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So, a couple of months ago (I think - time is a flat circle), there was a conversation and some slight complaining about how center-right parties in Europe never work with "far-right" parties, and how that's proof that the elite are against the votes, etc. and it's actually unfair the center-right aligns with the center-left instead of the far-right and there was even some talk it was somehow undemocratic.
Well, I just saw a poll about voting preference for Kamala Harris among German voters that shows something important about the underlying feelings of actual electorate-
https://x.com/ElectsWorld/status/1818288736549159376
% who would vote for Vice President Harris (D):
Grüne: 99 %
SPD: 92 %
CDU/CSU: 89 %
FDP: 85 %
BSW: 52 %
AfD: 26 %
Forsa, 26/07/24
Obviously, the SPD, Green, and AfD numbers all make sense. For those unaware, BSW is the new anti-immigrant economically left-wing party recent created by a former prominent Die Lienke member, so they're sort of cross-pressured on this, ironically.
But, the important number to show is the CDU/CSU & FDP numbers. This is why these center-right parties end up aligning w/ the center-left because on the big issues of the day, the CDU/CSU & FDP voter is closer to the SPD or Green Party than the AfD
Obviously, yes, the chances are some of that 15% in the FDP or 11% in the CDU/CSU will eventually also move to the AfD and obviously, another chunk of the voters if they actually lived in the US would end up voting for Trump the same way a lot of normal Republican's who have voted for Republican's their whole life end up voting for Trump, but this isn't a case of some Elite spitting in the face of their voters and aligning in some globalist conspiracy against the voters.
No, the voters are with the leadership for the most part on this. This isn't going to be correct for every country, but this is also why most of the center felt closer to Communist's than the former National Front in the French parliamentary elections as well. As I've said before, people want harsh immigration policies, they're just not willing to accept the rest of the right-wing culture war and lack of competence that comes with it when it comes to current far-right parties like the AfD.
If you truly think Muslim immigration is the worst problem facing Europe, then that person needs to accept LGBT rights, a massive welfare state, supporting Ukraine, and so on, and you might get somewhere.
Another possibility is that Europeans want fewer immigrants, but they are unwilling to actually do anything about it.
If the modal European could wave their hands and stop immigration they would. But if they see a picture of a crying child they will cave every time.
I'm not sure these beliefs are as foundational as you think, given that they are of such recent vintage. As always, signalling has much more explanatory power than principles. The issues don't matter. Tribes do.
I honestly think, if that happened today, people would be tapped out on sympathy. But, as with the homeless problem in some parts of America, it just doesn't seem to matter what they think.
You'll get sucked into a loop of activists, judges and feckless government decisions (the latter always blaming the first two) and by the time you realize what's going on the people who should have been deported haven't been for years and nothing has changed.
They're the new foundation. The old one was exclusionary.
Which has some implications for adopting it as a way to keep out migrants.
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Bleeding hearts cave because they think their social circles will cave as well. It is a self reinforcing cycle by which everyone presumes social sanction from their peers for not abiding by the presumed moral diktats of their community.
In small groups Europeans, even ostensibly liberal MNC civil servant types, will sotto voce voice their concerns that the muslim population is not in fact responding well to 'integration' overtures, and that the community regularly displays antisocial behavior. More daring ones would explicate a desire to remove the problem, but everyone has this shadow of Respectability hanging over them preventing voicing out of concrete solutions. At every level there is this presumption that voicing out objections will lead to an institutional witch hunt from a media ecosystem eager for scalps. Just look at lemonde for examples of how it is impossible to speak negatively of migrants.
This brings back the main issue of who is benefitting, and the reality is that small town girls stabbed by rwandan migrants or blown up in a concert or stabbed in parks or raped by the thousands does not affect the urban PMC. The urban PMC needs to capture the levers of power and influence, and the current holder of that lever is the centre right normies. Their suffering means nothing to the left. Look at how Novara Media or Owen Jones talk about the grooming gang scandals. The enemy must remain the racist and the normie, because the muslim is a pliant pawn the left can exploit fearlessly eternally.
This is of course wrong, and literally every arab country shows their socialist-islamist alliances dissolve when the islamists get a whiff of power and execute their socialist allies in the street. The left does not seem to care about its suicide as long as it can destroy the right, for it seeks just that brief moment in the sun where it can scream 'SEE REAL COMMUNISM CAN WORK'
I think it's just pure arrogance; it's not gonna fail, it can't fail.
Western leftists are acting as if this is the height of empire and no foreign threat matters as much as their fellow whites on the wrong side of their feud. The Muslims who are not assimilating are just harmless compared to some football hooligans carrying the wrong flag being proven right about the ray guns. That is intolerable and dangerous.
It's fascinating to watch. All of the arrogance and narcissism of arch-imperialists with none of the in-group preference or survival instinct you need when you actually are trying to conquer people.
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not really? On Eastern border wall is build and maintained, EU is bribing countries across North Africa so they will keep migrants away (including shooting them as needed, though that part is left implied). Organisations picking up migrants from human traffickers near Libyan shores are being hit by annoying regulations, disrupting their activities (as is the EU way).
I met some people annoyed about both and their "picture of a crying child" strategy is not too convincing.
Bar may be on the ground or buried, but it is quite ironic that fundamental border controls that are somehow controversial are actually done in EU.
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