And the worst thing is, I don't really see how this could get better. Economic problems will continue to grow for at least several years, and one of the most contenious problems - immigration, legal or otherwise - is not going to slow down, fueled by conflicts around the globe and climate change pushing people out of previously habitable areas.
Right at the top of that list: - using fossil fuels as cheap energy - assuming continued growth while earths resources are limited (yes tech is getting more efficient) - relying on respected and trusted media entities (opposed to outlets bought by corporations with clear interests or maybe(?) state controlled social media trolls
Change is happening, coming fast and is becoming harder to ignore but people don’t like change.
And before you call me a racist: mainstream media kept redefining the meaning of the word refugee for a while now. For example: refugees are expected to stop at the nearest safe haven and not traverse multiple countries to end up in the one with the biggest social benefits. Also, tonnes of young men arriving from war-torn regions with disproportionate ratio of women and children. News outlets advertising these groups as doctors and engineers which at this point is a meme.
Economical burden, elevated crime rates and social tensions caused by this are quite apparent. Just look at Sweden, France, Germany. UK has it lucky because it's an island and harder to get into. All that while everyone pointing at these topics as unresolved problems getting branded as racist or xenophobe. It's only natural people get angry and start leaning toward populist assholes who promise to "solve" these problems one way or another.
The pendulum is starting to sway back and that is not a good thing but also not unexpected the way things were going.
I'm not surprised by any of this, but I'm definitely not feeling easy about it.
The presence of all immigrants except refugees is contingent on their ability to support themselves. This is a legal requirement and it's verified at every step of the immigration process.
I can't just "walk into your home". I've been here 9 years, and I'm still waiting for the immigration office to confirm that yes, I'm still supporting myself (and quite a few German retirees), and that yes, I can live in this country for another few years.
From my perspective, I was raised, educated and trained by another country, then moved to Germany in my prime to pay taxes and support the local economy, and if all goes well, I'll retire elsewhere before I'm a strain on the healthcare or pension system. I can't vote, and my presence in this country is directly linked to my ability to pay taxes.
But sure, I'm getting all the new benefits.
Do you actually think immigrants don't need to work or pay for anything and just leech of society?
I call this auto-colonialism. Certainly in the West (if not globally since as we know our “owners and masters” just met in Davos) there is clearly a super-layer that went ‘transnational’ and has been extracting wealth from its own people. And speaking of “own people” this is precisely why they do not give a flying F about “cultural heritage” and anything whatsoever that ‘conditions mind’ (such as national myths) that is not under their narrative control.
If you study history, you will note that the elite have always used mind control means to lord it over the masses. Our current crop can not even claim ‘noble blood’ or anything remotely like that so their strategy of exploitive rule is to pyschologically confuse (and upset) the subject population.
I’ll give you an example. The memes around certain words that were/are directly targeting the sexual vulnerabilities of white(-ish) young men, coupled with pornographic content to reinforce these social and sexual vulnerabilities. I mean, if I wanted to create ultra right wing shock troops, that is what I would do.
We’re being played. We’re being fucked with. Because the elite know they can not tell us the full scope of their ‘progressive plans’ for controlling their cattle on Human plantation.
So they have us fighing each other. It works. [edit: see sibling comments. The discussion immediately turns into a polarization around secondary effects, such as ‘welfare benefits’, etc. Meanwhile they are laughing their way to the bank. Oh wait, they own the banks ..]
p.s. am imigrant myself. Even I am upset at what they are doing to my new Western homeland. After all, I came here precisely for the cultural heritage that the elite decided to destroy over the past 3 decades. Ever since USSR fell...
https://unherd.com/thepost/the-davos-consensus-is-finally-cr...
And the Titanic was an insurance job.
Apply just a little critical thinking. Please?
University of YouTube, maybe? Faculty of Facebook?
So no, I reject the premise that I benefit more than locals do. My life was 3x harder to get where I am.
The thing is, all of the above is just noise. It's not relevant to the problem at large. Even if they were all PhD educated doctors it would still leave the core of the issue to address - there's SO MANY people coming, and more will come in the next decade. All predictions on this point way up - be it do to instability in various regions, war, or things like actual literal depletion of fresh water sources and food, plus temperatures raising to the point where people are dying and crops can't grow in several African and middle eastern regions.
