site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28340 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Does Germany abolish itself? https://grauwacht.substack.com/p/does-germany-abolish-itself

Schafft Deutschland sich ab? https://grauwacht.substack.com/p/schafft-deutschland-sich-ab

I analyze the latest PISA results to figure out why Germany's performance has declined so much in recent years. My focus is on figuring out the extend to which changes in migration patterns can explain the decline. I won't post the entire post here because it has a lot of figures and will be disjointed to read. Remember to subscribe!

Introduction

In 2010, the book "Deutschland schafft sich ab" (Germany Abolishes Itself) was created by Thilo Sarrazin. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. Sarrazin's core thesis on the topic of education can be roughly summarized as follows:

  1. The German birth rate is low, with less than 1.4 children per woman. This is contrasted by a large number of migrants, especially from Muslim countries, who have higher birth rates.

  2. Many migrants have educational deficits compared to the German population.

  3. Even after several generations, these migrants do not catch up with German society. This is due to genetic and cultural inheritance as well as little pressure to integrate.

  4. In the long run, Germany’s educational achievements will deteriorate due to this demographic change.

Sarrazin's critics argued that he was right about some things, but that he painted too bleak a picture and mixed truths with falsehoods. They pointed out, for example, that there had been progress in the area of education among Turks, a large Muslim immigrant group. Against the background of the recently published PISA study, in which Germany performed miserably, it seems appropriate to re-examine Sarrazin's thesis. In particular, I will use the latest PISA study to answer the question of whether, and to what extent, migration aspects play a role in the continuous decline of German education...

It did not abolish itself, it is occupied and the occupiers will ensure that Germany is kept in line with their ideology. The Germans knew full well what would happen if the Americans and Soviets would take over the world and there is a reason why they fought tooth and nail to stop it. The foresight of German thinkers in the 20s and 30s was astonishing and they understood the direction the anglosphere was taking.

Nonsense. The Soviets never demanded high immigration from their puppets. Likewise, the Americans (at least those from the 1950s) didn't demand high immigration either. The "import third worlders en-masse" agenda is from the woke bug that bit all Western societies in the 2010s. There are no treaties or diktats you can point to where immigration is "forced" on Germany by the US. Maybe there's some bit in there about the EU pushing it, but Germany under Merkel was at the forefront of accepting refugees with the "we can do this" mantra.

Nonsense. The Soviets never demanded high immigration from their puppets. Likewise, the Americans (at least those from the 1950s) didn't demand high immigration either. The "import third worlders en-masse" agenda is from the woke bug that bit all Western societies in the 2010s.

Most of the non-Western immigration to Europe is not due to any of that, but rather the need of labor hitting all Western societies after decades of low fertility.

The "import third worlders en-masse" agenda is from the woke bug that bit all Western societies in the 2010s.

It was the Hart-Celler Act of 1965

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965

Mass non-Western immigration in Western Europe begins before 1965. The Empire Windrush docked in London in 1948. The first large wave of non-Western immigration to post-war France is Vietnamese who collaborated with French imperialism moving to France after Vietnamese independence in 1954, with another wave following after Algerian independence in 1962. As discussed below, the largest batch of Turkish Gastarbeiters arrived in Germany in the early 1960's.

Although there is a story about the need for cheap labour, in the British and French cases it looks like an accident rather than a well thought-out policy. The official policy of the 1945 Labour government was to discourage Caribbean immigration, but there was no way of prohibiting what was at the time domestic migration within the British Empire without causing a row that would blow up the whole Empire. The French situation is similar, with most of the early immigrants being what the French government considered to be loyal Frenchmen regardless of their skin colour.

Unlike the US, the 1960's is when the British start to restrict immigration with the 1962 and 1968 Commonwealth Immigration Acts. The UK reopens for mass immigration under Blair in 1997. Something similar happens in France 10 years later, with immigration laws being tightened in 1974 and loosened by Sarkozy.

In other words, the timings don't match up for mass immigration in Western Europe to be an extension of American policy. The wave of immigration permitted by the Hart-Cellar Act coincides with the pause in immigration in Britain and France. If you believe in the cheap labour theory of immigration politics, the explanation for this is easy - the role of cheap migrant labour in the US was filled by blacks moving north to escape Jim Crow.

