You might have noticed that mass migration to the West is a huge problem.
It is very bad for native Westerners, because it promises to transform our societies utterly, in permanent ways and not for the better. Curiously, it is also far from great for the centre-Left political establishment responsible for promoting mass migration, because it has inspired a vast wave of popular opposition and filled the sails of Right-leaning, migration restrictionist parties with new wind. Mass migration is also bad for taxpayers, for domestic security, for the welfare state, for many other aspects of the postwar liberal agenda and for our own future prospects. In short, mass migration is bad for almost everybody and everything.
There is a reason that nations have borders, and this is much the same reason that we have skin and that cells have membranes. You won’t survive for very long if you can’t control what enters you.
Despite the obvious fact that mass migration is bad, our rulers cling to migrationism like grim death. Given a choice between disincentivising asylees and intimidating, browbeating and harassing the millions of anti-migrationists among their own citizens, our governments generally choose the latter path, even though it is obviously the worse of the two.
Additionally unsettling is the fact that official justifications for mass migration often have a creepy, post hoc flavour about them. They sound much more like excuses dreamed up after the borders had already been opened, rather than any kind of reason mass migration must occur. When the migrationists really started to go crazy in 2015, for example, we were told that border security was simply impossible in the modern world and that infinity migrants were a force of nature we would have to deal with. That didn’t sound right even at the time, and since the pandemic border closures we no longer hear the inevitability narrative very much, although – and this is very bizarre to type – there is some evidence that high political figures like Angela Merkel believed it at the time. It is well worth thinking about why that might have been the case.
Another excuse that doesn’t make very much sense is what I’ll call the refugee thesis. We’re told that millions of poor people are forced to endure terrible conditions in the developing world and that it is our moral burden to improve their lot by granting them residence in our countries. That might convince a few teenage girls, but it cannot withstand scrutiny among the rest of us. To begin with, the population of global unfortunates is enormous; the millions of refugees we have already accepted, and the millions that our politicians hope to welcome in the coming years, represent but a vanishing minority – a rounding error – compared to the vast sea of human suffering. It is like trying to solve homelessness by demanding that those in the wealthiest neighbourhoods make their spare bedrooms available to the indigent. Even more telling, however, is that the push to welcome migrants comes precisely as conditions in the developing world have dramatically improved. When things were much worse, we sealed our borders against the Global South; now that they are much better, we hear all about how unacceptably inhumane it is to leave the migrants in their native lands.
Other post hoc arguments, especially those falling in the yay-multiculturalism category, are even less serious. That we need more diversity to ‘spark innovation’ (whatever that means) or that our local cuisines stand to benefit from the spices of the disadvantaged are excuses of such towering stupidity that you will lose brain cells thinking about them. As with the refugee narrative, nobody said crazy stuff like this until the migrants had already begun arriving on our shores. And there is another thing to notice about the multiculticult too. This is its blatant flippancy. The premise seems to be that migration is no big deal bro, but also too there are these cool exciting and totally random upsides, like improved local Ethiopian food offerings. It is the very definition of damning with faint praise.
From fake excuses, we progress to real causes. I am anxious to hear your theories, and perhaps I’ll provide another post on this theme compiling the most interesting of them.
For myself, I see two interrelated and mutually supporting factors:
Demographic decline and labour shortages: I know I know, nobody likes this theory, but hear me out. It’s hard to miss the coincidence between the post-baby-boom demographic decline of Western nations and their escalating distaste for border security. Countries like Germany face a difficult future of labour shortages and insolvent pension programmes, as each subsequent generation must support an ever larger number of retirees. Here politicians find themselves between a rock and another even harder rock. Older generations vote at very high rates, and proposals to abridge their pensions or raise the retirement age amount to political suicide, especially for establishment parties with fading constituencies made up primarily of olds. On the other hand, demanding that youngs sacrifice ever larger shares of their salaries to keep older generations healthy and hale is a very hard sell, particularly because these youngs must realise sooner or later that there aren’t going to be any pension programmes at all when they retire. If only politicians could conjure into existence a vast pool of younger guest workers, who might redress labour shortages and fund pensions without having much recourse at the ballot box, everything would be happy and solvent again.
I submit that it’s not that crazy on the face of it. To begin with, the migrationists themselves often talk about these very things. You can turn on the television at any moment and hear a captain of industry railing against the AfD for the threat they pose to the labour market. What is more, there is some precedent. Many Western countries experimented with mass migration for the first time during postwar economic expansion, precisely to redress labour shortages. Germany welcomed guest workers first from Italy and then from Turkey to sustain its economic miracle, and this thinking is still very much alive in some quarters.
