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The thing is, when you look at the rate at which European countries have been accepting refugees, it doesn't bear any relation to economic success and unemployment rates

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/09/daily-chart

We also know that in many European countries, unemployment is concentrated in the non-white population.

Given these facts it is obvious that anti-immigrant, anti-refugee feelings are based on ignorance and xenophobia. A politician who goes along with this and takes political advantage is in a very bad moral position.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

We also know that in many European countries, unemployment is concentrated in the non-white population.

Given these facts it is obvious that anti-immigrant, anti-refugee feelings are based on ignorance and xenophobia. A politician who goes along with this and takes political advantage is in a very bad moral position.

A)There are non-whites in our country that do not have jobs.
B)Therefore any position stating that we should no longer accept anymore non-whites into the country is inherently immoral.

Not sure I follow your logic there, buddy.


For the most part, at least in my own experience, people that are genuinely opposed to maintaining current levels of immigration are based on cultural matters. Most people don't care if David Wu and a couple of his mates come over for snags around the BBQ, but they don't like the idea of Hassan and his buddies setting up shop here and keeping to themselves and their own exclusive clique. If an immigrant makes an effort to assimilate into their host nation most people that aren't jerks will give them the time of day. If they stick to themselves or try to impose their views on the non-standard then trouble starts.

When you get to a point where there are entire suburbs of your city that people avoid because it's considered the 'territory' of a particular group, it's not incredible that there is a negative reaction to that.

 Humble Guardsman wrote:


A)There are non-whites in our country that do not have jobs.
B)Therefore any position stating that we should no longer accept anymore non-whites into the country is inherently immoral.

Not sure I follow your logic there, buddy.

You're following the wrong logic. He's arguing first that there is no factual basis on which immigration and refugees can be blamed for lackluster employment rates. Therefore we can conclude that anti-immigrant, and anti-refugee feelings are not based in fears about employment, but ignorance/xenophobia, and any politician who advances those positions for political gain is in a bad moral position.

When you get to a point where there are entire suburbs of your city that people avoid because it's considered the 'territory' of a particular group, it's not incredible that there is a negative reaction to that.

I could go into a very long explanation on why this is itself ignorant, but I don't have that kind of time. Short version; This ideal "immigrant who assimilates" and "immigrant who refuses to assimilate" are about as real as unicorns. Ethnic enclaves are a constant in immigration for a multitude of reasons, two of the most obvious being that cheap real estate tends to be clustered together, and people moving from one country to another tend to lean on already established friends and relatives for support early on for housing, work, money, and emotional support. First generation immigrants almost never assimilate into a society, while second generation immigrants often find themselves awkwardly split between the place they came from and where they are now. It inevitably goes away by the third or fourth generation except when people ignorantly alienate successive generations for superficial cultural differences like preferring hanging out with friends and family (how alien) over going out and getting beers with strangers. I mean heaven forbid your religion require food be prepared in a specific way! You'll never assimilate!

 LordofHats wrote:


You're following the wrong logic. He's arguing first that there is no factual basis on which immigration and refugees can be blamed for lackluster employment rates.

At the same time, he has said (the article didn't actually comment on it in depth) that there isn't any correlation between immigration and unemployment or economic success. So even if there isn't a strong economic argument -against- immigration, neither is there a strong economic argument -for- immigration. Unless someone were to argue that there are available jobs in a nation that simply aren't suitable for the population currently residing there, which would be ridiculous. It would be akin to arguing that a binman or janitor job is -beneath- a native-born citizen of the country, but not beneath a foreigner. That's how the Emiratis in Dubai viewed it, and my goodness they were absolute .

When you get to a point where there are entire suburbs of your city that people avoid because it's considered the 'territory' of a particular group, it's not incredible that there is a negative reaction to that.

