Why we on the Left made an epic mistake on immigration

[theworldismine13]

Why we on the Left made an epic mistake on immigration
http://churchandstate.org.uk/2013/03/why-we-on-the-left-made-an-epic-mistake-on-immigration

 

[88m3]

 

[The Real]

Why we on the Left made an epic mistake on immigration
http://churchandstate.org.uk/2013/03/why-we-on-the-left-made-an-epic-mistake-on-immigration

"Unfortunately, the multiculturalism that emerged in the Eighties ditched integration as an objective, put ethnic identity before national citizenship and reinforced a separateness that was already developing in some minority neighbourhoods through simple weight of numbers."

That's not the problem. The real issue is that Europe, unlike the US or Canada, never got over the ethnic nation state model that it began with, and so ethnic identity has been conflated with national citizenship there from the beginning. If the Left made a mistake it's assuming that Europe was just like the US and that WWII made them abandon ethnic citizenship, when it never left.

 

[mbewane]

"Unfortunately, the multiculturalism that emerged in the Eighties ditched integration as an objective, put ethnic identity before national citizenship and reinforced a separateness that was already developing in some minority neighbourhoods through simple weight of numbers."

That's not the problem. The real issue is that Europe, unlike the US or Canada, never got over the ethnic nation state model that it began with, and so ethnic identity has been conflated with national citizenship there from the beginning. If the Left made a mistake it's assuming that Europe was just like the US and that WWII made them abandon ethnic citizenship, when it never left.

Histories are different, it's easy for the US to say they're "over" the ethnic nation state (because there's a mixed president I guess?) when...it's a nation based on the genocide of the local ethnic "nation". So of course Europe is not like the US, in the sense that it's made of old nations that have been fighting each other for centuries, whilst the US is made of people who fled those nations and that had to cooperate overseas against native americans, blacks and other non-whites. So the comparison is useless. Add to that the fact that both the US and Canada (especially Canada) have a huge geographical asset in the sense that they can more easily control who comes in and doesn't and you understand why some nationalistic tensions are higher in Europe. Some friend told me that it was easier to integrate as an immigrant in Canada than in France I said well no doubt, since Canada can choose who it lets in (they didn't let a friend of mine in for example, because he had a bad illness. That's discriminatory under European law). Much harder to do in France and in Europe in general, for geographical (and thus also legal) reasons.

Where I think the Left made a mistake was to assume that immigrant=open-mindness, willingess to integrate, non-racists. Basically, for some reason the Left always kind of assume that immigrants were themselves leaning on the left, which is incredibly stupid because most come conservative countries. I can safely say that most "foreigners" (nationals with foreign origins or "real" foreigners) that I've known are more politically on the right, with some of them bordering on nationalism/racism.

 

[Serious]

The British political class has never prepared existing citizens for something as game-changing as large-scale immigration, nor has it done a good job at explaining what the point of large-scale immigration was and whose interests it was meant to serve.

Crucially, they failed to control the inflow more overtly in the interests of existing citizens. On the contrary, the idea that immigration should be unambiguously in the interests of existing citizens was blurred from the start.

Then, whenever there were problems with immigrant communities, the tendency was for the host society to be blamed for not being sufficiently accommodating or for being racist, rather than considering the self-inflicted wounds of some minority cultures.

Thus, the absence of fathers in many African-Caribbean households was excused as a cultural trait that just had to be accepted rather than a dereliction of duty that needed addressing.

 

[Serious]

Histories are different, it's easy for the US to say they're "over" the ethnic nation state (because there's a mixed president I guess?) when...it's a nation based on the genocide of the local ethnic "nation". So of course Europe is not like the US, in the sense that it's made of old nations that have been fighting each other for centuries, whilst the US is made of people who fled those nations and that had to cooperate overseas against native americans, blacks and other non-whites. So the comparison is useless. Add to that the fact that both the US and Canada (especially Canada) have a huge geographical asset in the sense that they can more easily control who comes in and doesn't and you understand why some nationalistic tensions are higher in Europe. Some friend told me that it was easier to integrate as an immigrant in Canada than in France I said well no doubt, since Canada can choose who it lets in (they didn't let a friend of mine in for example, because he had a bad illness. That's discriminatory under European law). Much harder to do in France and in Europe in general, for geographical (and thus also legal) reasons.

