1 yr. ago • 92%

The Far Right Is Winning Europe’s Immigration Debate

foreignpolicy.com The Far Right Is Winning Europe’s Immigration Debate

Mainstream parties are adopting increasingly radical positions—at their own expense.

40 comments

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43
- You must be very young and/or naive, if you had lived through the Schröder/Fischer governments (or had informed yourself about them) you'd have known that neither the SPD nor the Greens are in any way left leaning.
  
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  or in case of the SPD you just had to look at most of the Merkel governments
  
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  neither the SPD nor the Greens are in any way left leaning
  
  Sad but true.
  
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  How the fuck is the green party not left leaning? What kind of no true scotsman shit is this?
  
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  To be fair here... They are as left as their third coalition partner allows. And that's entirely the fault of voters, who -even with the CDU underperforming and proposing a literal clown as chancellor- couldn't mananage to vote in a not-right majority. So why complain about not enough left policies now?
  
  I won't vote left and then I complain about missing left policies and decide to vote even more right isn't a sane thought pattern but just a symptom of brain damage.
  
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- "tightening", by reducing requirements for getting the German passport?
  
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Anti-immigration positions: 5 minutes to explain.

Pro-immigration positions: 45 minutes to explain.

Population of the world: Fucking huge.

Not sure how to solve this one.

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- Something something representative democracy, where politicians have a duty to deal with the complexities, in order to actually represent the peoples interests and not just the populist ones.
  
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  How do you do that when everything has to be in short slogans or people will have forgotten it by the time you are done talking?
  
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- Inalienable human rights. Bam, 2 seconds.
  
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Thing is, those who are against immigration are much more motivated. This is generally how politics goes, that a motivated minority can eventually get their way against a less-interested majority. As great as it is, that was largely what happened in the other direction with issues such as gay marriage.

For those who are anti-immigration this is often the only topic they care about, or they care much more about this than anything else. On the other hand, those who are pro-immigration are largely either mildly-favorable towards it or they care much more about other issues.

Personally I think that left-leaning parties in Europe basically have two options currently:

-Fight against anti-immigration stances and then lose power.

-Focus on other topics while getting tougher on immigration.

It might not be the smartest move to be anti-immigration, but unfortunately in a democracy feelings are usually more important than facts and one of the biggest issues with the left is not being able to accept that.----

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- If you aren't motivated then you probably don't have a job, family and don't give a fuck about your country.
  
  You probably don't let anyone to walk on your property but somehow your country is eh, who cares right? Some people come, some go, nothing bad will happen.
  
  "We're all people", how come those people identical to us can't get their shit together in their own country and need to leech free money from Germany then? Aren't we all people? Something tells me that they're not same people, because if they were, they'd be trying hard to fix their own country instead of quite literally invading and stealing from another.
  
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  I hope you had history lessons in school. Europe and the West are jointly responsible for the conditions in Africa and the Orient. My goodness, that's not even history, It's happening right now.
  
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  you don't own your country
  
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Fear is both easy to manipulate and an extremely powerful tool.

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but am want move to europe ._.

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- You’ve nailed speaking with an implied subject, so the Slavic countries could be a good fit.
  
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  because funny
  
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Calling it an immigration debate is a symptom itself, right? We're usually not talking about people coming here to study and to work, which would be immigration. Instead the debate is about asylum for refugees, whether refugees get individual human rights or if they can be treated in bulk with imposed limits, where they can be sent and who has to deal with them, who builds walls, whether they can be drowned in the mediterranean or if it's legitimate to shoot them at the borders, whether activists who rescue them from drowning are criminals.

Stop framing it as immigration, which is a bit in each country's purview to organize or not, and can indeed be debated. Here we're talking about human rights for human beings who are in a desperate situation and deserve every help they need and if we can't grant them that then we have failed our shared values, and our economic system and our political system are apparently unsuited for humanity and should be abolished. Refugees are welcome or you are an asshole and there cannot be any discussion about this, at all, in a modern democracy with human rights.

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I kinda wanna live in Europe though, because my country sucks. Now I'm gonna get hate from everyone.

And if you absolutely hate me and hate this statement, there's this downvote button that you can press. I feel like getting shamed today.

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Damn nazis are making a comeback?

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- Being anti immigration does NOT make you a nazi. It's this kind of us against them rhetoric that got us into this situation in the first place. It may make you a racist, but you can be racist and an asshole and still be a democrat and far from a nazi. The world isn't black and white, please grow up
  
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  Whatever you say, darling. That's a very nice nazi text you just wrote and proved my point.
  
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