I could go into a very long explanation on why this is itself ignorant, but I don't have that kind of time. Short version; This ideal "immigrant who assimilates" and "immigrant who refuses to assimilate" are about as real as unicorns. Ethnic enclaves are a constant in immigration for a multitude of reasons, two of the most obvious being that cheap real estate tends to be clustered together, and people moving from one country to another tend to lean on already established friends and relatives for support early on for housing, work, money, and emotional support. First generation immigrants almost never assimilate into a society, while second generation immigrants often find themselves awkwardly split between the place they came from and where they are now. It inevitably goes away by the third or fourth generation except when people ignorantly alienate successive generations for superficial cultural differences like preferring hanging out with friends and family (how alien) over going out and getting beers with strangers. I mean heaven forbid your religion require food be prepared in a specific way! You'll never assimilate!

You are arguing with a random person on the internet, of course you've got time.

Of course immigrants with the same background and culture in common will congregate. How would you fix such a thing? You can't, obviously, breaking up a neighbourhood because it's "too black" or "too white" would be ridiculous and like an extreme reverse of segregation. But such massive enclaves don't remain self-sufficient and isolated enough to retain their foreign cultural identity if they are not allowed to immigrate in such a large number in the first place. Several hundred immigrants in a city would have to be highly uniform in their exclusivity for them to retain a separate identity, however several hundred thousand can easily retain their distinct cultural identity without ever having to assimilate into the nation after successive generations.

One solution is to encourage assimilation into the national cultural norm, whatever that may be. At the other end you could introduce so many different cultures in such a large number that the consensus on what the national culture even is would be lost. That latter result scares quite a few people, and not because they are afraid of the pigment of someones skin.

 Humble Guardsman wrote:
You are arguing with a random person on the internet, of course you've got time.

It's finals week (which for me means upwards of 100 written pages, sources, cited, and organized in a way that makes it look like I know what I'm talking about)

A quick hint for Hats is I always post most when vainly procrastinating brain hurt inducing academic gobledygook

I know that feeling, my house is generally spotless come exam week due to procrasti-cleaning.

Topic please, French elections. And go

Well, in that case, I'll leave that here...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/world/europe/le-pen-macron-holocaust-france-elections.html?_r=0

You can repaint the house all you want, it's still the same rotten people in there.

Well to stick to topic. Its fair to say they Le Pen is potentially able to take advantage of the economic situation, thr high unemployment, thr fact 9.6% of workers have no jobs, economy is going to be weaker with higher levels like that.

Its twice the rate of quite a few other big countries.
That's going to have some influence on people choices of president.

 oldravenman3025 wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

I think you can draw a parallel to the people who keep insisting that the American Civil War was all about states' rights and had nothing to do with slavery.

It wasn't all about States rights. But at the core, that was the KEY issue that the other major issues, such as slavery, revolved around.

Please no. Read the various Declarations of Secession and notice how they explicitly state that the main issue is slavery. Slavery is the key issue that the states' rights were to be used to affect, not the other way around. The entire business around states' rights was born in the context of slavery, the two are inseparable.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Humble Guardsman wrote:


A)There are non-whites in our country that do not have jobs.
B)Therefore any position stating that we should no longer accept anymore non-whites into the country is inherently immoral.

Not sure I follow your logic there, buddy.

You're following the wrong logic. He's arguing first that there is no factual basis on which immigration and refugees can be blamed for lackluster employment rates. Therefore we can conclude that anti-immigrant, and anti-refugee feelings are not based in fears about employment, but ignorance/xenophobia, and any politician who advances those positions for political gain is in a bad moral position.

When you get to a point where there are entire suburbs of your city that people avoid because it's considered the 'territory' of a particular group, it's not incredible that there is a negative reaction to that.

I could go into a very long explanation on why this is itself ignorant, but I don't have that kind of time. Short version; This ideal "immigrant who assimilates" and "immigrant who refuses to assimilate" are about as real as unicorns. Ethnic enclaves are a constant in immigration for a multitude of reasons, two of the most obvious being that cheap real estate tends to be clustered together, and people moving from one country to another tend to lean on already established friends and relatives for support early on for housing, work, money, and emotional support. First generation immigrants almost never assimilate into a society, while second generation immigrants often find themselves awkwardly split between the place they came from and where they are now.

