Comment by const_cast
8 days ago
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.
No, the right just loves surveillance and authoritarianism. That's just what they trend towards if you leave them unchecked over time.
Immigrants are the populist scapegoat needed to get the authoritarianism. They're an easy to blame demographic that are physically marginalized - you can literally see them with your eyes.
Without immigrants, this populist messaging problem isn't solved. In the US, we just used black people before. Chinese people for a while too. Japanese people. We increased surveillance, built camps, required registries, you name it.
That's just how the right operates and how their populist messaging works. You need to convince poor "incumbents" (usually white people) that there's some other demographic coming for their money and they're dangerous. Don't let them into your neighborhood!
But don't worry, we can clean it up! Just give us unilateral power and a surveillance state, and we promise these pesky brown folk will be gone. And then, somehow that will magically improve the quality of your life!
It's the same story again and again, over and over. If we haven't already done this a bunch, I might be inclined to believe you. But we have. So when I hear about some new dangerous, untrustworthy, mostly brown demographic taking over your country I just yawn.
Yeah yeah been there, done that. Just give the authoritarian's what they want at this point, they're not even being slick.
>Without immigrants, this populist messaging problem isn't solved.
This conflicts with basically everything else you wrote. Not sure if you meant to do that, or meant to say something else, but the immigration issue is definitely driving the messaging from Reform and, to a lesser extent, the Conservatives. If suddenly the boats stopped, the Afghans were beamed away back to Afghanistan, and ~30 years of mismanaged immigration policy was reversed overnight I don't see how a) reform exists, b) the election at the end of this 5 year term isn't just about funding NHS and Labour holds a majority with the rest split between the Tories and the Lib Dems.
>So when I hear about some new dangerous, untrustworthy, mostly brown demographic taking over your country I just yawn.
People say things like this as a cryptic way to imply the person they're talking to is just a racist bad person and therefore anything else that person said is wrong and "bad", and then they get to sidestep any meaningful discussion about policy.
Honestly that's pretty much how we got to the place where Reform is leading in the polls by 10 points, so bravo for a very meta comment.
3 replies →
> No, the right just loves surveillance and authoritarianism. That's just what they trend towards if you leave them unchecked over time.
The UK currently has a left leaning government. All governments love surveillance and authoritarianism.
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".