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Notes -
The Elevation of Fringe Theories to Official US Foreign Policy
Rewind 10 years, and the only ones expressing dire concern over racial demographics in the US and Europe were very fringe, low-status, rag-tag group of political radicals called the "Alt Right". At the time it seemed scandalous that anyone would have much concern over European civilization becoming majority non-White, at best it was just crazy-talk but more commonly it was denounced as an indictment on someone's character for advocating for any sort of political or cultural initiative to stop or reverse this development. Although that is still the median interpretation, since the 2020 Great Awokening there's been a rapid expansion and a mainstreaming of these political views- the greatest indication of that yet is the release of the official 2025 National Security Strategy that directly identifies these concerns, as well as actually stopping and reversing them, a matter of US foreign policy. My emphasis:
The long-standing political strategy of "Democratic" Europe has been to form whatever coalition of center-left/right parties is necessary to prevent far right parties who oppose this from attaining power, while at the same time engaging in strong censorship and political suppression of right-wing parties- an artifact of the psychological warfare against Europe which we called Denazification. This is behavior is identified as a national security threat in this document, which advocates the United States "Cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations."
The devil is in the details of implementation, but this document represents the codification of fringe Alt-Right views from 10 years ago. It's no longer a "conspiracy theory" or "White Supremacy" to identify the political forces actively orchestrating the demographic replacement of European nations, it's directly identified as a foreign policy issue of the United States, which is a major step forward, with mainstream publications now openly acknowledging the issue without the usual trappings of denouncing racism or White Supremacy:
Some observers have noted the relative deemphasis on preparing for conflict with China and pivoting towards Western-hemispheric control, a revitalizing of the Monroe Doctrine. Although I am a critic of Trump, I have to say I am supportive of this national security strategy- although implementation is ultimately what matters and in all likelihood a Democrat administration would strike much of this. But it's a major step forward in acknowledging an existential crisis that until very recently was completely taboo.
It will backfire. Trump's national strategy and persona are incompatible with Europe.
First, Trump hurt their pride.
Europeans are proud. Trump has taken a sneer-and-condescend approach towards European politics. It's a bad strategy towards any institution. But, it's catastrophic towards Europe. I visit Europe every couple of months. Yes, urban educated circles aren't a representative sample. But, the Europeans appear to despise Trump and his politics. Even blue city democrats don't hate Trump as much. Eventually, the hostility becomes grating.
Second, Trump put financial pressure.
Europe has slid into a financially fragile state after a lackluster 2008 recovery and not being able to print their way out of the covid crisis. You'd think Trump would extend an olive branch after the harsh words. Nope, it's more jab, jab, hook. Trump has added tariffs and strong armed Europe to rearm. Why would the Europeans be happy about any of this ?
Third, Europe has problems that America doesn't.
Spain and Italy have lower fertility rates than Japan. France and Germany have crushing social welfare ponzi schemes that require an ever increasing number of young people. They need immigrants. Trump wants these nations to use his 'wrecking ball' approach to political and (in his imagination) civilizational revival. No. They can't do it, because they aren't America.
2025's America doesn't have the financial weight or the military willpower to bully Europe. The other option is to align incentives. Confusingly, Trump is erecting new barriers instead. Europe may engage for now. It has no other options. But it sure as hell will be looking for alternatives if it does actually start regaining 'civilizational self confidence'.
Trump is single handedly ushering in a multi-polar world.
I am not European, I am Slovak. There is no European identity even after decades of astroturfing. If anything, you have something I would mark as "global" identity vs national ones. In the past this globalist identity was called as "western" identity or something similar. In fact local elites at least in Eastern Europe used this word quite a lot in condescending way toward their own population - just westernize already. These elites were similar to Russian aristocracy of 19th century - people self colonized into some supranational identity used to berate their backwards alcoholic underclass. This supposed "European" elite would be as satisfied in Berlin or Paris as they would be in Sydney or Dubai or Tokyo and of course in New York or Los Angeles - as long as it caters to their sensibilities.
In fact with Trump election it was interesting to see how this supposed "Western" vocabulary collapsed - what is The West without USA? With USA throwing a wrench into the edifice they just have "West" replaced by "European". But there is no such a thing, European identity has nowhere near such a power, it does not have the same legitimacy that USA and "The West" had during 20th century.
This is nothing new. "European" intelligentsia hated US political representation with vengeance for ages. People from Europe love their stories of redneck Americans, they watched with glee whenever any riot or scandal happened as it soothed their ego. The problem is, that at least in the past there was something to that as late as 80s/90s. French were proud of their cinematography, Germans were proud of their engineering and Scandinavians were proud of their social progress while they slowly imbibed US culture and systems. As of now all these things are in the past. At least since 2000s all EU countries are stagnating. Manufacturing went to shit, cultural influence is overwhelmed not only by USA but also by Asian countries. There is no NOKIA or Ericsson anymore and there is no new innovative industry in Europe.
