site banner
PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   22774 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 8, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Going to jump in with what I want to see discussed:

Police and political leaders in Northern Ireland call for calm after Belfast knife attack.

What we know is that a MENA immigrant has attacked a native in the street, gouged out his eyes, and was attempting to behead him when stopped by passers-by.

Details beyond that seem shaky. I've seen the attacker described as Somali, though Sudanese is more consistent. I've seen the victim described as a man in his 40s, though 15-year old boy is also popular. And I've seen that the victim's life was saved, but also that he's perished in the hospital.

What's certain is that the major concern of the people in charge is, of course, that this is liable to upset the native population.

Perhaps that's more understandable than usual because of where it happened. Belfast! A storied town. Across twitter I see various historically-enemy paramilitary sympathizers calling to set aside their differences and unite against the common enemy; that it doesn't matter who controls Northern Ireland unless there's any such place left to save.

Last I heard, all major transport routes into and out of the city have been shut down, businesses are forced to close at 17:30, and curfews have been established. The place seems to be gearing up for major rioting.

Is it just me or have the straws been landing more heavily, lately, on the camel's back?

And, provided that the historically-armed underground belligerent factions of the area haven't withered into insignificance; provided that they do get serious about uniting and using force; might they serve as a template, or at least an inspiration, for other places?

I believe Kulak once predicted that the flashpoint for organized European resistance would happen in Northern Ireland.

You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds.

Crime committed by immigrates provides a sharp flashpoint in a way other crime doesn't. The actual scale of the issue doesn't matter. Actual crime rates don't matter. What matters is that it's not priced in.

I can't speak to Northern Ireland, but here in the US, we have a lot of crime and a lot of avoidable death. We are, collectively, shockingly blithe about it - some people even take pride in it. One black man kills another in an argument? Priced in - everyone will just assume they were gang members, and in any event black lives don't matter. Cops make the worst shoot in the history of law enforcement and suffer no consequences? Priced in - nobody's perfect. A psycho shoots up a school, leaving dozens dead? Priced in - a few dead kids is the Price of Freedom^tm. Reckless driving kills more people than ten 9/11s, every single year? You better believe it's priced in. My grandfather didn't storm the beaches in Normandy so I could drive the speed limit (or, god forbid, take a train like some sort of communist).

A immigrant kills a native? Start building the internment camps and spare no thought for human dignity or individuals' rights. Collective punishment is the only solution.

On some level, I understand it. People really do acculturate to certain risks, to the point where they tolerate seemingly unreal levels of damage, and will get viciously defensive at the suggestion we maybe need to recalibrate our tradeoffs. Crime in particular is an emotional subject, since it is liable to be construed as free-standing anti-social behavior and people react more strongly to malice than misfortune (particularly if the motives are exotic and the victim is atypical). But there's a remarkable lack of curiosity about the actual scope of the issue. The preferred angle is lurid anecdotes (hilariously, the same error they tend to castigate CJRers for with respect to police misconduct). And for some reason the logic of collective judgment and punishment only flows one way. No one in the nativist camp thinks we need to carry out a purge of professional athletes just because professional athletics has a cottage industry in sexual assault cases, or that maybe we should . An uncharitable person might think there's some folks just looking for an excuse to do a pogrom.

You better believe it's priced in

You can't do much about people already here.

You can absolutely do something about not importing more of the most violent and rapey people in the world.

And yet! Only one European country has done anything to slow down on that, instead of spending billions of dollars bringing them in and billions more covering up that they brought them in.

Which country is that?

Denmark, where the left also adopted a moderate anti-immigration attitude. I don't know exactly how successful it's been but at least they're not arresting people for complaining or trying to ban any party that pushes back.

Would you like to discuss actual crime rates? Crime statistics? Because I've got a lot of them. Did you know that people from non-Western backgrounds commit one-third of all rapes in Denmark? I wouldn't recommend looking up the statistics on stranger/assault rape, that might send you to His Majesty's Posting Gaol. We can go through the stats on grooming gangs, if you like, or discuss the exact relationship between the numbers 13 and 52. The man on the street might not know the exact numbers, but if you do know them, it's clear that his folk-knowledge understanding of them is basically correct (modulo a couple esoteric race science aspects he may not know, like certain otherwise indistinguishable Balkan varietals being significantly different from each other).

Can you give a quick summary of the Balkan varietals?

The difference between blacks killing each-other, bad cops, school shooting, reckless driving... Etc. And migrant crime... Is that blacks, cops, school shooters, and reckless drivers aren't multiplying every year.

A horrible risk or costly reality can be priced in if it's predictable and not tied to an expanding variable. You can tolerate all of them for decades or centuries and your bloodline won't die out because of it or atleast this what Americans feel about the matter... Baltimore is a warzone and always will be so just don't go there)

Whereas migrant crime we have THOUSANDS of examples of it never stopping, it only escalating, and continuing to escalate until the host population is fully exterminated or enslaved. These have been called Invasions, Migrations, "Volkswanderung", and every single person on earth, and white people especially have deep social, cultural, spiritual, and probably genetic memories of such apocalyptic wars of genocide occuring about every 80ish years going back through WW2, WW1, Napoleon, the 30 years war, the Turks at vienna, the invasions of the Mongols... Etc. All the way back to Attilla, Caesar's Massacres of the Gauls, Marius' Massacres of the Cimbri, the Fate of the Carthaginians, the Fate of the Melians... All the way back to Troy and before.

If absolutely nothing is ever done about school shootings and it only keeps going on current trends, or even gets more common, maybe over the next hundred years some relative will have been at a school where one happened.

If absolutely nothing is done about Mass Migration or it get's worse... over 100 years it will escalate until your entire race is replaced and exterminated.

Is that blacks, cops, school shooters, and reckless drivers aren't multiplying every year.

If we consider school shooting a white preoccupation (which is dubious using a naive definition but accurate if we mean suicidal spree shooters who actually get attention) these populations are rapidly aging out of peak offending years/into their obsolescence. White people are ancient, even blacks are, iirc, at the upper end of their 30s for their median age.

Just so.

Though the encroachment of violent, crime-prone minorities like blacks and Mexicans into previously-white areas might serve as a counterpoint. Many of the same problems, and nothing was ever really done, except moving further away. This strategy is also wearing thin.

Something was done, in some places; it goes by the name of "gentrification".

Nobody panics when things go "according to plan."

A immigrant kills a native? Start building the internment camps and spare no thought for human dignity or individuals' rights.

An uncharitable person might think there's some folks just looking for an excuse to do a pogrom.

To be clear, an immigrant gouged out a deaf man's eyes, then tried to behead him.

An uncharitable person might think you're deliberately sanding off the horrific, inhuman corners of this specific crime, then presenting it as "merely" an immigrant attempting to murder a native.

There is no version of this where, in your example, an athlete (?) attempts to gouge out a man's eyes and behead him, and we all go "well, that's part of the plan".

To be clear, when I say "an uncharitable person might think there's some folks just looking for an excuse to do a pogrom" I am engaging in rhetorical understatement - there are people explicitly doing exactly that in this thread.

Horrific murders happen with unfortunate regularity, if for no other reason than there are a lot of people and some of them are pretty fucked up. A few weeks ago some Irish rent-a-cops suffocated a man to death. If you peruse a list of people executed in the United States, you'll find a significant share of them are pretty egregious (as in, above and beyond 'mere' murder). The point of emphasizing the horrific nature of this crime in particular is to try and gin up more violence against other people who didn't commit this crime. This is the purpose of the emotive language - don't think, don't empathize, get revenge (on unrelated people).

A few weeks ago some Irish rent-a-cops suffocated a man to death.

Perhaps not:

Now sources have told The Irish Mirror that an initial post-mortem examination which took place this week has not found any signs of foul play - and no visible external injuries on Mr Sakila's body.

Those who read murder mysteries know that one of the advantages of suffocation (from the killer's point of view) is it leaves no external injuries.

I strongly suspect that a man being pinned to the ground by six burly security guards and violently struggling throughout would end up with more external injuries compared to an old woman being smothered in her bed with a pillow.

A few weeks ago some Irish rent-a-cops suffocated a man to death.

This was stupid and they will probably get charged with something, but for context the shoplifter was violent and had just broken a pensioner's ribs.

This part isn't mentioned in some newspapers but the original Irish Times article has it.

Does the moral status of 'pogroms' change when less-unpleasant approaches have been attempted and failed?

People get arrested over there for expressing concern about it. I don't know what they're supposed to do, exactly.

A few weeks ago some Irish rent-a-cops suffocated a man to death.

My understanding is that the autopsy has yet to determine if that was the cause of death.

why let facts get in the way of hating the rest of the forum?

Huh?

a comment on skibboleth's style and regardlessness for facts of the relevant cases, as you pointed out.

Oh sorry, I get you.

The reason why there's a response like this in NI is because of the Unionist paramilitaries which were allowed and encouraged by the state have since been betrayed by that state, and are both present and organized enough to do something about it.

If you don't have a paramilitary organization in your neighborhood, then it might be too late for you.

It certainly gives a whole new meaning to “come out ye Black and Tans”

Come out ye blacks and trans, we've brought in too many Afghans

I believe Kulak once predicted that the flashpoint for organized European resistance would happen in Northern Ireland.

The flashpoint happens when people who don’t normally riot riot. These people have been rioting for a hundred years. They have huge walls in their city precisely because they’re sectarian conflict enjoyers. There are few non-natives in Northern Ireland, the government will quietly move some of them to England and things will quiet down.

What many Americans fail to understand about most major Western European cities (ie not Belfast) is that the battle has been lost a long time ago. In Paris, London, Brussels and in many tier two cities in these countries (Birmingham, Marseille, Rotterdam), natives are far below 50% of the population, and most of those who remain are old. My personal calculation is that perhaps as little as 20-25% of London’s young male population (unless you stretch to include outer, outer suburbs practically in Essex) is wholly indigenous, maybe the bottom end of that range. Other major cities like Vienna, Malmo, Frankfurt, Berlin, Lyon, even Geneva and Zurich are not too far behind.

You can’t start a revolt with those demographics. In fact other than the sectarian history, the reason these riots are happening in Belfast and didn’t happen in London after eg Lee Rigby is precisely because even then the demographics just didn’t exist to riot. The only riots in the last 20 years in London were the largely immigrant ones in 2011.

Just as in the US, the last realistic chance to alter history with regards to mass immigration was probably in the mid-late 1990s, maybe the early 2000s (before around 2003) in parts of Western Europe at the latest. The choice now will be between a kind of Muslim leftist social democracy and whatever corrupt rightist caudillo strongman regime emerges out of the remnants of the traditional hard right (as it already is in France under Bardella, and will in Britain under whoever replaces Farage, or indeed even him), as per the Latin American and arguably even Putinist example. The former will be vaguely green, red and gaza flavored, and the latter will have some aesthetically christian and anti-islam elements, but neither will be truly nativist. One need only look at how Le Pen, Bardella and Meloni have moderated in recent years to see that.

