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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35413 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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Can anybody explain the Polish perspective on the Ukraine war?

I went to Poland and it looked like what Western Europe should look like. The urban areas were clean and seemingly safe. Indeed the people living there are mostly European or Slavic.

My understanding is that most of the tsunami of African or Middle-Eastern immigrants of the 2000s would rather go to Western Europe or Scandinavia for better welfare or economic prospects.

Still, Poland used to get in trouble with the EU for not wanting to take in a certain amount of them.

Moreover, Poland has also faced reprimand from the same union for their policies toward non-heterosexuals.

Why did Poland even join the EU? Did they really need the money so badly at the time?

Now it seems that Poland is going toward ever more alignment with the EU and US.

Are they really so scared of Russia that they would drink the corn syrup and give up on whatever is left of their culture/sovereignty/demographics?

Is anybody of relevance in Poland even attempting to contradict the pro-Western turn?

  • -14

My understanding is that most of the tsunami of African or Middle-Eastern immigrants of the 2000s would rather go to Western Europe or Scandinavia for better welfare or economic prospects.

You underestimate how recent the whole woke/proimmigration bent is. In late 90ies when EU negotiated expansion with new members, the negotiations were tough. As part of the acceptance criteria there were temporary periods where free movement of labor from eastern members were suspended for years exactly for fear of mass economic immigration from east to west.

Back in the day there was also strong debate about what EU is: is it Europe of nations and just pact of economic convenience, or is it European superstate with its own army and foreign policy and so forth? The overall makeup of EU institutions was skewed to the former with deeply rooted principles of subsidiarity and voting system with multiple veto possibilities. It was before Treaty of Lisbon of 2007 that amends 1992 Maastricht Treaty and which brings more power to EU structures compared to member nations.

So one can say that EU left some member countries as opposed to member countries somehow not realizing where they entered.

You underestimate how recent the whole woke/proimmigration bent is.

Not towards African or Middle-Eastern immigrants.

Are you aware of when the EU thought the Poles should take some of those in?

It's also worth noting that one of the reasons why there are occasional attempts from EU to get the Eastern European countries to take in more refugees is that then the Western European countries wouldn't have to host those refugees themselves.

Meh. I just think such attempts were fundamentally dishonest and merely meant as a culture war bone thrown to Eastern European liberal opposition groups and their Western pals to chew on, and an excuse to complain about Eastern European barbarian badwhites.

And we can rightly assume such attempts were dishonest, because it's rather obvious to anyone that if, say, Poland or Latvia accepted a large group of African migrants, most of them would just want to move on and cross the border into Germany. And who'd try stopping them? Certainly not the local authorities, and very probably not the German border guards either.

I just think such attempts were fundamentally dishonest

That's a fair view to have. What would it take to convince you otherwise?

What would it take to convince you otherwise?

Any tangible sign on the part of Western European EU member states of a willingness to control the outer borders of the EU and to curb the influx of refugees to their own soil.

It seems to be the paradox of EU 'democracy'. While no individual EU state is individually strongly pro-African immigration, the collective response of the EU is to take them in. With some caveats, as they have developed some measures of containment with North-Africa.

This emergent property of the EU was not hard to predict, but of course the bureaucrats in charge are strangely sympathetic to the corporations that benefit from economic integration and industry relocation.

If this continues on this trajectory, Europeans as a people will not survive the EU, having survived the USSR and all kind of monarchies and fascist dictatorships previously.

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