Wow, apparently unicorns are real then! Yay! They must actually be quite common, because well-assimilated and totally not assimilated immigrants both are very common, at least here in the Netherlands. I know loads of people of both categories. I also consider myself a pretty well-assimilated 1st generation immigrant (and know plenty of others who moved from Russia or other countries to the Netherlands and assimilated very well), so that conclusion of yours is also wrong.
Maybe you got the wrong idea of what assimilation means. It doesn't mean that an immigrant abandons all things of his parent culture and becomes indistinguishable from the native population, but rather that an immigrant tries to fit in by actively interacting with natives, learning their language, accepting their cultural values and participating actively in his host society instead of isolating himself in an ethnic enclave.
If a 1st-generation immigrant assimilates like that, any differences between the immigrants and the natives will usually have disappeared by the 3rd generation. If however the immigrants isolate themselves, the differences never disappear. The Netherlands has plenty of 4th generation immigrants that aren't much more assimilated into the native culture than their great-grandparents. I suspect the situation in France to be even worse.

 LordofHats wrote:
It inevitably goes away by the third or fourth generation except when people ignorantly alienate successive generations for superficial cultural differences like preferring hanging out with friends and family (how alien) over going out and getting beers with strangers. I mean heaven forbid your religion require food be prepared in a specific way! You'll never assimilate!

You are getting it the wrong way around. It is the immigrants who alienate the native population, not the native population alienating the immigrants (although that is a vicious cycle that can eventually develop).

 Iron_Captain wrote:

You are getting it the wrong way around. It is the immigrants who alienate the native population, not the native population alienating the immigrants (although that is a vicious cycle that can eventually develop).

It's usually both happening at the same time in different degrees. Russians moving to the Netherlands isn't a particularly big shock. The closer a host society is to the one the immigrant came from the easier it is for immigrants to find acceptance. You don't see Le Penn complain about Spanish immigrants because Spanish it's not hard for someone from Spain to blend (you can even understand a lot of French as a Spanish speaker and vice versa). Then you have Sihks and Muslims, who have customs that instantly stand them out like wearing turbans, favoring beards, or having noticeably darker skin tones and they don't really get the luxury of blending like someone from America or Germany might enjoy. Compare Jews, who have ethnic enclaves around the world, and it's not just because they don't want to assimilate but because their customs and the distinctions between them and a host culture work to isolate them. Multitudes of factors come in to play other than that but I'm not writing a research paper on Dakka XD

Stand a white Russian, German, and American together in a room and you'd have to talk to them to really notice they come from different places. They blend with less effort and language barriers among the developed world are less apparent than those in the developing and third world. You're treating it too simplistically. The idea of assimilation you describe is counter to the definition you give in relation to my example. Superficial differences in culture are superficial but often pose the greatest barriers to the developing of new social bonds for immigrant groups. Even non-superficial differences become problems over time as people decide to be dicks. Someone in their forties doesn't really learn new languages well. Assimilation is not rigid. it's not a checklist you're going to able to consistently apply and get a desired effect. It shifts and differs between countries and groups, which is why I call the ideal of "assimilation" a unicorn. Someone like Le Penn will attach themselves to something absurd like the Sikh mandate on covering ones head, or the Jewish Orthodox payots to talk about how people don't matter and their traditions are incompatible as if somehow a turban or some curly side burns is some great barrier to being a functional French citizen. It's absurd. Part of that is that people just really don't care to see a display of any culture distinct from their own, but that's kind of inherently xenophobic which doesn't really advance the counter argument.

 jhe90 wrote:
Mainstream leaders offer no real differences. Thr parties blend into one. Then suddenly the popularists come claiming to have a answer, however simplistic but they claim to have answers, they claim to bring change to the problems that never seem to end.

Musch as there claims might be a facade, and not much behind em, you can see why they are gaining ground.
If the mainstream took on some of the difficult problems, thr ones that may not sound nice but are genuine things that need to be discussed. They may weaken there reasons to exist.