But remigration? We’re talking about old and rapidly aging countries with fractured populations, right-wing-but-tiny militaries, extensive surveillance, well-funded domestic intelligence agencies, demoralized and diverse police, disarmed populations, low morale and now - thanks to AI - the ability to monitor, disrupt and analyze population-level movements and communications on social media, in CCTV footage etc en masse in a way the Stasi couldn’t have hoped for. These are not ripe conditions for a revolution.

These people have been rioting for a hundred years.

Yes, but that also means that they are trained, heavily armed, and not particularly squeamish. Northern Ireland could pop off incredibly fast in a way mainland England just can’t. The paramilitaries never fully complied with the Good Friday Agreement. There are still sweet old Irish farmers in South Armagh with crates of Libyan AK’s and rocket launchers buried under the barn.

Additionally, the demographics are a lot different in NI. Decades of civil war and deindustrialization hit the economy hard, so it was never an attractive destination for migrants.

15% of the population of Algeria was French in 1962, approaching 60% in some of the cities, after a hundred years of settlement. Gone now.

Maybe it will maybe it won't. It's very plausible that mass migration will leave deeper scars than that and that remigration won't happen or that these situations are just too different to compare. But when you proclaim that the battle is lost, history only goes a certain way, and the future can be easily extrapolated from the past, I think you are misunderstanding history. It can swerve.

15% of the population of Algeria was French in 1962, approaching 60% in some of the cities, after a hundred years of settlement.

Quite a different pattern of involvement and, ah, cultural sympathies at play, though.

The obvious difference is that while they could likely not expect to be as big a fish in that fishtank, the Pieds-noirs had a comparatively wealthier country they could move to. For an Algerian descendant in France, being "repatriated" back to Algeria would be a big step down.

The pieds-noirs didn't want to go back to France either and the majority who did were impoverished by the change. But it was better than staying.

Yeah, but what I'm saying is that the move back away from Europe is going to be even less attractive, much less attractive.

Just nudge them back along the European stepping stones where they'll get other gibs. Also buying into the homeland being a complete wartorn mess is inaccurate in most cases.

Which countries want to be those stepping stones?

And these people are not dumb. As far back as the Syrian refugee crisis they were picking their location. There's a reason there's a Channel issue at all and it's because the migrants want to move.

If the UK didn't exist at all they'd simply have remained in France for the most part if their country of origin is so uniquely horrible. If it is solely due to the UK having unique levels of gib to justify the stress then cutting the spigot will motivate quite a few.

Genuine desperate refugees are too poor and too hungry to cross tens of countries

What many Americans fail to understand about most major Western European cities (ie not Belfast) is that the battle has been lost a long time ago. In Paris, London, Brussels and in many tier two cities in these countries (Birmingham, Marseille, Rotterdam), natives are far below 50% of the population, and most of those who remain are old. My personal calculation is that perhaps as little as 20-25% of London’s young male population (unless you stretch to include outer, outer suburbs practically in Essex) is wholly indigenous, maybe the bottom end of that range. Other major cities like Vienna, Malmo, Frankfurt, Berlin, Lyon, even Geneva and Zurich are not too far behind.

You can’t start a revolt with those demographics. In fact other than the sectarian history, the reason these riots are happening in Belfast and didn’t happen in London after eg Lee Rigby is precisely because even then the demographics just didn’t exist to riot. The only riots in the last 20 years in London were the largely immigrant ones in 2011.

One hundred and fifty Britons held back three thousand Africans at Rorke's Drift. Individual IQ matters in war. It could still be done, even at 3:1 odds, if only whites would wake up.

I mean, I get your point but, cowhide shields and spears vs carbines. Yes: industrialized warfare stomps down on tribal warriors. Race war fantasies aren't that though. And now days the tribal warriors have AKs and technicals. They aren't going to be as vulnerable as during those golden few decades in which colonial armies had modern guns and the natives had spears.

See here:

The Effectiveness of Rifle Fire Across Cultures by Kulak.

Long story short, even with the same guns the minds of the people using them count for a lot.

There's a pay wall. But anyways I assume it discusses Muslims literally not aiming and trusting Allah to guide their bullets. Which sounds incredible but supposedly enough Muslims have said it so it may be true.

There's a pay wall.

Open Seame.

Simply put even more shocking than the ineffectiveness of the veteran Afghan Insurgency’s attacks with gunfire, is the terrifying effectiveness amateur and deranged North Americans seem to muster consistently against both the public and the police forces who have spent decades training and preparing for such events.

Deeply interesting

Thanks. Also that's much better than I would have thought.

It's not war, it's low-level ethnic conflict (serious warfare risks drawing in state employees pushed to stop it who're probably going to be more competent than random Sudanese people)

The recent Southport riots have shown that a lot of people just aren't that competent at rioting, the downsides of a comfy life. There's some reports that the Irish are doing better but I wouldn't draw too much on Twitter reports yet.

The recent Southport riots have shown that a lot of people just aren't that competent at rioting,

Please define "competent at rioting"?

by what metrics are we judging a rioter's proficiency? Property damage? Amount of favorable press coverage?

Ability to avoid being arrested with trivial effort by not doing things like getting recorded or incriminating yourself via publicly posted video.

There's rumors that the NI protestors were "suggesting" businesses close and turn off their cameras, protestors leave phones at home and so on. Basic opsec but better in comparison.

I'm thoroughly disappointed at rioters. At no point does anyone throw a bunch of water balloons filled with paint at the riot cops plastic faceplate/shields. The riot cops are allowed to establish a defensive line and use line tactics vs the rioters and the rioters never just drive a truck through them or use heavy truck/bulldozer equipment to blockade ingress points denying the authorities access with riot vans/water cannons.

It may sound odd but traditionally rioters in Belfast aren't actually trying to cause maximum damage to the police. These riots and the ones last year are kind of unique in acting as cover for people to burn out suspected migrants. Most of the time there's no goal beyond symbolic rage. People don't want serious jailtime, they know you aim petrol bombs at the cars not the officers, and the only ones trying to do worse are drunk 16 year olds who aren't capable of much anyway.

Enough people know how to do real damage that it would happen if they really wanted it.

‘Whatever happens, we have got The maxim gun, and they have not’

Rotor’s drift was a British victory because the British couldn’t retreat and had guns. The zulus lost a lot of people, but Isandlwana shows that they were highly effective at war.

Do you believe that the median Silicon Valley Tech-Bro has a higher IQ than the median 19th century Tommy? If so, do you believe that if the historical defenders were to be magically replaced with a randomly selected band of tech-bros, that the tech-bros would perform better than the Tommys did?

I think the more relevant way to look at the matter is whether there are important IQ floors below which substantial efficacy is lost. Replacing hard men with above-floor IQs with much softer men who happen to be even smarter wouldn't go great, I think, no. I also don't think it's especially pertinent to mention.

I think it is extremely pertinent.

There is a common assumption here on theMotte that a high verbal IQ is a direct proxy for knowledge, competence, virtue, grit, etc... and it is that assumption that I am challenging.

See @HereAndGone2's comment on "midwits" down thread.

The flashpoint happens when people who don’t normally riot riot.

That happened in the US. State capacity was quite sufficient to put those people down for the forseeable future.

I find this comment to be a bit cryptic.

The people who don't normally riot, rioted on January 6. They were stopped, arrested, given long prison terms, fired from jobs and disqualified from public office, no flashpoint.

But that’s partially because January 6 was very small and contained. A white people equivalent of the George Floyd or Rodney King riots would be a lot harder to deal with, as unlikely as it is.

But it wouldn't be allowed to spread like that.

It just wouldn't happen, "allowed" or not. The George Floyd riots are a sign of low in-group bias, which is what you'd need here. About half of whites were fine with the chaos that was going on and those people simply aren't going to be supporting the riots in favor of racial reactionaries.

Astroturfed bullshit has to allowed to spread, when it’s big and real it’s tough to stop with anything.

I don’t believe America has losts yet, but we probably need a hard stop on mass migration today. We have probably had enough selection effect on the Indian and Asian migrations to assimilate those populations with time. The Central American populations tend to atleast have Christianity base and tend to be fine with being apolitical. It can be an America with a little Brazil but not Brazil. The Southern Cone is the last hope. Europeans have a constitutional right in Argentina to immigrate so mass migration of the European variety would be possible there. Plus huge surging population in some religious groups like Mennonites in the region. Argentina is basically the last stand for European Civilization. And where it is most likely to re-emerge if losts.

Pretty much.

What incenses me most about race-conscious rightoids is how incapable they are of sovereign thought, especially that of any relevance in 2026. The board is as you mention in your final paragraph: the digital surveillance state is wired up well enough that it's basically just "Draw a selection rectangle around the protest mob on Google Maps, right-click, 'Freeze bank accounts.'"

Even for something as fundamental as communication, rightoids just do it on the centralised, mass surveillance platforms run by the "idk, they trust me. dumb fucks" sort. Meanwhile, Hillary fricken' Clinton -- who was a woman in her 60s at the time -- was like "I should probably run my own email server on a box in my basement so I don't have to depend on a bunch of centralised surveillance slop like gmail."

Like come on, if grandma socialite over here is out-cyberpunking your ass, you are not a serious political actor.

What incenses me most about race-conscious rightoids

This is a bad start--it really communicates disdain in a way that wages culture war rather than discussing it. And while "race-conscious rightoids" is at least arguably a somewhat specific group (?)--

how incapable they are of sovereign thought

--seems too sweeping to apply to an appropriately specific group. The violation is not exactly egregious and there is some substance to your comment but I feel like I should at least say, "more light, less heat, please."

Perhaps we all long for, on some level, to be watched over and controlled. Some big thinkers in the 1850-1950 era probably had something to say about this. How "god" played a role in being the father figure for grownups. Omnipotent and omniscient as a small child imagines a parent to be. No one ever truly grows up though, not fully, so the needs of the child remain throughout life.

The seductive convenience of the smartphone and social media probably dulled people further into being sheep who are easily controlled and who don't stray far from what their peers do.

Perhaps we all long for, on some level, to be watched over and controlled

Well, Hillary Clinton doesn't. Perhaps she truly was the rightful heiress of the free world.

Hillary certainly wanted to be the watcher and controller rather than the other way around, but I think she's not at all unique in that -- it's a property of most politicians. Some people prefer the feel of the handle, others the sting of the lash.

Well, whatever one may say of her politics in general, I don’t think that’s what this specific incident implies: she didn’t want to watch or control anything here, in the Zuckerberg sense. She didn’t start an email service and try to get a bunch of gullible people to use it; she just hosted her own mail server for herself.

It’s honestly incredibly based. Possibly the most tech-literate and clearheaded act of self-sovereignty I’ve ever witnessed from a politician (although admittedly the competition is nonexistent).

I think you're overestimating how entrenched the new population is and underestimating how reliant they are on gibs to be viable where they are. It won't necessarily be at pitchfork point but it's largely charity keeping these people going and they've demonstrated the ability to keep shifting onwards for potential better deals

Even being homeless with zero ‘gibs’ (and there will never be zero) in Western Europe is better than being an average person in a true hellhole country. This guy was from Sudan. That is one of the worst places in the world to live, either in the desperately poor and violent south or in Sudan proper which is undergoing an extraordinarily brutal civil war in which countless people have been killed.

