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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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There was never a referendum on multiculturalism in Sweden just like there wasn't in America for the 1965 immigration act. This "people chose this themselves" is a tired and unconvincing argument.

just like there wasn't in America for the 1965 immigration act.

Honestly, when was America's last actual referendum? Usually, on federal issues, passing a law and never repealing it is as close as you get no?

This argument seems to do too much. It easily just collapses into a criticism of liberal democracies and how such polities choose anything. Which...I'm not inherently against but if you want to say that "America/Sweden/Whoever" didn't decide on this it can be applied to everything.

America especially was designed to have anti-populist mechanics. That's the foundational bargain of the country. It's a bit late to argue choices aren't legitimate cause they weren't done by plebiscite.

Getting a referendum is also a sign of commitment. The Brexit referendum happened cause Brexiteers were a loud and annoying enough constituency. If the Swedish people don't have the will to push such a thing on their government...that's on them no?

At least it can be said that the people didn't oppose with sufficient zeal to bother meting out any electoral consequences. 'The people chose it' is maybe a slight exaggeration but 'the people chose not to stop it' is basically right. And fwiw Hart-Celler polled pretty well.

The people who opposed it were often prevented from competing on fair terms electorally. In many cases, their party leaders were just jailed. This is a recent example. So no, I find the "let's blame the voters" unconvincing and frankly a sign of a mind unable to look critically at the system as it is.

Did this happen in Sweden? Your example is from very recently, Golden Dawn hardly did that well in 2019, a whopping 3% of the vote. Greek solution got another few percent, so still under 7% for the far righters. Can that poor of a performance really be blamed on your imagined unfair electoral terms; what was the unfairness in 2019?

The people chose it' is maybe a slight exaggeration

The exact phrase was "Sweden chose this"