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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.
This runs into problems, because one of the things the public wants from its government is to be against immigration, which many governments can't be.
It also has deeper challenges because the government of European countries seem to have people who believe - with some justice - that nationalism is a reactionary force that can organize people against immigration and the new multicultural state. This is on top of their general tendency to see it as a bit low class and cringe.
This is why Starmer's attempts to seize patriotism rang a bit hollow; his supporters would be the ones to write worried op-eds about the spread of English flags in public. Before him, I don't think Sunak cared at all either way, that's why it didn't occur to him that missing the anniversary of D-Day would be an issue.
Why would younger generations replacing new ones not accelerate the cultural decay? Older people can maintain a good status quo as well as a bad one.
Nationalism and immigration don’t need to conflict: nationalism and large-scale immigration can’t work except with a large suppressed underclass, but a small ratio of immigrants can be patriotic (towards their host) and the host culture’s identity and cohesion can remain.
A large ratio of the population supports at least some immigration (the Swiss referendum to cap the population failed). My understanding is that most people are unhappy because their economy is failing, institutions are overwhelmed, culture is broken…all problems worsened and maybe primarily caused by immigration, but I doubt extreme remigration will solve them. Reducing corruption, improving police enforcement, and moderate immigration reform would at least improve them.
On the other side, politicians who believe nationalism is intrinsically bad (or anti-immigrant) are wrong and should be voted out. Starmer’s image is ruined; unfortunately for him, the best way for a leftist party to get nationalist support is to publicly disavow him and other Labor politicians, or at least publicly disavow his failed policies.
National identity and imports must be balanced for culture: too much national identity creates a waning culture of nostalgia, too much imports creates an incoherent diluted culture, only a good amount of both creates a culture that improves over time.
Because the decay may be caused by most people having the opinions of zoomers and millennials, but living under gen X and boomer status quo, thus feeling oppressed.
To clarify, that referendum failed because it was stupid. Capping the population directly requires dissolving all ~20 bilateral agreements with the EU in the near future, which has been voted on several times before and which is (for prudent economic reasons) extremely unpopular with the constituency. It would be more catastrophic than Brexit, economically.
And the EU has repeatedly been very clear on the matter: if Switzerland wants to keep its current level of economic integration into the EU, freedom of movement is not optional. All bilateral agreements will be dissolved if freedom of movement goes.
So, the referendum was a pointless populist gesture. The votes it got (45%) was from people who want to cancel all the ties to the EU anyway, and people who didn't care enough to understand this simple point.
Is this why the French hated it, despite the Germans voting for it?
No, that's the normal pattern. The German speaking region always votes a few points more right wing than the rest of the country, pretty much no matter the question.
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