The Totalitarian Leftist Tactics against the Right

In fairness, that chart is immigration - it's not refugees. And it's not 'into Europe' - it's based on statistics for two European countries (Ireland and Poland). The vast majority of immigrants to both countries are, of course, from elsewhere in Europe.People coming into Europe as refugees are skewed towards young men. While you are probably right that lots of women and children are fleeing the war in Syria; a woman carting young children along with her is much more likely to stop at a refugee camp in Turkey or Lebanon. It's easier for a young, single man to brave the often dangerous journey to his dream of a better life in Europe. And not all refugees are fleeing the war in Syria. Syrians are certainly the biggest single country (making up about slightly under a third of asylum applications in 2015); but many are from poor parts of Africa; or from other poor countries like Bangladesh, and these are overwhelmingly young men. 73% of asylum applicants in 2015 were men; and 42% men between the ages of 18 and 34. Interestingly this is not the case in Sweden, where there are a higher proportion of women and children compared to the EU as a whole - which I suspect may be something to do with how they have set up their asylum application system, but I'm not quite sure). In Italy, the most common entry point to the EU for people who make the crossing from Africa by boat, 74% of asylum applications in 2015 were men between the ages of 18 and 44.(Figures above come from Eurostat and apply to the EEA + Switzerland).

The problem with your point is that what you describe is not totalitarianism - it's just state brutality. North Korea certainly is a totalitarian state, but pointing to horrific tortures doesn't establish this fact; since brutal tortures happen (and have happened) elsewhere as well.The classical definition of a totalitarian state is one that recognises no distinctions between public and private, and in which the state is entitled (or maybe obligated) to be involved in everything and to regulate and control every aspect of life.Brutality usualy goes hand-in-hand with totalitarianism since it's hard to see how such a system can be maintained without forceful oppression, but it's not part of the definition.There is a tendency in politics to throw insulting political names at everyone we don't like, and in this process they all start to blur in meaning. I think this is something we should try to avoid - if fascist, dictatorial, totalitarian etc all start to mean the same thing, then we run out of language with which to talk about these things.

Totalitarianism probably requires brutality to maintain itself; since you can't control everything without provoking opposition, but that doesn't mean that someone seeking to impose a totalitarian regime is going to start out by kicking a pregnant woman to death.My concern here is that your line of reasoning sounds pretty much identical to that used to shout down criticism of any unjust assumption of state power. When we say that some new anti-terror law is wrong because gives the security services arbitrary powers; or that the Poland's govenrment is behaving dictatorially by trying to overule the Supreme Court, people protest that this trivialises 'proper' dictatorships; as if anything is fine as long as you don't kill 6 million Jews.This sort of thing should be protested and criticised before it gets that far.ABE: I don't think there's anything totalitarian about advising schools they shouldn't prevent transgender kids from using the bathrooms of their choice. My issue was with the line of reasoning, not the specifics.Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.

Your understanding of the purpose and application of hate crime laws in the UK is wrong, since they make no distinction as to whether or not the group to whom the hate is directed is especially vulnerable. Hate crimes directed against dominant and majority groups are still hate crimes - one of the most famous convictions for incitement to racial hatred was that of Abu Hamza. Whilst some of his charges were specifically for incitement to murder Jews; he was also convicted of incitement to murder non-Muslims in general.There was a prominent news story this year when someone spat in a baby's face and informed it's mother than 'white people shouldn't breed'. He was convicted of racially-aggravated assault. This was actually his third conviction for a hate crime specifically directed at white people.These are not the only cases - just the two most prominent news stories I could think of. Outdated stats from 10 years ago show that half of the convictions for crimes motivated by racial hatred were perpetrated against white people. This does include 'white-on-white' hate (English against Polish, for example), but other cited cases included a white guy beat by Bangladeshis and a white Scottish man murdered by an Asian man.You may be of the opinion that we should reserve the term 'hate crime' for crimes committed against vulnerable minority groups, but that's not how the law in the UK is written or applied.

'Girding for a fight' just means getting ready for some kind of struggle or contest. It has no negative connotations. Two years ago, CNN informed us that President Obama was

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...girding for a fight as Congress signals it will try to block his Iran deal...

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There's no implication there that he made an error.I'd agree that most of the mainstream media in the US is more hostile to Trump than the average President, but hypersensitive exaggeration of everything anyone says about Trump; coupled with simultaneous denial or diminution of anything negative directed against Obama, just makes your whole argument look ridiculous.