It's a longstanding cottage industry. Substack Guy and his ilk are "just asking questions" (often with misleading data), which is designed to be picked up by the darker corners of the web, like our racial-purity-Swede there. People make sure to remove the original source to make it a bit more difficult to scrutinize the data and thus assume it comes from somewhere official (as perhaps if they find the source they discover that it's misleading, or drawn from comically small samples). The algorithm then ensures that the ragebait gets widely shared, at which point Os has a deep concern about the rate at which Kuwaiti nationals commit crime in Denmark. This has been going on for decades; the ur-text of modern scientific racism, The Bell Curve, was just this but longer-winded and for people that had a subscription to The Atlantic. But let's be clear: they are not talking about integration at all. They are talking about exclusion. There's a reason one of that guy's primary targets is America's Black and Hispanic population, many of whom have roots two centuries deep in the country. They want to just ask questions about whether there should be a racially pure White homeland (or 30), not how to better bring immigrants into the fold. (Before someone disputes The Bell Curve: it drew much of its data, if you can call it that, from work funded by the Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund's Wiki is reeeeeeally fun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Fund)
https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/the-effects-of-immigration-in-denmark The full analysis and breakdown of the figures is here, and it’s absolutely damning. Schad is going to bury his head in the sand as usual because he only sees the world through his progressive propaganda filled lens. The figures become “misleading” when they don’t agree with his worldview. But anyone that isn’t completely brainwashed will understand - and also recognise anecdotally - that the wests current immigration policies are fundamentally failing them. To clarify, for me it has absolutely nothing to do with the race of people entering the country. It applies to the volume of people entering and the likelihood of those people to make the country worse. In a country where our justice system has gone completely soft and weak, we can’t then afford to let more dangerous people in. To me this is just common sense.
Would you agree that successive waves of immigration have in some significant ways, made the UK a better place to live? Indian food and West Indian music are two cultural contributions that spring to mind; and what British pubs be like without the Irish contribution? So why do we only ever hear about the negative impact of immigration?
How far back in history should we look for 'immigration' ? The Vikings? The Normans? The Anglo-Saxons? If immigration is 'bad', then these islands probably need to be re-populated with Celts, and the occasional woad-covered Pict
Indeed, if every UK citizen took an ancestry DNA test they would be surprised about the results of the origins of their ethnicity.
The Celts were all immigrants too. Maybe the Neolithic people who came over the land bridge before the end of the last Ice Age count as indigenous? I don’t know, or maybe we just accept that we are all essentially just inhabitants of the piece of Earth we happen to fetch up on. None of us own any of this planet, and those who claim to are the problem, not the poor ****ers fleeing tyranny or war or the results of climate change.
Yeah. In North America, you can find 19th century tracts about the uncouth, dangerous immigrants from Ireland, Germany and Bohemia, ruining the character of the nation. In the early 20th century, they shifted to the uncouth, dangerous immigrants from Italy and eastern Europe, ruining the character of the nation. In the mid 20th century, it shifted to the uncouth, dangerous immigrants from Central and South America and East Asia. It's all bullshit. It's always been bullshit. It's just a way of laundering racism. Always has been. Edit: Benjamin Franklin, talking about the Germans who will never integrate. It's comical how little has changed. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-0080 Those swarthy French and Swedes!
Also partially responsible for one the most confusing bits of cultural cross-pollination: when they conquered Sicily away from the North Africans who conquered Sicily away from the Greeks, producing the Norman-Arab-Byzantine culture of Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman-Arab-Byzantine_culture
Well, they're OK, but someone put roads right through them. How will we ever repel invaders, with those gaps every few yards? Having said that, they're probably the only walls that would have stopped a JWP free kick
I think the truth is somewhere between these two standpoints. Take the example of the Normans. There was not a mass migration of Norman conquerors - but mainly an elite who came to take over positions of power. In fact, within 80 years the "immigrant" Normans were almost entirely naturalised. That can't happen with mass immigration. In fact, rapid immigration is relatively rare in the UK's history. We are an island. And a cold one. Nobody really wanted to come here until we developed an Empire and started smashing other people's houses. Then people started to want to come here. Empire means we can't really complain about immigration - but it also explains why all these other examples are facetious. All the other great UK migrations happened slowly, over long periods of time. Modern migrations are happening much more quickly, and this impacts local communities much more strongly. I worry about the left's messaging: immigration is good; concern about your changing community is racist. That empowers the right and it is also such simplistic nonsense that I am surprised anyone would even think to spout it. Left leaning Brits are always critical of expats going off to live in other countries but positive about mass immigration to the UK - but the damage they see the Brits doing to places like Spain is matched by the damage of some immigrant groups to the UK. It has to be, unless you believe the Brit is uniquely awful? I, personally, believe immigration has a net positive impact. But uncontrolled immigration - and failure to recognise that we have built a society of a set of really important values that other societies do not have respect for - will only empower the right and is a genuine failing of left-leaning politics.