This cannot, however, be a Total Theory of Mass Migration. Far from contributing to the welfare state, our new guests burden it disproportionately, largely because they do not find work at anything like the same rates as natives, and also because when they do find work, it is mostly in low-skilled, poorly paid positions. Crucially, this is not all their fault: many European countries, and Germany in particular, have long-established protections for native workers in the form of licences, certifications, educational requirements and the like. We have done everything to keep our borders open, while leaving these protections almost entirely in place. That does not make very much sense, but it is also the kind of idiocy we have come to expect from our late-stage managerial bureaucracy, which has serious problems with coordination and prefers approaches that do not require much effort (neglecting border security) over those that would entail some vision and initiative (rethinking worker qualifications).
After much pondering, I would propose this thesis: the labour-shortage justification is not sufficient in itself, nor is it the real aim of migrationist policies in general. It has been crucial, however, in getting a certain kind of fiscally observant, centre-Right politician on board with the programme, and in this way it has helped to make migrationism a consensus policy.
The universalist vision: both postwar liberalism and leftism have developed a towering impatience with the autonomous politics of the nation state, and necessarily also with national borders. These are ideologies that make moral claims for all of humanity, with adherents who prefer to see themselves not so much as leaders of particular nations but as members of an international elite bent on solving global problems. Mass migration is merely one aspect of these elites’ broader, longstanding preoccupation with the developing world, which is also expressed via massive foreign aid payments, hugely expensive state-funded philanthropic endeavours and even a general cultural (and moral) elevation of all that is poor, non-Western and not-us.
All successful ideological principles have some real-world utility, and the pragmatic advantage of theoretical universalism lies in the high-low alliance. Politicians, particularly on the Left, secure their power by cultivating clients at the bottom of society, to whom they promise some of the vast wealth and privileges that have been accumulated by the middle. In earlier generations, they could form these alliances with the native working classes, which explains the political importance of labour movements. As Western prosperity has increased, however, our own workers have identified increasingly with the (Right-leaning) middle of society, abandoning their client roles. Many of our countries have further obliterated their native political clients by outsourcing industrial production to overseas trade partners like China. Changes at the bottom portend changes at the top, and so there ensued the near-total transformation of the Left. Old workers’ parties like the Social Democrats in Germany have entered a long era of terminal decline, with new fashionable Green parties rising to take their place. The latter have a different agenda that looks beyond workers to address problems like climate change and the dangers of nuclear energy, but in the end this novel focus did not free them from their hunger for low-side allies. Lacking native disadvantaged peoples, they have elected to import foreign disadvantaged peoples instead.
This, I think, explains a great deal, and resolves many of the problems with the labour-shortage thesis. It explains why the hurdles to citizenship have to be lowered for our new arrivals, although this is far from optimal for our pension-plan funders. It also explains why the borders cannot be closed even as the migrants have proven that they will never solve our demographic problems.
The migrationist vision is maddeningly short-sighted. Migrants will bankrupt the welfare state before they ever fund our pension plans, and massive changes at the bottom of society will most likely wipe out the Left as we know it – however many election cycles establishment politicians hope to win with migrant support in the meantime. In Germany, the rise of Alternative für Deutschland has caused some in the centre-Left establishment to wonder whether mass migration is such a great idea after all, but as with all policies, this one has a terrible inertia behind it. A formidable body of jurisprudence now mandates open borders and makes rejecting asylees essentially impossible. The establishment parties have filled with rabid migrationists, and they have entangled themselves with a wide array of refugee-promoting philanthropic enterprises and NGOs. Social entitlements paid to migrants have become an occasion for a new kind of self-perpetuating corruption, funding an international migrant-smuggling industry that has in turn developed its own symbiotic relationships with migration activists and politicians. It is a massive mess.
As with everything else our managerial states do, migration has become an end in itself, increasingly independent of any real purpose. We welcome migrants because we have developed complex bureaucratic procedures, systems and incentive structures that are designed to welcome migrants, and because all manner of careers and funding are now premised on the project of mass migration.
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“The paper mills helping China commit scientific fraud”
At medical school one of my tutors mocked the faith healer Harry Edwards for writing in a book, “Cancer of the prostrate [sic] is very rare in women.” Lo and behold, it’s now mainstream science.
https://neweasterneurope.eu/2018/12/10/holodomor-2018-public-scholars/
Yesterday was Holodomor commemoration day.