What remains is basically cultural heritage - architecture and so forth which turns Europe into one large open-air museum. But even this is not exactly coded as elite thing to do with self hatred around religion and colonialism. There are some paradoxes going on such as some channels such as this one trying to promote European achievements. Which is fine, but if you ask, me it would seem to represent more something like Eric Zemmour's candidacy speech as opposed to current EU elite progressive consensus. It is right-wing and nationalist coded.
So in short what if "Europeans" you talk about hate Trump. They hate themselves and their culture with the same intensity if not even more.
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There is a quote, often attributed to Clemenceau or Wilde or sometimes Shaw that goes:
American is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Seems more and more pertinent by the day if you ask me...
Having not heard this before, I have to ask ... what does civilization look like, by that standard?
Honestly I would not claim to know what any of these people were thinking, remember this was said in the early 20th century so their standards of civilisation and decadence were probably quite different from ours, but the general sentiment of Americans being seen first as uncivilised barbarians and transitioning straight to being parvenus when they finally get wealth still is as relevant today as it would have been then, if you ask my non American social circle (the Americans I know would half agree and half vigorously deny it, in the "doth protest too much" sense).
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I'm also pretty convinced all this will backfire but
I mean sure, but the immigrants we need, and that are willing to come, don't exist in remotely sufficient numbers.
The ones that are willing to come are both a social strain and a massive financial drain.
We're not solving the financial consequences of fertility crisis with immigration, we're making it worse.
Fair. If you can't get good immigrants, the solution isn't to get immigrants who make things worse.
The problem is that things are simultaneously too easy for the "bad immigrants" and too hard for the "good immigrants". You can bet your whole career, with massive opportunity cost, on something like eventually winning the greencard lottery, while simultaneously hoping and H1B employer won't exploit you too badly in the meantime; or you can walk across the border and do low-skill informal-economy jobs far from the state's eye, while getting 10x the pay in your country of origin, and have a whole half of the CW binary advocate for you if you were to ever get in trouble (and it's not like the Mexican haul-heavy-shit employers will be questioning you about the gap in your CV and ability to attend American conferences if you were to fail, spend a year in ICE jail and get deported).
Unfortunately, our societies are just reliably lacking in executive function to see a problem for which some solution (immigration enforcement, policing...) exists as having more knobs than a single "more of the solution"/"less of the solution" one. "Have police arrest more criminals while being less violent and more discerning" was not a significant camp in the BLM discourse, either.
Because the BLM awakening (especially post-Floyd) wasn't actually about police brutality. It was about conjuring a scapegoat for the general failure of an entire community, one acceptable to both white and black educated classes.
Your solution is a solution to some problem, but not the one people care about. The result of more effective police would be to make the failure even more visible without the face-saving excuse.
A whole lot of effort is being expended, a bunch of plans are constantly made and acted on. It's more that only plans that fit a narrow window of acceptable discourse are even legible let alone tolerable.
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Denmark has pretty conclusively proven that MENA migrants are a net drain on the state, not a benefit. Sure there are a few winners: slumlords, the migrant industrial complex, and people who own shares in the discount retail sector.
Idk why European countries pretend the option is undereducated MENA immigrants vs nothing.
There's at least 3 billion people who would love to live in their countries. Surely there has to be a better way to sample from this population.
Every country on the planet wants rich, intelligent, very high skilled immigrants, but there just aren't that many of them available, and they have the entire world in terms of options.
Also, a lot of the political class literally can't tell the difference between good immigrants and bad immigrants. The Conservative government in the UK noticed that Indians and Nigerians in the UK earned lots of money, so they opened the doors to India and Nigeria, missing out the fact that the reason for these immigrant groups' overperformance was the selectivity of the immigration process. They invited so many that the average wages of Indians and Nigerians in the UK went from above the UK average to below the UK average.
They are so shackled by their blank slatism and fear of racism. Pro immigration in the year of our lord 2025 is the idea that genes and culture don’t matter.
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Lack of executive function, as I also claim in my other comment.
The exact mechanism by which the executive function is lost is that both the "immigrants good" faction and the "immigrants bad" faction see their optimal marginal strategy as drumming up alignment with the simple and straightforward sentiments I labelled them by. A position like "more smart prosocial immigrants, but fewer stupid violent ones" will be ejected by the former camp because the "fewer" part just diluted and muddles immigrants-good sentiment; likewise, the latter camp will eject it for the "more" part having the same effect on immigrants-bad sentiment.
Executive function doesn't enter into it. The issue is that the two tribes have no reason to trust each other, and that there are too many people with the "accept compromise, but keep fighting" mentality, so the only rational strategy is to swing the status quo as extremely to your side as possible (even beyond what you might actually want), and then fortify it as best as you can.
I consider the ability to execute and maintain complex compromises to be part of what is the "executive function" of society as a compound organism, by analogy with the executive function of an individual.
