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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 is stupid.
It’s pretty dumb on the object level; I highly doubt that Orebro has a workable plan. Actually, I suspect they don’t even have a realistic model of their problem, but then, I don’t know the Swedish stats either.
It’s pointless on the political level, where repeating one party plank over and over again does not generally bring said plank about. The road to hell is paved with agitators certain their one weird trick would bring about
the revolutionclean energya balanced budgetethnonationalism. Surely this time the people are crying out for someone to say the quiet part out loud!And it’s embarrassing on a meta level, where boards like this will take any opportunity to root for a Great White Hope.
My own state of Texas has a recurring cast of separatists. In the 90s, it kind of centered around Civil War revanchism. More recently, they tried it in protest of the 2020 election. Running a fringe political movement is a way to feel important and connected. Maybe raise some funds while you’re at it. I’d be willing to bet Orebro is in this category: a vanity project picking some edgy positions to get attention. Whether or not it represents genuine believers, it is not a serious attempt to enact any policy.
Worked for El Salvador.
In the case of Sweden, it was literally regularly cited as an example of progressive utopia back in the 00's, until they became a meme after a different type of one weird trick.
I’m not sure it did. See section 3. If those stats are right, the murder rate peaked four years before Bukele got the presidency, and three more years before he started imprisoning everyone.
Also, I don’t get the impression his campaign was actually focused on one weird trick. Running a general law & order message isn’t that weird.
By the same token, there’s no one weird trick to Sweden’s policy. It’s not like someone ran on a single issue of opening the gates. Liberal policy plus world events equaled a ton of migrants. Integrate over a decade or two to get the current totals. Or is there some tipping point I missed?
There are two problems with that:
I follow him on Twitter, dude literally reposts "fix everything easily switch" memes.
"Liberal policy" is the "one weird trick". Look at a map. Tell me how Syrians end up in Sweden, but somehow skip Denmark or Poland without someone trying out a "one weird trick" (which was them literally inviting the Syrians over, along with Merkel and her "refugees welcome" bit).
I haven't followed the politics closely, but my impression is that Bukele was also a mayor of a major city and had pivoted to a hard anti-crime posture a few years before he got the presidency, so it's not like he or his policies were just showing in El Salvador completely fresh, either.
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