That's the point, though. Arguing about mass immigration into the UK is silly because it is not happening and there is zero indication of it happening in the future; immigration rates have been falling steadily for years now. The net migration rate is hovering around 2 people in 1000 per year, and the UK has a lower percentage of foreign-born residents than freaking Estonia or Iceland.
No, I think you missed this point. It isn't silly. If it worries people it is serious and real. And it isn't racist or knee-jerk. It is a concern that should be dealt with calmly and spoken about appropriately. Words like silly, racist, ignorant all serve to alienate those who feel genuinely impacted (and how you feel is not a question of what statistics say). To question someone for feeling impacted by immigration is no less hurtful than to question them for their feelings of gender identity. These are feelings. It just isn't true that things aren't changing relatively quickly: Changes in ethnic diversity in the UK - How the UK population is changing in the 21st century - OCR - GCSE Geography Revision - OCR - BBC Bitesize The absolutely critical thing is to listen to all voices and try to keep showing the positives of migration. But you cannot tell Dave from Rotherham that everyone looking different on his street is his problem and he is a racist for noticing. Because that is why Dave from Rotherham is joining the extremists.
Yes, I would say there have been huge positives to immigration. I am not one of these crazy right wing folks that thinks all immigrants are evil. What I am saying is that this is a nuanced situation and we our current policies are not fit for purpose, for various reasons. Otherwise we will eventually lose the reasons that people want to immigrate here in the first place.
Amazing and eloquent post. There are valid criticisms about the way the country is being run, and calling people stupid or racist for noticing will only embolden the far right
We are in year 200 or thereabouts of these freakouts, and at no point in there have the Daves been talked 'round thanks to some good charts and the right verbiage to embrace immigration. The sad reality is that those changes historically have not happened by persuading Dave that immigrants are beneficial, they have happened over Dave's objections, often over his violent objections. The groups targeted change, but the Daves remain the same.
"Freakouts" is still the same way of thinking. Every nation on Earth has Daves when it comes to immigration. The idea of "here is the thing I built and I will protect it from outsiders" is central to human thinking. It is a perfectly normal reaction to immigration, and you are quite wrong that the "Daves remain the same". The Daves get used to the change and accept it - but of course change never ends so there is always some new change to get upset about. But getting upset is natural too. It isn't weird or psychologically deviant. It is absolutely humanly normal. So, labelling Dave a racist for this is not going to help you get him onside. In fact, I feel like you don't want Dave onside. I grew up in a poor area with a lot of Daves - and I don't think we should just give up on them. The people coming here are as likely to be Daves as the ones here already, anyway!
I grew up in a poor area with a lot of Daves, too. When I was in my late teens, I worked at a corner shop that was frequented by a lot of the farmers in the area. Do you know what one of the favourite grumbles for many of the farmers was? That the Dutch had come in and taken all the best farmland. This was around 2001-2003...the Dutch have been here since the immediate aftermath of WWII. Much of the land the Dutch received had been fallow/hayfield for more than a century because none of the locals could get yields out of the dykeland soil, and consequently they sold it to the government for nothing. The grandchildren of the original Dutch refugees were adults and they still hadn't made peace with it. What drives change, ultimately, is not that the Daves change, it's that the children of the Daves don't give a damn about it. They'll be petrified about something (or someone) else, but they'll have grown up with the Indian or Polish or Jamaican family down the road and won't consider them interlopers. The only people who grumbled about the Dutch were the old guys whose fathers had been viscerally angry about the Dutch. And for anyone younger than 70, the Dutch were just as much a part of the place as anyone else. But the Daves never accepted that.
Not to marginalise your lived experience, but there is a distinct psychological difference between farmers - who tend to live more isolated lives - and your typical inner-city Dave. You can't judge them the same way at all as a city Dave has to live alongside the immigrant. All I am picking up from you is that you seem to think ordinary people who worry about immigration are never going to change and not worth talking to. I have seen Southampton change drastically during my lifetime - but if I had lived in a nice suburb I wouldn't have noticed. There is a real disconnect between all my leftie friends (who are all middle class) and myself in the way we think about the working classes. I seem to have a lot more understanding of their viewpoints, where they talk way too much about people "who don't know what is good for them". Ok, lords and masters, we better cede the vote to your fine selves so you can save us!