I guess I'm not sure we're much of a compound organism anymore.
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Selection systems work for the initial cohort, but family reunification policies dilute them. If you want durable intergenerational outcomes and want to avoid regression toward the mean of the origin population, you need selection criteria applied more consistently across visa categories, not just to primary applicants but to the broader family migration that follows.
Why have family reunification policies at all ? Individual, wife and child. That's it. Older parents should be able to get a visa as dependents, but never citizenship or social benefits.
Family chain migration is an exploit. Policy wise, it's an easy loophole to close. Politically, may be another issue altogether.
Does the wife have to qualify on her own or does she get in because the husband does?
Lots of successful men have stupid children because they selected their wives for reasons they may live to regret.
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The policy is not aimed at convincing the existing European power apparatus but on fostering opposition parties. If migration were so great for Europe, why is all the censorship and political suppression of the opposition even necessary? Why is opposition growing in Europe if it has all these great benefits? Europe being replaced by foreigners is not in Europe's interests or the security interests of the United States. I do not care if the average European is in denial of the fact, it has to be overcome. The EU Regulatory framework is by far the greater barrier to economic growth than not having enough Arabs and Africans, who have not ushered in economic prosperity.
Also, you are not European, you are Indian, so the "you need us" perspective should be inverted- you are the one who needs us, not the other way around.
If Republicans think it's perfectly reasonable to boost fringe political parties in Europe because they genuinely believe that's in the best interest of the USA then it's perfectly reasonable for European countries to officially adopt positions supporting the Democrats wholesale because they genuinely believe that's in the best interests of Europe. Something tells me the Republicans would throw a tantrum if it actually happened though.
This would matter if a) Europeans didn't already pay vastly more attention to US elections than the US does to theirs (it would not be a throwaway story if GOP volunteers came to the UK to campaign for Farage the way a few Labour volunteers worked for Harris) and b) there's any evidence that this would have a large impact.
America is just too polarized for it to matter. There are some Americans who love to be thought of well by Europeans but those people are now all in the Democratic Party. It doesn't really matter much to the populists and the right wingers are well aware that the elite class of Europe looks down on them for their coarse ways. Americans just don't have to care, frankly. Elections are for beating the near enemy.
Besides, there's an obvious power differential here. "Hit him back just as hard" is good advice for the playground but probably not smart here.
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Deterrence doesn't work if your threat was already carried out before you even made it.
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Europe had its opposition boom.
Meloni has been in power for a while now. What's changed ? Orban tried to get fertility up, and numbers have continued cratering. Boris Johnson got Brexit, and things have gotten much worse since.
Idk what it has to do with Indians needing anyone. As a nation, Indian is reasonably comfortable being alone in the geopolitics landscape. As people, one perk of coming from the 3rd world, is they can take a lot of pain before life truly feels like it sucks. Perk of living in a shithole, is it can't get much worse than that.
Neither Germany nor France nor the United Kingdom got their populist peak yet. And it is coming. By God it is coming.
With all due respect to my Hungarian friends, they are a borderland with conflicting loyalties, not the financial heart of Europe.
And Meloni did manage to turn around Italy's economy in a big way. Big enough that it's impressing neighbors. She'd had to essentially give up foreign policy for it, but that's not nothing. And Italy is not like France or Britain. You can't truly govern alone there.
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Not exactly. They identified interventions with positive effect for the third birth most pronounced in 20-29-year-old highly educated mothers.
https://hungary.representation.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2021-12/hetfa_fertilitymodels_20190913.pdf
That sounds like interesting subgroup analysis.
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"Aren't representative" isn't even the half of it. Educated urban circles aren't even representative of educated urban circles, anyone with 2 braincells to rub together is in full Havel's Greengrocer mode, and the ones that do actually side with the regime are having palpitation over populist parties getting more and more mainstream.
Any country that bothered publishing statistics on the subject showed that non-European immigrants cost more money than they bring. The whole idea of solving our financial issue with them was ridiculous from the start.
I should clarify. I purposely left it at 'they need immigrants'. Europe's current immigration strategy (or lack there of) is a total mess. As it is now, it's bad. It's quite bad.
I still think the problem of 'how to get good immigrants' is easier than 'how do we fix our industrial policy' or 'how do we make our people have more kids'. Therefore there is an urgency attached to it. The latter 2 are definitely the more worthwhile pursuits, but it is what it is.
Could be. Happened with Trump 2016, Brexit and Modi 2014.
I don't think there's enough good immigrants to go between Europe, the US, Japan, Korea, and if China ever joins that club, you can forget about it. I'm also pretty sure that deindustrialization and depopulation are deliberate policy, rather than innocent bumbling around by the bureaucrats.
Nothing quite so drastic, but an educated urbanite won't be caught dead sharing no-no opinions in public, so even their relatively low numbers just won't become apparent in conversation. Though funnily enough it might come up with parents fretting over the political opinions of their kids, their sons in particular.
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