‘The reports that Muggeridge and Jones sent to the UK on their return from the Soviet Union about the Holodomor (this name was not used until the 1990s, and the atrocity was usually referred to as an “artificial” or “man-made” famine) were met with disbelief and attacked in the left-wing press.
Significantly, Orwell emphasized that the famine Jones had uncovered was centred on Ukraine, and even gave an estimate of the number of victims. He wrote: “The years Mr. Lyons spent in Russia were years of appalling privation, culminating in the Ukrainian famine of 1933, [during] which it is estimated that no less than three million people died of starvation.
Orwell was impressed by what he learnt from Lyons’ book about what Jones’ had done. He is certain to have used this information, and everything he later learnt from Muggeridge about the famine and the USSR, when writing his classic Animal Farm.
When Orwell heard on the radio that all the male inhabitants of the Czech village of Ladice had been shot as punishment for harbouring the assassins of Gestapo chief Rienhard Heydrich, he drew up his own list of the worst atrocities after 1918 atrocities. He included the “Ukraine famine” among them.
In his 1945 essay “The Prevention of Literature”, Orwell wrote: “The fog of lies and misinformation which surrounds such subjects as the famine in the Ukraine, the Spanish Civil War, Russian policy in Poland, etc., is not entirely due to deliberate dishonesty”,” but is tantamount to active collusion with the Kremlin.
Today we can extend this to Russia’s disinformation and fake news about its genocidal war against Ukraine and its 1984-like regime that tolerates no dissent and worships “Big Brother” Putin.
And also, to those who seek a cynical deal with despotic Russia at Ukraine’s expense and forget the lessons of the Holodomor, Guernica, World War II, 1984, MH17, Bucha, Mariupol and the existence of the hostile anti-democratic alliance of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.’
Hardly any wonder that Ukraine fights on……
‘In the Kursk region, missile and UAV threats persisted for several hours. Witnesses reported nearly continuous air defense activity and the sound of explosions. The Governor of the Kursk region, Alexey Smirnov, reported an alleged interception of 27 UAVs and two missiles in the skies over the region.’
Other sources suggest the enemy may be employing ATACMS missiles
https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1860470535060124154?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
Do you really believe that anyone cares about Ukraine in the West? USA? UK? EU? Do they care one iota about the country and its people, or do they only care about serving USA’s determination to retain global hegemony, while USA additionally wants to weaken Russia for future exploitation.
The Ukrainian ex-President has literally sold out his country: BlackRock is the new owner of Europe’s ‘bread basket’, whereby Zelensky and his fellow dictators are rolling in cash. Poroshenko’s income has increased 25-fold since the beginning of the war. Zelensky himself is now the owner of numerous luxury residences around the world.
Anyone who seriously supports the people of Ukraine would stop the hostilities immediately. The price will be denazification of the current government and military as well as an agreement never to join NATO. Is that so bad? Eastern Ukraine will remain in Russian hands but your Banderites always wanted rid of the ethnic Russians there anyway. It would be wise to surrender now before Odessa is lost, thereby removing access to the Black Sea. Each day of conflict is costing thousands of Ukrainian lives and those lives can never be won back.
U.S. strategy, Ukraine
“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
That meant Russia should “not have the capability to very quickly reproduce” the forces and equipment that had been lost in Ukraine.’
Russia strategy, Ukraine
Nothing scares a Russian autocrat more than a democratic Ukraine, because if Ukrainians can build a democracy, then the supposedly fraternal Russian people might too. Thus, combined, identity, security, and the interaction between the two drive Russia’s policies towards Ukraine since the 19th century. And demography.
Of the two, only the first one is succeeding. That is because of corruption and incompetence.
Even the latest ‘super weapon’ (a bit like the V2) is useless.
‘Russian bloggers note the alleged absence of damage to the Yuzhmash plant in Dnipro, which was attacked by the mega-missile “Oreshnik,” something the so-called president of Russia has been boasting about for days:
“November 24, 2024
Dnipro, Ukraine
Satellite images of Yuzhmash, which was struck by the “Oreshnik” missile, have surfaced.
The workshops are intact; nothing has been “reduced to dust.” However, it seems the private residential area above took some damage.”
Not many Western leaders take Putin seriously any longer. Maybe they should, but they don’t and, to get their attention, he will have to destroy Russia…..and they know that he will not do that…..although the inhabitants of Kursk are less sanguine.
https://www.lse.ac.uk/International-History/Events/2024/Intent-to-Destroy-Russia's-Two-Hundred-Year-Quest-to-Dominate-Ukraine-Cold-War-Studies-Project-Seminar
‘What drives Russia’s violence in and against Ukraine from the 19th century to 2024?