The UK reopens for mass immigration under Blair in 1997.

Immigration began rising earlier in the 1990s under Major, didn’t it? The nadir was in the early ‘80s, but there was still substantial immigration from the third world throughout the 1975-1997 period.

The difference is that it doesn’t show on the now all important ‘net migration’ figures primarily because there was substantial emigration of 200,000+ a year through much of this period, often to Australia and elsewhere, most of which was natives.

There is a long period of negligible net foreign migration in the 70's and early 80's. There appears to be a glacial slow uptrend in both gross immigration and net foreign immigration between about 1985 and 1997, but the data is too noisy to say when it begins. See figures 1.1 and 1.2 (which should, but don't, match) in this old ONS report. The ONS have since stopped publishing immigration statistics from before 2010 because it became clear that the numbers were such poor quality - in particular they are not stock-flow consistent when cross-checked against the census. But you don't need high-quality data to see the increase after 1997, which was deliberate government policy.

I remember that non-refugee immigration was not a political issue during the Major administration - there was a tabloid panic about the number of people claiming refugee status in the immediate post-Cold War period, but the numbers peaked at about 50,000 refugee arrivals per year and about 20,000 asylum grants.

You write well, thanks for this

Mass migration started happening in the USA earlier, to be sure, but it was generally seen as a problem. It wasn't until the 2010s that people started pushing for open borders in practice if not in name, and this got transplanted to Europe to cause the chaotic migrations of 2014-2016.

Yeah okay, I'll buy that, open-faced 'the great replacement is a good thing' was about when you're saying

I don't know, Wikipedia at least says that the US pressured Germany to accept gastarbeiters from Turkey:

The first guest workers were recruited from European nations. However, Turkey pressured West Germany to admit its citizens as guest workers. Theodor Blank, Secretary of State for Employment, opposed such agreements. He held the opinion that the cultural gap between Germany and Turkey would be too large and also held the opinion that Germany didn't need any more laborers because there were enough unemployed people living in the poorer regions of Germany who could fill these vacancies. The United States, however, put some political pressure on Germany, wanting to stabilize and create goodwill from a potential ally. West Germany and Turkey reached an agreement in 1961.

The source is in German so I can't follow it up, though I do remember seeing this asserted in other places over the years.

Technically that was in 1961 and not the 1950s and the Turks aren't "third world" but if true it would support the core claim that the US intentionally tried to push diversity on its puppet states via the mass importation of non-western people.

intentionally tried to push diversity on its puppet states via the mass importation of non-western people.

wasn't really about diversity, and more about internal issues in turkey.

if true it would support the core claim that the US intentionally tried to push diversity on its puppet states via the mass importation of non-western people.

It wouldn't, because the intention of the US, according to the text you quoted, was "wanting to stabilize and create goodwill from a potential ally." That Turks were so different from the Germans was an inconvenience from a US point of view, not a goal.

There's a massive gulf between a one sentence line in Wikipedia saying the US put "some" quid pro quo political pressure on Germany to accept some Turks in the 1960s, and the claims of European right-wingers who imply all nonwhite migration to Europe is a diktat enforced top-down by a brutal US occupation of the continent.

I can't find the source from that wikipedia article but if you tag it here I will (attempt to) translate for us

Also Germany was the bad guy in WWI because they teamed up with the Ottomans (Turks). After a thousand years of enmity they teamed up with team bad guys. Big no no

The Anglos and French did that first in the Crimean war, though.

Austro-Hungarians also did it sometimes, still not great. In a game of 5 better to be on the team of three without the muslims

I'll also chime in by utilizing the Akshually... meme unironically, by pointing out that Japan was also under de facto, and is under practical US occupation, and yet mass acceptance of immigrants and refugees never became the norm there. More or less the same applies to South Korea and Taiwan.

I happened to be out to lunch with a client yesterday, as fate would have it, who was a Japanese fella who had just visited his uncle, a hiroshima survivor, who was on his death bed in gratitude the yankees occupied them instead of the soviets

Very good point! Yes, Korea and Japan arguably make the point even more clearly and succinctly than my examples.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats