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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   34966 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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Far-right parties on the rise across Europe.

That's a headline we've all read many times in the past decade, is now really different? There are many clips around the internet of the race riots in France, with this Reddit thread showing a compilation of some. It's hard to gauge how serious the riots are, or if it's relatively isolated to a few blocks in a couple cities and these compilations make the situation appear worse than it actually is. The words of Eric Zemmour paint a dire picture:

We are in the early stages of a civil war. It’s an ethnic war. We can see clearly that it’s a race war. We see what forces are involved. We need someone determined and firm. … The problem, above all, is the number [of immigrants].

The reason I think the BBC article is noteworthy, most of all, is because it observes that contrary to the previous bouts of nationalistic populism that inspired Brexit and Euroskepticism, this surge in far-right political support seems to be dovetailing with support for the EU:

While at the same time, a number of far-right parties in Europe have intentionally moved more towards the political centre, hoping to entice more centrist voters.

Mark Leonard cites far-right relations with the EU as another example of their 'centrification'.

You may remember, after the UK's Brexit vote in 2016 that Brussels feared a domino effect - Frexit (France leaving the EU), Dexit (Denmark leaving the EU), Italexit (Italy leaving the EU) and more.

Many European countries had deeply Eurosceptic populist parties doing well at the time but over the years those parties have felt obliged to stop agitating to leave the EU or even its euro currency.

That seemed too radical for a lot of European voters...

Polls suggest the EU is more popular amongst Europeans at the moment than it has been for years.

And so far right parties now speak about reforming the EU, rather than leaving it. And they're predicted to perform strongly in next year's elections for the European parliament.

Paris-based Director of Institut Montaigne's Europe Programme Georgina Wright told me she believes the far-right renaissance in Europe is largely down to dissatisfaction with the political mainstream. Currently in Germany, 1 in 5 voters say they're unhappy with their coalition government, for example.

Wright said many voters in Europe are attracted by the outspokenness of parties on the far-right and there's tangible frustration that traditional politicians don't appear to have clear answers in 3 key areas of life:

  1. Issues linked to identity - a fear of open borders and an erosion of national identity and traditional values
  1. Economics - a rejection of globalisation and resentment that children and grandchildren aren't assured a better future
  1. Social justice - a feeling that national governments are not in control of the rules that govern the lives of citizens

I do not agree with Mark Leonard that far-right relations with the EU are an example of the centrification of the far-right, it rather represents a change in strategy.

I've seen it asked here, what would be the pathway for political or cultural victory of the radical right? This is it- these energies being transformed into a positive and ambitious political project that surfs the wave of globalization and European integration. In hindsight it seems like such a bad strategy for the far right to advocate stepping away from a project like this, and the failure of Brexit to produce any meaningful change is, along with Trumpism, proof of the failure of petty nationalistic populism. If you blame the EU for immigration you don't leave the EU, you go for European parliament.

Journalists have spent many years hand-wringing over the Euroskepticism being influenced by right-wing politics, but I think they will find the prospect of the EU being reformed by a pro-EU radical right to be much more worrisome- and effective at bringing real change.

Edit: Police Unions are also describing the situation as dire:

Faced with these savage hordes, asking for calm doesn’t go far enough. It must be imposed.

Re-establishing order in the republic and putting those arrested somewhere they can do no harm must be the only political signals to send out.

Our colleagues, like the majority of the public, can no longer have the law laid down to them by a violent minority.

This is not the time for industrial action, but for fighting against these ‘vermin’. To submit, to capitulate, and to give them pleasure by laying down weapons are not solutions, given the gravity of the situation.

They said: “Today, police officers are at the frontline because we are at war.” And they warned the government that, unless officers are given yet greater legal protections and more resources in the future, “tomorrow, we will be in resistance”.

Frankly, I'm deeply pessimistic on the migration question. Yes, the overton window has moved to the right in the sense that it is now possible to harshly criticize mass migration in public now, but anything that would actually solve it is still completely politically impossible. What would be the bare minimum a serious program intending to stop Europe's demographic shift look like? Step 1 would obviously be to stop new arrivals, i.e a complete halt of non-EU migration, or at the very least African and Middle Eastern migration.