Getting into whether these people are men, children, skilled workers or uneducated farmers is pointless - the question is what are we going to do(as European Union) about 1M+ arriving here every year. We are trying to do the humane thing, and it's clearly resulting in a massive increase in populism and nationalism everywhere because the native populations don't like it - again, there is zero point in even getting into whether that's justified or not - the question is, where do we go from here. Because the way I see if, if something isn't done urgently we will end up in a situation where the people in power do what the louder and louder groups say we should - and that's a terrifying vision of the world.
If that were true, countries next to warzones would risk destabilization (moreso than they already do). The system's not set up like that, and never has been.
While you aren't wrong, I don't see how that's relevant when talking about immigration into Europe from Africa and Middle East - those migrants arrive either on foot or on crappy boats, at best they manage to catch a train or get trafficked inside a van. They aren't flying in.
Wages stagnated, inflation is eating up the last pennies of a more impoverished worker class, populism will always rise up from these conditions, and right wing populism will eventually lead to fascism.
It seems you are equating them just by virtue of authoritarianism, to me that's just one trait they share (and from which only Fascism has it necessarily in any instance it happens). I'd like to know what else you consider them to be so similar at to call "two sides of the same coin".
But there is more. Both began as support for the working class after World War I (in Germany). In fact, both the Communist Party and the Nazi movement fought for their influence on the workers and other disgruntled groups. They also used very similar methods like organizing strikes, providing support and shelter to the workers, using propaganda as the main method of communication, playing the nationalism card, nationalizing companies and seizing private assets for planned productions etc. Also their militaristic aggression as a means of expansion of their ideologies bears many similarities: Soviet in Afghanistan, Vietnam in Cambodia, China in Korea and beyond, etc... Even in terms of the will to genocide/mass kill the "enemies", they are not far from each other: Nazis and the concentration camps, Khmer Rouge and their killing fields, China and the Uighur prison camp/Cultural Revolution, Soviet Union and the Holodomor famine in Ukraine etc...
With enough power, both communism and fascism will tend to extremism and will not shy away from military aggression to spread their ideologies.
> The Strauss–Howe generational theory, devised by William Strauss and Neil Howe, describes a theorized recurring generation cycle in American history and Western history. According to the theory, historical events are associated with recurring generational personas (archetypes). Each generational persona unleashes a new era (called a turning) lasting around 20–25 years, in which a new social, political, and economic climate (mood) exists. They are part of a larger cyclical "saeculum" (a long human life, which usually spans between 80 and 100 years, although some saecula have lasted longer). The theory states that a crisis recurs in American history after every saeculum, which is followed by a recovery (high). During this recovery, institutions and communitarian values are strong. Ultimately, succeeding generational archetypes attack and weaken institutions in the name of autonomy and individualism, which eventually creates a tumultuous political environment that ripens conditions for another crisis.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
It's not. Unity is the European's strength.
Our people are hopeless, depressed, displaced, purposeless, deracinated drones. Our money is worthless. Our jobs are pointless. Our governments despise us. Our media humiliates us. Our cities are riddled with crime, our industries with incompetence, our young couples can't afford homes, our young women see no point or purpose in having children, our young men see no point or purpose in participating at all.
Those brave men 80 years ago would never have enlisted had they been able to see the fate they sealed for their great grandchildren.
Of course things are changing. The Saxon is beginning to hate.
They reached into actual daily politics of the government - because Chancellor Scholz now also say things like "we have to start massivly kicking immigrants out"
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/olaf-scholz-ueber...
The overton window has shifted right even in left-leaning, immigrant-packed forums. I am stunned by the sort of stuff I see on reddit these days. They think that they'll only come for the other immigrants. I'm not going to wait and see.
1. Wasn't an AfD meeting
2. Had CDU politicians there too
Reality is, the AfD's positions are popular and Scholz tries to respond to that, whilst also claiming his opponents are a threat to democracy. But that is a risky strategy. After all, if one party can make a policy that another party cannot then campaign to reverse, then who is really dismantling democracy?
The Russia induced Syrian migrant wave of 2015 sure helped undermine the current right wing popularity rise. [2]
And Russias involvement in making brexit happen... [3]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AfD_pro-Russia_movement
2: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-weaponizing-syrian-refugees-g...
3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...
