6 ms·
None of this should be surprising unless you've been just gobbling up whatever you heard through mainstream media. Britain is at a breaking point. There are ex
by zuzululu 5mo ago
None of this should be surprising unless you've been just gobbling up whatever you heard through mainstream media.
Britain is at a breaking point. There are existential questions to be asked:
Is Britain British without British Bourgeoisie that have lived there for thousands of years with new arrivals that have no commmon culture or connection to the land?
Can Japan be called Japan without Japanese that have lived there for thousands of years and their homogeneous identity?
Why is it okay for one but not the other? Where does this double standard come from ?
The fact is the loudest voice in the room so far has never been representative of the answer to the above questions.
- miltonlost 5mo ago[flagged]
- wetpaws 5mo ago[dead]
- slashdev 5mo agoThat’s a very simplistic take on a complex problem. Unrestricted immigration destroys democratic high trust societies. There is a balance to be found, as in all things. It isn’t simply diversity always good or always bad.
- orwin 5mo agoInequality destroy high trust societies, and low trust cultures implement a surveillance state to replace trust.
- BobaFloutist 5mo ago> Unrestricted immigration destroys democratic high trust societies. In the United States it's pretty clearly the nativists destroying the society, the immigrants are largely baffled about what the hell we're doing to ourselves and why.
- mcphage 5mo ago> Unrestricted immigration destroys democratic high trust societies. I’m currently living through a democratic high trust society that’s destroying itself with immigrants being 0% to blame. I’d swap the Christian nationalists for immigrants in a heartbeat, no matter where they’re from.
- moomin 5mo agoObjectively, Japan needs to do something about its culture. It’s literally killing the country. Pretty sure a Japanese person could say the same thing about the U.K.
- nephihaha 5mo agoJapan is doing something. It is decades behind Europe but going down a similar path.
- HoldOnAMinute 5mo ago[flagged]
- HoldOnAMinute 5mo agoThere would need to be a mental and cultural framework where the old ways are loved, respected and allowed to be mourned.
- moomin 5mo agoI don’t really know what it would look like, it would have to be up to the Japanese, but I think you’re correct that this would be essential.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- henearkr 5mo agoIt's not ok in Japan either. And its "homogeneous identity" is mostly a construction, dating back from the Meiji era. And Heian period Japan had a completely different set of values, not less nor more valid than Meiji era Japan, just different. So the identity of a nation is not something eternal nor absolute. Heck, there is even proof Japan has been a mosaic of at least three sets of human populations in prehistoric times, arrived at different times on the land. So here you are: yes Japan was, long time ago, a land of immigration.
- nephihaha 5mo agoJapan is fairly homogenous with the obvious exception of the Ainu and certain castes. Much more so than Persia/Iran, Russia, Mexico or India. When Japan had a large empire, that was not so much the case, because they ruled over very different peoples.
- henearkr 5mo agoThat's not what most recent archaeological discoveries tell. Quite distinct groups of humans mixed in ancient Japan, as different and distant at that time as the groups that are mixed in modern times in Peru or India. Some groups were related to Autronesians, others to Yakuts, yet other groups to Hans, etc. If I remember correctly, at least three distinct groups are proven to have cohabited and arrived at different times.
- zuzululu 5mo agoand your point ?
- nephihaha 5mo agoI am not talking about prehistory here. The culture of the Japanese "Home Islands" in the Middle Ages consisted of two main groups: Ainu/Edo and the Japonic peoples who spoke related dialects. The first group was treated abysmally and dwindled. There were differences based on environment, e.g. the people in Tohuku had to deal with the cold and those in the south had subtropical climates and more outside interaction. The first major cultural difference (other than Ainu) came in with Christianity in the south and caused a civil war. Japan is a heck of a lot more homogenous than Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and most of continental south east Asia. In fact, for that matter, Japan was more homogenous in 1707 than the British Isles, Spain, France, Italy or Germany.
- hiddencost 5mo agoEasy question with an easy answer that threatens a lot of bad people: immigrants are good.
- nephihaha 5mo agoImmigrants are people. People are not automatically good. Or bad. Migration is not just a choice between an open door and a closed door, but a spectrum. There are a variety of levels between those two extremes.
- slashdev 5mo agoThat’s way too simplistic. Not all immigrants are good. Many cost society more than they contribute. The right kind of immigrants are good.
- mrguyorama 5mo agoPaint me this picture of an immigrant who costs more than they contribute.
