Comment by mooxie
9 days ago
This is a far-right talking point that ignores the other concerns of progressives that are bundled up in the argument.
Progressives (in the US at least) generally support immigration with protections and fair wages. They also recognize, rightfully, that systems built for decades upon exploitative practices (low wages, no protections) if removed overnight will cause mass disruption of those systems.
Neither of these is in any way supportive of slavery, modern or otherwise. The first - suggesting that immigrants be treated civilly and paid a living wage - has been fought tooth and nail by 'free market' literalists. The second - that there will be disruptions in social and economic systems when an entire workforce is suddenly removed from the systems that it has propped up for decades - is common sense and historically founded.
You're conflating these things to try to justify a talking point that was just created three months ago.
The fact remains that UK (or US) is well below the replacement rate. If your progressive society can continue to exist only because oppressed women elsewhere keep supplying the human material, then it's not that progressive after all.
Nothing in this talking point is remotely „far right“. Words have lost all meaning. You also haven‘t answered his argument one bit. In the end, all you say with your smart words is that indeed, someone has to pick the cotton and it won‘t be you.
The "far-right" propaganda comes in when we try to argue that actually the right cares about immigrants, and they want to deport them because they just care so damn much.
Like, come on now. Give me a break. This type of reasoning is so caked with bullshit I don't think anyone on the right even buys it.
Sure, we can say maybe the left is arguing for exploitation, but certainly the right aren't champions of human rights. I mean, what's the big picture here? "Don't exploit the immigrants! Instead, violate their rights and force them into camps!"
We can solve the immigration problem overnight, if anyone cares. Just say that if you're found hiring undocumented people, you go to prison. I garauntee you, the problem will solve itself with such expedition it will leave you in awe.
But nobody on the right actually proposes this. Because they don't actually care about immigration. They care about populist messaging. They want you to believe there's an enemy within causing all your problems, and they they alone are the solution.
But no - they, too, directly rely on the exploitation. They won't ever patch it. It will always be lip-service, propaganda, and populist messaging.
The right doesn't give a shit about the livelihood of the immigrants, but they have accurately observed the line that goes from "heavily increase low skill immigration" to "emergence of a low trust society" to "implement authoritarian surveillance state to manage the low trust". The left has no answer for this, because it requires them to admit that high levels of immigration have negative qualitative impacts on society that don't show up in GDP figures. They can't do that, because immigration itself is part of the ideology.
6 replies →
Pointing out the hypocrisy of one side does not mean that the other is right. I still remember when the progressive pro-labour argument was against immigration to favour the increase of wages of the locals and I'm puzzled when they switched to "you know we need immigrants to work the shit jobs we don't want to do".