The recent riots in France got the right-of-centre conservatives in the freedom movement blowing very hard on their dog whistles. What is to be done with THE IMMIGRANTS (!!)? they asked in chorus. Why, they asked, in the name of all that is good and holy, do they have to break the furniture every time a hardworking, long-suffering policeman shoots one of them in the back? The poor policemen would much prefer to do the decent thing and shoot them square in the face but THE IMMIGRANTS (!!) make it exceedingly difficult by running away.
As soon as the riots erupted, I prayed hard for large doses of courage and wisdom to resist being dragged into THE IMMIGRANT (!!) debate. As you can see, I lost that inner struggle when it became apparent that a large swathe of the alt media weren’t interested in actually analysing the issue. Instead, the French riots spoke to them, roused their good Christian hearts and instructed them to rifle through their drawers in search of their dog whistles.
An effective political dog-whistle is one that appeals to the greatest possible number of constituents while alienating the smallest possible number. By that measure, dog whistles about immigration tend to fail because they end up alienating a large number of people – and not just immigrants themselves, whose feelings and views are inconsequential to the dog whistlers. They also tend to fail because a dog whistle on immigration uses simplistic messaging for a complex and thorny subject.
Former Conservative Party leader Michael Howard found that out in 2005, when he fell flat on his face with the (in)famous “Are you thinking what we’re thinking” campaign slogan. As far as flagship election slogans go, let’s just say it wasn’t anywhere near as successful or clever as Thatcher’s 1979 “Labour’s not working”. Every dog-whistle slogan by definition has an “are-you-thinking-what-I’m-thinking” question subtly built into it. The dog whistle is designed to test acceptance of the unspoken message. A dog whistle is supposed to be subliminal messaging. Its power lies in the target audience ‘getting it’ without having to tell the whole world in blunt terms what ‘it’ is. Howard’s slogan was a dog whistle that announced itself with some fanfare and therefore wasn’t up to the job from the off.
And, rather hilariously, it was revealed during Howard’s 2005 campaign that his grandfather was, in all likelihood, an illegal immigrant. Howard’s father arrived legally as an economic migrant a year after his grandfather. Howard’s father then falsified details about his parents when he applied for British citizenship in 1947. After settling in Britain, Howard’s father, Mr Hecht, anglicised the family name. More about name-changing as a blending-in tactic when we discuss another famous Tory immigrant success story later. Suffice to say at this point that if the Royal Family, UK immigrant supremos, felt the pressure to change their name, we must have sympathy for immigrants who did it at a time when it was a lot tougher to be an immigrant in Britain.
I linked to the Wikipedia page of Prince Michael of Kent, whose mother was a Greek Princess by birth and who is married to Baroness von Reibnitz (born in Karlsbad, Greater German Reich), to illustrate that immigration is not a problem for the higher-ups. It’s a problem for the plebs.
In any event, Michael Howard was forced to admit that he did not know if his grandfather would have been allowed in under his party’s immigration plans. I rather suspect that the breaking of this story by an investigative journo was a significant factor in the Tories’ decision to drop the slogan midway into the campaign. It’s an instructive tale on how thorny the subject of immigration can be.
Here’s the 2005 “are you thinking what I’m thinking” campaign video:
In this first part of the series, I’ll set out my position on immigration generally. I think it’s a position that might please and then confuse the Right. And, coming from an immigrant, it may neutralise the Left’s laissez faire attitude to open borders.
In Part II, I’ll try to deconstruct some ‘analyses’ (yes, they’re that bad) of the French problem done by big hitters like Robert Malone in the US and TCW here in the UK, before going on to use their commentary as a counterpoint for presenting alternative ways of viewing the French problem of THE IMMIGRANTS (!!) in Part III.
