7 ms·

I don't think the far-right is fueled by economic stagnation, but I do think that, were we living in an economic golden age, people would be able to ignore and

I don't think the far-right is fueled by economic stagnation, but I do think that, were we living in an economic golden age, people would be able to ignore and excuse the increased prevalence of foreigners on "their" streets.

decremental 2y ago
[dead]
Cumpiler69 2y ago
[flagged]
- stogot 2y ago
  Well said. Better than I could put into words
  - aguaviva 2y ago
    No, it's just an inspid rant. Let's pick a spot at random: But at the same time the state somehow has money to house feed and medically care of millions of illegal immigrants Do you honestly think the government is literally simply "housing" all the authorized immigrants? As in, literally writing checks to their landlords? And literally paying their grocery bills, each and every week? Do you actually think that's what's happening? Remember, the rant wasn't referring simply to new arrivals, but literally to all the "millions" who have been here for decades. With the tacit approval of US society at large, for the simple reason that (authorized or not) the vast majority form an indispensible part of its workforce, doing the hard work that most Americans refuse to do. I'm not saying the migrant crisis isn't a huge, costly mess. But for whatever is happening, I just don't get these weird, distorted and emotionally manipulative narratives.
    - stogot 2y ago
      It depends on the country. I know that in the UK this actually tends to be the case last I checked. I was reading this from a UK perspective (western) not a US . I don’t know how much housing the US provides
      - aguaviva 2y ago
        Ok, let's try the UK then. Actual estimates for the total number if illegal migrants (including children) in the UK top out at around 800,000. Yet the commenter above said that your government was paying to house and feed "millions" of them. Last we checked, "milions" means >= 2,000,000. Do you still think that what the commenter is saying "actually tends to be the case" in the UK?
        stogot 2y ago
        Previously you said authorized (legal). Now you’re changing your argument to illegal. How about you look up how many refugees European nations are paying to house vs getting emotional and changing the goalposts. I suspect the number is not millions, but this does not include medical care or other humanitarian care. The GBP/EURO/USD spent is in the billions and the cost was the premise, not necessarily the number of people. If OP exaggerated, correct it and move on to the substance of the argument. It doesn’t make their entire post insipid (your words)
        aguaviva 2y ago
        Previously you said authorized (legal). Now you’re changing your argument to illegal. I meant "unauthorized". It was just a typo, honest. How about you look up how many refugees European nations are paying to house It was the conflation of "refugees" with "illegal immigrants" in the commenter's post that I took issue with. The two categories might sound the same but are entirely different. In particular the latter category definitely do not receive subsidized subsidized housing or benefits the way actual legally recognized asylum seekers, aka "refugees" do.
    - Cumpiler69 2y ago
      >No, it's just an inspid rant. This exact attitude is what gets the right wing growing. > As in, literally writing checks to their landlords? In some EU countries (where I'm from), yes. A student friend of mine was even rejected by landlord who wanted Syrians because the government would pay their rent. But thank you for your valuable contribution to this conversation.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - aguaviva 2y ago
        A student friend of mine was even rejected by landlord who wanted Syrians because the government would pay their rent. And are they there ... illegally? Or legally? Are there, in fact, per what you said, "millions" of illegal immigrants being housed and fed in the EU on public subsidy? I know you said "illegal immigrants and refugees", so I misquoted you slghtly. But the bigger point is -- why conflate the two, when the numbers and overall situations are obviously entirely different? (In particular - while legally recognized asylum seekers might be eligible to obtain housing subsidies, illegal migrants quite definitely cannot). To be charitable, one can assume there was no manipulative intent, and you were just being careless. But if so, then you'll have to acknowledge that that's why your missive appeared, at first glance, to be well, a rant. The solution is to listen to their worries and take action to fix them instead of ignoring them and calling them stupid It isn't the concerns of the voters, but the relentless cognitive distortions we keep hearing about push-button topics such as this one (generally promoted by ideologues and pundits, rather than the voters themselves) that are, for want of a better term, stupid. (And on the subject of stupid, my initial response contained a horrible typo -- should have said "unauthorized", rather than "authorized").
