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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   25363 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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The UK is closer to the US on the “pace of being destroyed by mass immigration” scale than worse-off countries elsewhere in Western Europe, and more likely to end up Brazilified than Lebanonified.

Uh, the US’s largest states are white minority, gen z is the last white majority generation, there’s no functioning border, and we have more immigrants than births every year.

Now I don’t think a Hispanic majority- or plurality or whatever- is a death knell, but ‘control of immigration’ is not an American strength.

Yes, but fundamentally the US probably isn’t going to experience major ethnic conflict because of immigration. Latinos are mostly Christian (either devout or secularized catholics), quickly adopt American dress and have high intermarriage rates by the third generation. Most of Central America moving north will manifest itself in, long term, a lower performing population, higher inequality, more corruption and crime, and general civilizational decline, probably. But there will be no grand clash of civilizations, thus Brazilification.

In much of continental Europe, non-European immigration is overwhelmingly Muslim. Assimilation is limited, cultural identities strong. Very few German or Austrian second-generation Muslim immigrants consider themselves German or Austrian, for example. They conceive of themselves as having a strong, separate identity. This makes Lebanonization that descends into open ethno-religious conflict much more likely in countries like France, Sweden, Germany etc.

The UK sits kind of between the two. Immigrants are a lot more diverse, with large Chinese and Indian (Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist) contingents, many African Christians from former colonies (France’s former colonies are largely Muslim, by contrast) plus a large number of additional groups from all over the world who speak English (eg. Filipinos are the third most common nationality in the NHS after British and Indians). Islamic immigration remains high, and there have been terror attacks, the grooming gangs scandals and so on, but it is a smaller proportion of the total than in continental Europe. Most non-Muslim groups also have relatively high intermarriage rates.

I think the UK is therefore more likely to Brazilify than to Lebanonify.

Something I've never been clear on, which I think you might be able to explain due to your (astoundingly broad and deep!) geopolitical knowledge:

What exactly does "brazilification" mean? I've seen it used enough and I'm familiar enough with the popular perception of Brazil that I think I've picked up the "vibe", but I find myself wondering if there isn't more to it than just "extreme inequality and crime, favelas in every city where the wealthy never go." Is there a racial component in Brazil, or is it just a socioeconomic thing? Is there a specific historical path that is necessary to count as brazilification?

Brazil has a racial hierarchy but it’s in denial and likes to pretend that there’s a ‘Brazilian’ race instead of many races which could all be Brazilian, in order to cover up the massive drag of high human capital demographics subsidizing lower human capital ones which then proceed to repay them with crime.

It started decades ago as a progressive economics term to argue that rising economic inequality risked America looking more like much of Latin America, where the top 5% live like Americans while the bottom 90% are poor. Over time it was adopted by the right in light of ongoing mass immigration, keeping some of its original meaning but adding the idea that Brazil is also poorer, more corrupt, more violent, more dysfunctional. On the internet right the Brazilification thesis stands in contrast to the ‘Balkanization’ or Lebanon scenarios in which ethnic tensions crystallize into hot conflict. Brazil, by contrast, has little significant racial strife of the kind far rightists sometimes predict in the West’s future.

Got it, thanks.

Ah, appreciate the clarification. I’d thought that Britain’s immigrants were highly Pakistani or unassimilating Hindus; sort of like France or Germany. A comparatively small number of Pakistanis in a context of mostly assimilating migration from throughout the former empire is a meaningful improvement over that assumption.

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