The Plague-on-Both-Houses position on immigration
Let’s start with uncontrolled immigration, as opposed, of course, to controlled immigration. No-one likes anything ‘uncontrolled’, do they? Think of anything good in your life and then prefix it with the word ‘uncontrolled’. It’s instantly transformed into a menace to health, sanity, finances, you name it. To the Right, uncontrolled immigration describes inflows of poor, desperate people escaping wars and famine with no plan to be housed and fed on arrival, and arriving in large enough numbers to threaten national identity. I won’t belittle the idea of national identity, but suffice to say it’s a somewhat nebulous concept whose opacity does not preclude it from being cherished by the Right.
The Left has lost any concept of national identity, not because it is a nebulous concept, but because rather paradoxically, the Left is capable of embracing a thousand different identies all in one day. Identity politics is, after all, the bread and butter of the extremely addled and soft Left brain. To the Left, uncontrolled immigration represents psychological reparations for the past sins of colonialism and the current sins of supporting all wars started anywhere by anyone. Because that’s what the Left does these days – ‘leans in’ to war. All that is required to get the Left to support a war is to explain in earnest tones that some tyrant somewhere is threatening to ban Pride marches and that said tyrant must be stopped in the name of the gods of Diversity and Inclusion. At any rate, the Left’s position seems to be in sync with their position on the wars that fuel immigration – they like immigration because they like wars. If the Right doesn’t like immigration, it should stop liking wars. You can’t have it both ways.
Uncontrolled immigration is the 1.25 million Syrian refugees taken in by Germany between 2015 and 2016. Are they fully integrated and thriving? DW reports that only 50% are employed, and immigrants are disproportionately involved in violent crime. Hardly surprising if you’re going to have an immigration policy that has no basis in employment. Germany has decided to conduct a chicken-and-egg experiment on employment: which comes first – the job vacancy or the worker? At the moment, the jury’s still out with a 50% employment rate for the newcomers.
The Twitterati Right-leaning freedom movement would have you believe that Germany is now teeming with “no-go” areas where Germany’s fair maidens dare not venture unaccompanied for fear of being molested by THE IMMIGRANT (!!). I asked a friend – a white male American migrant to Germany who has lived there for 24 years – what to make of this Twitter news. His response was preceded by the question: “Are you referring to the 1 million Syrian refugees from 2015 or the 1 million Ukrainians from 2022?” I said I was asking about the Syrians. I had carelessly forgotten about the 1 million Ukrainians who recently fled to Germany in the wake of the war with Russia. We’re just one war away from the statue of Liberty being moved to Berlin. I want to be alive in 40 years from now to see how this amazing experiment works out. Holocaust guilt seems to have succeeded in making Germany the new melting pot of the world. Anyway here’s his response to the question of the immigrant menace to Germany’s female virtue:
“My contact is mostly with Syrians. They are not as integrated as say the Turks but they learned German very quickly due to integration classes that started about that time and they are in the workforce— and as a recruiter I talk to them daily. I’ve never seen or heard of no-go areas at all. The only areas I shy away from are the neo-Nazi ones in some parts of the east and I’m Berlin One area that sadly has a large population of Aussiedler (the ethnic group my father’s family belongs to) which also has a lot of ethnic Russians— it’s kind of tough there (though nothing compared to south Phoenix) [where he grew up in the US].”
Now, I’m not saying that ‘no-go’ areas don’t exist just because my German-American pal isn’t aware of them. That’s just my cursory and lazy foray into investigative journalism. Make of it what you will. And, at the risk of stereotyping, should we be surprised that the Germans can organise ‘integration’ classes at the drop of a hat for 1 million refugees? You just know for a fact that would never happen in Blighty.
Meanwhile, in the US, commentators are rending their garments over the immigration mayhem at the Southern border. I don’t need to tell you it’s a huge issue for them. But as we shall see in Part II, I think it was highly questionable of Robert Malone to project his US immigration fears onto an analysis of the French riots.
The idea that nations automatically have a moral duty to offer refuge to the world’s tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free is a sentiment prevalent on the Left, whose grasp of history in this regard appears to be very theoretical and abstract. Not so much on the Right, where there is perhaps a keener understanding of the role uncontrolled immigration has played in recent history.