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > And are they there ... illegally? Or legally? Not relevant to the political question. The point is there is anger at the number of migrants European politicians let in.
    - slowmovintarget 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - aguaviva 2y ago
        Yes, you are. I'm not, and it's difficult to see what you think you might gain from this conversation style.
        slowmovintarget 2y ago
        [flagged]
        aguaviva 2y ago
        The "but" is a denial of what preceded it. I think you misread me there. It wasn't a denial at all. It was simply saying: whatever the state of the mess -- weird, distorted narratives about the mess don't help us out of the mess. And in fact are a huge part of the mess. Exactly as you put it.
      - rootusrootus 2y ago
        > In my neighborhood This is one of those moments I wish people had a way (I guess you could just add it in the notes) to mark their HN account with a region. Are you in the UK, maybe? The immigration issue sounds very different in the EU vs US, even if many of the sound bites rhyme.
    - munksbeer 2y ago
      You're commenting from a US perspective but the person you're responding to was commenting from a European perspective. In Europe (including the UK), we have seen an enormous surge in asylum seekers and they're housed, fed, etc, with tax money. I believe the latest annual figure is around £5bn, which is not insignificant. I don't know what the solution is, as an immigrant to the UK myself I find it difficult to judge or comment, but you need to keep in mind that Europe has a welfare model quite different from your US. We typically pay more taxes and have a higher expectation of public services. When those services are deteriorating, people look for someone to blame. Immigrants are an easy target. In reality, it is much more to do with the aging population and fewer in the workforce, but that doesn't mean that we're also not paying a lot of money for asylum seekers.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - youngtaff 2y ago
        The UK costs are due to the previous government not processing asylum seekers and other irregular immigrants in a timely manner and also the fact all the processing, care etc is outsourced to profit making private companies We’re generally only talking about 50,000 people a year coming in via these routes Of course Brexit didn’t help with the policing of it all either
      - com2kid 2y ago
        > In Europe (including the UK), we have seen an enormous surge in asylum seekers and they're housed, fed, etc, with tax money. I believe the latest annual figure is around £5bn, which is not insignificant. That number sounds big, but for some perspective my city (Seattle) is spending more than that to build light rail tracks to one particular (not that very dense!) neighborhood. 0.42% of the UK budget is spent on helping people who have had everything in their lives ripped away. People who have watched family members get shot, had their houses destroyed by bombs, and for some, their entire homeland turned into rubble. The UK populace spent decades electing corrupt leaders who purposefully destroyed civic institutions. Of course things are falling apart. Immigrants don't have much to do with that...
    - aguaviva 2y ago
      all the authorized immigrants That should have read "unauthorized", and without the negating particle the rest makes very little sense.
ConspiracyFact 2y ago
Why the scare quotes?
- mPReDiToR 2y ago
  'Scare quotes' is not the only use of the double quote. In this case it seems that the author is pointing out that the incumbents do not in fact have any inferred or conferred ownership of these public spaces.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    I think that is the most likely interpretation, but it doesn't seem like a reasonable interpretation of what was said literally in context. From a local v. foreigner perspective the roads are literally their roads. Locals do have an inferred and conferred ownership of public spaces in their capacity as the public. The foreigners don't own the streets, the streets are commons property to the locals. I decided to treat it as a minor typo and read it as 'people would be able to ignore and excuse the increased prevalence of "foreigners" on their streets' instead. Ie, the foreigners aren't really foreigners, just citizens of non-aboriginal ethnicity.
  - ConspiracyFact 2y ago
    The public spaces of a state belong collectively to the citizens of that state. The state government only administers them. That's essentially what statehood means. By putting the word their in quotes the poster is implying the unstated assumption that states aren't legitimate.
mytailorisrich 2y ago