- ceejayoz 5mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_Trump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_Trump
- gambiting 5mo agoI mean, it's not particularly difficult to imagine(and I'm an immigrant to the UK). You move here, then after a while you bring over your retired parents to care for them in their old age. They are not contributing financially to the system but they are costing British taxpayers a lot of money. The point though - it's irrelevant. Even those cases, and even straight up cases where people come here and just go on the dole, don't change the fact that as a whole immigrants are a net positive to the country(financially), and that's based on the OFR findings not my imagination.
- 5mo ago
- rubyn00bie 5mo agoHaving a storied history, culture, and customs go beyond simple birthright citizenship and xenophobic behavior to enforce said culture and sense of identity. The US, for all its faults, exemplifies how unnecessary it is to rely solely on where you were born— anyone can move to the US, get citizenship, and call themselves “American.” I honestly cannot understand what “connection with the land” even means in reality. Most people aren’t farmers, and land has no inherent culture. People do, and culture is acquired by living in it and participating in it. Culture also changes overtime and is, like the earth itself, for the living. This idea that for some reason other human beings cannot embrace, be a part of, and contribute to existing culture simply because they were born in a different country is flagrantly absurd. It’s also how people who are born somewhere, but don’t “look the part” have to fight an uphill battle to prove they are. So yeah, Japan could be called Japan if people who live there are culturally Japanese, participate in shared culture, and contribute to it. I am also absolutely aware that isn’t possible by any reasonable means currently, but it doesn’t change the fact it should be.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- zuzululu 5mo ago[flagged]
- BobaFloutist 5mo ago> The question was do you believe that without ethnic Japanese people you can call it Japan? Yes, of course, ethnicity is a collection of observed physical traits. What makes Japan Japan is the way people behave, not the way they look, and behavior is not an ethnic trait, it's a cultural trait. What the fuck are you even talking about?
- zuzululu 5mo ago
- newaccountman2 5mo agoThe result of the poll in the article seems to be a soft rebuke of the kind of viewpoint you espouse. > Can Japan be called Japan without Japanese that have lived there for thousands of years and their homogeneous identity? > Why is it okay for one but not the other? Where does this double standard come from ? Disingenuous question; even people who like Japan and Japanese culture tend to dislike how xenophobic and racist it is.
- zuzululu 5mo agowhich is why Sane Takaichi became PM ? I do think there is a clear distance from all the Japan experts on HN and reality
- newaccountman2 5mo ago> which is why Sane Takaichi became PM ? ?? 1. You claim (without basis or evidence) that people in the West have a double-standard about xenophobia and cultural chauvinism as between Japan and Western countries. 2. I say people in the West also dislike it in Japan and Japanese culture (more precisely, the same people who dislike racism and bigotry in the West dislike that it exists in Japan too) 3. You say "but Japan elected a right-wing bigot" like...ok? We don't like her and we don't like you :shrug:
- add-sub-mul-div 5mo agoI don't understand Japanese culture well enough to comment on it, but if it contained the ugliness of xenophobia and white supremacy as they exist in America I'd surely oppose it.
- iamflimflam1 5mo agoAre you British or do you live in Britain?
- sph 5mo agoWhy? One can parrot Reform talking points from anywhere.
- zuzululu 5mo agoI don't consider my self British even though my Croatian roots can easily pass as one and I lived there during my early adulthood but one need not live in Britain to know its issues and see past the filter of MSM we have X now so we can get a more raw look at what's actually happening and what we are not being fully shown.
- Arodex 5mo ago[flagged]
- socalgal2 5mo agoGreat Radiolab on this topic https://radiolab.org/podcast/americanish-2306 https://radiolab.org/podcast/americanish-2306 It's also fun to watch people's heads explode over the hypocracy pointed out by this episode. Short version: If Samoa has to follow non-racial discrimination rules than Samoa as a place of Samoans will cease to exist. Without taking a side, the same is true of Israel.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- 10xDev 5mo agoJapan never colonised India, Japan never colonised an African nation, Japan never colonised a Caribbean nation. Britain overnight cannot have a fresh start from its past, even the royals have ties to other nations. The England that was always English never existed and its history will always be rooted in the British empire (where the sun never set).
- po1nt 5mo agoWell Britain didn't genocide the Chinese. And all the countries colonized by Britain are now better of then those that weren't. Look at ex-Rhodesia.
- anigbrowl 5mo agoI'm not sure that creating mass addiction and collapsing the Chinese economy by forcibly industrializing and scaling up the opium trade was so much better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
- gadders 5mo ago[flagged]
- 10xDev 5mo agoI obviously hurt your feelings but thank you for the facts that clearly changes everything.
- gadders 5mo agoYou didn't hurt my feelings. You came on here and boasted about how weak your country was.
