“My centre is yielding. My right is retreating. Situation excellent. I am attacking.” - General Ferdinand Foch
When applied to ones own life, and not when sending thousands of men to their deaths, this sort of attitude is so sexy lmao.
But also, why the fuck are we using military metaphors here? I don’t think theres an analogy.
Fascism is going on again (Boooo) and fears about immigration are driving it. Apparently theresch a skepticism that the general public will ever side with the pro-immigration position.
But we have to fight it. The timidity is keeping us on the defensive (okay, idk why this part of the article is written like this lmao). Flinching from a tackle hurts more than committing to it. No one ever won a fist fight – again with all the fighting analogies! Prove they apply!
Okay, this bit I agree with. You must attack premises – trash and tarnish the foundations of your opponent’s case. You must put forward a positive, values-driven vision of your own.
okay this is just the classic driven by vs. driving public opinion debate.
Advantages the left has: - right is overextended, taken their ideas too far nad too deranged - consquences of fascism increasingly visible in day-to-day life
What doesn’t work? Center-left parties avoiding the matter, trying to compromise with the right, and so on. No. Classic ratchet. “The UK’s national economic suicide to address the”legitimate” concern of nativists.”
hmm that’s interesting, this article critiques the argument those on the left makes that anti-immigration is a ‘divide and rule’ tactic. Apparently this assumes a rationality and homogeneity of the ruling class that doesn’t exist (hahahahha, press X to doubt). Brexit has made everyone poorer, even the very rich. (Nationally, sure, but not globally.)
The argument that anti-immigration sentiment is simply racism is similarly criticised as not that helpful because lots and lots of people have bought into it anyway, because its all the media have been showing them!!
Okay blah blah blah we have to go on the offensive and argue aggresively in favour of immigration.
https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/42/pdfs/do-immigrant-workers-depress-the-wages-of-native-workers.pdf?ref=liberalcurrents.com 30 years of research shows that high immigration does not depress the wages of low-income native workers. “They took our jobs” is simply not true.
Heh, i like this bit: (re the question ‘how many is too many’) “It’s the wrong question. The measure of a country’s success is if its citizens are happy, healthy and prosperous, not if an arbitrary number of people cross a border.” Nativism has made us all more divided, poorer, literally sicker.
And then we have a bit on globalisation. You can’t make a phone in the UK. We don’t have all the resources you’d even need. Hmm yeah that’s true. I guess this is why William Gillis likes his trade so much.
But similar argument applies to labour needs more generally. Complex modern economies are complex. They can’t meet all their labour needs in all sectors; they change too quick and education and training are slow to adapt [in an equitable way]. Immigration is one of the few ways to meet these changing demands. National self-sufficiency is a myth, for these reasons and others.
What has changed more recently is the shape of the population pyramid and thus a need for higher levels of immigration to meet those needs.
The UK is in a particular bind because an aging population needs lots of labour to care for it, we are vehemently against the immigration that could meet that need, and our universities are in such a crisis (partly due to anti-immigration leading to a dearth of international students) that we cannot hope to train it ourselves in time. Finally, it takes so long to train, and our economic suicide is so effective that a decade qualifying to practice gets you an embarassing £32,000 salary.
This gets worse and worse, and makes things worse for everyone else.
There are more mundane cases than social care: the normal ebb and flow of markets and specialisation mean that short-term needs can’t be met by slow training and sectors with a glut of workers have some of those become economically inactive because they can’t go elsewhere.
The US is large and wealthy. The EU has internal freedom of movement. But both are still very restrictive. We would all benefit from labour being able to go, easily, where it is needed.
Hmm. This is not the sort of argument I like, but I concede that it is correct. I just think that everybody has a fundamental right to go somewhere else!
Lots of people think that electorates (excuse you? you mean the public, my neighbours &c.) are not persuadable. Evidence (lining opinion poll dates up with particular broadcasts) suggest otherwise.
Don’t be afraid to argue! We need to destroy the premises of the anti-immigration case. If their arguments are trash, then trash them!
Then they went on a bit about authenticity and class stuff and so on.
Polling shows that lower-income people vote according to the general average for their country (that’s because the important variable is race and not income, and BAME people are more likely to be lower income).
You can’t become more or less of a Brit by being educated or being born in a certain part of the country. And, nativism often for affluent (or even not!) pensioners who can vote their distaste without having to worry about the economic harms it causes the rest of us!
The stereotypes politicians press on us are disgusting! And are totally ignorant of the vast history of real working class progressive politics.
The snobbery charge is used to silence liberalism(eugh) because it exploits an insecurity in our leaders and press; they geneuinely are a bit out of touch. Starmer’s father was a toolmaker, don’t’cha know, but Starmer’s a lawyer.
Hmm, this author thinks that reactionary centrists are mostly middle-class, and are uncomfortable about how that has been feminised by conservative critics. Then they attack what (they percieve to be) queer and female-coded liberalism.
Then the author says they need to get over all this, which fair enough.
“I don’t know about you, but in a fight for our lives, I want leaders who instinctively hate those trying to kill us. Conversely, I think troops wanting a general [why the fuck all this military metaphors??] wanting a general who does not openly sympathise with the enemy’s cause is a reasonable enough minimum standard.” gosh.
Then the author reminisces about how they used to be able to travel all over the place, and now we can’t! Free travel very important, very good. Good good good. And now we can’t :(
Free movement good!!!! For economic reasons (above), for all the other reasons!!!
“Sorry nativism, but contrary to your claim of being universal, there is a deep seated human need for experience and adventure that your unseasoned dork ideology just can’t satisfy.”
omg this article is so longggggg
Being on the attack is good because then its on your terms, and not your opponents’. We are currently operating in their framing devices. We should not. We should destroy them.
Ooh now the fun bit. “Freedom of movement provides a better model for the world we want.”
We should have freedom of movement with the EU, and the US (and every other country, abolish all borders!!!!) You’d save so much money by not enforcing the border.
Solve the “problem” with illegal immigrants by making all immigration legal! Easy.
Nativism is a weird ideaology where you insist the boundaries between groups are permanent and inviolable. This is clearly not the case.
At the time of the French revolution, only 11% of the population spoke French. Modern nations are very modern inventions! Imposed with violence
“This is not the say that we should become anarchists” hahahaha
And if distrust of those different to you is simply the way things are, then that’s a weird sentiment and its stoked by endless lies and propaganda. Fears aren’t inevitable.
In practice, on the ground, the things nativists want it to represent; pride, cultural fit, sense of belonging &c. are just things they desperately want to feel. “Everyone else has their own culture, why can’t we?”.
Mass deportation, restrictive migration, these are the things that tear families apart.
Travel is the human essential. Family is the human essential. Nativism destroys both.
One way to avoid the framing of “letting people in” is to turn it into reciprocal agreements between countries. Yes they can come here, but we can go there.
yeah, pretty cool, about what i’d expect from a magazine called liberal currents. the anarchists do this kind of thing much better.