The issue here is that in Europe this is impossible to do on the national level anymore. Even if a far-right party can take power in any given European country, and even if they sincerely want to halt migration, there is an entire European judiciary that has decided that the right of muslims to come here en masse is a human right, but Europeans not having their cities being made unlivable by them and their progeny is not a human right. As such, any serious attempt to stop migration is stillborn. To actually solve the issue, you would need either a very throughout rework or abolition of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. But even admitting this out loud is still completely outside of the overton window. It is a political impossibility.

It is tragic, but the well-intended reaction to world war 2 will prove to be Western Europe's doom.

anything that would actually solve it is still completely politically impossible

Poland and other countries bordering with Belarus build wall there. (as in, actually build it and stopped uncontrolled migration, not like that Trump wall comedy)

anything that would actually solve it

Where does 'Marshall-Plan class program to bring the Third World Global South up to standard so that the inhabitants won't feel the need to move' fit in this?

That belongs in the same category as the "use technology from the Roswell crash site to end energy scarcity" or "Construct a fake airport out of sticks to summon great cargo from the land of the ancestors" approaches.

The Marshall Plan is absurdly overrated. Europe recovered from the Thirty Years War, the Napoleonic Wars and WW1 without any Marshall Plan just fine. It was European institutions and human capital that allowed the recovery. Things you can't create in the Global South with piles of money.

Observationally, nation building failed completely in Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan alone received something like 10x more money than Europe did on a per capita basis. All that money was set on fire and accomplished nothing.

Up to what standard? I had understood that residents of impoverished countries actually become more likely to emigrate as the countries become wealthier.

It seems pretty clear the idea is to improve them up to a near-western standard so the incentive to move isn't there.

I doubt it's the poverty that keeps Germans from moving to Bulgaria en-masse.

Right, if that's the idea, the proponent should do the budget math to figure out what it would cost to raise the entire rest of the world up to first-world standards, because it's obviously a fantasy even if you assume that wealth can be delivered via wire transfer irrespective of the human capital in the recipient country.

I'm all for it in theory. In practice, I look at the giant money pit that was Afghanistan, and worry that any such Marshall Plan would meet a similar fate.

The issue here is that in Europe this is impossible to do on the national level anymore.

Not true. Denmark's Social Democrats, of all people, pulled it off.

Talk about channeling Nixon going to China.

Have they though? I know the socdems there have been making a lot of noise about halting mass migration, but to which extent have the actually succeeded? Mind, I'm not trying to say you're wrong here, I'm genuinely curious. if this site is to be believed, the Denmark's net migration rate has barely budged since 2019, but net migration rate isn't the stat I'm interested in as it includes inter-EU migration.

If they've succeeded, what's been their secret sauce? How have they managed to get out of getting flooded with refugees without getting slapped down by some EU court? Is what they've been doing scalable to the rest of the EU, or are they basically just pushing the problem to other EU countries?

I've spent some time now looking for the data, and it's quite a lot harder to parse than I expected. There's undeniably been a huge drop in the asylum flow, but the effects of the 2019 socdem crackdown are obscured by the natural drop from the absurd mid-2010s highs, Covid, and now Ukraine. Although it's striking to me that even with Ukraine, the acceptance rates dropped from 85% in 2015 to 59% in 2022.

As for the secret sauce... my pet theory is that when the socdem's focus shifted leading up to 2019, they were uniquely positioned as having neither the ideology nor the monetary incentives (socdems are generally not liked in the circles that benefit from cheap labor) propping up the migration-friendly stance of their government.

Although it's striking to me that even with Ukraine, the acceptance rates dropped from 85% in 2015 to 59% in 2022.

Apparently most Ukrainians are not even applying for asylum: "as of 25 March 28 000 people have arrived from Ukraine and registered in Denmark. 2 000 of these have applied for asylum and are now accommodated in asylum centres". It seems like this is the result of a special law which grants them work, schooling and welfare rights without the need to gain citizenship through the asylum process.

Indeed, IIRC lots of euro countries declared that they would allow Ukrainians to move to their countries, no questions asked, and that they didn’t need to apply for asylum.

The question Western/European civilization now needs to answer is at what point migrant camps / ghettos / unassimilated population centers / banlieues / HLMs become colonies in the colonial sense.

Native America was overtaken by European colonies, and the most famous was Plymouth, refugees who broke from England’s church but stayed tied to England politically.

