Comment by drbscl

From a US perspective, just up until a decade ago, it was a sentiment that left-center perspective that people like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton had.

I was caught quite off-guard by this new "open borders" perspective. It doesn't seem sustainable at all.

I think, all pretty recently (atleast in the 'States), there's been much news and noise about the abuse and fraud of these systems designed to help the downtrodden.

Now whether that's all true, has always been true, is propaganda...whatever, but it's easy for me to understand why sentiment has been changing as the spotlight is focused more and more on the abuse of the systems as opposed to the benefits.

I also think there's some 'hierarchy of needs' going on here, where as the economy shifts and more and more Americans are struggling to afford housing, groceries, and other necessities, it's easy to feel like you should be putting yourself first over strangers. Combine that with the prior point, and you have a great recipe to build resentment. Selfish, maybe, but I can understand how you get there.

This is NOT to say 'There is no xenophobia' or anything...racism in general is alive and well in the USA... but I have pretty sound-minded people around me starting to echo this mindset, and this is my best understanding of what's been brewing.

Comparing the US and Sweden, it's also useful to know that the proportion of refugees accepted by these two countries is wildly different. Sweden has historically taken in many refugees (including draft dodgers from the US). In 2015 (an outlier) they accepted rouhgly 1 refugee (163k) for every 60 people (~9.4m) in the country. At its peak in 2024, the US admitted 100k refugees, significantly fewer than the Swedish peak. The impact of refugees is much more visible (also in budgetary allocations) in Sweden than the US because of this difference.

Migration in my part of Europe (Holland) has largely been workers for jobs the Dutch won't do. These people are abused as a sort of semi-serf labour mainly in the farming sector.

Some groups are a big net benefit to our (looking at the income the group benefits / social support costs) and others slight net negative. But once you take the economy into account it's positive.

Immigrants are a timeless scapegoat for the problems faced by the working class.

At least from a US perspective, the problem is that the downsides are the deliberate policy goals of the political class. Immigration was but one tool used to achieve them, and now the immigrants themselves serve as a convenient visceral scapegoat for releasing the grassroots political pressure. We finally built enough political capital to do something about the economic vise most Americans find themselves in, only for it to be squandered on performative vice signalling.

There’s expected to be 1 billion climate refugees by 2050. What will be this factions answer to that? Bullets?

How can you be sure the opinion moved to the center and not that the center moved to the right?

Migration is all a distraction anyway. Brown people existing doesn't hurt you. Whenever you think they drive up rents or whatever, that has nothing to do with the brown people, that has everything to do with the system that sets rents.

„Letting mass migration happen „ is such a fallacy in and if itself.

Sentiment hasn't moved from far-right to the center. If it feels like that to you, it sounds like your perspective changed because you moved from the center to the far-right.

I think it's phrasing and the phrase "damn parasites" that makes it far-right.

The idea of changing immigration policies is not unique to any political party. However the quote isn't that, it's trying to stir up an angry us/them reaction at a large group based on national/racial lines. Also "damn parasites" is somewhat dehumanizing (whether you apply it to billionaires or immigrants).

You mean the Overton window or whatever has drifted right.

Nationalism is a right wing concept.

We were sold one thing and got another.

No. That sentiment didn't "move toward the center".

What happened is that the far-right -- and, lets not use euphemisms like "the far right" here, we're talking about fascists and literal Nazis (ethno-fascism is Nazism) -- have successfully taken control of much of our mass media. They've also more or less captured the government of one of the world's super powers. Those two things put together have allowed them to make their views appear mainstream.

This is exactly what happened during the 1920s and 1930s prior to World War II. And similarly, you were finding Nazi views expressed openly and proudly and being given a veneer of respectability. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Squ...)

But they are no less extreme now than they were then. They are still fascist and Nazi views. And they still ought to be abhorrent to anyone who considers themselves a decent human being.

It's possible to support all of the same policies without referring to human beings as "parasites," and I don't think we should be flippant about what language is used. It's relevant. It reflects a state of mind.

I personally do not ever see myself voting for (or otherwise indirectly supporting) a politician that speaks like that, regardless of whether you can steelman it with more neutral language.

Isn't that what every politician who ended up doing an ethnic cleansing said?

Interesting, but what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

The billionaries don't need/care about sympathy And most importantly, the billionares don't do hard work for minimun pay.

Billionaires always have the option to un-parasite themselves, quite trivially.

Nobody is calling MacKenzie Scott a parasite.

Well I find the 'Eat the rich' slogan equally disgusting.

Won’t somebody please think of the poor oppressed billionaires!

> you should probably cite that.

I got it from reading the Wikipedia article linked in the comment I was replying to. Specifically here, third paragraph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party#Immigration_...

The statement has a citation but I did not follow it.

I think government art projects the western world over would fare better if they went through a reasonably local direct democracy type process. Instead we get unelected bureaucrats with absolutely bizarre tastes commissioning wildly expensive projects that the majority don't really appreciate. Even though that only describes a minority of cases I think it shouldn't be any surprise that it results in backlash and defunding.

I hope you don't think that is the odd one out.

For more context, from wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grenade_attacks_in_Swe...

Sweden is the only country I'm aware of that has a Wikipedia page specifically about this incredibly niche local phenomenon which by the way has no correlation to anything being discussed here at all.

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What about kicking people out who don’t believe in equal rights for women?

Because, that is pretty core to the Swedish cultural identity.

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> which is literally kicking out people who don't look or sounds like me, out of the country.

Or, more accurately, people who weren't born there (particularly first generation immigrants). No one's talking about legitimately doing deportations via family guy race cards.

No, we just want them to not hate us and our culture. People in general are tired of being tolerant to the intolerant.

Split from: Left Party

So basically the left but with a stricter view on immigration?

Source that every single left wing party in the 90s wanted to get rid of every single person of a non-white background?

Fair enough. (And white)

Canada's (mainstream) nationalism is also part of its political left.

I mean it's definitely possible to call yourself that, but I'd argue no, it's not possible to actually be that.

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No-one defines what they mean by "nationalist" so it could apply to a rock.

> celebrate that culture.

The party explicitly votes against paying for local culture

> wanting to protect

There is a big difference for wanting to protect culture, as in celebrate, educate and promote, and removing people from the land that has that culture. I would say the two are orthogonal.

For example, a huge influence on the British music scene comes from either getting pissed in Hamburg, or music coming from the Caribbean. None of which could have happened if people were dead set on "re-migration" (ie removing non "white" people.)

You can protect your “culture” without deporting all non-White people. If your culture can’t be protected without that, maybe that culture doesn’t need protecting.

Or: We're cherry picking ideas from all sides where applicable.

It's all a Louis XVI seating chart anyway.

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