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Up until now the conversation within Germany and Europe at large concerning what to do concerning the ever-preeminent rise of populistic parties, largely directed and funded by Russian money while deriving their support from a sensationalist media which amplifies any individual instances of so-called immigrant violence, hasn’t really amounted to much meaningful policy changes to actually suppress these unconstitutional and antagonistic groups.
In Germany specifically this is in spite of the fact that the AFD has already been declared an anti-democratic tendency by the German federal office for the preservation of the constitution, who is supposed to be the go-to authority to defer to on matters such as this. Even so, politicians are today afraid of actually pursuing this declaration to it’s logical conclusion by actually enforcing a ban on the party in question, with people today saying that doing so would be an “anti-democratic” action supposedly (and of course when the AFD wasn’t popular, it wasn’t appropriate to ban them either given their low popularity, with the implication being that banning these antagonistic parties is never appropriate until they are within the halls of power?).
In Britain a similar story has been repeated, wherein government hesitation to pursue an outlawing of unconstitutional parties like Reform and Restore in spite of their unconstitutionality necessarily depriving them of the protections of assembly, since there is no democracy outside the nation state which is the guarantor of freedoms and rights for people, and necessarily that seeking it’s abolition are (morally but not necessarily legally) outside it’s protections.
The problem today is simply put that democracies are still based on antiquated ideas, inherited from the enlightenment, that haven’t been able to keep up with modern technological and sociological changes which now threaten to upturn the rules based international order which was created following the second world war. As such, for any humanitarian concerned about this matter, I think it is imperative for us to find potential solutions going forward which might help democracy develop in a healthy fashion and oppose those tendencies contrary to it.
One very promising idea among others would be to clearly restrict and define what constitutes a political party, supposing (for the sake of argument in this instance) that there should be three primary political tendencies which every legal party must adhere to.
The first of these is the Third Way position of Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder, in Social Democrat fashion, which we already know can be trusted to uphold sensible economic and societal policy. The second is the more centrist “liberal” tendency (of course, all of these are liberal in some sense or another), being generally pro individual freedoms, freedom of expression and congregation (so long as no anti-democratic tendencies or hate speech is spread, as hate speech is not free speech), following a humanist policy position. The third is the “conservative” right-wing position, in the vein of Reagan and George H. W. Bush, believing in individual freedoms, little market intervention and a certain support for religious institutions (within limits). The traditional right has unfortunately been infiltrated to a certain extent by this populist tendency, but hopefully a more reasonable path is still reachable for those politicians seeking the best for their country.
In this system I’m suggesting all parties as stated will adhere to some extent to one of these three positions, and those who are opposed to it will have to be disbanded or reformed to be eligible to participate in elections. Similarly, the creation of new parties must require the approval of an office capable of judging the conformity of these new groups, and former leaders within disbanded organisations must be monitored to ascertain that they pose no threat to the state or the people it’s sworn to protect. Thankfully the need to have a permit in order to protest is already a well-established norm within many western countries, so riots and disorder can be kept to a minimum, and perpetrators punished accordingly should they break the law.
In this sense I feel such an improvement would drastically help shore up the defence of these western states, which have largely been ineffective at opposing the rising trend of misinformation and disorder.
If a political position becomes popular enough to merit democratic political representation, but the political system declares that that position is a priori illegitimate and anti-democratic, there are only two options:
That's all
Scott Adams had a quip similar to this with Democrats and Trump: You successfully convinced the public that Trump is Hitler. Hitler won. Now what?
In this case it's especially damaging because the "anti-democratic" position that nobody is allowed to express except for AFD and Restore and other such parties is that migrants should be deported and European countries should stay demographically European. You basically can't keep a lid on that. "Democracy can't allow mass deportations." Two guesses what happens next
Two wolves and a sheep....
I suspect that ethnic animus is inversely proportional to living standards, which are downstream of energy supply. If so, then the Greens are one of the most anti-immigrant parties, and AfD, in supporting nuclear energy, might very well contain the seeds of their own destruction.
Why hello there Marx, playing at historical materialism again?
The problems natives have with the tens of millions of foreigners is the tens of millions of foreigners. Yes, it's entirely possible that if material circumstances were cushier, more people would distract themselves with the opiates of the masses du jour. But the massive everyday ethnic friction isn't some psychological projection or poor man's cope or some other intangible phenomenon you can wave away by accumulating a little more public debt to throw at the dissatisfied public. You can sedate people, sure, but they're learning their lessons - that immigration is a problem first and an opportunity second, that foreigners are not their brothers in humanism, that politicians and media will absolutely do their best to shaft them for ideological gains, and that the establishment parties may claim to take their concerns seriously while actually despising them and acting against their interests.