The actual "far right" is much smaller than they'd have you believe. It is very small. It's just that the term is abused to create fear. I don't think that the economy in general is key, though high immigration does dampen wages and that is mostly felt at the lower end of incomes. I think what we're seeing are the social and cultural consequences of very high immigration from countries of completely alien cultures and whose people do not assimilate in Europe. This has been going on for decades now but completely ignored by successive governments and that only hardens people's reaction against it. This is compounded by the apparent powerlessness to act "because whatever treaty/law" that we seem to have shackled ourselves with...
mcphage 2y ago
> I do think that, were we living in an economic golden age, people would be able to ignore and excuse the increased prevalence of foreigners on "their" streets. I don't fully know what's going on in Europe, but in the US we have several TV news networks dedicated to making you upset about the increased prevalence of foreigners. And they've been doing it for 30+ years, so it's working, no matter how good the age is or isn't.
- Jensson 2y ago
  In Europe the terrorist attacks and crime is real though, that doesn't happen much in the US but in Europe it happens quite a lot since the immigrants are different. So there is no need for any propaganda to get people to turn against unlimited immigration, what they see on every news station paints the same picture.
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    The news in western EU never cover the bad parts of illegal immigration, only the rosy part, so the people turning against immigration aren't doing it due to what they see on the news but mostly due to what they, rightfully or wrongly, perceive themselves .
    - ta1243 2y ago
      Not sure about the EU, but in the UK the support for the far-right is highest in areas with the fewest numbers of immigrants. It's not about peoples personal perceptions, as the areas with relatively high numbers of immigrants are invariably also the areas where there's low support for the far right.
      - Cumpiler69 2y ago
        We need to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants. Plenty of legal immigrants also vote right wing because they hate illegal immigrants which is the core issues.
sebazzz 2y ago
That is just because of inequality those populists feed on, while at the same time being rich. However, being unconvential, having a sound media strategy, and no doubt being helped by (foreign?) disinformation - they quickly gain a foothold in an era of unlimited social media. However, I often think about that drawing where three people are at a table. A blue-collar worker (mine worker or construction worker), a black sad looking black person (immigrant), and a rich guy in suit. The blue collar worker has a single cookie on his plate, the immigrant no cookies at all, and the rich guy a plate full of cookies. The rich guy with his plate full of cookies, looking at the worker, points to the immigrant. “He wants your cookie”.
- wahern 2y ago
  People prefer jobs, not handouts, but handouts is what your scenario implies--wealth distribution from the rich to the workers. This is where the academy has led liberal/left parties astray. Yes, inequality is at the root of discontent, but the academy over stresses inequality of outcomes rather than of opportunity; and while inequality of outcomes matters, people gauge their success by looking to their neighbors and social circles, not to groups far removed from their physical and social geography. Likewise, modern economic theory says that tax + redistribute is the most economically efficient solution to addressing inequality, but it falls short for the same reasons. It's a very difficult sociopolitical problem, and it has as much to do with psychology as it does headline statistics. Contemporary media dynamics has much to do with the psychological aspect, but it's also corrupting the way people think about these issues across the ideological spectrum.
  - andrepd 2y ago
    > People prefer jobs, not handouts, but handouts is what your scenario implies--wealth distribution from the rich to the workers Labour's share of wealth produced (vs capital's share) has been declining in the developed world since the 1970s, and is now well past Gilded Age levels and still getting worse. So yes, it's both about better jobs and about distributing away from the rich and towards the working class: these are the same thing.
DragonStrength 2y ago
If their kids could afford to buy houses nearby, they'd probably be a bit more OK with it. But when their own kids are priced out and told they don't have the relevant skills (thanks to education provided by the government unequally) for the new jobs, it's easy to point fingers at the new people in town. And those people don't have to be foreign or a different race: just see the anti-tech waves that have rolled through the Bay Area in the past, directed more based on attire and mode of transport than race. And a lot of people here would agree those new workers are to blame for a lot of Bay Area problems, but it's easier to dismiss others as bigoted than wrestle with the reality of winners and losers behind each statistic.