Even if you rely on handouts and charity, you get more in a rich place than a poor one, that’s why beggars (and trick or treaters) classically go to wealthier and more trafficked neighborhoods. Better to starve on the streets of Belfast than Sudan. At least in the former you are less likely to be gang raped and tortured before dying, and someone will probably take pity on you. These people are never ever ever going home voluntarily.

Yeah but like most of these people came through other European nations to the UK due to the perception of it being the best deal. If UK suddenly becomes a notably worse deal than France they're fully capable of going back. You just need to be less attractive than the median eurozone gibs.

You're also vastly overstating how bad life is in the countries of origin especially for those with sufficient resources to make a multi-year refugee odyssey viable. There's a reason they frequently go back to visit on holiday

You're also vastly overstating how bad life is in the countries of origin especially for those with sufficient resources to make a multi-year refugee odyssey viable. There's a reason they frequently go back to visit on holiday

They go back because they maintain family links.

I was just talking to my dad and he said it was actually dead during Eid because everyone went back to the provinces. Those are poorer places than even what counts as a metropole in a tiny, sub-$1000 GDP per capita country. But they want to see their people.

Make no mistake though, they'll be back for work on Monday. And if they were told they couldn't come back after they left, they're having Eid right where they work.

And there's some obvious benefits that come with having foreign currency in these countries. But they're gonna have to come back and earn more. My mother is in this cycle of bouncing between Saudi Arabia (for the Hajj/Umrah) and then back home to see people and relax and then back to America for work or see the kids, depending on what her bank balance looks like.

There's no genteel way out of this. This idea that you're going to cut off a spigot here or there and it'll stop is the sort of bloodless wonkery that people like Starmer are driven by. If there was some solution like that it'd already be found. It's not going to happen.

'If we cut off the spigot it'll be super difficult and the countries of origin are literally Mordor' is the sort of logic that drives a Starmer. Vast majority of recent immigrants are gibs motivated economic migrants who aren't starving and raped in their countries of origin.

We don’t need to kick out everyone; we need to stop new people coming and get 30%-50% to self deport.

Cut off gibs but offer exit gibs.

extensive surveillance, well-funded domestic intelligence agencies, demoralized and diverse police, disarmed populations, low morale and now - thanks to AI - the ability to monitor, disrupt and analyze population-level movements and communications on social media

So is your argument that even these methods will prove to be insufficient to prevent a political takeover by either the far left or a right-wing caudillo, or that the powers that be will refrain from deploying these methods out of political considerations?

These institutions can broadly withstand most socialist-type left wing movements and most caudillo type right wing movements that will both be within the expanded universe overton window that’s currently being created. True remigration isn’t in that window.

I responded to FtttG here before realizing why there was so little action in that thread.

Tl;dr

  1. Fuck this guy. I hope he gets whatever punishment the law deems fit for a violent psychopath.
  2. It’s good that public figures are calling for calm. That is the most important part of their jobs.
  3. I realize that saying 2. automatically places me in the Leftist Shill category, and I don’t like that the discourse is so poisoned.
  4. Twitter delenda est.

Seriously, social media is probably the worst way to learn about public opinion. Unfortunately, most of the public which is opining probably got the idea through social media.

across twitter I see various historically-enemy paramilitary sympathizers calling to set aside their differences and unite against the common enemy

This is still pretty silly. If the IRA is plotting a cooperative pogrom, they’re not doing it on Twitter.

Is it just me or have the straws been landing more heavily, lately…

Just you. Belfast has a smaller total population than LA’s black population. In the 90s. I’m not expecting to see anything remotely on the scale of the ‘92 riots.

Kulak once predicted that the flashpoint for organized European resistance

Kulak predicts a lot of things. I don’t know that he’s been right yet. I’d take the other side of this bet.

It’s good that public figures are calling for calm. That is the most important part of their jobs.

Moving my response here. I don't think it makes you Leftist Shill, exactly, more like Usefully Naive Centrist.

Public figures calling for calm have burned all their credibility over and over, and to keep giving them the benefit of the doubt is Einstein's supposed definition of insanity.

Elected officials are incentivized to call for calm, procedural responses no matter what

Surely we can accept by now that in fact no, they're pretty specific about when they call for that and exactly how they put it down, and how they pressure victim's families into making hostage statements? None of them called for calm when they were promoting BLM riots, as far too many Europeans and their politicians did!

While #notallimmigrants is true, why would anyone believe that it's more than mealymouthed slop when it's coming from the cultureless, soulless cretins that promote pure propaganda like Adolescence? It's not like this is a one-off, or a tenth-off. It's just the Norm Macdonald tweet, over and over.

It’s hard to make that clear when the very act of calling for restraint is treated as a naked emotional appeal

Is there any evidence that it's not? At some point, they have to do something, ANYTHING, to credibly display that they care more about actual violent crime than about "community relations."

It's hard to make that balance clear when everyone's lying eyes tell them that the ruling class of the UK would rather let low-class girls be raped in perpetuity and a growing number of random civilians be stabbed to death, than to be called racist. Hell, the police would rather let a man bleed to death in the street than help him because he was accused of racism! People like Starmer would, seemingly, rather start slitting throats themselves than restrict immigration at all or change any policy.

It’s good that public figures are calling for calm. That is the most important part of their jobs.

It's certainly not the most important part of their jobs, what a strange idea - the most imporant part of an elected official's job obviously would be representing the interests of the people that elected them.

I also wouldn't summarize their reaction as "calling for calm" - they're calling for you, the citizen, not to think about these things too much and to let those in power handle it, i.e. allow them to continue business as usual. If they were "calling for calm", why do they insistently reroute these tragedies into hit-pieces about how evil the reaction of right-wingers and protestors is? That is the opposite of calming the situation, it actually inflames it considerably. Manufacturing a new enemy to distract from the actual barbarism that occurred is pouring oil on the fire.

I realize that saying 2. automatically places me in the Leftist Shill category, and I don’t like that the discourse is so poisoned.

The discourse is never gonna recover. Public figures actively fanned the flames of BLM 2020, to the point where UK had people protesting in the streets cuz George Floyd GOT GOT thousands of miles and an ocean away. Same crowd, last year: Netflix's Adolescence. Leftist public figures engineered genuine hysteria over a fictional 13yo boy who fictionally murdered his fictional female classmate after fictionally listening to "Andrew Tate". They used this fictional morality tale to lecture and pathologise actual young boys as dangerous little beasts who needed to be muzzled and re-educated.

And when challenged, the so-called documentary kept circling back to these made up names. Funny how the “real story” it was supposedly based on never seemed to appear.

I’m in favour of calling for calm on principle, but leftist figures have burned through every last scrap of credibility here.

It’s good that public figures are calling for calm. That is the most important part of their jobs.

It is a part, but I wouldn't call it "the most important part". Admittedly, in Northern Ireland specifically it is a larger part than usual, but I'd call running the country more important than calling for calm (I think I'd prefer a politician who ran the country and never called for calm to one which called for calm and never ran the country, although admittedly a politician that calls for mob violence is a different kettle of fish).

This reminds me of "More Communication" from last week. You can call for calm because you want the sentiment to go away (with no substantive action), or because you've received the message and will take action (so any further excitement is wasted).

Imagine that you're in the wild west. A local commits an atrocity, and a mob gathers to lynch him. The sheriff steps out in front of them and says "You need to calm down...

  1. "...because violence is not the answer. You need live and let live. It wasn't really that bad, after all."
  2. "...because I will arrest him and bring him to trial, and there is a very high chance he will be executed for his crimes."

Those are wildly different messages, that could both be described as telling the townsfolk to calm down.

EDIT: See Montreal mayor urges calm, vows to uncover truth after police unit suspected of racist behaviour. The government discovered misconduct and is in the process of fixing it. Consequences are already on the way (with or without further outcry), so any excitement is wasted.

\3. Because I sympathize with him and plan to let him go and I would really rather you not do anything when I let him go.

I replied to @netstack arguing something similar.

It is good that public figures are calling for calm, it's bad that the policies of those public figures has led to this beheading via policy and are unable to address it due to ideology.

These problems are longstanding and have been ignored, and right now calling for calm is something the incompetent and complicit are doing in order to avoid blame falling on themselves. It is something they are doing in order to avoid sending them all back, repealing every bullshit refugee law on the books, and reverting to ethnocentrism.

I don't hope this guy gets whatever punishment the law deems fit, because the law has beclowned itself again and again and again and it does not deserve the respect you hold for it. There's no doubt he did it, he should be dead within a week, and every moment past that he draws breath is further injustice masquerading as mercy.

Twitter delenda est.

With respect, I think you are falling into the centrist trap. Twitter isn't radicalising people. All the horrible murders are radicalising people. Twitter is merely declining to censor them afterwards.

I realize that saying 2. automatically places me in the Leftist Shill category, and I don’t like that the discourse is so poisoned.

Again, it's not about the discourse, it's about the horrible murders. I don't think you're a leftist shill but I think you are okay, fundamentally, with this kind of thing happening. That doesn't mean that you wouldn't fix it if you could snap your fingers and magically prevent all horrible murders, but ultimately you seem to prefer all the horrible murders to any of the things that would prevent the horrible murders.

If "calling for calm" means "calmly discussing how we are going to begin repatriating these people" then that's fair enough, but otherwise "it's good that politicians are calling for calm" does absolutely translate to "I want you to sit down and do nothing". That's not a discourse thing. That's a basic divergence of political preferences.

All the horrible murders are radicalizing people.

Well, horrible murders of whites are radicalizing other whites. I don't care about horrible cartel killings, and I presume you don't either (well, I suppose (royal)you and I might "care" in the way you accuse netstack of "caring" about the Belfast murder).

If "calling for calm" means "calmly discussing how we are going to begin repatriating these people"

"These people" might mean criminal and illegal migrants, the recent crop of migrants in general, all Sudanese, or even all nons. I can absolutely understand why a non-white person, or anyone who cares about non-whites and is familiar with the dissident right's rhetoric, might prefer to weather the current storm rather than concede the field and risk the chance of the DR going the distance with the Overton Window. After all, what comes after reclaiming your lands if not seizing theirs in kind?

After all, what comes after reclaiming your lands if not seizing theirs in kind?

This does seem to be have been the reaction of the Africans and Arabs to colonisation, who as always are very clear-eyed about how they see other civilisations.

In general you seem to be going off on a weird tangent. My point is that it is the constant murders of white people by ethnic minorities that is radicalising whites against ethnic minorities, not the Twitter algorithm.

My point is that it is the constant murders of white people by ethnic minorities that is radicalising whites against ethnic minorities, not the Twitter algorithm.

The safest countries have about one murder per year per 100,000 people. At least a quarter of those will be outrageous enough to make good social media copy. So a group of 5,000,000 people will commit one potentially viral murder per month, if they are as peaceful as the Swiss. And one a week if they are only as peaceful as white Americans or black Britons (both around 4 murders per 100k). Since there are more than 5,000,000 nonwhite people in the UK (and an order of magnitude more than that if you are looking at immigrant crime globally, as most of the Americans poasting about the situation in the UK are), your Twitter feed being full of murders of white people by ethnic minorities could just as easily be caused by the algorithm as by actual crime. If Elon Musk wanted your Twitter feed to be full of white-on-white murders, he could make it so. And if he wanted it to be full of cute cat pictures, he could make that so.

