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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025

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In response to the Afghan national attacking National guard troops in DC Trump promised to "permanently pause" immigration from all Third world countries in a Truth Social post. That sounded too good to be true and it was.

Trump is actually pausing immigration from only 19 countries, which are Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.

Meanwhile the top sources of 3rd world immigration are Mexico, India, Philippines, El Salvador, Vietnam, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Colombia. The only place where those two lists overlap is Cuba.

MAGAs must make up their minds about whom they dislike first.

Are you worried about demographic replacement, elite takeover or unintegrated criminals ?

"Stop all non-white immigration" may resonate in some circles, but isn't representative of American or Trump voter preferences.

In response to the Afghan national

His actions are in reaction to unintegrated criminals, primarily from Islamist nations. Why would you expect it to affect Mexico, India or the Philippines ?

Trump's post only vaguely points to his intentions vis-a-vis legal migrants.

end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, These goals will be pursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations - Trump

Lets see.

This would imply removal of benefits for all green card holders ? Visa holders don't get federal benefits anyway. Immigrants must pay into social security, pay taxes and rising visa fees. All while being ineligible for benefits. Cool. What was that about taxation without representation ?

denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization. - Trump

Americans already agree that violent felons who lied on their naturalization doc should be deported. Visa & green card holders with felonies are already banned from reentry. Outside existing norms (terrorism, child predator, Nazi), it is very hard to de-naturalize an American who got their citizenship legally. Trump has limited power and courts have a ton of precedent. Doesn't help that it requires a jury to convict.

Apart from criminality, How does Trump define 'incompatible with western civilization' ? Maybe he means the Amish, the native Americans, the Mormon or the Scientologists ? Does he mean pluralist, liberal & tolerant ? Does he mean white, protestant and english speaking ? IMO, it's a whole lot of words that mean nothing. Trump 101.


Personally, I'm sick of white supremacists using motte-and-baileys to criticize immigrants.

It's revealing that Indians, Mexicans and Filipinos are the main groups they have issues with.

Indians are a model minority, speak English, from a pluralistic democracy and uniquely economically productive. Other than color and religion, they satisfy every bar for a model American.

Mexicans are devout Christians, take all the 'shit' jobs, have a fair claim to the land and work harder than any 'sanctity of work' protestant I've seen. There are valid concerns about criminals and cartel members. But, as we covered before, Americans and Trump are already aligned on their deportation. If every illegal immigrant and every Mexican criminal is deported, Mexicans will still continue immigration in large numbers through legal family based migration and birthright citizenship for children of legal workers.

Filipinos are devout Christians, pre-indoctrinated (due to American colonial occupation), peaceful and most immigrate to fill middle-of-the-pack essential jobs in healthcare, military and education.

There is no venn diagram that fits all 3 groups except - "not white". If you want fewer non-whites. Just say that.


P.S: I've heard geographic arguments claiming 'America is full' and they don't want more immigrants of any color. I am not going to address why this opinion is bad. It's a tired one.

Are you worried about demographic replacement, elite takeover or unintegrated criminals ?

This doesn't feel like a good description of typical reasons:

  • Elite takeover: Sure
  • "Demographic replacement": ...by which races? I'm guessing a MAGA would feel quite differently about Japanese vs Somalian demographic replacement.
  • Unintegrated criminals: This is the most extreme example of the kind of thing conservatives are worried about. But I assume they are also worried about less egregious kinds of bad behaviour / non-assimilation (e.g. taking minimum wage jobs, nepotism, general anti-social behaviour etc)

His actions are in reaction to unintegrated criminals, primarily from Islamist nations. Why would you expect it to affect Mexico, India or the Philippines ?

But you could also view this crime through a racial lens instead of a religious one, i.e. races that have bad HBD stats (which pretty much aligns with the 3rd World) are more likely to bring problems like this

And also because he explicitly claimed he would do it in his Truth Social post: "...I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries..."

Apart from criminality, How does Trump define 'incompatible with western civilization' ? ... IMO, it's a whole lot of words that mean nothing.

Like most political things, it is kind of fuzzy ("what is a woman?", etc) - but I think everyone, including non-supporters, are roughly aware of what he is talking about (even if they don't like his definition)

As a rough definition, how about "compatible with a supermajority of Whites"?

Personally, I'm sick of white supremacists using motte-and-baileys to criticize immigrants.

It's revealing that Indians, Mexicans and Filipinos are the main groups they have issues with.

...

There is no venn diagram that fits all 3 groups except - "not white".

I mean... they don't seem to have a problem with East Asians (indeed, such a sentiment is fringe even on the Motte), who are a large and well-known class of non-White. Also you left out Blacks from your list (there was the whole "Haitian pet eating" thing)

Another very reasonable category that fits would be "low-IQ races". And I think it fits better, because of the general right-wing affinity towards East Asians.

If you want fewer non-whites. Just say that.

As I said, I think it is closer to wanting fewer people from low-IQ races. Irregardless, both of these sentiments lie far outside the Overton window.

On the Motte, people should be honest about what they want (and the commenters who feel either way have been forthright about this) - but in actual politics, the goal of speeches, rhetoric etc is to try and achieve a goal (as opposed to truth-seeking), so obviously you should not phrase your desire in terms of out-of-Overton-window ideas.


As for anti-Indian sentiment. Firstly, I'm not sure how real it is beyond just general anti-brown-people sentiment. And I don't think the more "storytelling" explanations (culture, nepotism, etc) given down-thread are particularly convincing.

I think the crux of anti-Indian sentiment is due to an especially low average IQ. Ideally, this would not matter, because appropriate filtering would account for it. But in practice lots of low-IQ people will manage to slip through the cracks somehow (fraud, a left-wing government loosens restrictions, etc), and then cause problems for the host country, because they are a (close to) unfiltered sample.