decremental 2y ago

[dead]

Cumpiler69 2y ago

[flagged]

stogot 2y ago
Well said. Better than I could put into words
- aguaviva 2y ago
  No, it's just an inspid rant. Let's pick a spot at random: But at the same time the state somehow has money to house feed and medically care of millions of illegal immigrants Do you honestly think the government is literally simply "housing" all the authorized immigrants? As in, literally writing checks to their landlords? And literally paying their grocery bills, each and every week? Do you actually think that's what's happening? Remember, the rant wasn't referring simply to new arrivals, but literally to all the "millions" who have been here for decades. With the tacit approval of US society at large, for the simple reason that (authorized or not) the vast majority form an indispensible part of its workforce, doing the hard work that most Americans refuse to do. I'm not saying the migrant crisis isn't a huge, costly mess. But for whatever is happening, I just don't get these weird, distorted and emotionally manipulative narratives.
  - stogot 2y ago
    It depends on the country. I know that in the UK this actually tends to be the case last I checked. I was reading this from a UK perspective (western) not a US . I don’t know how much housing the US provides
    - aguaviva 2y ago
      Ok, let's try the UK then. Actual estimates for the total number if illegal migrants (including children) in the UK top out at around 800,000. Yet the commenter above said that your government was paying to house and feed "millions" of them. Last we checked, "milions" means >= 2,000,000. Do you still think that what the commenter is saying "actually tends to be the case" in the UK?
      - stogot 2y ago
        Previously you said authorized (legal). Now you’re changing your argument to illegal. How about you look up how many refugees European nations are paying to house vs getting emotional and changing the goalposts. I suspect the number is not millions, but this does not include medical care or other humanitarian care. The GBP/EURO/USD spent is in the billions and the cost was the premise, not necessarily the number of people. If OP exaggerated, correct it and move on to the substance of the argument. It doesn’t make their entire post insipid (your words)
        aguaviva 2y ago
        Previously you said authorized (legal). Now you’re changing your argument to illegal. I meant "unauthorized". It was just a typo, honest. How about you look up how many refugees European nations are paying to house It was the conflation of "refugees" with "illegal immigrants" in the commenter's post that I took issue with. The two categories might sound the same but are entirely different. In particular the latter category definitely do not receive subsidized subsidized housing or benefits the way actual legally recognized asylum seekers, aka "refugees" do.
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    >No, it's just an inspid rant. This exact attitude is what gets the right wing growing. > As in, literally writing checks to their landlords? In some EU countries (where I'm from), yes. A student friend of mine was even rejected by landlord who wanted Syrians because the government would pay their rent. But thank you for your valuable contribution to this conversation.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - aguaviva 2y ago
      A student friend of mine was even rejected by landlord who wanted Syrians because the government would pay their rent. And are they there ... illegally? Or legally? Are there, in fact, per what you said, "millions" of illegal immigrants being housed and fed in the EU on public subsidy? I know you said "illegal immigrants and refugees", so I misquoted you slghtly. But the bigger point is -- why conflate the two, when the numbers and overall situations are obviously entirely different? (In particular - while legally recognized asylum seekers might be eligible to obtain housing subsidies, illegal migrants quite definitely cannot). To be charitable, one can assume there was no manipulative intent, and you were