How much do you know or care about white-on-white crime in Belfast? It's a complex issue given the history of the Troubles and the number of ex-paramilitaries hanging around. And yet you feel the need to have an opinion about crime by asylum seekers in Belfast.

There is enough crime in Zurich to fill a tabloid or a social media feed with crime stories. To know whether the constant stream of crime being shoved in your face by people who don't have your own interests at heart (at best they want you to keep staring at the ads between the criminal fnords, and in the case of Twitter coverage of migrant crime in the UK, we know that these posts are being amplified by a foreign billionaire who has made no secret of his desire to foment political violence in the UK and drive the British government out of office) is caused by the people doing the crime or the people doing the shoving, you need to look at statistics. So let's do that.

Murder has dropped since mass immigration started in the UK and continues to fall slowly. Ditto stabbings*. Ditto violent crime where the victim ends up in A&E. Ditto violent crime measured by victim surveys. Ditto property crime measured by victim surveys. There is some evidence that property crimes which mostly target tourists and therefore wouldn't appear in a victim survey have increased, including phone snatching and pickpocketing. Shoplifting (which also doesn't appear in victim surveys because the victims are businesses and not individuals) has definitely increased. Sexual offences by ethnic Pakistanis in the UK were out of control 20 years ago, and these cold cases are being regularly relitigated on social media in a way which suggests to people not paying attention that the crimes are still going on. (I genuinely don't know if they are or not, and the people outrage-poasting about them aren't bothering to check either). Cyber fraud is also rising, but it isn't what right populist agitators or tabloid journalists are talking about when they say that "crime is out of control".

Right now the UK right-populist discourse is dominated by two murders that went viral on social media. One was a case of "two hotheads get into a fight at pub closing time, unfortunately someone is dead because someone else brought a knife to a fistfight". The murder of Henry Nowak is only newsworthy because of the shockingly poor (and probably racially motivated) police response - and yet the social media peanut gallery are calling for penal laws against a demographic who commit less crime than the white British. Nobody has run the numbers, but given the reputation of Sikhs in the UK** it is likely that kirpans prevent more crime than they cause (much like guns carried by CCW permit holders in the US). The other case is a real failure of the UK immigration system - the Belfast attacker was a Sudanese falsely claiming to be a Somali who crossed the open ROI-NI border in order to claim asylum in the UK instead of the EU. But you wouldn't have learned about the difference from social media posts by right-populists.

* Police recorded knife crime is up (but peaked in 2024 and is now falling again), but actual stabbings are down, as measured by NHS administrative data. The most likely reason is that the police have been told to be more careful about checking whether a knife was used in muggings and suchlike where violence is threatened but nobody gets stabbed.

** Singh is the second-most common surname of VC winners, after Smith.

Nobody has run the numbers, but given the reputation of Sikhs in the UK** it is likely that kirpans prevent more crime than they cause (much like guns carried by CCW permit holders in the US).

What difference does it make? They're building a parallel society. If you give them a street and they commit less crime it's still not yours to live on. If you give them a city and they make it rich it's still not your money to spend. If you give them your country it's not yours anymore, it's theirs.

Unless they were integrating. Are the Sikhs integrating? Apparently they have their own rituals we have to grant them religious exemptions for. And they don't behave like White Britons -- by your own argument they don't commit crime at the same rate. Presumably they are different.

(Not that I would assume they commit crime at lower rates anyways. Basically every immigrant group commits more crime than native Brits with the exception of other European groups and the Japanese. It's possible the Sikh are genuinely exceptional and I know they are different from standard Indians / Muslims / Arabs / etc. But if a random Sikh murders a kid and his family helps him cover up the crime I'm going to assume that they're actually not exceptional: I've never heard of a Japanese immigrant family doing that.)

If you give them a city and they make it rich it's still not your money to spend.

I mean, it is if you tax them and redistribute the money.

Apparently they have their own rituals we have to grant them religious exemptions for.

Although it doesn't actively proselytize as much as Christianity, Sikhism is not an ethnic religion; any person of any ethnicity can convert to it if they become convinced that its teachings hold the true answers about the Divine. Accordingly this is, as it says in the name, a religious, not ethnic, exemption. In other words, to not have it would infringe upon the religious freedom of Britons of any race by foreclosing the possibility for a white Englishman of converting to Sikhism if he wants to.

Now as an atheist, I'm not that big a fan of religious exemptions. But ultimately, they're a Chesterton's Fence whose origins are not very hard to dig up. Bad things happen if the government starts steamrolling over the faithful's objections with "there's not actually an angry sky man who will send you to Hell if you work on a Sunday/do indulgences/mix meat and dairies, get over it". Granted Sikhs are enough of a religious minority that pissing them off on their own wouldn't start a religious war, but it seems straightforwardly more principled for the state to say "we withhold judgment about the truth-value of any recognized religion" than "we withhold judgment about the truth-value of Christianity and Islam, but because there's so few of them we're going to functionally write it into law that you cannot simultaneously act in accordance with a belief in the divinely-inspired truth of the Guru Granth Sahib, and be a law-abiding citizen in our country".

I mean, it is if you tax them and redistribute the money.

We can do the same thing with tariffs. And then we don't have neighborhoods full of foreigners who will hide the Bataclan bombers after they make their getaway.

Accordingly this is, as it says in the name, a religious, not ethnic, exemption. In other words, to not have it would infringe upon the religious freedom of Britons of any race by foreclosing the possibility for a white Englishman of converting to Sikhism if he wants to.

I don't agree with it, but the English have adopted weapons bans as a virtue. They also have religious freedom as a virtue. In accommodating immigrant Sikh values, they now have to accommodate exceptions in their weapons bans. These are two contradictory virtues. They can't actually coexist meaningfully. This is a conflict caused by immigration. Your proposed solution, essentially, is to jettison arms control in favor of religious freedom, i.e., that English society should change even more in order to accommodate the Sikh. It can be perfectly English to be Sikh! Well, it wasn't 50 years ago, and it wasn't even common until extremely recently. If the challenges of integrating migrants are to be solved by England changing to accommodate them, what's the argument in favor of accepting migrants? Trade deal: You change your society and culture and values, and we give you welfare consumers, a housing shortage, and endless supply of accusations of racism, and occasional stabbings. We will integrate on our terms, not yours, and maybe, just maybe, statistically, we'll perform better on some made-up statistical measures. Oh and you don't have a choice and this downgrade is permanent.

More comments

Are Jews integrated in the United States? Are the Irish? Are Texans? What are the standards for 'building a parallel society' such that we should apply it to British Sikhs?

If an Irish man used a religious exemption to acquire a weapon to murder somebody and his Irish friends and family closed ranks to help him hide the weapon and spin up bogus anti-Irish racism charges, I would not consider that proof of integration.

You put "building a parallel society" in quotes and I'm not sure if I should read that as scare quotes. But to be clear, there are absolutely Muslim, ethnic, and immigrant neighborhoods in major cities in Britain and across Europe that function as parallel societies. There are parts of London where it is not safe to be gay. There are parts of Marseilles where it is not safe to be white. Would it make a difference to you if those areas had lower reported crime stats? It doesn't to me.

More comments

One was a case of "two hotheads get into a fight at pub closing time, unfortunately someone is dead because someone else brought a knife to a fistfight".

What a despicably misleading gloss of the Nowak murder. There is zero evidence that Nowak assaulted Digwa, or that he was a "hothead".

The video shows Nowak calling Digwa a "bad man" repeatedly while filming him shortly before the murder, and continuing to do so when Digwa is walking away from him. That isn't legal provocation, and nobody suggested it was, but it pattern-matches to "two hotheads get into a fight at pub closing time" much more closely than "unprovoked attack by crazed thug from violent foreign culture".

We don't know what happens in between "Digwa is walking away from Nowak, who continues to abuse him verbally" and "Digwa attacks Nowak with a big-ass knife", but "Digwa turns round and demands satisfaction, and a series of mutually escalatory threat displays lead to a fight" is quite plausible, as is "Digwa turns around and chops up the guy who he incorrectly thought was stalking him with no further warning", or anything in between. If we were trying to adjudicate Nowak's Darwin award nomination, the crucial point would be whether Nowak follows Digwa. Following someone while filming them and verbally abusing them is genuinely provocative (though not a provocation in the technical legal sense), and culpably stupid if the guy is visibly armed in a way which means they will win a fight. But the police didn't find any evidence either way on this point, and in any case it is legally irrelevant to Digwa's guilt.

  • -15

The video shows Nowak calling Digwa a "bad man" repeatedly while filming him shortly before the murder, and continuing to do so when Digwa is walking away from him.

If that exact scene were put into a Sopranos style prestige drama, the point of the scene would be to show that the murderer was an unhinged psycho with a pathetic, brittle ego and "random encounter" levels of impulse control.

More comments

The term "fight", to my mind, implies that the two men were attacking each other. Likewise "fistfight" implies that both men were punching each other. I don't think "one man insults another man, to which the second man responds by physically assaulting the first man" can reasonably be characterised as a "fight". Despite Digwa's insistence that Nowak attacked him first and he was defending himself, he was unable to present any evidence that this was the case, and there were no cuts or bruises on his person at the time of his arrest.

So: I think the claim that "Nowak and Digwa got into a fistfight" is simply untrue. No one has presented any evidence that Nowak punched (or even tried to punch) Digwa. If you said "Nowak insulted Digwa, and Digwa responded by stabbing him", I'd have no objection.

More comments

After all, what comes after reclaiming your lands if not seizing theirs in kind?

This would mean that the reason they are coming here is to seize all our lands, so we should kick them out all the harder, no?

That bit was adopting the DR's language to emphasize my point; also see my use of "nons" to refer to non-whites two sentences earlier. I'm not countersignaling the general right-wing response (I'm in favor of fedposting the murderer and kicking most of his ilk out), I simply note that merely removing the recent arrivals and leaving it at that is not the natural end of the DR's philosophy (which is sounder than the more moderate alternatives), just as desegregation was not the natural end of the social justice movement's goals.

I don't know that there is a natural end to any political movement, beyond what reality permits. Sadly, it seems like we need to constantly exercise our agency, prudence, etc.

I’m not sure what the point of this comment is. It seems clear to me that the prerequisites for coordinated white resistance to globohomo (at least basic common understanding of HBD and rekindled pride of race) are also prerequisites for restarting the course of history that was set in motion in 1492, only this time without any preconceptions of “uplift”*. If you believe otherwise, I’d like to know why; I certainly don’t wish for this to be the case, given my own dubious whiteness.

*Assuming the lack of some mass gene-drive technology or dedication to more traditional population-scale eugenics, though both of those options can still be argued against.

