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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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I also observe quite a lot of 1 but with a racial tint: the only possible reason not to want to have open borders is a dislike of foreigners, and therefore anything short of open borders is racist. And any rational non-racist argument against non-maximally-open-borders is just a covers for the racist argument (not always wrong!).

And any rational non-racist argument against non-maximally-open-borders is just a covers for the racist argument (not always wrong!).

Which is why the way to dismantle that is to publicly disavow that the "racist argument" has any meaning whatsoever (re: Fuentes/Morgan, though Trump is the best modern example). That's partially why he, uniquely among English-speaking nations, can still pull the Boomer vote (typically confused as "obligatorily right-wing" by the people who call themselves the left), since the other places are more reflexively fighting the racist bogeymen of 70 years ago.

Reform UK do marginally better among the 50-65 age group (mostly Gen X) than among the 65+ group (mostly Boomers), but the key point is that they do almost twice as well with the over 50's as they do with the under 50's.

Given the size of the Conservative vote among over 65's, I suspect the total right-populist vote (Reform voters + low information right-populist voters foolishly voting Conservative because they don't realise that Johnson's right-populism was fake) is strictly increasing with age.

My impression was that right populists in Australia also skew old.

The only Anglosphere country where right-populism is a youthful movement is Canada, and UK media coverage implies that is because right-populism in Canada is YIMBY in a way that it isn't in the US or UK.