just being careless. But if so, then you'll have to acknowledge that that's why your missive appeared, at first glance, to be well, a rant. The solution is to listen to their worries and take action to fix them instead of ignoring them and calling them stupid It isn't the concerns of the voters, but the relentless cognitive distortions we keep hearing about push-button topics such as this one (generally promoted by ideologues and pundits, rather than the voters themselves) that are, for want of a better term, stupid. (And on the subject of stupid, my initial response contained a horrible typo -- should have said "unauthorized", rather than "authorized").
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > And are they there ... illegally? Or legally? Not relevant to the political question. The point is there is anger at the number of migrants European politicians let in.
  - slowmovintarget 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - aguaviva 2y ago
      Yes, you are. I'm not, and it's difficult to see what you think you might gain from this conversation style.
      - slowmovintarget 2y ago
        [flagged]
        aguaviva 2y ago
        The "but" is a denial of what preceded it. I think you misread me there. It wasn't a denial at all. It was simply saying: whatever the state of the mess -- weird, distorted narratives about the mess don't help us out of the mess. And in fact are a huge part of the mess. Exactly as you put it.
    - rootusrootus 2y ago
      > In my neighborhood This is one of those moments I wish people had a way (I guess you could just add it in the notes) to mark their HN account with a region. Are you in the UK, maybe? The immigration issue sounds very different in the EU vs US, even if many of the sound bites rhyme.
  - munksbeer 2y ago
    You're commenting from a US perspective but the person you're responding to was commenting from a European perspective. In Europe (including the UK), we have seen an enormous surge in asylum seekers and they're housed, fed, etc, with tax money. I believe the latest annual figure is around £5bn, which is not insignificant. I don't know what the solution is, as an immigrant to the UK myself I find it difficult to judge or comment, but you need to keep in mind that Europe has a welfare model quite different from your US. We typically pay more taxes and have a higher expectation of public services. When those services are deteriorating, people look for someone to blame. Immigrants are an easy target. In reality, it is much more to do with the aging population and fewer in the workforce, but that doesn't mean that we're also not paying a lot of money for asylum seekers.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - youngtaff 2y ago
      The UK costs are due to the previous government not processing asylum seekers and other irregular immigrants in a timely manner and also the fact all the processing, care etc is outsourced to profit making private companies We’re generally only talking about 50,000 people a year coming in via these routes Of course Brexit didn’t help with the policing of it all either
    - com2kid 2y ago
      > In Europe (including the UK), we have seen an enormous surge in asylum seekers and they're housed, fed, etc, with tax money. I believe the latest annual figure is around £5bn, which is not insignificant. That number sounds big, but for some perspective my city (Seattle) is spending more than that to build light rail tracks to one particular (not that very dense!) neighborhood. 0.42% of the UK budget is spent on helping people who have had everything in their lives ripped away. People who have watched family members get shot, had their houses destroyed by bombs, and for some, their entire homeland turned into rubble. The UK populace spent decades electing corrupt leaders who purposefully destroyed civic institutions. Of course things are falling apart. Immigrants don't have much to do with that...
  - aguaviva 2y ago
    all the authorized immigrants That should have read "unauthorized", and without the negating particle the rest makes very little sense.