I think you radically underestimate the extent to which technological progress can accelerate when we don't have a communist albatross around our necks. Particularly considering the wider reforms to the State ethos which would be required. But I appreciate the phrase "restarting the course of history that was set in motion in 1492", it's a great slogan. We just gotta freeze the Germans out like the last colonial race or they'll start killing everyone out of sheer autism again - Anglos don't got that dawg in them and the Latins are too venal/horny not to make nice with the locals once they're in charge.

Why would you assume it's about race? There have been minorities in Britain for centuries. There have not been not been horrible and prolific murders and rapes in Britain like this. Nobody cared about minorities when they acted British and identified as British and cared about British people and their values.

I don't care much about horrible cartel killings in practice (though I do in a theoretical sense) because they're not happening around me. But if a cartel murdered the family next door to me, I would care very very much. And I would not care whatsoever what race the victims were, I would care about the proximity and the threat to me and my friends and family. And I would advocate radical anti-cartel policies that did whatever they needed to and broke whatever they had to in order to get me safe.

People are selfish much more than they're inherently racist. If people feel like they need to deport or ostracize everyone of a certain race because that is the only or the most effective way to protect themselves then they'll suck it up and accept being racist. The key to actually helping sympathetic and non-murderous minorities is to clearly and unambiguously differentiate them from the murderous one. If you have a sane and careful immigration policy which tests the temperament, reputation, and civic-mindedness of potential immigrants and only lets in ones that want to integrate into their new home and actually make it their home, then those immigrants will not stand out from the native population. They might visually be distinguishable, but nobody will care because their behavior and safety won't meaningfully differ from white people. If you let in one million sane and civilized immigrants and one million looters, scammers, and murderers of the same race then people will become racist to protect themselves from the 50% chance that any minority they meet might be a looter/scammer/murderer.

This can easily be seen by the fact that racism is targeted specifically towards minorities with high crime rates and not others. Nobody really goes around trying to harass or deport the Japanese minorities. This is not a coincidence. Fix the crime and the racism goes away for free.

After all, what comes after reclaiming your lands if not seizing theirs in kind?

Why does something have to come after? Most people just want their homes and their friends and family to be safe. Even if the most radical of the right might be true racists who want to conquer the world in the name of Whiteness, as soon as the majority of sane people feel safe the radical right who try to push for wars of conquest will lose their support and things will return to normal.

Why would you assume it's about race? There have been minorities in Britain for centuries. There have not been not been horrible and prolific murders and rapes in Britain like this. Nobody cared about minorities when they acted British and identified as British and cared about British people and their values.

The largest immigrant minority in Britain before the Empire Windrush docked in 1948 was the Irish. (They were legally British, but so were the Jamaicans on the Windrush - people who are inclined to racism didn't see either group as remotely British). Moral panics about Irish wickedness were an ongoing feature of 19th and early 20th century British politics. There is also the notorious indigenous minority with their own unique kind of sexual deviance, the Welsh. Anti-Welsh racism has also been an on-and-off feature of British politics, and there was at one point in the 19th century a semi-serious moral panic among a certain type of conservative Anglican about the spread of Welsh-influenced Nonconformism* in England.

The British are less prone to ethnic hatred than most countries, but we are not immune to it. It is just that the ur-racism in England was never about skin colour, and this confuses Americans and lefties raised in the American tradition of anti-racism.

* Nonconformism is a general term historically used in British religious politics for and form of Protestantism that is not Anglican or Scottish Presbyterian (both of which are official state religions in different parts of the UK).

Why would you assume it's about race? There have been minorities in Britain for centuries

Ah yes, they've been here from the start.

Until 1948, Britain's non-European population was effectively zero. Sure, you can find isolated individual's like Henry VIII's trumpeter or whatever, but to jump from that to claiming 'there have been minorities in Britain for centuries' is just motte and baileying.

Otherwise you're right. People are very good at telling good immigrants from bad ones. The state, unfortunately, is not.

Ah yes, they've been here from the start.

It would be funny to start using this argument in reverse. Vikings discovered part of America a thousand years ago, so naturally Europeans have been in the Americas "since the start". There are even rumour of Jews in ancient Israel!

But it wasn't zero. And, I could be wrong since I'm not actually British, but to the best of my knowledge they were treated relatively normally and not faced with the levels of racism seen in the U.S. Or... maybe centuries is too far. But the past century, at least. I never used to hear about racial problems with minorities in Britain, though I suppose that is confounded with the low prevalence, it could be that the few minorities that were there were poorly treated.

Otherwise you're right. People are very good at telling good immigrants from bad ones. The state, unfortunately, is not.

Start with "anyone without a legal visa or immigration paperwork is immediately put back where they came from", or in the rare instance they seem like an actual legitimate refugee from an unsafe place you put them in the nearest European country or country adjacent to their home country as if they had merely crossed that border and not yours. Wherever they were before coming here, they go back as if they had never crossed your border.

That should address like 90% of the problem immediately, since the illegals are going to be the most greedy, selfish, uncaring, and unwilling to follow rules and wait in lines, and make up a substantial fraction of the population.

Then you adopt civic nationalism tests. Ensure they speak English, want to be British, are willing to swear loyalty to the Crown and set aside their old nation. Know what it even means to be British and have rights. Are not radical zealots for some religion or ideology incompatible with first world British values. Make sure they have some sort of skill or work ethic that makes them employable. Only let in people who pass the test.

Disqualify anyone from social services for the first five years. Maybe you help them with housing and job-finding program for the first month or two, but then they need to get a job and support themselves. Anyone who commits crimes or ends up unemployed is sent back as above.

All of this is legible to a state. The civic nationalism tests are probably going to end up subjective and a bit exploitable, but even something as simple as forcing people to state out loud "I don't want to bring Shariah Law to this country" is going to filter out a lot of people who would be too offended to say that out loud. And the English language requirement is not so easily cheated.

I think this is how Britain should handle it. I think this is how America should handle it. I think this is how basically every first world country should solve their immigration issues. We have a functioning society, we want cheap labor, immigration trades some amount of the former for some amount of the latter. Supply and demand dictate that the market price is massively in our favor and we can make whatever demands we want and still find people willing to fulfill the role. We can ask for anything we want that good, honest, hardworking people can fulfill, and they will continue to flood us with applications that we can pick and choose from.

But it wasn't zero.

This seems like hair-splitting. For most of the history of what we call Britain, the non-white population was as close to zero as made no difference, a rounding error. Until the mid-twentieth century, the majority of the British population could go their entire lives without encountering a single non-white person inside British borders.

I never used to hear about racial problems with minorities in Britain

By "racial problems with minorities", are you referring to racism experienced by minorities, or problems with racial minorities committing disproportionate numbers of crimes etc.? I'm not sure what timeframe "I never used to" covers, but in either case, it's not a new phenomenon.

For the former, the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 sent shockwaves throughout the UK, and was the subject of a government inquiry which concluded that the British police service was institutionally racist. (The handcuffing of Henry Nowak is ultimately downstream of recommendations made by said inquiry.) The murder was the impetus for new legislation surrounding double jeopardy in murder trials.

For the latter, last week we discussed Enoch Powell's (in)famous "rivers of blood" speech. He was sounding the alarm about the increased crime and societal dysfunction that appears to accompany mass immigration as early as 1968. While the grooming gangs scandal only really became common knowledge in the 2010s, it had been ongoing since the mid-90s.

it had been ongoing since the mid-90s.

The earliest newspaper report about a Pakistani rape gang is from 1955!

The amount of times people use historical anecdotes along the lines of 'A person of moderate Arabic complexion rocked up in court one day, the entire country came to look upon this oddity as they had never ever seen the like of it in many many years and it was the talk of the town for the next 20 years' as proof of dark people being in Northern Europe is kinda hilarious.

My dad is about the color of Tom Jones (and of Isles ancestry for atleast the last 2-300 years) and growing up in Northern England in the 1950s he used to routinely be called the N-Word and referred to as if he were the darkest person in the world. And this was a major port town after the empire had already happened.

Yep, Marco Polo in China means that white people were ALWAYS there. They're completely acclimatised to whites. Never mind hordes of Chinese adults coming to touch your blonde kid's hair when you visit Beijing.

I've been to Beijing. They are so used to white people that they don't care and don't want to touch your hair. Maybe decades ago they were like that.

More comments

Why do you call that "the centrist trap"?

Because it’s a mental trap I see friends and family who think of themselves at centrists fall into a lot.

Something along the lines of:

  • Most centrists are people who are reasonably comfortable with how things are, which is why they avoid radical politics.
  • But they see that lots of other people are upset. How can this be? Intellectually, they can read the arguments/complaints but viscerally they don’t feel them and it doesn’t make sense to them.
  • They therefore get deflected to an argument that does make sense to them. This is usually either economic (‘people scapegoat minorities when they’re feeling precarious’ is a common one) or media (‘social media presents a biased view of the world so they can’t see the truth that actually the important things are all fine’).
  • These explanations are particularly useful because they suggest it’s possible to fix the angry people’s problems without doing anything scary. All we have to do is improve the economy using the tried and tested methods the populists dislike, such as raising immigration in a Boriswave or lowering taxes, and/or regulate social media to show the true (and centrist-friendly) state of affairs at which point they will slowly realise they were wrong.

In short, blaming the discourse for popular upset flatters centrist sensibilities/*, gives an excuse for authoritarian action to silence the scary people before they ruin everything, and best of all it’s sometimes correct. So it’s very alluring.

* like all of us, centrists are only human

Perhaps a misleading phrasing I admit.

That is a minor variation on the populist trap. The essence of populism (both left-populism and right-populism) is to channel inchoate anxiety among the populace into hatred of the designated (ideally but not always foreign-coded) scapegoat. The centrist trap @Corvos is referring to is to attempt to dismiss inchoate anger by pointing to a non-existent scapegoat.

The essence of populism is that it is popular because it takes the stated concerns of people seriously rather than airily dismissing them.

The centrist trap @Corvos is referring to is to attempt to dismiss inchoate anger by pointing to a non-existent scapegoat.

I have no idea what you are talking about here, but thank you for providing a perfect example of the type.

The essence of populism is that it is popular because it takes the stated concerns of people seriously rather than airily dismissing them.

Although there are popular populists, it isn't necessary for the term to apply. Nigel Farage was still a populist back when UKIP were getting single-digit percentages of the vote.

Even now, populists are generally not popular, in the sense that they tend to lose elections to centrists. (Yes, Trump won. But the Republican theory of the 2024 election is that there was no centrist on the ballot, not that Trump beat a centrist).

They therefore get deflected to an argument that does make sense to them. This is usually either economic (‘people scapegoat minorities when they’re feeling precarious’ is a common one) or media (‘social media presents a biased view of the world so they can’t see the truth that actually the important things are all fine’).

I don't think this is just a centrist thing. The socialists at Novara media play the same games and then call for eating the rich as their solution. It's just a standard anti-other-people's-radical-politics stance.

Got it. Yeah, I just asked because I sometimes call myself a centrist but I don't make those kinds of arguments. It's certainly possible that the majority of centrists would make such arguments, though.

Just you. Belfast has a smaller total population than LA’s black population. In the 90s. I’m not expecting to see anything remotely on the scale of the ‘92 riots.