One other thing scares me: France is a nuclear-armed power; imagine if the Conquistadors had found natives’ nukes and given them to the 17th century Vatican.

One other thing scares me: France is a nuclear-armed power; imagine if the Conquistadors had found natives’ nukes and given them to the 17th century Vatican.

When South African whites had to hand over power to the black majority they wisely destroyed their nukes rather than give them to the ANC.

One other thing scares me: France is a nuclear-armed power; imagine if the Conquistadors had found natives’ nukes and given them to the 17th century Vatican.

I do not for a second believe the French troops that are guarding nuclear depots would hesitate to fire on intruders.

They have one job, and one job only. Their entire training must be based around protecting unauthorised access to nuclear weapons, as any failure to do so can cause tens of thousands of deaths.

Their entire training must be based around protecting unauthorised access to nuclear weapons

Until the accusations of racism start flowing in, and some government official or other mandates diversity indoctrination and hiring quotas...

at what point migrant camps / ghettos / unassimilated population centers / banlieues / HLMs become colonies in the colonial sense.

When the government lacks the power to do anything about them even if it wanted to. As long as European countries have the theoretical state capacity to eject the migrants then it's a matter of domestic policy rather than one of necessity imposed from overseas. It may be very bad domestic policy, but African countries aren't threatening to impoverish or take military action against France if it stops taking in their overflow.

The only groups who can externally constrain Western countries this way are the US and supranational organisations like the EU, and you do sometimes see the rhetoric of colonisation used by their opponents.

Belarus and Turkey with migrant warfare got closest. Belarus got walled, Turkey extracted significant bribes from EU and continues to use migrants as a threat.

When it comes to Finland's right-wing populists, discussed below, their current stance on EU is a rather confused one - their programs still formally state that they support a Fixit and a withdrawal from Euro, but when asked about this during the election, they said that these are "long-term goals" and that they wouldn't push for them in the government.

In general, the Finnish relationship to EU is very pragmatic; the Union itself enjoys wide support and quitting it (or the Euro) is unpopular as an idea, but there's also a constant fear that Finland is putting in more money than it gets or that the EU is about to pass, in particular, environmental legislation that would be harmful to Finland, such as the recently shot-down proposal for Nature Restoration Law. You don't get Brexiteer-style agitation, but Remainer-style fervent expressed love for the EU is not that common, either. It's just a fact of political life.

One of the main reasons why right-wing forces are advancing in many countries generally is opposition to high fuel prices or various proposed environmental laws. My understanding is that AfD is zooming up because of their opposition to this plan to ban oil and gas heating of homes in Germany. The Finns Party campaigned heavily on enacting whatever policies are necessary to bring down the fuel prices, which have, at least at times, been the highest in Europe in Finland.

Wright said many voters in Europe are attracted by the outspokenness of parties on the far-right...

I personally think this is the result of the kind of soft censorship progressives are using right now. The Overton window has been pushed to the point where there are some mainstream opinions get you labeled a bigot. So the only people representing those views are the far right; The very people who are not afraid of those labels.

Currently in Germany, 1 in 5 voters say they're unhappy with their coalition government, for example.

Is this considered bad in Germany? 20% are unhappy? (I checked and its not a typo the article says the same thing)

Seems like politicians anywhere else would be overjoyed to poll that well.

It's likely that the author of the article misread the original study. Here's the source the article was referencing probably, it's the bar chart titled "Zufriedenheit mit der Bundesregierung". 20% are happy or very happy with the current government, the rest is not.

It's really not, and I have no idea why it was toted out as an example either.

I think it’s a positive sign for the European far right, but a big part of the problem for them is what happens when they win. There isn’t really a plan for what to do with the banlieues. Repatriation still seems incomprehensibly beyond the pale, even Zemmour wouldn’t dare go beyond suggesting possibly deporting some relatively small number of non-citizen foreigners.

deporting some relatively small number of non-citizen foreigners

There's a "Zero to One" sort of effect here, though: once you have a legal mechanism in place to effect something like this, expanding the program looks like a small tweak to an accepted policy instead of a radical shift.

In Ireland's case the legal mechanism is there and plenty of deportation orders are given out. Very few of them are ever enforced.

They already have mechanisms to deport non-citizens, even those with residency in certain cases (just like the US does). Mechanisms to deport citizens are much more radical, especially those that would strip them of citizenship based on origin.