That is true to a large degree. However the flip side of that is the public itself, who are far too happy to condemn politicians for failing to solve difficult problems, and then even happier to abuse them when they attempt difficult but realistic answers to those problems.


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 LordofHats wrote:
I think people who look for simple solutions/explanations to complex problems end up prone to such. No one but God can judge anyone by their head space, and when presented with the distinction between "actual racist/xenophobe/bigot" and "person who says lots of racist/xenophbic/bigoted gak" I just fail to see why I should care to notice that a distinction might exist. It's such a paper thin difference, and practically they lead to racist/xenophobic/bigoted gak happening whether the person saying it earnestly believes it or not.

It's the kind of detail that matters in an autobiography, not an election.

Yeah, I'm not looking to excuse people for any racist policies of statements. I was just more wondering about how people best counter this kind of populist thing, and that starts with figuring out what it is that voters find so appealing. I wonder to an extent if it isn't as simple as being drawn to the candidate who says the racist things they are thinking. Afterall, racism isn't new, but these candidates and parties are suddenly gaining large vote counts where previously they did not. Which hints that possibly the appeal isn't as simple as racism.

That said, even if my thought bubble is true and it isn't racism that you have to counter but the popularity of simple solutions, I still have no idea about how you go about addressing the problem. Just watch as the idiots win office and break a whole bunch of stuff?

It can simply be distilled thusly:

...the grass may be greener on the other side...

Sometimes, its hard to convince voters that they have it good in the status quo. So, it's not that difficult to understand that people will vote for something entirely different, even if many believe they're voting against their own benefit.

 oldravenman3025 wrote:
The people blame the Establishment because the Establishment is a part of the problem. A big part. You are correct that the voting public has to take some responsibility, due to their participation in the body politic. But to absolve the Establishment of any blame is A: Putting too much faith and trust in the political and financial establishments, to the point of naivete. And B: To fall for the Establishment's "party line" that anybody who opposes the spun narrative is a "racist" or a "xenophobe", even directed at those with legitimate concerns about such policies and their effects on their homelands and lives.

Your argument is based on a false dichotomy. There isn't a binary state of accepting establishment politics absolutely, or rejecting establishment politics completely in favour of any halfwit with a string of empty promises. You've the real world position of almost every voter. That's quite a feat. For instance, the idea that a person could be happy that establishment policies are typically informed by expert analysis and reflect more or less the best way forward, but at the same time are frustrated that in some cases the expert conclusions are ignored due to political cowardice or subversion by insider special interests. There is no place for anyone who thinks anything like that in your description.

Sooner or later, some among the "sheeple" will get tired of it, and stop falling for the bull spoon fed to them by vote-hungry, money-hungry politicos and fat cats, and their agenda ridden useful idiots. Others among the "flock" will get desperate and grab on to any politician smart enough to play on concerns (legitimate or otherwise), while offering no real solutions. I fall into the first category. And understanding the historically proven fact that politics is just another form of prostitution, that ALL politicians are driven by self-interests (money, influence, and power), and are inherent liars/silver tongued devils, doesn't convince with of anything else otherwise.

So your answer is that it comes down to heaping dose of cynicism and crude generalisation? Well as a description of modern politics it's a total disaster. But as an explanation of the thought process that has led a lot of people to cast very foolish votes recently, it actually works okay.

 sebster wrote:
That said, even if my thought bubble is true and it isn't racism that you have to counter but the popularity of simple solutions, I still have no idea about how you go about addressing the problem. Just watch as the idiots win office and break a whole bunch of stuff?

I'm of the opinion that to get a real and lasting solution the average person's life needs to improve. Right now there are a whole lot of people working harder to earn less, making ends meet for the average person has gotten much harder over the last several decades. These people are worn out from their lives, and as any of us can say simple solutions without much thought become a lot more attractive when one is tired. If people had the energy in their lives to invest in looking a bit further than the superficial we would see candidates like Le Pen, who turn ugly real quick when looking beyond skin-deep, not gather as much support. At least that's my take on things.