- 10xDev 5mo ago>You didn't hurt my feelings. You came on here and boasted about how weak your country was. This is a very bizarre response. Don't mind if I screenshot this and write an email. Very strange behaviour.
- hinata08 5mo ago>with new arrivals that have no commmon culture or connection to the land actually Britain still see these arrivals. Brexit restored immigration from people with more walks of life and with a more worldwide origins. There is no fast track for any nationality, like when EU citizens didn't need a visa, so companies are blind to origin. You only got rid of the maudzits français / stronzo francese who liked the queen way too much and feel at home everywhere. The Québécois, the Swiss, the Dutch and a part of Europe look at Britain as an example for that : it's so funny to see them struggle with the UK ETA app while they no longer have Tyrrells crisps, as they keep complaining about british food and were mean about the tapestry anyway. But was this show worth the losses that Britain had ? It's never too late to apply again, Britain hasn't deviated from its course of rule of law and democracy
- gadders 5mo ago[flagged]
- anigbrowl 5mo agoThese questions aren't comparable. Japan had a crash modernization followed by a brief outburst of violent colonialism, which they thought was the style at the time but was actually in decline almost everywhere else. Britain had an empire that lasted hundreds of years, and whose greatest legacy is linguistic and temporal system dominance. Having spent centuries proclaiming itself to be the literal center of civilization to most of the world, is it really surprising that ambitious individuals gravitate toward it? This is the common culture that Britain set out to impose on its possessions. It's especially ironic (though not especially surprising) that immigration from former territories went way up after Britain forcibly detached itself from the EU. Perhaps the Brexiteers wil offer to secede from the world next - build a national space program and launch Britain into orbit as a second satellite that can service its markets while orbiting the planet from a distance.
- rayiner 5mo ago[flagged]
- gadders 5mo ago[flagged]
- anigbrowl 5mo agoIt's not a matter of ideology, or of punishment. It's simply the dynamics of the system playing out. It's alienating for people inside of it because they're experiencing the effects of historical forces which operate on a scale longer than human life. OF course people would rather live in a period when things were simpler and easier, who wouldn't? The lie sold by the self-styled reformists (and doubled down upon by the emerging Restore Britain) is that all these unwanted outcomes were done to Britain by Other People instead of being the product of repeated bad decisions - Brexit being the most recent one. Someone else in the thread observed that about 27 immigrants are offered jobs for every native Briton entering the workforce. But this notion of prioritizing market forces at the expense of all other considerations is exactly the legacy of Thatcherite conservatism that has dominated Britain for nearly a half-century and of which the Brexit/Reform/Restor movements are the ost recent iterations. As John Bagot Glubb pointed out ~50 years ago (and many others have pointed out before him), the root causes of decline are complacency, greed, and individualism (vs the notion of social duty). I put it to you that modern finance capitalism selects for these negative traits because they maximize short-term gain and because the accumulation of money allows the holders of it to be indifferent to the long-term structural problems. The primary reason I do not identify as a political conservative is that they sell tradition to the electorate but conserve wealth and power for themselves. https://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf https://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- surgical_fire 5mo ago> Is Britain British without British Bourgeoisie that have lived there for thousands of years with new arrivals that have no commmon culture or connection to the land? Thousands of years? Are you talking about celts? Because Romans later arrived in Britannia and founded Londinium. Is it British when it was founded by those pesky Romans? Or are you complaining about later populations, such as Vikings or Normans? I mean, they haven't been to the British isles for thousands of years. How can Britain be British with those smelly frenchmen? Unless what you really are trying to do is complain that Britain now has too many brown people.
- gib444 5mo ago> Why is it okay for one but not the other? Where does this double standard come from ? Because in Japan AIUI they haven't been infiltrated by people pushing narratives that being eg White British is inherently racist, that to not open your borders to one and all is racism and xenophobia (you can see lots of examples of such people in the post about the Swiss referendum on the 10M population limit), which they do in order to gain for them and their communities. The existing minority populations know they can abuse our good nature, our placidity, our leftist politicians, and even the English language in order to gain, and to position themselves as continuous victims. Some feminists do the same. The idea that the whole of the UK is full of angry white supremacist racists is the kind of propaganda I allude to (it's funny how many US folk here fall for it). (I am British, lived here all my life, live in a county with many areas of significant minority populations, and just old enough to have observed plenty of change in England)
- asveikau 5mo agoExcuse me, are you holding up the British as some kind of pure, undisturbed ethnicity? You mean the celts who were conquered by Romans who were conquered be Angles who were conquered by Normans? Who speak this bastard language we're using now, where most vocabulary is Latinate upon bones of Germanic?