There's a whole raft of powerful policies waiting beyond the Overton Window, e.g., making eligibility for government benefits or government housing dependent on having at least 1 French grandparent. As long as one is willing to address the charge of "second-class citizenship" with 'yes, and so what?', then France can quickly make itself intolerable for its own immigrant underclass.

I’m not sure any of that it possible unless all of Europe does the same. Europe has free transit across borders, so immigrants can get citizenship at the easiest point, then cross borders until they end up in a rich European country. The US has the same problem— a state refusing immigrants would be forced to accept them because California does and the lack of borders between states means a sort of race to the bottom.

I’m not sure any of that it possible unless all of Europe does the same.

From the point of view of the European populist right, yeschad.jpg. The European Parliament effectively forces political movements to organise at a pan-EU level, and the populist right is getting better at it. The bottom-up movement to curtail Muslim immigration is inherently pan-EU.

Also, the problem as perceived by the marginal right-populist voter is irregular immigration, and a lot of work on that issue (border policing, asylum reform, doing deals with transit countries to push "refugees" back) can and should be done at EU level, and increasingly is. Contrary to the "woke EU" memes spread by the Brexit campaign, the EU institutions have proved themselves perfectly willing to actually do anti-immigrant things where the member states let them. The EU (largely under the influence of Eastern European conservatives) has produced

  • A public statement by the Commission President (effectively the head of the EU executive branch) that countries deliberately facilitating the transit of unwanted immigrants are engaged in a "hybrid attack" on the EU.

  • A uniformed EU border corps (Frontex). Frontex also has a coast guard that actually turn migrant boats round and send them back (see wokist wailing and gnashing of teeth), rather than acting as a water taxi service. This Samo Burja briefing (unfortunately behind an expensive paywall) provides confirmation that Frontex is for real from a non-establishment source.

  • The Dublin agreement to stop asylum shopping. (Leaving the Dublin agreement as a side effect of Brexit is why the UK now has a "small boat" immigration crisis that we didn't when we were in the EU)

  • A deal with Turkey to return Syrian refugees who settled in Turkey before illegally immigrating to Europe.

  • The only reason why the EU isn't funding border fences is tit-for-tat budget politics.

"If we want to keep the infidel out of Europe, we need to work together" has been a truism of European politics for almost 1000 years by now.

While in the US, the country will whiten over the medium-long term if immigration can be cut off, is that the case in France? I mean payments to ethnic French to have more babies probably won’t work, you’d have to rely on natively high fertility rates, and it seems like once you exclude the Muslims and tradcaths France has typical-euro fertility.

I believe, and I think a substantial portion of the right does as well, that the presence and resource cost imposition of all these immigrants is having a serious depressive effect on birthrates and family formation. The resources being used to subsidise the reproduction and immigration of all these new muslims are resources that are actually adding to the competition faced by ethnic natives who are in many cases generating these resource surpluses, not just being removed from them!. When I talk to people in western countries who would like to have children but are currently not, the manifestations of these costs loom extremely large in their mind. I actually think that the impact of diversity in this regard is even more pernicious than just the numbers would suggest - does it really seem plausible that events like the Rotherham cases had no impact on the life-trajectory and family formation of the individuals involved?

If you break it down further, the white Republican TFR is replacement, while the native black TFR is much lower than the overall black TFR, and the Hispanic TFR is mostly declining. So over the long term assuming no immigration, the red tribe expands demographically while other groups shrink, which looks like a whitening country. The non-white groups having a higher TFR is mostly due to 1st gen immigrants.

Also, when hispanics assimilate they tend to do so into the red tribe- so they identify as white once they’re white passing.

All true, but a key component is net "conversion" from red tribe to blue tribe. The size of red tribe whites is shrinking as some portion of their children become blue tribers and move to cities. The rural stock of conservative whites doesn't have sufficiently high fertility to offset this drain. Red-tribe whites are at about 2.0 TFR and blue-tribe whites are 1.3. This assimilation dynamic means there is no rebounding effect on overall white TFR unless the acculturation/assimilation dynamic stops or reverses.

I see little chance of that happening at present.

The red tribe seems to be slowly getting better at dealing with the assimilation effect, and in any case the assimilation of Hispanics is probably able to at least partially offset it.

Remember that pickup trucks and country music are booming businesses, and that’s probably the best vibes based indicator of the relative strength of red tribe cultural power.