 Humble Guardsman wrote:
For the most part, at least in my own experience, people that are genuinely opposed to maintaining current levels of immigration are based on cultural matters. Most people don't care if David Wu and a couple of his mates come over for snags around the BBQ, but they don't like the idea of Hassan and his buddies setting up shop here and keeping to themselves and their own exclusive clique. If an immigrant makes an effort to assimilate into their host nation most people that aren't jerks will give them the time of day. If they stick to themselves or try to impose their views on the non-standard then trouble starts.

I think you are right here in pointing out that the issue is primarily cultural, not economic. The economic stuff actually makes no sense, even on a simple, intuitive level, it is what people add on to bolster their argument, once they've already decided they're resentful of immigrants. After all, the people who are worried about foreign workers coming here are almost always the same people who are also worried about foreign investment, when the latter creates jobs so should be supported by people who are primarily concerned by jobs.

And ask yourself, can anyone name a single person they know who just loves foreign cultures, looks to engage with foreigners to learn about them, their lives and experiences, but then says as much as they love that, they just can't support more immigration

As to whether the cultural issue is correct... that's a tougher issue. You are right that it is natural for people to resent it when an area they live in or around begins to feel alien. But this has been a concern as long as there's been migration. Here in Australia we hated the Italians and the Greeks because they didn't assimilate, then another generation on their kids were assimilated and we forget that it ever bothered us. By that point we were hostile to the Chinese because they didn't assimilate. But their kids did assimilate, and by then we'd moved on to being hostile at the Somalis and the Lebanese who weren't assimilating. When the history of second generation assimilation is pointed out, people assert this time is different, this group really won't be assimilating. That's almost certainly not true.

So assimilation does happen, but its generational. It is understandable that people don't see, or appreciate, or believe in change at that slow speed. Hence much of the resentment.


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 Humble Guardsman wrote:
Of course immigrants with the same background and culture in common will congregate. How would you fix such a thing? You can't, obviously, breaking up a neighbourhood because it's "too black" or "too white" would be ridiculous and like an extreme reverse of segregation.

You can place visa requirements on people to settle in certain areas, and not in others. Typically this isn't done over ghetto concerns, more to address town population issues, but there's no reason it can't be done to restrict ghettos forming.

But such massive enclaves don't remain self-sufficient and isolated enough to retain their foreign cultural identity if they are not allowed to immigrate in such a large number in the first place. Several hundred immigrants in a city would have to be highly uniform in their exclusivity for them to retain a separate identity, however several hundred thousand can easily retain their distinct cultural identity without ever having to assimilate into the nation after successive generations.

Britain's immigration might be very high by British historic standards, but it's nothing compared to the immigration in to countries like Australia and the US. And despite massive waves of immigration, the experience here has shown that ghettos happen, but then they fade. All the various Chinatowns, that were once strong ghettos, are now just novelties for the tourists. The children of the immigrants moved out in to mainstream society.

One solution is to encourage assimilation into the national cultural norm, whatever that may be.

The solution really is time. You have to trust that in time the awesomeness of the 'native' way of life will win people over. If not the first generation, then the second and subsequent generation.

But certainly there are things you can do to help that process along. Free language classes, for instance.


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 jhe90 wrote:
Well to stick to topic. Its fair to say they Le Pen is potentially able to take advantage of the economic situation, thr high unemployment, thr fact 9.6% of workers have no jobs, economy is going to be weaker with higher levels like that.

Sort of. For lots of reasons France typically has a higher unemployment rate than other countries*. It's been below 8% for only 12 months in the last 30 years. In that time its never been below 7%. Just straight comparing the current French rate to the US and then thinking about how bleak the US economy was when unemployment was 9.5% there gives a false impression.

This isn't to say there aren't problems in the French economy. Productivity has been flat for a sustained period. Unlike France and Germany which slowly clawed back the jobs lost in the GFC, France is basically in the exact same place it was in 2009. There would be a level of angst impacting the political results. I'm really just saying that straight number to number comparisons often confuse more than they reveal.



