guide" mentioned in the piece, is of course a major supporter of militant zionism. Chances are he is not pointing out to tour-goers that militant zionism, "jewhadism" to some, has helped unsettle the mideast for decades and had a major role in promoting jihadism vs the US. His ulterior motive with these tours, naturally, is to horrify Americans so they will oppose Muslim immigration into the States -- Imagine what a Muslim minority might do to upset the gravy train that the US guv'mint provides Pipes's zionists.
・guest-oselwmsSep 6th, 13:28
The reason why Brits and Americans are more in favour of immigration than Italians or French is because the people that emigrate to these countries are different. In Britain an America you get high-skilled workers, la creme de la creme who immigrate from other countries. Italy and France get the poor people who arrive from overseas who can't speak the language. So the authors' comparison of how much the people in these countries are in favour of immigration is rather simplistic
・abu tayyiin reply to guest-oselwmsSep 8th, 16:25
@guest-ose: You are kidding, of course. What we get a good deal of in the US is the result of pressure from groups already here and mostly Demos: campesinos fm south of the border, rough types fm Africa. Fewer mideastern Muslims and Christians, of course, in part due to pressure from another group already here.
・guest-ajmsajwaSep 6th, 08:24
Go to a hospital, or go after dark, if you think urban slum districts in Europe are surprisingly pleasant. Or visit the jungle in Calais. Anybody dares?
・So26XdG3xXSep 5th, 11:58
"People [...] assume it is 'a hellhole' [...] After visiting, they are surprised at how lively it is"
But perhaps a sensationalistically named 'hellhole' is not defined by the kind of street-view decay instantly obvious to anyone, or to a constant presence of physical threat like in a horror movie.
It might be a question of life quality when you're being stuck in the middle of it: how safe it is to walk home five nights a week from work; how safe from harmful influence your kids are in that environment; how peaceful the nights are; how often the corner shop is visited by shoplifters or worse; what the average 'human quality' of your neighbors (and their kids) is; how an average staircase looks and smells etc.
Can misery tours show this aspect? Or does the relatively pleasant surprise come from unrealistic expectations ('oh, I thought it will look and feel totally post-apocalyptic and it doesn't, so perhaps it's not so bad, after all')?
・from GdanskSep 5th, 10:47
Perhaps a tour of Knightsbridge, and Harrods in particular? The misery and squalor, the prisons and universities are mere recruiting grounds (for nut cases). The source of Islamist terror isn't poverty, it's Islam. And the recruiters are rich, like Osama bin Laden.
・guest-ajmsajwain reply to from GdanskSep 6th, 08:27
True, the most run down slums I seen in Europe were in England.
・The Iceman ComethSep 4th, 08:44
Misery loves company?
The EU business tourist model for Greece. Stimulus package very bad. Yes well, we like it for ourselves, but up here in my journalistic ivory tower,I can see how all of this will come to a crashing halt soon, so...
Poorer EU nations should agree to live in squalor first?
No wait, don't tell me, let me take a stab @ it again!
・mcosmaSep 2nd, 23:12
Which alternative German guide to Berlin? I'm visiting soon, and would be interesting in reading the source cited.
・The Iceman Comethin reply to mcosmaSep 4th, 08:51
Easy enough to find, just follow a minority home to his/her neighborhood, and have some good eats while you're there.
・Tropicana312Sep 2nd, 21:52
So it is basically a Muslim zoo. I wish Belgium will never ban Hijab, Niqaab, Abaya, Thawb and Alkhalla, to keep the exotic flavour alive.
・JoeySSep 2nd, 15:58
"musée de la globalisation " would be better
・Perrodinin reply to JoeySSep 4th, 07:35
It takes time to learn French.
・JoeySin reply to PerrodinSep 5th, 08:10
Tout à fait!
・Kremilek2Sep 2nd, 13:18
"Misery has officially become a marketing opportunity."
Ad absurdum people could then travel to countries destroyed by civil war etc. It can be only good if you want to increase your satisfaction feeling by seeing that your life could be much worse.
・YuppieScumSep 2nd, 09:02
Sounds like Europe has not learnt from America's antebellum-to-civil-rights era. It looks like it will take several generations for us to escape the quagmire of systemic segregation. At least you guys' crime rate is a lot lower.
・guest-ajminmeeSep 2nd, 07:25
If you want to visit the shittiest places in Antwerp and Brussels def. check out http://shitty.guide. Brown bars, shabby shops, obscure karaoke bars. We've got it all. Embrace the shitty!
・Raf M.Sep 2nd, 07:21
Belgium's interior minister's name is Jan Jambon, not Jean Jambon as written in the article.
・YuppieScumin reply to Raf M.Sep 2nd, 08:59
That sounds made up.
・Grotchin reply to YuppieScumSep 2nd, 10:08
Raf M. is right, it's Jan, not Jean. The article seems well informed to me, and it's interesting reading too, but that spelling mistake doesn't help its credibility.
Expand 1 more reply
・guest-oenjmmnSep 1st, 20:53
A good article I enjoyed reading. It gave me new perspectives, Well done!
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