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Notes -
Let's talk about the Örebro Party: (Swedish) lefty socialists except they support remigration.
Key quotes from Wikipedia (emphasis mine)
They've made headlines recently (and got on my radar) because Mullvad's CEO donated €452,000 to them.
My perspective on remigration:
People should live in their own communities. I remember reading an article about a tradcath community, and presumably the article wanted to criticise and mock them, but I thought they had decent values and the world is better with them. Or the furry community, even though they can be weird, sometimes produce amazing works like this. Or the unique cultures from other countries and ethnicities...hence the appeal of reversing immigration.
Immigration has ruined communities. A massive problem with today's culture is that it has become one monoculture: everything is becoming gentrified, secured, and impersonal. Translation tools, ethnic stores, etc. are accelarating this (despite otherwise being positive by granting me interesting new cultures and vice versa), by making every culture adapt every other culture's most viral aspects (which aren't necessarily good, like arguably convenience food and tipping). LLMs are accelarating this. But immigration is perhaps most accelarating this: some immigrants are even beneficial, but immigrants who don't know or respect the culture's customs, don't socialize with the rest of the community, take more than they contribute (without an apparent excuse), commit much more crime than the existing community, and don't even speak the language...break community members' unspoken understanding, friendship, altruism, trust, and communication with their neighbor.
But remigration isn't a solution. First, because I can't imagine how to do it remotely ethically. Comparing anything right-wing to Nazism is an overused cliche, but it fits here: AFAIK Nazis initially planned to just deport the Jews somewhere (Madagascar), but ended up brutally overworking and exterminating them, because their end goal was to get rid of them and that was easiest. How would you get rid of immigrants if Somalia etc. won't accept them? What if it's too expensive? What if it's dangerous for them? What about women and children?
These are difficult questions not only morally, but the infrastructure (military tactics) to effectively implement remigration is dangerous for your own sake. It risks broadening persecution, creating a fascist state, an ugly monoculture...the exact failure it seeks to prevent.
So what to do? I don't oppose moderate immigration reform, like:
Honestly, I don't think these are enough to reverse the decay of culture and public resources, and they may seem like a waste of resources for unwanted immigrants, but I think too much immigration/remigration would be worse (for culture and public resources). A real solution must be broader than immigration. Fixing the other issues: making LLMs more diverse, further improving translation tools and incentivizing ethnic stores to include more cultural nuance, and increasing nationalism as a side-effect of addressing the elephant in the room: convincing most of the population to like their government (maybe by having it do something notable for the public and advertising it, and electing new parties with less out-of-touch politicians, even Örebro if they tone down remigration).
Arguably the above essay is another milquetoast thought experiment with the same conclusions everyone already knows: obviously government should not be so corrupt, etc. So another point of discussion is why Örebro decided to focus on this as their stand-out policy. Is it just marketing and they plan to implement something much more moderate (I realize I'm bad at marketing, but I'm skeptical this would work for a generally leftist party). Is it a radical idea to appeal to the working class? Is it only the media that's focusing on this policy, and Örebro themselves consider it a less important part of the agenda compared to the socialist policies? (Probably all of the above, especially the third.)
I do think we need some radical solution to fix societal decay, although it may emerge outside policy, like a technological breakthrough, or just younger generations replacing older ones and having a drastically different culture. I don't think it's in immigration. Maybe the Örebro party will get elected by arguing for remigration, but if they actually want to improve Sweden, I believe the bulk of their implementation must be in their other policies.
Consider that perhaps your ethics need to adapt, or die. A growing part of the population doesn't share them to begin with, and your society is failing at curbing the influx, and failing at assimilating the newcomers into your system of ethics. You know the line - If the rule has brought you to this, then what good was the rule? Dogged adherence to ethics that are proving less practicable and cost-efficient by the day, even while hostile actors have figured out how to exploit them, is to nobody's benefit. The natives will lose their country, the newcomers will no longer have a highly ethical society to exploit, and future people looking back will shrug and say "must have been a nice place, for a while, but then they lost the will to take charge of their fate and just let the whole thing careen into a wall". Paralysis by ethics is not some triumph of doing the right thing; it's proving that there can be entirely too much of a thing that was good in moderation, and then it will all go into history's dustbin and be forgotten as anything other than a negative example to steer clear of.
The conclusion drawn from it will not be "you have to be nice, even when it's difficult, and if it proves too difficult, then dammit, you just have to figure something out to make it work anyways". It will be "if you're a nice loser, then you're just a loser, and nothing in this world will be truly yours".
I ramble. I rant. I despair at this fixation on ethics as an overriding necessity. Is Western Civilization really so despicable that we must destroy it rather than adjust our ethics? Are our ethics really so supremely perfect, so outright sacred, that they brook no improvement? Remigration is only one topic of several where this phenomenon comes to the fore, but it is arguably the most salient.
In wanting to be the polar opposite of the nazis, we are repeating their chiefest mistake - starting from an incorrect conclusion, we do with great determination what is wrong, to our detriment and doom.
Ethics need to be changed but I’m arguing for moderation. I won’t really argue where the line is drawn, except that it shouldn’t be drawn at “remigration” or deporting immigrants who clearly seem to be contributing and assimilating.
You’re right that the polar opposite of Nazis are also bad, which is why “Nazis also did X” is a fallacy: Nazis made the trains run on time, and imprisoned dangerous criminals, both ethical. But when they imprisoned innocent Jews and were unnecessarily cruel it was unethical.
If you are nice to everyone you will be taken advantage of, but if you are mean to everyone you will be shunned. In an apocalypse, if you spare someone, they may hunt you later or have some skill that becomes vital later. There’s no simple answer.
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