*There's some reporting issues, like France counting people with no fixed hours as unemployed, but I've been told that's more an excuse than a real, material difference. It is probably more to do with the structure of the different economies, France is a much less horrible place to be unemployed, to put it at its simplest.


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 whembly wrote:
It can simply be distilled thusly:

...the grass may be greener on the other side...

Sometimes, its hard to convince voters that they have it good in the status quo. So, it's not that difficult to understand that people will vote for something entirely different, even if many believe they're voting against their own benefit.

Yeah, I think this sums up a lot of it really well. I think it is natural for people to stop appreciating things they have had for a long time. Taking those things for granted, they focus largely on small things changing at the margins. This leads to an irrational decision that ends up putting at risk lots of good stuff

This is complicated more by, as you put it, the reality that sometimes the grass is actually greener on the other side. Sometimes there are brave new ways of doing things that are simply better than what we have now. The rise of activist unions was terrifying to the status quo, but in time it gave us safe working conditions and levels of pay that created the middle class. The deregulation of the 70s and early 80s was a massive reversal from the previous 50 years of post depression institution building, but it gave us the productivity gains of the 80s and 90s (alongside computing and trade).

The trick, I guess, is for people to be able to really study how things are, and what can be changed to fix problems without risking the greater system and its qualities. And then to really study possible solutions, to figure out exactly how green the grass is over there. The problem is that analysis just isn't informing the public debate. It is largely happening in academia, but that doesn't filter down in to public debate in a meaningful way. There are very few people right now who can present an informed, expert opinion in a way that retains its substantial meaning while being understood and accessible to a mainstream audience. Bill Nye and Neil Degrasse Tyson are doing a job like this on general science, but they're almost entirely preaching to the converted, they have very little effect in presenting science in a way that wins over doubters. And in other areas, like economics or immigration there's simply no-one even at that level.


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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I'm of the opinion that to get a real and lasting solution the average person's life needs to improve. Right now there are a whole lot of people working harder to earn less, making ends meet for the average person has gotten much harder over the last several decades. These people are worn out from their lives, and as any of us can say simple solutions without much thought become a lot more attractive when one is tired. If people had the energy in their lives to invest in looking a bit further than the superficial we would see candidates like Le Pen, who turn ugly real quick when looking beyond skin-deep, not gather as much support. At least that's my take on things.

While I'm sympathetic to the challenges facing many people on low incomes, I'm not sure its an excuse for ignorance. That's a bit of a cop out, really. Most everyone I know works really hard, most of us have young families on top of full time jobs, so we're never going to be more tired. Some of us follow the news and politics, and others don't, it isn't a product of tiredness but a product of what you're interested in.

But I certainly agree that it is all about the average person's life improving, at the end of the day. If someone has most spare cash for fun stuff than they had 10 years ago, and they're more financially secure, then they're going to be disinclined to vote to break the system. The issue is that's really hard to do. You can't just wish productivity increases in to existence. And the reforms we've enacted in the last 20 years, combined with the natural trend of the economy has seen increases, but they've been concentrated on the very rich.

I didn't mean to excuse voting for a toxic candidate, especially in the case of someone like Le Pen it takes very little time or effort to figure out she isn't all that great. And even beyond that it just doesn't take that much extra effort to get oneself reasonably informed on candidates before voting for them. I was attempting to explain a reason rather than an excuse. But to elaborate, I think it extends beyond the low income bracket, because the argument applies to what I feel is a significant group of middle class people who are working their assess off to stay there.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I didn't mean to excuse voting for a toxic candidate, especially in the case of someone like Le Pen it takes very little time or effort to figure out she isn't all that great. And even beyond that it just doesn't take that much extra effort to get oneself reasonably informed on candidates before voting for them. I was attempting to explain a reason rather than an excuse. But to elaborate, I think it extends beyond the low income bracket, because the argument applies to what I feel is a significant group of middle class people who are working their assess off to stay there.

Yeah, cool, didn't mean to imply you were trying to excuse Le Pen.

