French Election, why it matters

[Gromnir]

23 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Man, it wasn't even remotely close. Not that I wanted LePen to win in any way, but that is really lopsided.

fake news. until the cyber ninjas do a forensic review, am not buying the results, and even then the libs will cheat. you gotta read this zerohedge link...

HA! Good Fun!

 

[rjshae]

There does appear to be a link between immigration and the growth of right-wing populism in Europe and the US. I doubt this is going away any time soon.

Migration and the rise of populism: how closely related are they?

[BruceVC]

10 hours ago, rjshae said:

There does appear to be a link between immigration and the growth of right-wing populism in Europe and the US. I doubt this is going away any time soon.

Migration and the rise of populism: how closely related are they?

Thats a good article. Their is no doubt that illegal and uncontrolled immigration has led to the increase of right-wing populism and increased votes for right-wing political parties

But their are 2 important distinctions and realities here caused by illegal\uncontrolled immigration and your article summarizes this in stage 4. To quote 

The ‘activation’ of anti-immigration attitudes, combined with the widespread dissatisfaction with the immigration management was ultimately reflected in votes[2] for right-wing populist parties, which capitalized on immigration fears in parts of the population. In this sense, migration can be seen a prerequisite for the mobilization of right-wing populist support in the protest against the ‘ruling elite’.

In most Democracies you have right-wing political leaning parties that normally are supported by your traditional bigots and people who are  anti-immigration on any level

Then you have people who believe that any immigration must be done legally with papers and it must be managed. But the failure of effective immigration policies in  well meaning governments in mostly Western countries has created this strange reality where tens of thousands of people arrive illegally on your  borders and if you object to it you are called "racist\Islamophobic\xenophobic " when in fact people from this group are not opposed to immigration at all, they want it to be managed

So in the EU citizens in many countries end up aligning with traditional  right-wing parties but its because these parties are anti-immigration or rather they dont support open borders and they recognize that all citizens have a right to say " we want control of who gets to immigrate and become an initial burden on the tax base "

But this doesnt make them racist or right wing, at least not for the second group 

[rjshae]

4 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Then you have people who believe that any immigration must be done legally with papers and it must be managed. But the failure of effective immigration policies in  well meaning governments in mostly Western countries has created this strange reality where tens of thousands of people arrive illegally on your  borders and if you object to it you are called "racist\Islamophobic\xenophobic " when in fact people from this group are not opposed to immigration at all, they want it to be managed

So in the EU citizens in many countries end up aligning with traditional  right-wing parties but its because these parties are anti-immigration or rather they dont support open borders and they recognize that all citizens have a right to say " we want control of who gets to immigrate and become an initial burden on the tax base "

But this doesnt make them racist or right wing, at least not for the second group 

Yes, there's a lot of conflation of issues happening there, to some degree because racism is a trigger issue for the left in the US. However, if you look back at the history of the US, strong anti-immigration sentiment was, in may cases, caused by cultural differences, such as occurred with white Irish and Italian immigrants. People usually prefer their own culture and tend to be intolerant of outsiders who behave differently.

[HoonDing]

Our rightwing populist is better than their rightwing populist

[kanisatha]

33 minutes ago, rjshae said:

Yes, there's a lot of conflation of issues happening there, to some degree because racism is a trigger issue for the left in the US. However, if you look back at the history of the US, strong anti-immigration sentiment was, in may cases, caused by cultural differences, such as occurred with white Irish and Italian immigrants. People usually prefer their own culture and tend to be intolerant of outsiders who behave differently.

Exactly. It isn't race but rather "the other" who arrives later that is the issue, no matter the race of "the other." So white English and French immigrants to America did not like Italian and Irish immigrants even though they were white too. Then, ironically, those Italian and Irish immigrants did not like it when Polish and Russian immigrants arrived.

It's why today a large majority of latinos in America are so strongly opposed to the current 'open borders' situation, because the existing latino poplation is mainly of Mexican or Cuban origin and they don't like the current immigrants who are from Central America.

And Indian immigrants don't like immigrants from other parts of South Asia, and Japanese immigrants don't like immigrants from Korea and China. And so on.

[rjshae]

39 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

Exactly. It isn't race but rather "the other" who arrives later that is the issue, no matter the race of "the other." So white English and French immigrants to America did not like Italian and Irish immigrants even though they were white too. Then, ironically, those Italian and Irish immigrants did not like it when Polish and Russian immigrants arrived.

I'm not so sure that racism isn't a factor in certain immigration situations, but I do think it's more of an exacerbating factor that is easily conflated.

[kanisatha]

58 minutes ago, rjshae said:

I'm not so sure that racism isn't a factor in certain immigration situations, but I do think it's more of an exacerbating factor that is easily conflated.

Yes this is what I meant to say as well, if that wasn't clear, that racism can be a factor but it is not THE factor.