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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33827 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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Remember "creeping Sharia Law" that far-right hysterics were warning about 10-15 years ago? Of course it was always ridiculous, but now something pretty amusing has happened.

‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags

What stood out to me was the support of right-wing activists from nearby towns. So this isn't just a moslem issue, even white Republicans are joined up. Here in Europe, populists like Geert Wilders were often warning about how too many moslem immigrants would threaten liberal values but they've been supplanted by a newer generation of populists that appear to increasingly take a page out of America's right-wing playbook by uniting with moslems against the LGBT crowd.

For liberals it also creates a bizarre spectacle. They've been obsessed with white Christian "fascists" and often turned a blind eye towards immigrants. Many of these immigrants rarely had much in common with them on social issues. They just voted left because of economic interests and the fact that the white left is more likely to let their entire family back home settle in the West.

Another ironic twist is that the supposed "Great Replacement myth" is largely what facilitated this change. Moslems are now a clear supermajority in the city and the change happened relatively quickly. Liberals were demographically replaced by the people they brought in and now feel like they've been hosed. Can't feel much sympathy for those who use immigration as a political weapon against their domestic political enemies.

For liberals it also creates a bizarre spectacle. They've been obsessed with white Christian "fascists" and often turned a blind eye towards immigrants. Many of these immigrants rarely had much in common with them on social issues. They just voted left because of economic interests and the fact that the white left is more likely to let their entire family back home settle in the West.

I don't think this is why Muslims typically vote left. It seems to me that neither immigration policy or welfare policy are major motivators for the Muslims I've talked with.

The two big reasons why they tend to vote left is 1. they are frequently vehemently anti-Israel and 2. they don't like the overt hostility that gets directed their way from the right.

A GOP that managed to shut up about muslims, ran hard against LGBT stuff, and promised to cut aid to Israel would win the Muslim vote easily IMO.

I could see it, but I’m not sure that shutting up is enough. Playing to the Christian fundamentalist crowd has been a vote part of the GOP platform for a while. Cutting out all mention of Islam or the Middle East, but still pushing for a generic Christianity in public spaces, would still be rather alienating.

This does make me wonder—how much of early 2000s evangelism was driven by the War on Terror? Teach the Controversy was developed in 2002, but appears to have its roots in late 80s court cases. No idea if it was deployed against a perceived Islamic influence. McReary v. ACLU was brought before 9/11. The complementary case, Van Orden v. Perry, involved a long-standing monument. I guess the war could have stirred up atheist sentiment, but judging by these court cases, it doesn’t appear to have galvanized evangelists.

Also, in European contexts, a large portion of (Muslim) immigrants simply don't vote at all. If one checks a map showcasing voting rates in different electoral areas, frequently immigrant suburbs have very low rates. Of course a large portion of immigrants don't have citizenship in the first place, though in some places residency is enough to vote in local elections.

I'd wager that the ones who do vote will tend to be on the more integrated end of scale.

Doesn't seem accurate for the UK.

Nor for France: at least in 2022, there was a clear Muslim vote in favor of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his party.

Muslims also disproportionately had many of the other predictors of support for Melenchon.

I doubt this. The fact is that the modern right's coalition does not cater to city folks and muslims aggregate in cities.

Don't you have cause and effect mixed up there? The modern right repels muslims and that is part of why they struggle in cities.

Not at all.

Muslim immigrants congregate in cities for the same reason almost all immigrants congregate in cities: They desire to soak up the spillover prosperity generated by the more productive persons in the city. It is very hard to live in a rural area and charge $40/hr to prune the hedges of a Google C-suite character. If you were to live in a rural area, that is a $7/hr job. You get the higher wage by accepting living conditions natives don't, such as 5 to a studio and the like.

What does that have to do with anything? I'm not disputing that Muslims live in cities, or arguing about why.

If I am not mistaken, there is a bit of a miscommunication going on. When you said:

The modern right repels muslims and that is part of why they struggle in cities.

I understood "they" to refer to the Right. I believe that anti_dan understood it to refer to Muslims.

Living in cities has both causes and effects and attractors.

If Muslims had to settle in places that need them, they wouldnt immigrate.

need

What do you mean by that? There’s a couple things getting conflated in this thread. Need them, economically, to fill unpleasant jobs? Politically, to win a socially conservative coalition?

Sounds like the place which is willing to pay $40/hr for some hedge pruning needs people to do hedge pruning a lot more than the place which is only willing to pay $7/hr.

True, but the question we are asking is who gets that $40/hr not whether it is a filled job.

I still fail to see your point.

Modern low skill immigrants go to places where they replace American workers for a slightly reduced wage, resulting in a zero sum game, as now those are just unemployed welfare receiving Americans. They do not (speaking in large % terms here) go found new cities in remote regions to exploit new resources.

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It's pretty much entirely 2. Muslims were a republican demographic before the GWOT and the GOP doesn't, deep in its bones, care about Islam when not actually at war with it. Besides, it's not like democrats are anything less than ultra-pro-Israel.

Muslims were a somewhat Republican demographic before 2001 because there were very few of them and they were a largely well educated upper-middle class demographic, which used to be more Republican. Asians voted 42% for Bush in 2000 according to polling I just googled, in general before the WOT affluent minorities were more Republican since the culture war in the 1990s re. immigration was about illegal migration from Mexico, not skilled work visas.

The profile of American Muslims has changed substantially since 9/11 due to further large-scale immigration from Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Muslim parts of West and East Africa and the rest of MENA, making Muslim Americans more diverse in terms of wealth and background, and in any case affluent minorities in general (eg. East Asians, Indians) have turned against the GOP. After Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ proposal, even though it can be justified on grounds that aren’t strictly hostile or Islam as a religion, they’re unlikely to return to the Republicans any time soon.

Also, Muslims’ anti-Israel beliefs are different to anti-Israel reactionaries (who are in any case a tiny minority of conservatives). Conservative isolationists want the US to defund Israel and then leave the Middle East. This would not actually have much impact on the Palestinian situation (and might actually make things worse for them, it’s not as if Israel would collapse). By contrast, progressive and Muslim anti-Israel activists want more overt condemnation of the treatment of Palestinians, possible sanctions on Israel (eg. BDS) and so on. They want big state, big foreign policy, big intervention, just in the other direction.

The stats probably understate Muslim (and East and South Asian) income numbers because so many are students. The vast majority of Muslims near me are still in that middle-upper middle class demographic.

It's a funny reverse from my Euro family to my American family, "I don't get why Americans/Europeans are upset about Mexican/Muslim immigration, all the Mexicans/Muslims I know are smart professionals and small business owners, much more like 'us' than the Muslims/Mexicans WE have to deal with. I'd love to trade our immigrants for your immigrants."

There aren’t very many Mexicans in most of Europe at all. There are many Latin Americans (Brazilians in Portugal, Argentinians and Colombians and some Mexicans in Spain) in Iberia, but because of ancestral citizenship and visa costs they tend to precisely be the wealthier Iberian types. The average Brazilian who emigrates to Portugal is effectively Portuguese, they’re not indigenous amerindians from the Amazon or Afro-Brazilians from the poor north.

A Spaniard telling you Mexican immigrants seem to be nice is really just talking about his own countrymen, even if their ancestors spent 300 fruitless years in the New World before coming home.

There are many Latin Americans (Brazilians in Portugal)

There are a lot of Brazilians in Ireland too. The 2016 census showed 15,000 or so and now it's at 40,000.

Like the Polish before them (and unlike asylum seekers) there really isn't that much anti-migrant sentiment against them, though they do suffer a lot at the hands of Dublin's feral youths.

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