Where I think the Left made a mistake was to assume that immigrant=open-mindness, willingess to integrate, non-racists. Basically, for some reason the Left always kind of assume that immigrants were themselves leaning on the left, which is incredibly stupid because most come conservative countries. I can safely say that most "foreigners" (nationals with foreign origins or "real" foreigners) that I've known are more politically on the right, with some of them bordering on nationalism/racism.

interesting...

 

[theworldismine13]

Dispute Over Immigration Widens Between Britain and E.U.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/28/w...es-limits-on-immigrants-welfare-benefits.html

 

[Chris.B]

lol at Muslims assimilating

 

[DEAD7]

"Unfortunately, the multiculturalism that emerged in the Eighties ditched integration as an objective, put ethnic identity before national citizenship and reinforced a separateness that was already developing in some minority neighbourhoods through simple weight of numbers."

That's not the problem. The real issue is that Europe, unlike the US or Canada, never got over the ethnic nation state model that it began with, and so ethnic identity has been conflated with national citizenship there from the beginning. If the Left made a mistake it's assuming that Europe was just like the US and that WWII made them abandon ethnic citizenship, when it never left.

 

[The Real]

Histories are different, it's easy for the US to say they're "over" the ethnic nation state (because there's a mixed president I guess?) when...it's a nation based on the genocide of the local ethnic "nation". So of course Europe is not like the US, in the sense that it's made of old nations that have been fighting each other for centuries, whilst the US is made of people who fled those nations and that had to cooperate overseas against native americans, blacks and other non-whites. So the comparison is useless. Add to that the fact that both the US and Canada (especially Canada) have a huge geographical asset in the sense that they can more easily control who comes in and doesn't and you understand why some nationalistic tensions are higher in Europe. Some friend told me that it was easier to integrate as an immigrant in Canada than in France I said well no doubt, since Canada can choose who it lets in (they didn't let a friend of mine in for example, because he had a bad illness. That's discriminatory under European law). Much harder to do in France and in Europe in general, for geographical (and thus also legal) reasons.

Where I think the Left made a mistake was to assume that immigrant=open-mindness, willingess to integrate, non-racists. Basically, for some reason the Left always kind of assume that immigrants were themselves leaning on the left, which is incredibly stupid because most come conservative countries. I can safely say that most "foreigners" (nationals with foreign origins or "real" foreigners) that I've known are more politically on the right, with some of them bordering on nationalism/racism.

The US doesn't have an official language, nor an old enough history to claim the kind of entrenched roots evoked by European nationalists. Obviously racism still exists here, but whiteness/Americanness is not an official operator, categorically. In Europe, Englishness, Frenchness, and so on absolutely are, linguistically, culturally, etc. Race and ethnicity were absolutely instrumental to the official founding of those nations, whereas for the US, they operated unofficially, except for the anti-Black element (even Native American ideas were explicitly incorporated into our Constitution, for example.) In short, America was founded on anti-Blackness more than specifically "white" identity (which didn't exactly exist yet) whereas European countries were founded on very specific forms of ethnic citizenship.

 

[Odyssey]

LOL @ it being a mistake. Western Immigration into historically European nations is a Talmudic Yid plot to displace, destroy and remove European homogeneity from the world. Left wing marxist whites love it because they are bourgeoisie, and self hating and spiritually and culturally defeated.

 

[The Real]

LOL @ it being a mistake. Western Immigration into historically European nations is a Talmudic Yid plot to displace, destroy and remove European homogeneity from the world. Left wing marxist whites love it because they are bourgeoisie, and self hating and spiritually and culturally defeated.

So you're an anti-Semite on top of all your nostalgic Euro-fetishism?

There's no such thing as European homogeneity. That's precisely why immigration is such a problem for individual European countries.

 

[Odyssey]

What i mean by European homogeneity is destroying the culture and demographics of Germany, U.K. Norway, etc. Reduce them to minorities in their own countries and bring in a mass amount of outsiders who will place their culture + race + religion over that of the new host country, and then when the host country says "uhhh, hey, can we like, maybe keep are values, traditions, language and demographics" call them racist, xenophobic, islamaphobic, homophobic, etc, etc. It's a perfect way to create mass social disfunction.

I know American Marxists such as yourself want to "destroy the concept of whiteness" because that's what your cool liberal professor told you, but what is happening in Europe is soft Genocide.