That would mean changing the constitution, since it would create two classes of citizen. That’s kind of the problem for them, under the law almost all the rioters etc are citizens.

I mean we’re on the fifth republic already. It’s not hard to imagine a sixth.

There's a lot of superstructure now that is intended to prevent further such changeovers...

Make revocation of citizenship for crime relatively easy?

I hear far-right commentators excited about revocation of citizenship as if it's the easiest thing when it actually seems like the hardest and most fraught option. Even without the concrete issue of venerable and widely respected international agreements specifically against it, producing an appreciable number of stateless individuals - especially a particularly criminal and undesirable sample of stateless individuals - would be seen as shitting on the international commons. It's not like people on your territory would magically disappear if you revoke their citizenship, and so all you would actually be doing - assuming you don't keep them firmly locked up yourself after revoking their citizenship - is that you would be telling other countries that you will refuse to take responsibility for them or take them back if they somehow make their way into those countries. Doing this would quickly turn you into a pariah state in a way in which no amount of concentration camps, draconian laws or firing squads, targeted against your own, would.

I understand some proponents' attitude towards that would amount to a "so what, sending a big fuck you to the rest of the world is a feature, not a bug"/"if everyone hates us that means more jobs for our people and military", but it seems that many others instead subscribe to a fantasy where if France revokes the citizenship of an nth-generation criminal African then after much wailing and gnashing of teeth some African country nobody can point out on a map will step up and admit that the individual in question is actually theirs (or perhaps that they can run a country-level paternity test that will identify some Equatorial Guinea as on the hook for child support in best reality TV fashion).

International agreements of the 'humanitarian' kind only matter to western nations in any meaningful sense. If they go far right, and it would only take two of the big ones, I don't think anyone will care enough or afford to uphold them.

To that end there would be no problem with France sorting the good from the bad in their society, relegating the bad to some purpose built prison hole in Djibouti.

The point is that it's only superficially about humanitarianism and actually largely about forswearing a type of aggression between roughly equal nation-states that is annoying to defend against.

Who is going to operate the prison hole in Djibouti you are talking about? The Djiboutians would neither be efficient nor incentivised to keep the people in, and would demand a lot of money for it if their internal politics don't randomly whiplash against operating it for any price; for the French running a prison in Djibouti - assuming they can rent the land or muscle themselves into it, which is not so clear - might turn out more expensive than running the same prison in France. (I haven't looked up the operational costs, direct and indirect, of Guantanamo Bay which seems to be the closest equivalent of what you are proposing, but I doubt it's cheaper than your run-of-the-mill federal supermax.)

If the humanitarianism is superficial then what problem are we facing? By the sound of things many on the far right in Europe are not against the EU per se. I don't see why, if we're not maintaining some facade of treating native first worlders and foreign third worlders the same, that the sky will fall as a consequence. European nations can continue working together despite that.

As for Djibouti, the French already have a military base there. Which they could run with an additional prison complex for as cheap as the French can run things overseas given they have the French Foreign Legion stationed there. It would be much less Guantanamo Bay and much more refugee camp you can't leave.

But that's kind of besides the point. I'm not attached to any one mechanism for doing things like that. I mentioned it more in passing than anything. The third world manages to house their criminals. I don't see the task as being impossible or even that hard for France. Nor why it would end up being prohibitively expensive.

If France had third worlders with no land to call home that commit crime, ship 'em out to prisonland.

Yeah, people also don’t realize just how much many people don’t want to go ‘home’. You’re not going to move to the Ivory Coast or Mali even if stripped of welfare rights. Mild pressure wouldn’t do it.

The UK did recently strip the citizenship of a woman (who joined ISIS) on the basis that she was entitled by ancestry to Bangladeshi citizenship, leaving her arguably stateless in a refugee camp. But doing it on a large scale would be quite different.

It presents a concrete political objective. A pan-European radical right movement to reform the EU constitution to actually serve European people would have to aim high and dream big.

The reason I think the BBC article is noteworthy, most of all, is because it observes that contrary to the previous bouts of nationalistic populism that inspired Brexit and Euroscepticism, this surge in far-right political support seems to be dovetailing with support for the EU:

The fundamental issue that the EU had in England was that it lacked legitimacy. What's more, it never attempted to build any legitimacy, it always held the England in disdain. Therfore English populists (and the far right) would rage against a government that they felt was imposed on them. Notably, pro EU people in England don't express themselves in favour of the EU, but against England. You would find it difficult to find one who could name the European commissioner.