I think you mean the 5-eyes induced ME immigration that started in 2003 with the illegal invasion and destruction of 5% of Iraqs population, the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, destruction of Libya, invasion and occupation of Syria by the West, and so on.
We (5-eyes and by proxy, Europe too) still occupy 1/3rd of Syria - its oil fields - specifically to prevent the Syrian people rebuilding their nation.
Some factors involved are:
- Turkey and other "gateway" states closing their outbound borders to Europe in return for financial and political favors, thus preventing "migrants" (mostly refugees and asylum seekers, legitimate or not) from moving into Europe - Libya even went so far as to imprison migrants on spurious charges
- the lackluster handling of post-war Iraq and Afghanistan and the lukewarm involvement by Western powers in the Arab Spring creating a power vaccuum filled that allowed for the rise of ISIS and prolonged the Syrian civil war (which even saw an absurd NATO-internal confrontation between Turkey-backed ISIS-affiliated groups and US-backed Kurdish Rojava - until the US pulled out)
- brutal and at times legally dubious treatment of "migrants" by EU border countries (e.g. preventing rescue attempts at sea resulting in people drowning that could otherwise have been saved, "refugee camps" in places like Lampedusa or tent cities near the French-UK transit lines)
- countries like Germany being unwilling or very slow to allocate more resources to the actual processing of "migrants" and asylum requests or the housing and aid provided to them (contrast this with the "quick and unbureaucratic help" immediately extended to Ukranian refugees where politicians literally said the refugee housing was inadequate for them - legally, Ukranian refugees were and still are treated more like foreign EU citizens rather than as refugees when it comes to various permits and benefits)
In effect, the 2015 "migrant wave" was rather uneventful in Germany if you look at the actual numbers. It was a temporary spike followed by a statistically high plateau in 2016 caused by the bureaucratic backlog rather than a still ongoing "wave". But of course there was a trendic topic of a "migrant wave" present throughout the media and heavily utilized by the AfD as one of the only parties to run with it and use it to their advantage (whereas none of the other parties really had any interest in debunking it wholesale, thus just appearing rhetorically weak).
Prior to the sanctions that followed the invasion of Ukraine, Russia had very successfully seeded right-wing movements in Western countries and used social media, RT and Sputnik to provide a "counter-narrative" to mainstream and public news. It's telling that when the sanctions started, a lot of the COVID deniers rebranded as "peace movements" and often explicitly used Russian flags as symbols of solidarity while calling for an end to military aid to Ukraine.
Yes, the Western nations are hardly innocent when it comes to interfering in or outright invading in foreign countries, especially in the Middle East, but neither is Russia although Russian interference is historically less blatant and less open, often using plausible deniability or multiple parallel constructions (i.e. less misinfo or disinfo and more undermining the trust in any form of info altogether by pushing multiple mutually contradictory alternative explanations).
Nobody ever mentions brexit, even though it had a significant bureaucratic impact. The immigration office was clearly affected by it. Now it's equally impacted by the wave of Ukrainian refugees. I see these clearly since I work with the immigration office a lot.
I hold CDU, SPD, FDP and the greens all accountable for the rise of AFD. Much more than Putin or the Kremlin or whatever. I even think it is dangerous to overlook the mainstream parties' own hand in this. They must learn now, or it will get very unpleasant soon.
The opposition, the far right ones are however funded by new sources, shady ones. Their platform is thin as ice, there is no substance behind their loud slogans. But the slogans they use, do reach peoples heads. If the current leaders are not able to take these points for them selves and gain back the votes by actually doing what the proletariat want, then a very sudden and painful fall is the outcome. It has always been that way.
Dismissing the other side of the political spectrum instead of addressing their problems is exactly how we keep getting into this mess.
The Western nations know, intrinsically, that they are being run by war criminals - people such as Cameron and Macron, who have the blood of MILLIONS of innocent peoples lives on their hands, and yet: they are getting away without facing justice.
In such circumstances, you can be sure there is populist anger which can be deftly exploited by propagandists in the West to create movements conducive to their gaining more power as the war-criminal class fights to hide its crimes against humanity.
Until we prosecute our OWN war criminals we will have to shelter their victims. Period.
The AfD has gotten louder and stronger last year, and it's reaching further and further into other parties' voter bases, fueled by growing economic problems and contentious immigration policies.