But I still don't accept that working hard and being tired is the reason people aren't engaging with politics. Reading the news isn't exhausting. Even after a really hard day, after an hour or so of spacing out anyone can do something like read an opinion piece.

You make a good point about the issue extending in to the middle class. I was making a fairly classist assumption in just limiting it to the working class.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 oldravenman3025 wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

I think you can draw a parallel to the people who keep insisting that the American Civil War was all about states' rights and had nothing to do with slavery.

It wasn't all about States rights. But at the core, that was the KEY issue that the other major issues, such as slavery, revolved around.

Please no. Read the various Declarations of Secession and notice how they explicitly state that the main issue is slavery. Slavery is the key issue that the states' rights were to be used to affect, not the other way around. The entire business around states' rights was born in the context of slavery, the two are inseparable.

OT. Take it to another thread or another board. This has nothing to do with the French, the French election, or a technical manual on how to convert stale French bread into nonchuks to take out Spanish conquistadors (kudos to Cheech and Chong).

High unemployment, immigrations problems, mmm yea Le Pen has a better chance than you think.

As sebster pointed out though, it's not actually high unemployment in the French context.

On a related note, how does le Pen intend do handle the notoriously militant French farmers if France leaves the EU? If they're disgruntled now, just imagine them being outside the CAP.

AFAIK, she rely on wishful thinking.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
As sebster pointed out though, it's not actually high unemployment in the French context.

On a related note, how does le Pen intend do handle the notoriously militant French farmers if France leaves the EU? If they're disgruntled now, just imagine them being outside the CAP.

Hang a few of them. If its good enough for Washington, its good enough...oh wait this is France. Bring back the guillotine.

That's the thing, though. Facts don't matter; perceptions do. So if people get fired up that they perceive that they have no jerbs and that immigrants are taking their jerbs, the will act on that, no matter how unfounded in reality it is. The problem is that it is a lot easier to scapegoat people who look different and dress and talk funny than to analyze underlying systemic and economic trends. And guess what reactionaries tend to do (Hint: it's not the analysis option!) Worse, there is that primitive part of the brain that all humans have that desires simple actions, safety, and buys into this at some level (threat of the Other) and has to be overridden by knowledge and experience, so it bleeds over into the mainstream, where it can mobilize just enough to swing elections.

 jmurph wrote:
That's the thing, though. Facts don't matter; perceptions do. So if people get fired up that they perceive that they have no jerbs and that immigrants are taking their jerbs, the will act on that, no matter how unfounded in reality it is. The problem is that it is a lot easier to scapegoat people who look different and dress and talk funny than to analyze underlying systemic and economic trends. And guess what reactionaries tend to do (Hint: it's not the analysis option!) Worse, there is that primitive part of the brain that all humans have that desires simple actions, safety, and buys into this at some level (threat of the Other) and has to be overridden by knowledge and experience, so it bleeds over into the mainstream, where it can mobilize just enough to swing elections.

They both matter. Because facts don't care about people's perceptions. If they act on a perception that isn't true, the fact will still be there causing the problem at the end of the day. So after all the immigrants are kicked out and people are still angry because their issues haven't been resolved, they will round on the next most obvious target; those who lied to them. Even politicians can only sell a lie for so long before it bites them in the ass.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So after all the immigrants are kicked out and people are still angry because their issues haven't been resolved, they will round on the next most obvious target;

So, the Jew? Or the Free Mason? Or the bankers? Or the gays? Or anyone the politicians will decide to scapegoat?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So after all the immigrants are kicked out and people are still angry because their issues haven't been resolved, they will round on the next most obvious target;

So, the Jew? Or the Free Mason? Or the bankers? Or the gays? Or anyone the politicians will decide to scapegoat?

Actually, then you'll see a version of what our illustrious idiot is doing, which is to deflect blame at the press for reporting fake news, being unfair and labelling them the "enemy of the XXX people". The blame game is what despots, or in this case right wing mouthpieces, do.

As I was just saying...

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said Sunday the Trump administration considered changes to libel laws that could limit certain freedoms of the press, but contended that whether any changes happen is a “different story.”