Continentals don't have that issue. The EU was started, for Germany, to allow themselves back into the European community, for France, to rebuild and continue the French power in Europe stretching back centuries, and for the Netherlands, Belgium, etc, to stop (excessive) domination by another country.

It makes sense that European populism and far right movements would fit more neatly into the European Union.

The fundamental issue that the EU had in England was that it lacked legitimacy.

This is dubious - there was a 2/3 supermajority for membership in the 1975 referendum, and zero sign of meaningful public support for changing this until UKIP get 16% of the vote on a 38% turnout in the 2004 European Parliament elections. Eurosceptic parties do embarassingly badly in Westminster elections until 2015, by which time UKIP have learned that they need to headline a populist domestic programme - Brexit is relegated to an appendix in their <a href = "https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/ukipdev/pages/1103/attachments/original/1429295050/UKIPManifesto2015.pdf"manifesto.

Notably, pro EU people in England don't express themselves in favour of the EU, but against England.

This is simply false. It is true that "I see myself as more British than English" is the best predictor of remain-voting (better than age or education) and that the patriotic section of the pro-EU movement used British rather than English symbols. But the anti-patriotism wing of the British left is anti-British (mostly anti-Empire) at least as much as it is anti-English. The only people who are noisily anti-English in British politics are the SNP.

The main reason why pro-EU people in the UK are pro-EU is that we believe (correctly) that EU membership is in the national interest - Dominic Cummings' focus groups confirmed this. Our support for the EU is a fundamentally pro-British position. (And therefore, indirectly, pro-English). There is a minority of fanatical pro-Europeans who would support EU membership if it wasn't in the national interest - they express this support by waving the EU flag and singing the Ode to Joy, not through being anti-English (which, as I have said, would just make them look like angry Scots).

The driving force behind right-populism in the UK is (similarly to other countries) a combination of:

  • General Boomer nostalgia

  • Vibes-based beefs about the economy, which mostly appeal to a generation of pensioners who are nevertheless enjoying an unprecedented level of affluence in retirement.

  • Opposition to Muslim immigration, which has very little to do with the EU.

The fact that this expressed itself through opposition to the EU, rather than opposition to the UK domestic policies which caused the problems, is a mistake on the part of right-populist voters - the Brexit we are getting is, as promised by the Johnson wing of the Tories, leading to increases in non-EU legal migration and is also leading to increases in illegal migration. And the Brexit-supporting faction of the Conservative party that supported Johnson, although not Johnson himself, are committed to the "Thatcherite" domestic-policy agenda that is what the people beefing about the economy are beefing against. So the interesting question is why the nascent right-populist movement in the UK self-sabotaged by focussing on Brexit. The question of why right-populists in the rest of the EU are not making the same mistake is easy - because they can see what happened in the UK.

Some of this is bottom-up (the age group that is most susceptible to right-populism is also the cohort group that has always been the most anti-EU, going back to the 1975 referendum). But a lot of it is top-down:

  • Pre-Farage, Euroscepticism is mostly a libertarian-adjacent project which although deeply unpopular with the voters, is well-funded and backed to the hilt by powerful foreign-owned media. So the right-populist movement that looks most likely to deliver Brexit and then cuck (i.e. UKIP vs the BNP/EDL/English Democrats) is the one that gets the cash and favourable media coverage. And even the existence of this movement is somewhat contingent - if Margaret Thatcher's senile dementia progresses differently then the bizarre idea that the true Thatcherite position on the EU is the direct opposite of Margaret Thatcher's approach to the EEC as Prime Minister may not get off the ground.

  • Cameron promises the Brexit referendum because of internal Conservative party politics, not because of any public pressure for it. (Remember how pathetic UKIP are in Westminster elections). FWIW Cummings says that promising the referendum did not help the Tories in the 2015 election, mostly because the promise was not believed.