I don't think that's what @TitaniumButterfly meant. I think by "straws breaking the camel's back" he was referring to acts of shocking, indiscriminate violence committed by supposed refugees and asylum seekers, not to riots which ensue in response.

I’m saying that if the LA riots didn’t represent a breaking point, the Belfast riots won’t, either. There’s not gonna be a kulak-approved Helter Skelter.

The main difference with Belfast is that they've got a lot of the structures for and exposure to sectarian violence in recent living memory, meaning that if a catalyst arises they're a lot more able to spring into action compared to the vast majority of places in the developed West.

I'm watching videos of -- allegedly -- mobs roving door to door searching for migrants and torching the place if any are found. While it's certainly small potatoes compared to a full-blown reconquista, it sure looks like a significant step in that direction to me, and while I haven't spoken to Kulak in a while I have little doubt that he approves.

Much will depend upon the scale, efficacy, and above all optics of the official response here. Because whatever else can be said, precedent is being established.

I'm watching videos of -- allegedly -- mobs roving door to door searching for migrants and torching the place if any are found.

What videos? Where? It seems that the houses catching fire were secondary to the usual protest moves of setting bins/cars/buses on fire, we're not talking about people being firebombed out of their houses:

Masked men set commercial bins alight and pushed them into a Glider bus on the Newtownards Road in the east of Belfast as a large crowd gathered in the area.

There were multiple reports of roads being blocked and vehicles being set alight in Belfast and some other areas.

In Lendrick Street in Belfast, a car was set alight and NIFRS officers had to remove some residents from houses after they caught fire.

At the moment, there's immediate political reaction and comments which are emotional ("masked gangs burning people out of their homes") but which may not be accurate. Granted, there's probably little difference between "the gangs set cars on fire outside my home which then caught fire" and "my house was set on fire" when it comes down to the effect on someone, but it's not the same thing as "usual rioting and burning":

I'm in Lendrick Street in the east of the city, where one home has been completely burnt out and is now just a shell.

I've been speaking to the woman who lived there until last night.

She is from Belfast and recalled a car being set on fire, which then set fire to her home.

When I saw her this morning, she was really emotional and had a bag with her trying to pull together whatever she could.

A Ukrainian family had also been living in the house next door. They fled to Northern Ireland from the Ukrainian war about two and a half years ago.

They spoke about the fear seeing masked men walk up their street, knowing their front door was on fire.

They had to escape out the back of the house with their pet dog.

Random question just because I don't know the answer, but are you Irish or Northern Irish?

Southern Freestayto versus Nordie Tayto 😁

Though I do have a family member who married into the North and lives within view of the Mountains of Mourne.

It seems that the houses catching fire were secondary to the usual protest moves of setting bins/cars/buses on fire,

I'm reminded of the idea that Trump says inaccurate things so that the media corrects him with a correction that to an average person sounds as bad as the original claim. "Oh, they're just really burning cars and busses" is damning with faint praise.

The rioting is bad, the provocateurs using it as cover for their own agenda is worse, but there is a difference between deliberately setting fire to a house versus collateral damage. It could happen that some houses are now indeed being petrol bombed deliberately, but that again is not the same as "a car was set on fire in the street outside and the fire spread to this house".

I am completely tired of this shit. Europe needs to take its lands back. I’m tired of it in America. If you were ever curious how pogroms happen then this is it, but I have a feeling in the past it was for far smaller infractions. A minority group then probably would have been smart enough to handle this guy first.

It feels to me like this is getting close to Catholic Just War theory. Your government won’t deal with this which would then devolve power down to the common man.

As someone who losts his home and some wealth to white flight I understand the anger.

Pogroms happen when the hated group is unable or unwilling to defend itself and the authorities are at least willing to look the other way. Neither condition holds here.

I don’t believe both conditions hold here. I do think the authorities some reason support immigration.

Which means the only real way to end immigration right now would be restarting The Troubles to force political change.

Europeans democratically vote for politicians who pursue pro-immigration policies. The immigration is, roughly speaking, the expression of Europeans' collective preference. One can make an argument that "they vote against immigration but get immigration anyway" - however, the reality is that if people consistently voted against immigration as one of their absolute upper-echelon top priorities, they would get politicians who actually stop immigration. This is because then it would become clear to politicians that being for immigration or running against immigration and then doing nothing about it means the end of a viable political career. I think that allowing mass unfiltered immigration of people from violent and backwards cultures is a very bad idea for Europe, but Europeans, as a group, do not vote like they see it as being critically important.

I believe that to fundamentally fix Europe's approach to immigration you would have to either change voters' minds or end democracy. I would much prefer the former, since in my view ending democracy to fix immigration would be replacing one major problem with another major problem.

the expression of Europeans' collective preference

Indeed, to stop immigration effectively would likely require destroying the ECHR, and ultimately completely undoing/redoing the EU.

the reality is that if people consistently voted against immigration as one of their absolute upper-echelon top priorities, they would get politicians who actually stop immigration

I think this underestimates the effectiveness of the last 50-75 years of propaganda on what kind of behavior is acceptable and for whom.

Europeans democratically vote for politicians who pursue pro-immigration policies.

Wrong, they vote for politicians who campaign on reducing or reforming immigration and then pursue pro-immigration policy once in office. There isn't a single EU country that doesn't have a clear majority of voters demanding less immigration.

Edit: whoops totally misread the last line, nvm

It’s not so clear cut. Yes, voters often vote against mass immigration but not always. The votes for Hollande and Macron in France were for center-left candidates who had at most the mildest dislike (if at all) of mass immigration. In England, the Labour Party destroyed the Conservatives in the election campaigns of 2001 and 2004, in which the top Tory message (in both cases) was about stopping Labour’s mass immigration experiment. Carney won in Canada recently.

The electoral record shows that the public is occasionally betrayed, yes, but it also has not consistently voted against mass immigration for 30+ years as some in the right say. Even since 2015 the most anti immigration candidates haven’t consistently won.

Public polling has generally been against immigration even if they don't always vote singularly on the issue.

The median voter (remembering that the old and rich vote more often than the working-age and poor) likes the consequences of mass immigration, apart from crime. Almost all voters like their noncriminal immigrant friends, neighbours and co-workers and want them to stay. To make mass deportations a winning issue at the ballot box, you need to convince the median voter that the people you are deporting are disproportionally likely to be criminals - which turns out to relatively easy, particularly when they actually are.

Dominic Cummings always said that the idea of competently managed mass immigration (i.e. a Canadian/Australian points system) focus grouped as popular in the UK.

Dominic Cummings always said that the idea of competently managed mass immigration (i.e. a Canadian/Australian points system) focus grouped as popular in the UK.

I dunno about Australia, but the main issue with Canada's point system is chain migration and alternative pathways. Coming to Canada saying "I want to immigrate here because I want better opportunities" is appropriately hard, but what often happens is getting accepted by a school that's mostly a facade (it's rarely recognized schools, it's "mall campuses" that are nominally linked with real institutions) then after moving and "studying" (usually working most of the time, then doing whatever the minimum is necessary to keep qualifying as a student; the "school" doesn't care, it's in on the grift) they leverage easier immigration pathways for people who have studied here, because that too polls well (and sending back students polls badly). Because it sounds reasonable to say that since someone was able to study and work part time to support his studies here, they are probably a good fit to stay here if they want. If that's what it was, if it was only people who truly studied and integrated, and worked alongside Canadian nationals, as opposed to moving here under false pretense and working "immigrant jobs" (Uber, delivery, immigrant dominated fast foods like Tim Hortons), then I'd support it.

Then there's chain migration, once one person gets their citizenship, they can start sponsoring family to go through a pathway that also bypasses the points system.

As someone with direct experience of the Canadian immigration system, this is not inherent to a points-based system: it's a product of deliberate choices, mostly by Trudeau.

The fraud problem, for example, became exponentially worse after COVID.

And a lot of this could be easily solved by things like a country cap. It's not that difficult to make it harder to coordinate fraud.

More comments

When voters have only choice between Pepsi Coca and Coca Cola...

One can make an argument that "they vote against immigration but get immigration anyway" - however, the reality is that if people consistently voted against immigration as one of their absolute upper-echelon top priorities, they would get politicians who actually stop immigration.

That's really not a fair claim to make about a country with an electoral system that penalises voting for anyone but the two main parties through FPTP. If I'm an anti-immigration voter in 2010, the rational thing for me is to vote Conservative, because if I don't then it increases the chance of Labour winning, and they are likely to increase immigration even more.

Of course, the Tories committed electoral suicide through the Boriswave so now the mantle of the right has finally passed to a truly anti-immigration party, but you can hardly blame previous British voters for refusing to throw away their votes on the BNP or whatever.

The average Western voting body is increasingly getting pushed to vote for strong populists since those are the only ones they have faith in actually making the requested changes. The center right is dying since they receive a strong popular mandate on immigration then inevitably just let the same unelected bureaucrats who are working on the same assumptions continue the same activities

Europeans democratically vote for politicians who pursue pro-immigration policies.

Of the major European states I think the UK has the best case that large masses of the public have been voting against mass migration via the Tories and Brexit just for that to...never happen for years, followed by the Boriswave from the same people who campaigned to exploit these feelings.

Now that it's failed with traditional parties, they're seeking alternatives. The Tories have suffered a pretty steep fall after their actions and Farage barely got to enjoy his front-runner status before he was being attacked from his right.

Exactly. Saying the brexiteers said 'We want far less eastern Europeans' and then going 'sure thing, here's infinity Africans' is pretty clearly not what the Brexit enthused had in mind

No, but it is what the Brexiteers said they were going to do. Vote leave campaigned in existing Commonwealth immigrant communities saying that ending EU freedom of movement would create more space for Commonwealth immigrants, told business leaders that ending EU freedom of movement would create more space for work permit immigrants, and told the electorate that the Australian and Canadian points systems were good models for a post-Brexit immigration policy at a time when Australia and Canada had much higher legal immigration than the UK.

While the Boriswave was happening (but before the small boats became the dominant media narrative around immigration), Dominic Cummings said that the British people were not unhappy with the Boriswave because, unlike immigration of EU citizens under freedom of movement, it was under democratic control. Reader, he was wrong.

Boris was always planning to do a Boriswave, and made no effort to conceal this.

I really think Cummings is probably the single best example of a midwit and a midwit magnet there is. Shirking responsibility is one thing, it’s hard to ‘hate’ Boris for the Boriswave because really he’s clearly never thought much about anything and likely signed off on it without thinking. A terrible leader and vacuous jester of a person who cheated on every woman who ever loved him? Sure. But there was no pretense of anything else. Cummings painted himself as an intellectual and then pretends he was bamboozled at the consequences of his actions and words and every bad thing was just someone betraying him or not listening correctly.

Cummings' real-world achievements, including leading the successful Vote Leave campaign, are incompatible with being a midwit. What Cummings does appear to be is a high-IQ quokka who sees himself as a political genius because of his proven success in manipulating the great unwashed with carefully A/B tested and focus grouped nuggets of emotional manipulation. But as soon as he tried to be a political player in his own right rather than Michael Gove's henchman, he had to engage in conventional political intrigue, at which he proved to be about as cunning as Baldrick after eating too many turnips.