ConspiracyFact 2y ago

Why the scare quotes?

mPReDiToR 2y ago
'Scare quotes' is not the only use of the double quote. In this case it seems that the author is pointing out that the incumbents do not in fact have any inferred or conferred ownership of these public spaces.
- roenxi 2y ago
  I think that is the most likely interpretation, but it doesn't seem like a reasonable interpretation of what was said literally in context. From a local v. foreigner perspective the roads are literally their roads. Locals do have an inferred and conferred ownership of public spaces in their capacity as the public. The foreigners don't own the streets, the streets are commons property to the locals. I decided to treat it as a minor typo and read it as 'people would be able to ignore and excuse the increased prevalence of "foreigners" on their streets' instead. Ie, the foreigners aren't really foreigners, just citizens of non-aboriginal ethnicity.
- ConspiracyFact 2y ago
  The public spaces of a state belong collectively to the citizens of that state. The state government only administers them. That's essentially what statehood means. By putting the word their in quotes the poster is implying the unstated assumption that states aren't legitimate.

mytailorisrich 2y ago

The actual "far right" is much smaller than they'd have you believe. It is very small. It's just that the term is abused to create fear. I don't think that the economy in general is key, though high immigration does dampen wages and that is mostly felt at the lower end of incomes. I think what we're seeing are the social and cultural consequences of very high immigration from countries of completely alien cultures and whose people do not assimilate in Europe. This has been going on for decades now but completely ignored by successive governments and that only hardens people's reaction against it. This is compounded by the apparent powerlessness to act "because whatever treaty/law" that we seem to have shackled ourselves with...

mcphage 2y ago

> I do think that, were we living in an economic golden age, people would be able to ignore and excuse the increased prevalence of foreigners on "their" streets. I don't fully know what's going on in Europe, but in the US we have several TV news networks dedicated to making you upset about the increased prevalence of foreigners. And they've been doing it for 30+ years, so it's working, no matter how good the age is or isn't.

Jensson 2y ago
In Europe the terrorist attacks and crime is real though, that doesn't happen much in the US but in Europe it happens quite a lot since the immigrants are different. So there is no need for any propaganda to get people to turn against unlimited immigration, what they see on every news station paints the same picture.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  The news in western EU never cover the bad parts of illegal immigration, only the rosy part, so the people turning against immigration aren't doing it due to what they see on the news but mostly due to what they, rightfully or wrongly, perceive themselves .
  - ta1243 2y ago
    Not sure about the EU, but in the UK the support for the far-right is highest in areas with the fewest numbers of immigrants. It's not about peoples personal perceptions, as the areas with relatively high numbers of immigrants are invariably also the areas where there's low support for the far right.
    - Cumpiler69 2y ago
      We need to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants. Plenty of legal immigrants also vote right wing because they hate illegal immigrants which is the core issues.

sebazzz 2y ago

That is just because of inequality those populists feed on, while at the same time being rich. However, being unconvential, having a sound media strategy, and no doubt being helped by (foreign?) disinformation - they quickly gain a foothold in an era of unlimited social media. However, I often think about that drawing where three people are at a table. A blue-collar worker (mine worker or construction worker), a black sad looking black person (immigrant), and a rich guy in suit. The blue collar worker has a single cookie on his plate, the immigrant no cookies at all, and the rich guy a plate full of cookies. The rich guy with his plate full of cookies, looking at the worker, points to the immigrant. “He wants your cookie”.

wahern 2y ago
People prefer jobs, not handouts, but handouts is what your scenario implies--wealth distribution from the rich to the workers. This is where the academy has led liberal/left parties astray. Yes, inequality is at the root of discontent, but the academy over stresses inequality of outcomes rather than of opportunity; and while inequality of outcomes matters, people gauge their success by looking to their neighbors and social circles, not to groups far removed from their physical and social geography. Likewise, modern economic theory says that tax + redistribute is the most economically efficient solution to addressing inequality, but it falls short for the same reasons. It's a very difficult sociopolitical problem, and it has as much to do with psychology as it does headline statistics. Contemporary media dynamics has much to do with the psychological aspect, but it's also corrupting the way people think about these issues across the ideological spectrum.
- andrepd 2y ago
  > People prefer jobs, not handouts, but handouts is what your scenario implies--wealth distribution from the rich to the workers Labour's share of wealth produced (vs capital's share) has been declining in the developed world since the 1970s, and is now well past Gilded Age levels and still getting worse. So yes, it's both about better jobs and about distributing away from the rich and towards the working class: these are the same thing.

DragonStrength 2y ago

If their kids could afford to buy houses nearby, they'd probably be a bit more OK with it. But when their own kids are priced out and told they don't have the relevant skills (thanks to education provided by the government unequally) for the new jobs, it's easy to point fingers at the new people in town. And those people don't have to be foreign or a different race: just see the anti-tech waves that have rolled through the Bay Area in the past, directed more based on attire and mode of transport than race. And a lot of people here would agree those new workers are to blame for a lot of Bay Area problems, but it's easier to dismiss others as bigoted than wrestle with the reality of winners and losers behind each statistic.