  • If you look at the leave campaign messaging, both Vote Leave (Cummings) and Leave.EU (Farage) made blaming the EU for Muslim immigration a core part of their campaign. Vote Leave mostly do this using the "Turkey is joining the EU" lie - which only sticks because Cameron personally supported Turkish EU membership back in the pre-Erdogan era when it was a live political issue. Farage focusses on the 2015 Mediterranean migrant crisis (which was technically Merkel's fault, not the EUs, but the politics didn't reflect this) - which is taking advantage of a piece of good luck. But critically, neither campaign makes migration of EU citizens a core issue, because opposing the immigration of hard-working law-abiding culturally-Christian immigrants was not a vote winner.

This is dubious - there was a 2/3 supermajority for membership in the 1975 referendum, and zero sign of meaningful public support for changing this until UKIP get 16% of the vote on a 38% turnout in the 2004 European Parliament elections.

The EEC and the EU are not the same thing. 2004 was the year Blair opened the borders to Eastern Europe which had a major effect on the lives of the English working class.

Does a 38% turnout not indicate a lack of legitimacy?

This is simply false. It is true that "I see myself as more British than English" is the best predictor of remain-voting (better than age or education) and that the patriotic section of the pro-EU movement used British rather than English symbols.

I'm not sure i've ever met anybody who is pratriotic and Pro-EU.

The only people who are noisily anti-English in British politics are the SNP.

I would argue new labour were fairly anti-English.

Opposition to Muslim immigration, which has very little to do with the EU.

Agreed, up until the the EU allowed millions of people to march in through schengen.

hard-working law-abiding culturally-Christian immigrants was not a vote winner.

First of all, the reputation of the Poles and other Eastern Europeans as hard working the is completely overblown and is a good indication that they have never worked in industry in England. Anecdotally, the major difference between a Polish forklift driver and an English one is the Polish ones don't look back when they're reversing. And when you get to the other Europeans (Romanians, Bulgarians, etc), trying to get any work out of them at all is difficult, often they will pretend they don't speak English, even when you have had a conversation with them before.

Second of all, law abiding? ehhhh, maybe. They don't tend to commit too much violent crime, and most of it is "mutual combat".

Third of all, White working class people don't care if the people who are replacing them are culturally Christian.

I remember reading a pamphlet by Tommi Uschanov (a Finnish equivalent of Matt Yglesias - can't offer a better description) that argued that all the complicated, cultural/historical explanations of Brexit are false (referring to things like the 1975 pro-EU referendum etc) and essentially the sole explanation for Brexit was Thatcher deciding to go anti-EU during her waning years and this then becoming a litmus test for being a true "dry" Tory and things snowballing from there. Not sure if I buy that thesis fully, but there's also something a bit exhilirating reading someone give a very simple explanation hinging on one particular point in history for an ostensibly complex topic.

It‘s main goal (and legitimacy derived from it) was the prevention of war between france and germany (something benelux had a vested interested in) by combining war-making materials markets. Just because it‘s taught in school doesn‘t mean it‘s naive nonsense.

Since the EU is a rather invisible, undefined blob otherwise, it is what you need it to be. The extremes find it convenient to assign it to the outgroup. When you‘re crafting dodgy underdog stories about constantly losing to flawed assholes despite having the support of the people, a supranational supernatural entity putting its thumb on the scale is a useful scapegoat.

The EU didn‘t fill Birmingham with pakistanis, Nanterre with algerians , and Malmö with syrians. London, Paris and Stockholm did. Maybe secede from them? And when you‘ve finally declared the independence of podunkville, you‘ll find your neighbour was the problem all along.

It‘s main goal (and legitimacy derived from it) was the prevention of war between france and germany (something benelux had a vested interested in) by combining war-making materials markets. Just because it‘s taught in school doesn‘t mean it‘s naive nonsense.

The US and Soviet troops secured the European peace after the war.

Since the EU is a rather invisible, undefined blob otherwise, it is what you need it to be.

I agree. One of the funny things about Brexit is that the EU became everything to everybody.

The EU didn‘t fill Birmingham with pakistanis

True.

Nanterre with algerians

True.

Malmö with syrians

False. They allowed them to march through the Schengen area.

Maybe secede from them

I would if I could.

How does your model account for Eastern Europe, where the countries in the EU were no founders, and where it is a deeply popular institution anyhow?

Eastern Europe gets a significant amount of cash and market access out of the EU.

Protection from, and recovering from, the Soviet (Russian) Empire. I don't think it's controverisal to say that the idea of, and reaction to, the EU is different in the east and the west.

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