Yeah but even there you had Farage implying that multiple times through the campaign, so calling it a total bait and switch is questionable.

The bigger example is Boris’ 2019 election victory and subsequent Boriswave.

you had Farage implying that multiple times through the campaign

I don't think that's fair. There were noises around "we should be getting in the best from around the world, not literally any rando from Eastern Europe" but going from that to infinity Africans and especially infinity low-paid Africans seems a stretch.

It is a stretch but it’s also a stretch when people like Farage and Cummings claim they have no responsibility for the broad character of the debate, especially in the latter case.

You seem to be reacting to something specific that I'm not aware of. Would you mind going into a bit more detail?

More comments

It seems to me that representative democracy is quite capable of producing outcomes that the populace does not actually want.

The city of Minneapolis held a referendum on whether to abolish its police force. The referendum lost, unequivocally. Not even remotely a possibility of passing.

The same populace that voted overwhelmingly against a referendum to abolish the Minneapolis Police Department, elected a city council that is overwhelmingly in favor of abolishing the Minneapolis Police Department. This same populace also voted, in the same election, to reduce the powers of that city council and vest those powers in the office of the mayor, whose position on police abolition could be described as "are you fucking serious?", instead.

Despite anti-policing sentiment clearly not being a position that can win democratically, the city is nevertheless governed by an anti-police city council, and is still recovering from anti-policing riots that dealt over half a billion dollars in damages to homes and businesses.

I have no trouble believing that Europe could elect politicians who proceed to pass policies that would never win as referendums, or that devastating riots could emerge from a minority sentiment.

Yes, but mass immigration has been a problem for at least a decade now in Europe. By this point, European populations have had plenty of time to hold politicians' feet to the fire electorally and ensure that they actually curb immigration.

  • -12

  1. No European electorate has ever voted for mass immigration.

  2. European powerbrokers have systematically lied and deceived their populations about the nature and scale of immigration - for example, the wave of post-Soviet states joining the EU in 2003 with "guarantees" that it wouldn't disrupt local labour markets - which it of course did.

  3. All polling, in all EU nations, in every decade going back to the 1950s (Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech polled at around 75% popular agreement when he made it), has consistently shown a clear rejection of more immigration - even Germany in 2015, at the height of pro-refugee mania, had a consistent majority polled saying the country could not handle the influx of people and that it would harm the country in the long-term.

  4. Establishment parties ranging from Macron's centrist LREM/Renaissance all the way to Meloni's "neo-fascist" FdI consistently make reducing the most undesirable forms of immigration a centre-point of their political campaigning, only to drop it the moment they enter elected office.

  5. Even when elected leaders actually decide to push through popular anti-immigration reform, they instantly falter before supra-sovereign EU institutions such as the European Court of Human Rights, which they could of course easily contest or ignore, like Poland and Hungary did without issue, but mysteriously always choose to give up without a fight.

The main thing holding European electorates back from going all-in on anti-immigration politics is our bourgeois chauvinism against the extremely prole-coded far-right, which is loathed and despised less because of their specific politics, but because they represent and proudly adhere to the trashy, unsophisticated, non-college educated Kevins of European working class society. Most bourgeois/college-educated Europeans would probably literally rather have more immigration which they increasingly openly hate than be ruled by a segment of European society they consider irredeemably beneath them.

Has anyone in the West ever actually voted for mass immigration? It seems instead like no population ever wants mass immigration, but whoever they vote for it happens anyway.

Which British party would you have voted for in the 2019 general election, in order to achieve this goal?

Manipulation of procedural outcomes is quite powerful, but it is not infinitely powerful. Because its power is based on exception, it is utterly dependent on the basic reality exception deviates from. Manipulators of procedural outcomes defect against those cooperating with the construction and maintenance of procedure; without sturdy norms to defect against, they would have no leverage with which to generate and wield meaningful power.

People want results. The problem with setting up a system specifically tailored to deny them the results they desire is that no matter how many convolutions you generate between what they want and what you're giving them, sooner or later they figure out that you are, in fact, part of the system, and thus one of the variables subject to modification in pursuit of a better future.

Democracy, like Free Speech, is a spook.

Europeans democratically vote for politicians who pursue pro-immigration policies.

When the EU was up for a vote, it lost many times across many countries. They kept having votes until it won.

Why did it ever eventually win?

They stopped asking the demos and just held a vote among themselves.

Why is the moon full?

I don't care how many times someone asks me if I want to eat pieces of shit for breakfast. I'd say no every time.

In that case, why don't we start having regular referendums about abolishing the EU, and reverting every reform they orchestrated. Can't hurt, right?

UK did vote for Brexxit and got immigration anyway. There is also a huge chunk of the populace that is now foreign born. A hecklers veto type thing would still seem to be possible as in the native Brit’s become ungovernable. I would guess 30% of Europe or close to it are very anti-immigration.

As to No immigration or Democracy I will gladly side with No Immigration. Dictatorship just isn’t that bad and it’s mostly American propaganda that makes you fear it.

As to No immigration or Democracy I will gladly side with No Immigration. Dictatorship just isn’t that bad and it’s mostly American propaganda that makes you fear it.

A dictatorship is like deciding to dismount the brakes on your car to save weight before a road trip, or sharing a needle with a stranger. There is certainly a possibility that it will not be a big deal and you get Park Chung-Hee. There is also the potential for unlimited disaster.

Us Germans have experiences both with dictators and democratic leaders. If I have to choose, I will pick a democratic leader over the coin toss which is a dictator. The worst leader Germany ever had (by pretty much any metric) is mustache guy, with Wilhelm II having worked hard to earn a well-deserved second place.

You are anti-immigration, so you probably hate what Merkel did in 2015. I have lived through it, and I can assure you that it compares to what happened 1939-45 like a sparrow compares to an A380. I will strongly prefer a candidate from a party whose policies I do not share but who is committed to democracy to a candidate whose policies I favor but who would rule as a dictator.

I can assure you that it compares to what happened 1939-45 like a sparrow compares to an A380

Completely opposite models of failure play out in different time scales.

Like I said American propaganda. You immediately jumped to with a dictator and used Hitler. Who I guess I could remind me you would have won Germany the entire world without the American involvement.

Democracy hasn’t worked as well in the third world. Successful Democracies are largely correlated with high hbd qualities. Africans don’t view Democracy the same way. Either form has a ton of corruption but sometimes the dictators are better and law and order. Pinochet set Chile up to be well. House of Saud has been a success.

Basically on an immigration debate and whether a dictator would be better it basically ends up being it’s the same thing. If you import a lot of third world immigrants at best you become Brazil. You will have a dysfunctional Democracy and won’t be able to maintain all the institutions that make a good Democracy.

The American involvement was predictable risk of being at war with the UK. Hitler rejected the UK's ultimatum to cancel the invasion of Poland anyway and after he did that the UK declared war, as did France.

Even if American non-involvement could have somehow been guaranteed, going to war with the UK and France was a very risky move. In the real timeline, most things went well for Germany in the first 3 years of the war. However, the UK and France together with their colonial holdings were economically stronger than the Axis powers and because of the English Channel and the power of the UK's air force and navy, Germany had no way of knocking the UK out of the war. It's possible that if a few things had gone differently, if the French had made some better decisions, Germany would have gotten bogged down when trying to invade France rather than gaining a swift victory. And there was always the Soviet Union looming in the background.

Basically, Hitler's foreign policy failed to honor the "only go to war when success is reasonably likely" maxim and should be evaluated as a massive failure despite Germany's successes in the pre-war period and in the first 3 years of the war. If he had stopped after Czechoslovakia and then managed to attain a durable peace with the other relevant great powers, then one could evaluate his foreign policy as a massive success. But he didn't stop.

As for democracy, I agree that it is not a panacea and that its successes are partly correlated with having good human capital. I prefer living in a democracy, though. I don't want to live in Pinochet's Chile, Saudi Arabia, or Hitler's Germany. I'd prefer not facing the possibility of imprisonment, torture, state murder, and so on for expressing my political ideas, for example.

Pinochet’s Chile is the best LATAM country to be from. Richer than Argentina without all the nicer of Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico and let’s not start on Venezuela….they wish they had a Pinochet now.

Of the options you give America and Europe aren’t talking about living in America and Europe. I will gladly choose the House of Saud over living in Somalia. Which is basically Europe in a generation.

The problem you have is you still think you live in Germany. That’s not what is coming.

As I heard someone on a forum put it many years ago, if I'm forced to choose between fascism and communism (I'd prefer neither) then I choose fascism. Because the secret police will come for me at some point either way, but when the fascist secret police arrest me I'll have a full stomach.

More comments

I think a dictator must by nature either be vastly more competent than most others (because competition) or else at least controlled by someone who is. Little such pressure in a democracy, and especially a two-party democracy.

A self-made dictator, probably has to be competent to seize power. What do you think about monarchies?

however, the reality is that if people consistently voted against immigration as one of their absolute upper-echelon top priorities, they would get politicians who actually stop immigration.

"If you voted harder, you'd get $thing" does not support the argument for "$opppsite_of_thing is the expression of collective preference".

Also, it's not a "reality". A politician promising to deliver you something as the absolute top priority can still do the opposite, as they often do.

In a morbid coincidence, this happened the same week that the trial for Riad Bouchaker began in Dublin. Bouchaker, you'll recall, was an Algerian man who stabbed a female schoolteacher and two of her pupils in Parnell Square, prompting a riot which brought the city centre to a standstill for one night. Bouchaker inflicted injuries on at least one of the pupils which were described as life-altering.

A MENA man, entirely without provocation, stabs a native citizen in a large Irish city and inflicts injuries serious enough to permanently change the course of their life. He's apprehended. The same week his trial begins, a different MENA man, entirely without provocation, stabs a native citizen in a large Irish city and inflicts injuries serious enough to permanently change the course of their life. He's apprehended. The same week his trial begins...

one count of the production of a knife.

Do you need a loicense to sharpen metal in Ireland or is this "production" in the sense of "brandishing"?

I think the latter.

MENA

Somali, Sudanese

Nitpick, that's not MENA, that's black African.

I believe Kulak once predicted that the flashpoint for organized European resistance would happen in Northern Ireland.

So sad this happened but it's a natural consequence of the white man's listening deficiency and their immigration policy. White people will do nothing, as always. There are men in the right wing that should probably be running white civilization who post on X from the Bahamas instead because white people insist on cultural communism instead where the lowest, dumbest, most immature whites get a vote equal to classicist philosophers and race scientists. This obviously naturally leads to the immigration policy we see, and it won't stop until the deep rot in the white race is addressed. But that will require being eaten up by the immigrants first, most likely. Unless AI simply ends history.

race scientists

What a nice way to refer to the people who would want to extirpate "the lowest, dumbest, most immature whites", otherwise known as "ordinary people". Why do you think you would be spared, @dailydogma? Why do you think the Bahamas millionaires would think you any better than the rest of the drudges who should be removed so the elite can govern in peace?

Why do you think you would be spared, @dailydogma?