It's a good thing for the left that they already delivered a far more fatal stroke to nativism than "just throw money at the rubes to make them shut up". Sneaking in millions of immigrants, and later letting them rush in through opened floodgates while sabotaging every mechanism that might stem the tide or lead to functioning assimilation, that was a generations-long campaign that worked out excellently. Europe is now a multi-ethnic continent, and has neither the will nor the means to revert it. The AfD and similar parties will die out eventually as the natives are successfully replaced. Congratulations. You already won. To everyone's detriment.
I do not claim that material conditions are the sole driver of history, but they do play a major role. It can hardly be a coincidence that the same island that birthed James Watt also gave rise to William Wilberforce; nor that women's liberation saw wide success in the decades following the invention of the washing machine.
Some people may oppose the presence of foreigners as a terminal value, and would throw away a life of luxury with their neighbour of foreign extraction having equal comfort to live in poverty and toil as long as the other guy has it even worse, but I doubt that we would have made it as far as we have if that particular character flaw were universal.
If material circumstances were better in the Rest Of The World, I don't think there would be as many foreigners trying to move to the OECD countries.
I hardly think that the machines that allow so many of us to have the benefit of servants without any of us having to be the servants constitute 'the opiates of the masses du jour'.
No, some of it is a need for education; contra the wokists, the education needs to be on both sides. If a man immigrates from a country where the community considers decisions about who is allowed near a woman's nether regions to rest with her husband, father, or other male relative, with her preferences in either direction being considered irrelevant, he needs to be informed that, here, even if there is no father/brother/husband forbidding him to touch a particular woman, if she tells him to back off, he can either respect that on her sole authority over her own unmentionables, or he will have the same number of years to reflect upon his life choices as an indigenous European or European-American who did the same thing.
However, a lot of the ethnic tensions come from lingering memories of the nearly-always zero-sum pre-industrial world, in which we did not yet know how to raise ourselves except by pushing others down, and ties of colour or creed formed a convenient Schelling point for ganging up on the neighbours to take their stuff and make them do the donkey-work.
No, I am advocating the production of more physical assets. More energy, more housing, more trains, &c. Things that would be potentially useful even on a deserted island.
If that is the case, it is because they come from societies that have more recently emerged from, and have not advanced as far out of, the aforementioned pre-industrial zero-sum state. (The Green Party, as I have have stated passim and frequenter, are Not Helping.)
That would happen just as much in an ethnically homogeneous society. (Not that it would stay ethnically homogeneous; if everyone of extra-German extraction left Germany, it wouldn't be long before everyone in Bavaria who previously objected to the presence of Poles and Turks and Syrians started objecting to the presence of Saxons and Westphalians and Hannoverians [lumped together as Damp Russians].)
I don't consider that a 'win' so much as a 'good first step'; there are several more continents to get to.
You mis-spelled 'benefit'.
Yes, he who dislikes mass immigration from foreign cultures into a continent that fails at assimilation mus surely be a hateful bigot who just wants others to suffer. Something something ideological Turing test.
We Germans do not control the Rest Of The World.
There is no lack of washing machines, dishwashers and vacuum cleaners in Germany. I do assure you that household appliance shortages are not the cause for our deplorable xenophobia.
"Education", said the soviet. "New Man", he said. Yeah, I'm sure we'll social engineer our way out of this by telling so-called educators to push feminism even harder.
Great. The state of assimilation in Germany is such that urban youths without any immigrant background are converting to the more charismatic ways of our new countrymen. We are not making them advance out of their zero-sum mindset; they're convincing ours it's the better way.
Again, ideological turing Test. You won't believe it, but there are actual differences between having to live with different kinds of Germans and having to live with muslim arabs, subsaharan Africans and Afghans.
Look at any muslim country. Look at africa. Look, at the most optimistic, at Brazil. That is your future.
Disliking immigration as a terminal value is a character flaw. Opposing it as an instrumental value, in pursuit of some other goal, leaves open the possibility of some other route to the same objective.
I was more referring to the wealthier countries put together; the dismantlement of USAID was a bad move even from the perspective of forestalling long-term demographic change.
That was just one example; there are many other dimensions of material circumstances that can shift attitudes.
Something being tried and failing does not mean that it is impossible; otherwise, per Thomas Edison, I would be typing this by candlelight.
A pure redoubling of force on 'intersectional privilege patriarchy male-gaze blah blah blah buzzword buzzword buzzword' feminism is unlikely to be successful. An adjustment of methods, focusing on the sort of feminism that asserts that Women Are People In Their Own Right, Not The Property Of Their Husbands Or Fathers....
And that is the problem we need to solve; less economic precarity would, I believe, at least contribute to the solution, if it weren't being blocked by manglement worried that a lack of desperation in the workforce might possibly create limits to the social dominance they can wield in the workplace.
There was a time when the indigenous people of Europe were no better.
I hardly think that Brazil represents an absolute limit on the quality of life in a multi-ethnic society; and it is still much better than the last time ethnic supremacists were in charge.
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