The Right perhaps understands that it was uncontrolled immigration into the US colonies from Europe that ultimately led to the genocide of the indigenous Native American people who had inhabited the continent for some 15,000 years before the arrival of Davy Crockett and his merry band of gunslingers. The Right perhaps has a good working knowledge of the role that uncontrolled British immigration into Australia played in the genocide of the Australian aboriginal people who had inhabited that continent for some 65,000 years and now make up only 3.8% of Australia’s population.
That’s a good place to begin a conversation about replacement, although I’m sure we could go further back. It’s a concept, and practice, as old as the hills. The demographic shift forced on Northern Ireland in the 1650s by Oliver Cromwell’s plantations reverberates today.
The Right perhaps understands only too well how uncontrolled immigration saw the Jewish population in Palestine go from less than 10% at the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to around 30% by 1939. In 1948, that 30% then succeeded in establishing the Jewish state of Israel, resulting in the ethnic cleansing of some 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland. Today, Palestinians are now herded into the wretched Bantustans of Gaza (described correctly as a prison camp by David Cameron during his time as PM) and the West Bank.
And then of course there’s the story of how uncontrolled immigration into Africa, mainly from Britain, resulted in brutal colonial rule and apartheid there. I grew up in a country that suffered from the effects of uncontrolled immigration from Britain – Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.
To acknowledge the role uncontrolled immigration played in the above disasters is to accept that uncontrolled immigration is dangerous and understandably frightening to people who have a good grasp of history. It’s not racist to point out that basic truth. And nor is replacement theory such an outlandish proposition given that Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, New Zealand’s Maori and Palestinians have all been replaced by uncontrolled immigration. Replacement theory is neither new nor a theory.
I do have some problems with some of Tucker Carlson’s confused framing of it, though. He says that “the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate…with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World”. [Emphasis added] He assumes that the “obedience” he ascribes to ‘voters from the Third World’ will translate into electoral allegiance to the party that made it possible for them to enter the US. When put like that, it makes sense – why would immigrants vote for the party that promises to put them on the first flight/bus back home? But he also says these very same new voters “have shown absolute contempt for our customs, our laws, our system itself”, which doesn’t make them obedient at all, does it? And this confusion encapsulates one of my biggest beefs with the Right-leaning section of the freedom movement – its instinctive deference to authority and how the violent lurch towards totalitarianism has got them terribly confused about how to oppose illegitimate authority.
So immigrants are obedient when they’re supposed to be disobedient, and disobedient when they’re supposed to be obedient! In the case of the French riots, which we’ll explore in Part II, it’s the latter, according to some Right-leaning pundits. But if some immigrant populations have a proclivity to disobedience stemming from unaddressed grievances, isn’t this actually an asset to be harnessed in light of the growing need to resist illegitimate authority?
In any event, the memory of the dangers of uncontrolled immigration have not been forgotten by the Right. Their fears are grounded in hard historical evidence, and I empathise with them because, with a knowledge of history (especially a working knowledge in my case), it’s not difficult to put the shoe on the other foot. If I can’t condone or apologise for any of the uncontrolled immigration horrors cited above, how could I possibly condone uncontrolled immigration occurring today in the West? So, here I am, an IMMIGRANT (!!), railing against uncontrolled immigration.
This writer says that Britain “did rather well out of its colonies” and should therefore maintain a stiff upper lip about immigration into Britain. That’s arguing for two wrongs making a right and, in any case, the countries losing the migrants don’t benefit. They actually lose, so reverse immigration is not a form of reparations. If Africa sought a financial settlement for the damage wrought by uncontrolled colonial immigration, I would have no problem with it unilaterally cancelling its debts to the IMF and other Western institutions of global financial slavery. But ultimately, the best revenge would be living well, and Africa hasn’t yet figured that out.
Global South economies experience significant remissions from overseas migrant workers in the North. I still think that this results in a net loss to the South since the inflows are not a productivity inflow. UKIPers also often like to argue in favour of severe limits to immigration on the grounds that they are motivated by not wanting to deprive poor countries of their best and brightest. But I think it’s disingenuous of them to take this line since I doubt very much if they’re motivated by concerns about brain drains in other countries. They should just be honest and admit that they fear the consequence of what they see as uncontrolled immigration.
So that’s my view on bad immigration. What is good immigration?
In a nutshell, a good immigrant, insofar as one can exist in the eyes of the anti-immigrant Right, is someone who hits the ground running. Someone who has been ‘invited’ in to fill a need in the employment market. Someone who has a roof over their head and a meal waiting for them, not provided by the taxpayers of the destination country, and either a job or enough of their own money to tide them over until they find one. A good immigrant in the initial stages of their stay is essentially a working tourist. Crucially, good immigration remains good provided it remains sufficiently below the radar. That’s a limit that is hard to define but, if you’re Nigel Farage, it’s the point at which you start to notice too many foreign languages being spoken on your train commute.
The other big indicator that good immigration has gone too far is when people start complaining about stolen jobs. I have some sympathy for this, but I wish to assure readers that I am an extremely lazy person so, for me to have successfully stolen another person’s job, they must have been getting out of bed at 1pm and reporting for duty at 3pm. But to be clear, putting aside my pitiful productivity, I have always supported myself through paid employment and never received or claimed a state handout of any kind. I humbly put it to you, ladies and gentlemen, that I am a textbook good immigrant. For now. But enough about me.
One final important point to make about immigration – it’s not going away, unless of course the psychopaths in charge of global affairs successfully institute their climate catastrophe agenda by keeping the entire planet penned in like obedient sheep in their 15-minute ‘smart’ cities with car and air travel successfully terminated. Immigration has been around for as long as humans have had legs and the desire to see what’s on the other side. If you really want to stop immigration, then go and team up with the WEF transhumanists and work on a brain-chip implant that neuters the human desire for adventure and change.
In Part II, I’ll pick apart commentary by the Right-leaning independent media who seized on the French riots as the perfect vehicle to illustrate the evils of immigration. Are they right?
Well it certainly is not ahistorical to point out that what you call “uncontrolled immigration,” given your examples, is not immigration at all but conquest. It’s qualitatively different to come to a place armed to the teeth for the purpose of grabbing land or resources or enslaving the population, than to come to a place with little in your pocket trying to get a job or escape (as you rightly say) war in your own country. So, calling conquest immigration further obscures the issue. which, is, as you say, already complicated.
A more considered response:
https://plagueonbothhouses.substack.com/p/a-readers-comment-on-whos-afraid
Disagree. Uncontrolled immigration was integral to those conquests. The indigenous populations never wanted that flood of immigration. Much of it started out as benign too. Bible in hand etc, exploration. Once a power vacuum in the destination lands was perceived, it was exploited. They are classic examples of the consequences of uncontrolled immigration. The idea of Europeans arriving in those lands “armed to the teeth” is also a caricatured representation of what took place. European Jews arriving in Palestine between 1896 and 1939 were not “armed to the teeth”. You call it “conquest immigration”. From the perspective of people on the sharp end of it, it’s still uncontrolled.
I called it conquest, not conquest immigration. “calling conquest immigration” was meant to say I would NOT call conquest, “immigration.” And of course the indigenous populations didn’t want it– that was my point. In fact they were mostly killed off here in the Americas. So it was indeed conquest, and genocide, even early on, at least here in the Americas, Columbus to Puritans, for gold or God. It wasn’t immigration. It was most certainly “uncontrolled.” and it wore a benign face LATER, not earlier (with reservations, trade, etc.) But comparing it to immigration today really obfuscates the issue in a way that doesn’t support the argument.
There is an example that is slightly different, and that’s the French fur traders in late 17th early 18th cent, in GENERAL they came to trade and intermarried with the Native population. That could perhaps be called immigration, because a lot of assimilation went on on both sides, and, due to the nature of the fur trade, they were not settling on or stealing land.
Anyway, I stick to my argument above. Mostly it was Euro conquest of the Americas.
Does not the ruling class keeps the inflow of illegal immigrants alive to keep a pool of low waged, insecure labor force ready for keeping the wages low in general low then?