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So after all the immigrants are kicked out and people are still angry because their issues haven't been resolved, they will round on the next most obvious target;

So, the Jew? Or the Free Mason? Or the bankers? Or the gays? Or anyone the politicians will decide to scapegoat?

Thats why Nationalism is xenophobic by definition. I know many many Spanish nationalists that now fuel their rage towards muslims (Even when Muslism in Spain, outside Ceuta and Melilla are totally quasi-unexistant) and refugees. But you only need to mention them the Catalonia Independence problem to make them rage, or say "Blas de Lezo" to give them a boner for their English-hatred..

That people only whant to put a face to their "problems" because problems are complex, and need complex solutions. Any politician that full his mouth with empty promises like "I will give you jobs again!" without a carefull crafted economical plan is full of gak. And unfortunate, all of this recent elections are full of that, the French one is just another example.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The thing is, when you look at the rate at which European countries have been accepting refugees, it doesn't bear any relation to economic success and unemployment rates
Given these facts it is obvious that anti-immigrant, anti-refugee feelings are based on ignorance and xenophobia. A politician who goes along with this and takes political advantage is in a very bad moral position.

Ok, so no relation to economic success and unemployment rates. That's fine.


Does acceptance of more refugees correlate with increased crime and sexual assault of young women?

How much more likely to sexually assault someone can an immigrant be before it becomes no-longer-xenophobic-and-ignorant to want them out? Are you Killkrazy considering say, "only 5 times more likely to rape" as not enough reason to be phobic and they deserve our sympathy, but perhaps "10 times more likely to rape" would be acceptable? What sort of indication would be "enough" for you to consider that maybe it's not racist to not want your young daughter surrounded by more people who would do her harm?

 ph34r wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The thing is, when you look at the rate at which European countries have been accepting refugees, it doesn't bear any relation to economic success and unemployment rates
Given these facts it is obvious that anti-immigrant, anti-refugee feelings are based on ignorance and xenophobia. A politician who goes along with this and takes political advantage is in a very bad moral position.

Ok, so no relation to economic success and unemployment rates. That's fine.


Does acceptance of more refugees correlate with increased crime and sexual assault of young women?

How much more likely to sexually assault someone can an immigrant be before it becomes no-longer-xenophobic-and-ignorant to want them out? Are you Killkrazy considering say, "only 5 times more likely to rape" as not enough reason to be phobic and they deserve our sympathy, but perhaps "10 times more likely to rape" would be acceptable? What sort of indication would be "enough" for you to consider that maybe it's not racist to not want your young daughter surrounded by more people who would do her harm?

I think that the statisc of the high number of Rapes in north countrys has been very mythified. I think that it has to do with the fact that the legislation about what is legally "rape" has been very expanded and a very insistent social campaing to make people more aware of what constitutes sexual assault in Sweden and similar countrys.

But you have a point. We can see cases of people don't persecuting crimes on inmigrants or refugees because they don't want to see as racist, like the ones in Germain in a music festival, etc... but to be honest, I don't think the reason to don't make those sexual assault public was fear about being called "racist"; but because it will be a very very bad PR case, and make them lose a lot of money.
And don't think by this that I'm defending muslims. I'm a defender of forced integration in social and legislative values for inmigrants of any kind, and cases like where one muslim was payed because he feel disrespected when his female-boss say that he need to give his hand to salute her are total absurd to me. I know people born un Morocco and other african countries that live in Spain and some of them are even muslism but are totally integrated, and their daugthers don't gear an hiyab and their parents don't do emotional pression to make them wear it, they are free to choose, but at the same time they don't eat pork.

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden

According to Brå, it is likely that as many as 80 per cent of all rapes are not reported, which was confirmed in a 2001 study of the extent of violence against women, funded by the Government of Sweden and the Crime Victim Compensation and Support Authority.[39][49]

Long before any Inmigration crisis.

EDIT: Ok, I have noticed now that this is totally offtopic, so I'm not gonna continue to discuss this issue here!