Ebeneezer Goode
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You, yourself, have been claiming there is a migration crisis. I agree. I think people freezing to death in their thousands in camps around Western and Southern Europe is an atrocity - that people who seventy years ago said "never again" are now saying "well, maybe again, if the alternative is sacrificing a tiny sliver of our prosperity".
The fiction that Europe tells itself is that we are civilised. That's what we convinced ourselves as we conquered the world. It's the rationale people use to justify bombing people now.
We believe in human rights. We have values that have transcend our bestial nature - something that makes us fundamentally different to those who lock people in cages and set them on fire.
Obviously this is and always has been a lie. But it's a little bit galling to hear people who've trotted it out for years now going "ah, well, tribalism's in our nature" the minute tens of thousands of desperate people start freezing to death on our doorsteps.
Of course, even if tribalism were in our nature, a quick glance at history suggests it's not always wise. Look at the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. It was caused, in the first instance, by a crisis of refugees displaced into the Roman Empire by the Huns. The Empire's refusal to provide food to the refugees or give them land on which to resettle led to a revolt. Two years after that point, the Emperor was killed and a Roman Army destroyed at Adrianople, a quarter of a century from that point, Rome was sacked by Visigoths (the people who'd sought refuge), and a century later the Western Roman Empire was no more.
I'm pretty sure that "never again" is in reference to genocide and racial segregation and the like, not as some catch all term for a perceived lack of compassion. The notion that a state is responsible for itself and it's own is nothing new, and not at odds with slogans like "never again" I don't think. We didn't see a rejection of tribalism after the holocaust, just a healthier redefining of it away from race and ethnic background and toward the more pragmatic identity of nationality instead. We do need some substantive thread running through us to maintain a harmonious society though, which is probably why our passive European brand of multiculturalism is looking more and more like a failure.
And the fall of the Western Roman Empire is much more a straightforward lesson about military strength than it is a convoluted one about welcoming refugees. The simple fact is that while strong a tribalist civilization might fall, a passive one almost certainly will. Just ask the Native Americans.
" western society can't cope" " our culture will be swamped" " infrastructure will crumble" these arguments aren't new. The same thing has been said about every migration to Britain from the Huguenots to the Polish. My house is still standing, I can still get red wine in the shop and as far as I can tell the football is going ahead tomorrow. Anti immigration politics are dominated by the frightened and the bigoted.
While pro-immigration politics is dominated largely by the oblivious and insulated self-righteous bourgeoisie (dancing like puppets for the neoliberals), with a grasp of history seemingly measured in months not centuries. The track record of mass immigration is a grim one, and almost universally works out poorly for native populations. The higher the numbers and the less culturally compatible the worse it is (the protestant and anti-Louis XIV Huguenots were actually largely welcomed in England though, by the way).
For example if you don't think that mass Polish immigration has had a devastating effect on many people's lives then you're utterly detached from the plight of the working class, especially tradesmen. It's no fun being laid off or having your wages slashed because someone from Eastern Europe has come over and will work for peanuts. The cultural argument is not an unfair one either, as there are already self-segregating communities in the UK that are unrecognisably British, with some third generation migrants even less integrated than their grandparents were, a problem that's only worsening. And the strain on infrastructure, particularly housing and schools is hardly imaginary either. You could say that's a failing of the state for not spending the money to keep up, but you'd also have to just about wipe out your precious migrant tax revenue to do it.
It's not that the pro-immigration control side of the argument is concerned about nothing, it's that the pro-mass immigration side sets the bar so low that as long as they can get their wine and their house stays standing they couldn't give a fuck about anyone else (unless they're some form of minority).