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is the single most important event in Europe since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. It is also arguably the major global geopolitical development since 9/11. Prof Finkel’s main argument is that violence and repression are deeply rooted in the history of Russo-Ukrainian relations. Since the mid-19th century, dominating Ukraine and denying Ukrainians an independent identity, let alone a state, has been the cornerstone of Imperial, Soviet and eventually, post-Soviet Russian policies.
More specifically, Prof Finkel will show that Russian and Soviet policies were driven by two factors: identity and security. The idea of the shared origin and fraternity of Russians and Ukrainians is a staple of Russian self-perception and historiography. The second key factor is security. Western powers often passed through Ukraine to attack Russia; Ukraine’s fertile soil was crucial to feeding and funding the Russian and Soviet Empires. Even more than geopolitics, it was regime stability that drove Moscow and St. Petersburg’s obsessive focus on Ukraine.
Nothing scares a Russian autocrat more than a democratic Ukraine, because if Ukrainians can build a democracy, then the supposedly fraternal Russian people might too. Thus, combined, identity, security, and the interaction between the two drive Russia’s policies towards Ukraine since the 19th century.’
And, to that, I would add demography.
In 1991, Solzhenitsyn said that Ukraine’s independence meant that Russia ‘lost twelve million Russians and 23 million more Russian speakers’.
In 2000, Putin said this:
‘And, if you believe the forecasts and the estimates are based on actual work, the real work of people who understand this, who have devoted their whole lives to this, in 15 years, there may be 22 million fewer Russians. I ask you to think about this figure: a seventh of the country’s population. If the current trend continues, the nation’s survival will be in jeopardy’
Russia has had a ‘Ukraine problem’ since the mid 19th Century.
NATO was only founded in 1945.
More complete nonsense. Firstly, Ukraine was part of the USSR. Secondly, Russia and Ukraine were working side by side all the years since the USSR until USA stepped in and set up the Maidan Coup. Instead of your daily tirades against Russia, you should be attacking USA for the death and destruction they have brought to Ukraine. Istanbul was Ukraine’s finest chance of peace with minimal losses but, no, Zelensky believed in sacrificing his country for what, a chance to join the outdated NATO, the dictatorial EU?
But, fortunately, Putin is not expecting Western leaders to take him seriously.
‘Why make these same claims time and again when the Kremlin has no intention of following through on them?
The escalatory rhetoric plays extremely well with the vocal nationalist crowd on digital platforms like Telegram, a popular source for consumption of news in Russia. On state-run Telegram channels, reports of the Kremlin’s braggadocio often cause excitable pile-ons in comment threads.’
Ian Garner
So just a dotty load of vodka soaked old duffers then…….
Blimey, the numbers on that petition are moving fast! Of course they are not going to call another GE, but it does send a message, and they will have to respond to it.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700143
Just shy of 450k at 10:12 am.
Now 516k (11:05 am)
I reckon it will be at a million by the end of the day.
It looks as though you may be right: now 720k (1:20 pm)
It passed one million at 4.00 pm.
A lot of “buyer’s remorse” here, I would guess.
Much as I would like there to be a new election, it seems obvious o me that the e-petitions site has been got-at by ‘bots’. When I first looked at it it was on 278 thousand ‘signatures’, In the length of time my tea took to brew it reached 280 thousand. It’s now (08:52 UK time) on over 327 thousand. Unfortunately this gives Sir Keir’s mob excellent justification to ignore the petition.
If they are this easy to be got at by bots how do we know if any petitions are valid?
What’s the point of them?
We don’t.
09:52 350,259 ‘signatures’
There were 28,809,340 votes cast out of an electorate of 48,253,193 in the 2024 GE. So apparently the petition is signed by 1.2% of the turnout at the GE or 0.72% of the whole electorate. I don’t think that many people have heard of the e-petition site.
Dammit. That was supposed to be 09:12 350,259 ‘signatures’. In other words 20 mins after my 08:52 comment.
But they are experiencing labour’s gov!
Maybe they are looking for some way to be heard?
This might just be the vent of their spleens they’ve been looking for?
The British are just realising how much they have been shat upon in such a short period of time!
Over a million signatories now (16:40 UK time). @Valerie_London (below) pointed out that the map of where the signatories claim to be from is consistent with Labour heartlands not voting for it. I hope it’s real! Over 3.7% of the votes cast at the last GE.
I’m certainly not offended by your (later) comment above. I hope nobody else is either!
Is it not necessary to confirm ones vote after first doing so.
Yes it is. I’ve just done so. That makes bot voting more difficult. Besides, why doubt the depth and severity of hatred for the Labour branch of the elites.
Indeed, there is plenty of it out there it seems.
Yes, they’re hated but far too many think they’re better than the alternative(s).
Why doubt the e-petition votes? To be well prepared when the inevitable ‘we considered debating it but decided against’ response comes down from Parliament.
(My emphasis)
You do have to verify your email address before voting. If it helps, here is their map of signature locators. https://petitionmap.unboxedconsulting.com/?petition=700143
Interesting view.- I see the north is very well represented…
My permanently Labour London borough has very low numbers…
Interesting. If it was ‘bots’ I would have expected a more even distribution. We can hope it’s real. At 12:13 it was at 619,295, 2.1% of the number of votes cast at the 2024 GE.
I note Aunty Beeb hasn’t covered it – I wonder why?
Soundofreason,
Maybe Real people are this pissed off at labour’s lies?
Maybe you’ll get your wish and it is real people after all?
850000 and counting, at time of comment!
This could go viral!
I agree it might not change anything, but it’s a hell of a kick in the bollocks to Starmer!
Sorry about the profanity, I unreservedly apologise. Touch of the vapours!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/23/climate-change-weekly-526-some-suggestions-on-climate-and-environmental-policy-for-the-new-sheriff-in-town/
Notes on U.S. Climate/Energy policies that may be useful for an incoming centre right government in Britain to emulate:
‘1. Paris Climate Treaty and Endangerment Finding. Repeal the Obama/Biden EPA determination that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are threats to the public health and welfare (the “endangerment finding”).
2. EV mandate and California waiver. Request legislation clarifying that the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA)
3. Green New Scam and Grid Security. Ask Congress to repeal all the energy subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act through budget reconciliation. For national and economic security purposes, bar electricity grid reliance on variable sources of electricity generation such as wind and solar.
4. Oil and Gas. Lift moratoria on offshore drilling in areas put off limits by prior presidents. Reverse the Biden moratorium on federal leasing for coal mining. Streamline the permitting process for energy production. End the Biden moratorium on LNG export terminals.
5. Presidential Appointments. Appoint officials at federal agencies like EPA, Interior, DoE, FERC, and other key agencies that will aggressively permit new oil and gas pipelines, LNG terminals, and other infrastructure required for producing oil, gas, and coal. Streamline the permitting process. Terminate all existing federal science advisory boards and reconstitute only those that are legally required. Appoint qualified and pro-energy individuals to the boards.
6. Offshore Wind. Offshore wind developers, which happen to be foreign companies in most instances, threaten consumers, endangered species, and iconic maritime communities whose prosperity depends on the fishing. The industrialization of fisheries by offshore wind development should be terminated by delisting unleased wind energy areas.
7. Coal. Repeal all the anti-coal regulatory actions of the Biden administration and promote coal as a preferred means of producing electricity. Commence a review of related air quality regulations issued by EPA.
8. Litigation. Re-staff the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division attorneys who will zealously defend administration priorities.
9. Regulatory Reform. Request legislation to require that federal courts no longer defer to regulatory agencies on scientific matters.
10. Regulatory Burden. Require congressional authorization of regulations with a significant economic impact, including but not limited to those with an economic impact of $100 million or more.’
Simply delete ‘Congress’ and insert ‘Parliament’.
I checked Miri AF last night and found this excellent piece…
https://miriaf.co.uk/invasion-of-the-flat-snatchers-2/
Huddersfield Council have “sequestered” shall we say some student accommodation just outside Huddersfield centre and it will be used to accommodate 400 immigrants. Doubtless as Miri suggests these immies will be single, male and in the age range 18-40 i.e 400 soldiers.
I have just been informed that Oldham Council have been given a seven storey ex DWP building in the centre of town complete with tram stop. No information on its likely use but I suspect something similar to Huddersfield.
Another clampdown looks likely but this time ‘policed’ by mercenaries. So me banging on about an invading army for over three years is beginning to look bang on.
The petition for a general election has now got nearly an astonishing 500,000 signatures. If you haven’t already done so, do consider signing: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700143.
Duly signed and shared widely.
I do suspect we are shouting at the moon however. 2TK knows he and his “government” are detested but doesn’t care, hence the importing of hundreds of thousands of voters.
Nothing less than the subversion of democracy, as we are seeing in Europe.
According to Lloyd Austin about N Korean soldiers “Based on what they have been trained to do, and how they have been integrated into Russian formations, I am absolutely certain that these soldiers will soon be taking part in combat operations,”
Oh, so they are not there yet. What a surprise.