I don't know, and I don't care because my ideas aren't me me me. Sounds like your objection to the idea is simply Me Me Me, though. And nothing was mentioned regarding extirpation, but I guess to spoiled brats, the world order ceasing to revolve around pandering to their own whims might feel like extirpation. Too bad.

I guess to spoiled brats, the world order ceasing to revolve around pandering to their own whims might feel like extirpation. Too bad.

Remember to cry aloud "My ideas survive, who cares what happens to me?" as your face is being ground into the dirt.

There are men in the right wing that should probably be running white civilization who post on X from the Bahamas instead because white people insist on cultural communism instead where the lowest, dumbest, most immature whites get a vote equal to classicist philosophers and race scientists.

Antiracism is probably positively correlated with IQ, and lower class people are likely less antiracist in part because they're less likely to go to college.

If anti racism correlates with IQ a plausible explanation would be high IQ people only know the top elites of different groups. Who most of the time are ok people. They don’t interact with the bulk below. They don’t even see them.

I personally have a very diverse friend group of brown people. Whose dads are all Doctors or kids of their government etc.

I think there's a nonlinear effect, and well-educated, manly 140+ IQ people will all be scientific racists, while 120 IQ striver urban midwits will be anti-racist. The latter rule in the name of the rabble, and you are seeing the consequence of that.

I think you're confusing IQ with intellectual sophistication.

I'm just assuming people of 140+ IQ will mostly have a decent level of intellectual sophistication without trying too hard. Even Scott Alexander is a scientific racist.

120 IQ is considered midwits now? Is this IQ inflation?

But more seriously, many of my super intelligent friends (I’m talking top 1%, ML researcher at OpenAI and the like) are anti-racist and afflicted with TDS. Maybe they just don’t think about politics all that much. Maybe California is a bubble.

120 IQ is considered midwits now?

Always has been.

130+ and maybe you're starting to get somewhere. 120-129 is the "merely bright and curious" range. (I got that from an /r/slatestarcodex comment and my friends thought it was hilarious and we've been calling each other "bright and curious" as an insult for years now.)

They fit into the midwit reasoning pattern, which is by heuristic, instead of direct.

120 is only moderately above average. There are still plenty of schoolteachers at that number (roughly translates to a 1200 SAT).

That correlation only applies to pre-1994 SAT scores. Nowadays a 1200 SAT score puts you at the 75th percentile, the IQ equivalent percentile would be 110. The SAT now tests scholastic achievement more than aptitude/cognitive ability.

120 is the top 9% which I wouldn’t categorize as “mid” in any way but maybe midwit is just a technical term that I didn’t understand.

"Midwit" is the term for "sure okay this person has a life they enjoy and a family and is successful in their mid-level white or skilled blue-collar job, while I am on a range of anti-depressants and still trying to make that seven figure tech salary, but I'm so much smarter than that midwit on an IQ test so I am superior which means I am better even if objectively I am unhappier and failing at life".

No, a midwit is a term for a slightly-above-average intelligence person who is fairly good at learning things... but isn't smart enough or curious enough to actually consider why the things they learned are the way they are, or if in fact they are not. Or what @erwgv3g34 said.

More comments

A midwit is someone who is smarter than average, but not as smart as he thinks he is, and easily fooled by elaborate rationalizations that would fail to impress a dumber man who just sees what's in front of him.

https://en.meming.world/wiki/Midwit

https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-is-the-midwit-meme-and-what-does-it-mean-the-iq-bell-curve-meme-explained

My favorite midwit meme:

https://i.redd.it/dkvg2uxbalq91.jpg

Or as I've seen it put elsewhere, knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein is not the monster, wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein is the monster.

More comments

There are still plenty of schoolteachers at that number (roughly translates to a 1200 SAT).

There are also plenty of OpenAI researchers at that number.

There are also plenty of OpenAI researchers at that number.

Im not really that familiar with AI hiring but that would be surprising. 1200 is an average student at a 2nd tier state school. 1200 is U of I - Chicago, not flagship campus (1400+); Michigan tech, not MI (1400+) or State (1300); University of Southern Florida, not Miami, Florida (both 1400) or FSU (high 1300).

1200 SAT I think is more like 110 IQ, not 120. I think 1300 or 1350 is more like 90th percentile.

More comments

many of my super intelligent friends (I’m talking top 1%, ML researcher at OpenAI and the like)

Are they Asian? If so they're probably 1) not top 1%, just appear to be, and 2) racist, just for Asians and not whites.

I thought the Sudanese were primarily Arab?

North Sudan is primarily Arabs/lower Egyptians who have been beating the fuck out of the South Sudanese who are generally the super tall super dark phenotype

The secession @ToaKraka is talking about was directly about the ethnic makeup. The Sudanese government, controlled from the north, was orienting itself explicitly towards being an Arab-dominated Muslim state, and the southern Sudanese, who are largely black, were not happy with this. The south seceeded with the implicit support of the US; Salva Kiir, the country's first president, took a liking to George W., and wears a stetson everywhere because W. gave him one as a gift.

After the secession the militant government descended immediately into civil war and ethnic cleansing; South Sudan is not a great place to live.

Sudan-Sudan, the northern country, is 70% Sudanese Arab and is dominated by Arab culture. South Sudan is overwhelmingly black, but split between different ethnic groups, the largest of which is the Dinka.

"Sudanese" as an ethnic marker refers generally to Sudanese Arabs, who identify as Arab and are descendents of Arab traders and local African tribes.

Thanks for the rundown. Curious which part of the country this guy was from. From the video I saw he looked black, rather than Arab.

If they resemble Manute Bol they're generally Southern Dinka. Most people equivocate Sudanese with a 7 foot tall midnight colored stringbean

No, look up photos of Sudanese people.

Visible overseas sudanese diaspora are overwhelmingly South Sudanese blacks due to refugees and the NBA being two of the biggest channels to see them. Northern Sudanese are pretty indistinguishable from Egyptians/Arabs

There's no need to be so hostile, Wikipedia reports that the country is 70% Arab.

I wasn't being hostile. Your same article says 40% Arab if you include both Sudan states, which I am guessing is an overestimate. Somalian or Sudanese indicates he was black regardless.

In the parallel universe of Sudan, Arabs and black people look exactly the same

According to Wikipedia, the country was majority-black (as suggested by the name) historically, but became majority-Arab in 2011 when South Sudan seceded and took a lot of blacks with it.

It would be interesting if the provos and loyalists decide to put aside their differences in recognition of their common enemy (globohomo and third-world immigration imposed upon them from on high)

and then history repeats itself when Downing St sends in the troops to put down the insurrection, only this time they're shooting Protestants and Catholics.

at that point what does 'loaylist' mean?

I studied history in secondary school and had an entire module about the Troubles. My teacher was himself a Northern Irish Protestant, and he noted to us the curious fact that, even though Unionists consider themselves British and want Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK, most of them tend to have a visceral hatred of English people. Admittedly, Northern Irish Protestants are disproportionately of Scottish descent, and even Scots who are opposed to Scottish independence tend not to be too keen on English people.

I don't necessarily see any conflict between "there are too many of the wrong sort of immigrant in this country and I'm willing to fight against the British military in order to get that point across, but I still think Northern Ireland should remain part of the UK." No different, really, from American militiamen who are willing to fight against the federal government (because they think it's been usurped from within) but nonetheless consider themselves fiercely patriotic Americans.

Didn't loyalist in 1776 America mean opposite of Patriot?

No idea, but in Northern Ireland it means loyal to the crown.

"Loyalist" in practice means "sympathetic to political violence on the Protestant side of the Troubles". Northern Irish Protestants who make loyalty to the UK central to their political identity but don't support political violence are called "Unionists".

I endorse this definition.

The current bearer of the Crown is seemingly content with population replacement and wishes to be ready to war with Russia. When you disagree on the very main thing the government does, can you be loyal to it? It's not like a child wants her mom to give her more candy. So you want other government, just in same land borders, and the old goverment - Mussollini.jpg

Orwell addressed this dilemma/paradox in "The Lion and the Unicorn". How can you be patriotic to the idea of something you're intending to completely alter from the ground up? The answer seems to be "it's tricky, but it can be done". Russians really did seem able to transplant/displace their patriotic fervour from Czarist Russia to the Soviet Union with minimal difficulty.

Love of one's country is just one of many kinds of love, all of which have to deal with this contradiction to a greater or lesser extent. Unlike what that one movie from the 70s would have us believe, love does not mean never having to say you're sorry. Saying you're sorry and promising to do better is a big part of love. Just because you love someone doesn't mean you can never criticise them or request that they change their behaviour. Sometimes this is "tough love" (i.e. because you love them, you hate to see them behaving in a self-destructive fashion), but sometimes it's not.

How can you love a football team consisting of a rotating selection of foreigners and guys born on the other side of your country? And sold to the highest bidder, who also happens to be foreign a lot of the time, if not a literal multinational conglomerate?

But people do. (shrug)

More comments

most of them tend to have a visceral hatred of English people.

I just don't think that's true. I am an Ulster Scots Northern Irishman and we have many English relatives. Half my extended family moved to England and married English people. Maybe a very mild dislike of Southern posh English people but we get on very well with Northerners.

I've never even met a Protestant Ulsterman who mentioned hating the English. Certainly not a visceral hatred.

The real (Norn) Irony here is that many Northern Irish Catholics call my people immigrants/colonizers/invaders and condemn us for the violent actions of say Lenny Murphy and the like (or Britain in general) while leaning left and thus being more lenient towards the more recent Sudanese immigrant. While my people who are in fact themselves literal violent invaders/colonizers are harsher to the Sudanese, but don't see the same logic also applies to us. If this Sudanese murderer means we should treat Sudanese people differently then Lenny Murphy and the like indicate that Catholics are in fact correct to want us gone/out of power as well. You either have collective guilt/treatment or you don't. Nothing here is driven by logic or rationality.

It's an Ulster-Scots kettle calling the Sudanese pot black (so to speak). While likewise the Catholics are more tolerant of this chap and similar immigrants than of my type and similar immigrants. It's topsy-turvy, all built around tribal lines.

Still this chap is likely to get knifed in prison or have boiling sugar water thrown over him by a wee fella from Antrim sooner or later.

I'll take your word for it. I only know a handful of people from up north, and it wouldn't surprise me if my secondary school teacher's perspective was unrepresentative or inaccurate. He was a bit of an oddball.

The real (Norn) Irony

Nice.

The fun little wrinkle here is that Irish Nationalism, like Palestinian Nationalism, is a left-wing ideology. Conceivably we could see a similar progression to what happened in Palestine, where the historical champions of the nationalist cause lose legitimacy and are replaced by a more explicitly religious right-wing resistance front.

As I understand it, the loyalist paramilitaries have turned into something like truly outlaw biker gangs in the USA- they aren't particularly religious or nationalist anymore, despite the exclusionary membership rules, and more exist to skirt the edges to society, dabble in organized crime, etc- and that the non-actual-hard-communist branches of the IRA are now more or less totally defunct, the 'real IRA' and continuity IRA are tiny fringe groups mostly made up of true believers in the hardcore versions of extreme lefty ideologies.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats