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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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Anybody who has qualms with these developments is a racist white supremacist and no true progressive. Those who object to the rise in immigration are dogwhistling xenophobes who are covertly advocating for racist policies and non-inclusion of marginalized ethnic minorities.

Liam Kofi Bright has written that "the culture war is sustained by a material inequality that no one is seriously trying to fix" - except for Trudeau, who has done more to fix this imbalance in the distribution of resources between whites and colored people people of colour than any other Prime Minister in the history of this country.

Any progressive who is actually serious about effecting social change (and not merely screaming about it on the internet or using the ideology as a cudgel to beat their enemies into submission) would "give away their property and superior opportunities" to marginalized groups to actually bring an end to systemic inequality. This includes, yes, giving hard-working immigrants from the third world, who did not grow up with the white privilege of an upbringing in a materially wealthy nation with superior access to education and career opportunities, a chance to improve their lives in Canada.

If anything, the growing disdain with the policies of the Trudeau administration is revealing that when push comes to shove, and white progressives are asked to make material sacrifices to uphold and stick to their principles, they immediately step down from their high pulpit of moral superiority and inclusivity. There is no free lunch, and this is what it takes to ensure that marginalized groups can also get a slice of the pie; you cannot have your cake and eat it too by simultaneously demanding material equity and then crying when those same materials, resources, and opportunities are redistributed against your favour. This is the exact dynamic Liam Kofi Bright outlines in the previously linked paper, "White Psychodrama." White progressives should either put up, grin and bear the cost of the very same social justice they demanded through bloody cancellation and mob invective, or end the charade and shut the fuck up.

disproportionately low skill

compete with young Canadians

This sounds more like an indictment of young Canadians, their lack of skills, and their inability to compete in the marketplace with those who will do their exact same entry-level service job, except for lower pay, and for longer hours. Immigrants are hard-working, ambitious, and (possibly even literally) hungry for success. Their lack of access to said opportunities instills within them a greater work ethic and drive to succeed when they don't have the Bank of White Mummy and Daddy to catch them when they fall after their six-year all expenses paid academic career in Theatrical Non-Binary Basket Weaving fails to take off. Why should white Canadians feel that their white privilege of being born in a deeply racist country entitles them to continue upholding the institutions of racism by denying ethnic minorities a job that they can do just as well as a white? What entitles these already privileged whites to a job over minorities?

Prime Minister Trudeau gave an interview where he said: “Housing needs to retain its value. It’s a huge part of people’s potential retirement and future and nest egg.

As an ethnic minority homeowner, I agree, and I refuse to let whites claw back the very same resources they loudly and proudly proclaimed they wanted to redistribute to marginalized folk like myself.

If anything, the growing disdain with the policies of the Trudeau administration is revealing that when push comes to shove, and white progressives are asked to make material sacrifices to uphold and stick to their principles, they immediately step down from their high pulpit of moral superiority and inclusivity. There is no free lunch, and this is what it takes to ensure that marginalized groups can also get a slice of the pie; you cannot have your cake and eat it too by simultaneously demanding material equity and then crying when those same materials, resources, and opportunities are redistributed against your favour. This is the exact dynamic Liam Kofi Bright outlines in the previously linked paper, "White Psychodrama." White progressives should either put up, grin and bear the cost of the very same social justice they demanded through bloody cancellation and mob invective, or end the charade and shut the fuck up.

What I suspect in this case is something like what’s happening in the USA. The elites want the immigrants to drive up costs of goods (increased population leading to increased demand) and to hold down wages. This is how immigrants tend to improve the economy of the country they go to. On the one hand, as new arrivals, they’d need housing, and all the stuff that comes with it. They will need furniture, vehicles, clothes, shoes, kids need school supplies etc. probably toys. So the price of these things go up because suddenly you have doubled the size of the town and thus driven up demand. At the same time, their expectations for wages are dirt cheap— and this delights the business owners who can now bid down the cost of labor (and BONUS! Get points for your work to increase diversity) and even skimp on safety and health rules as third world countries have poor conditions and the workers aren’t going to complain about treatment that while bad by first world standards is wonderful for people used to poor conditions at the workplace. OSHA (and the Canadian equivalent) don’t exist in most developing countries.

So the benefits are the support depends very much on which side of the class divide you sit on. If you’re part of the investment class, immigration is net positive. The stocks will go up, GDP goes up, labor becomes cheaper and more compliant. If your on the working class side, your wages stagnate, your costs go up, your kids are denied opportunities for work (to make room for the cheaper and more compliant immigrant population who won’t complain or ask for raises) their schools spend more effort to teach immigrants English than getting your kids prepared for life after high school.

And there is the reason for the lack of support. It’s a battle between the beneficiary class who wants all these immigrants and the benefits they offer to their social class, vs the working class that all of this is happening too. They don’t like that their wages aren’t going up, or that the new immigrants are allowing dirty and dangerous conditions on the job. They don’t like the resources that should be going to the school computer lab instead being shunted to hiring scores of ESL teachers and textbooks written in whatever language the kids speak.

This sounds more like an indictment of young Canadians, their lack of skills, and their inability to compete in the marketplace with those who will do their exact same entry-level service job, except for lower pay, and for longer hours. Immigrants are hard-working, ambitious, and (possibly even literally) hungry for success. Their lack of access to said opportunities instills within them a greater work ethic and drive to succeed when they don't have the Bank of White Mummy and Daddy to catch them when they fall after their six-year all expenses paid academic career in Theatrical Non-Binary Basket Weaving fails to take off. Why should white Canadians feel that their white privilege of being born in a deeply racist country entitles them to continue upholding the institutions of racism by denying ethnic minorities a job that they can do just as well as a white? What entitles these already privileged whites to a job over minorities?

I think you have a wildly skewed idea of the kinds of people who live in small towns. These people don’t have the resources you think they do. They’re mostly working class. The immigrants are not taking the jobs of high skilled graduates, they’re taking jobs from the working class. And working class people don’t actually have the bank of dad to fall back on. So when they don’t get early work experience it’s an economic setback. Further, these people might be trying to support a family. The advantage immigrants have is that they’re cheap and compliant. They might work a bit harder, but the main thing is that they won’t ewww try to get better wages or conditions. They’ll work for peanuts and sleep 3-4 families to a house so they can live on $10 an hour. No first world labor can afford to work for that little, but now that we have immigrants, you can forget about your wages going up. But remember, if you’re not in favor of being underbid by imported labor, you’re a white privileged racist.

Sounds like you are one or two generations removed from a country in the global south. Here is a hypothetical for you.

Imagine there was a 20% white Mormon minority in your country. They immigrate in large numbers and have more kids per woman than the native born. The flow is so large they don’t need to assimilate in any significant way and within 3 generations they become majority of your society.

Imagine their cultural norms start to change how people interact in your culture and it begins to change politics in a way you dislike. For instance, suppose they insist that “materials, resources, and opportunities are redistributed against your favour” and they use politics to do it. People like you are discriminated against in hiring to give these newcomers a leg up since they are disproportionately poor. You and your kids hear endlessly, everywhere that your society is evil and you owe a blank check to these people.

Just try to inhabit the thought experiment for a second. What emotion do you feel? If you are a normal person, its probably a deep sense of loss – the “black pill” so to speak. The other obvious response is to ask “why do I owe these people anything? I am not gaining anything from their presence. Hell, they owe me for what I am sacrificing!” And indeed you are sacrificing: In sufficient numbers immigration entails the destruction of a society and its replacement with something else. The buildings might remain the same, but everything else would have changed. I’d say those Mormons owed you an enormous debt. And if you decided you wanted to avoid that outcome altogether – that your homeland was the only homeland you had and was worth preserving – then you would be a totally normal person, and your preference should be respected.

On non-inclusion of minorities and racism

Institutions and individuals should treat people equally in the equal-before-the-law Jeffersonian sense. This is what the majority owes the minority. One of the worst things about Canada's mass immigration plus wokeness is that we are jettisoning that sense of equality for equality measured by equal outcomes by group.

The minority owes the majority assimilation. Multiculturalism was a mistake. I take the deep roots thesis seriously: assimilation is a multi-generational process and often a two-way process where the native born can assimilate backwards to newcomer norms. Societies are basically a weighted average of the cultures that make it up, tending towards the lowest common denominator for things like trust – i.e. a high-trust culture can be destroyed once a certain threshold of low-trust people enter it. Your post is frankly full of ethnic resentment against whites, why would I want more of this in my society?

Even though I do believe in the equal treatment principle, that principle is compatible with caring about the future of your society and its culture. I don’t think Canadian culture is improved by admixture of 10% more Indian norms and aesthetics — or those of anyone else for that matter. Minorities should remain small so the assimilation pull towards the mainstream is very strong and the cultural substrate that is Anglo-French Canada can persist into the future. This is what the majority owes itself if it has any self respect.

On Canada living up to its ideals

Your specific point on Canada seems to be that Trudeau is actually delivering the goods that progressives seem to promise and Canada’s coming rejection of Trudeau-ism is hypocrisy. I think that is basically fair and is an indictment of progressivism. I’d only add three things: First when progressives want to redistribute resources on the basis of ethnicity, they are committing a grave injustice. Second, Trudeau’s Liberals have not actually done any of that redistribution. The beneficiaries of his policies are principally old white boomers who own houses. The losers are young people -- disproportionately non-white -- who live in major cities and have inherited more debt, more costly housing, and a worse job market. And third, even if you think that everyone is entitled to the opportunity to live in Canada as you do (and I definitely don’t), the intergenerational transfer from young to old represented by forcing young Canadians to compete with the global poor for work and housing is socially destabilizing and should be opposed for that reason alone.

As an ethnic minority homeowner, I agree, and I refuse to let whites claw back the very same resources they loudly and proudly proclaimed they wanted to redistribute to marginalized folk like myself.

They should never have loudly and proudly proclaimed it. And a fixation on housing as a store of wealth is a feature of immigrant cultures (especially Chinese and Indian) that has caused enormous harm to Canada and I would love to see it sent back.

While I don’t disagree with the main thrust of your post, you appear to have taken the bait of a troll. See this comment by the same user, whose profile is presumably private to keep people from keeping track of the various troll posts, for a general flavor of said user’s meager output.

Oof.

I mean I suspected he was a troll at first, but it was so elaborate complete with the nonsensical woke sociology links.