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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30012 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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tl;dr: FYI, Trump has evolved from the 2016 guy who said the Nazis at Charlottesville should be "condemned totally." He's now personally in favor of mass state killings if they're the most expedient way to do ethnic cleansing.

EDIT: Now that I can see the net karma on the "I hope you're right" comment, I've reconsidered whether winning this argument would be in my interests. I'm invoking Godwin's Law on myself to declare that I've lost and the thread is over. Nobody is, shall be, or ever has been, a Nazi.

There’s a Holocaust happening in China today. The Uyghurs, an ethnic group that includes, or included, 11 million people in China, are being rounded up arbitrarily and sent to “re-education camps,” where they are often killed or forcibly sterilized. More than a million, we think, are in camps now.

I used to believe that if anything on the scale of the Nazi Holocaust were to start up today, the rest of the world would rapidly respond and put an end to it. As a kid, I imagined enlisting. But China is too strong. Our leaders get away with not responding, because China simply denies everything. Sometimes with only the thinnest veneer of plausibility, like when they claimed to end the involuntary harvesting of prisoners’ organs, but the number of organ transplants kept rising steadily.

Joe Biden is not responding appropriately to this atrocity out of pragmatism, cowardice, or weakness. Maybe Kamala Harris will be different; we can at least hope.

But this started in 2017. Donald Trump did not respond appropriately either, because he approves of China’s actions.

Here’s Trump’s National Security Advisor at the time:

At the opening dinner of the Osaka G-20 meeting in June 2019, with only interpreters present, Xi had explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do. The National Security Council’s top Asia staffer, Matthew Pottinger, told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China.

His administration felt differently, but there wasn’t much they could do. Mike Pompeo officially condemned the Uyghur genocide on his last day as Secretary of State, now that Trump couldn’t fire him. They also got him to sign a bill (co-sponsored by Harris) that sanctioned some Chinese officials for the ongoing atrocity.

Since then, people working for Trump have continued to condemn the genocide, and made pledges in his name to end it if he’s elected. But Trump himself has, as far as I can find, still declined to. In 2022, interviewers asked him whether he agreed with his staff, and he responded “I’d rather not say at the moment.” During his 2024 campaign, he’s said that Xi would be his first call as President, but he would not include human rights in his agenda for the call—in fact, one of his demands would be for them to increase the number of state executions for nonviolent offenses.

This is a consistent principle of his. Here’s President Trump excusing the massacres of Kurds on the Turkish border:

Turkey, in all fairness, they’ve had a legitimate problem with [the border]. They had terrorists, they had a lot of people in there that they couldn’t have. They’ve suffered a lot of loss of lives also. And they had to have it cleaned out. But once you start that, it gets to be to the point where a tremendous amount of bad things can happen.

He’s going to try to do the same thing here in America.

Ever since being voted out of office, Trump’s language about immigration has shifted more and more towards the language of ethnic cleansing. He regularly tells crowds that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” There are about 15 or 16 million people here who shouldn’t be, he says, so “we got a lot of work to do.” More recently, he’s made it explicit that when he says “blood,” he means “genes.” It’s not a dog whistle, it’s not a gaffe, it’s not a malicious misreading of his ramblings.

This is identical to Nazi rhetoric. This is as harsh as Hitler was ever willing to be in his campaign speeches. He didn’t say he was going to round up the people poisoning his country’s blood and kill them. He said that he was going to deport them. Even once in power, when his government shifted policy toward extermination, they never admitted it.

A second Trump presidency will detain people suspected of being illegal immigrants, including those retroactively made “illegal,” and won’t be transparent about what happens next. How many of them survive detention will depend on logistics, on whether his new staff quietly rebels, and on how earnestly Trump tries to ensure that his preferred way of dealing with detainees is actually implemented. There are lots of ways this could end up not being a mass state murder. But “Trump disapproves of mass state murders” isn’t one of them.

(He wants pogroms, too. Just put people in charge who will look the other way, he says, and the problem will be solved immediately.)

I don’t think Trump started his political career as a Nazi. In 2017, he famously tried to have it both ways, saying of a rally led by white supremacists and containing avowed Nazis that it included some “very fine people,” but that the Nazis of course should be “condemned totally.” I think he just didn’t care one way or the other, and so was calibrating his remarks so that anyone could persuade themselves he agreed with them. Doing the politician thing, except most politicians don’t do that when it’s Nazis.

But in office, Trump got to know, and came to respect, Xi, and Erdogan, and Putin. His own attempts at mass deportation and building a wall were largely ineffective. But those guys. They knew how to get things done.

And now, after four years out of office, he’s rhetorically committed to the idea that there are millions of people here who shouldn’t be, because of their evil natures and evil genes. Now, all he’s willing to say against Nazis is that he’s never read Mein Kampf.

His Republican Party is, I believe and hope, not a Nazi party. As an institution, it’s not what the Nazi party was in the 1930s, just badly off-kilter. But Trump himself is a Nazi now. He doesn’t call himself that. But then, the Nazis didn’t use that word for themselves either.

For most of the past four years, I’ve tuned him out. I thought I knew everything I needed to know about him. Maybe you have too. But we were wrong—something has changed. People have been crying wolf for so long about Republicans being Nazis that now we just tune it out. Newspapers scared of looking like tabloids resort to headlines about “a fascination with genes and bloodlines.” So I missed it, and most people are still missing it.

Sources https://chinatribunal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ChinaTribunal_JUDGMENT_1stMarch_2020.pdf https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-refused-to-say-whether-china-was-abusing-uyghurs-2022-4 https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/elections-2024-trump-xi-us-presidential-call-09232024232901.html https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1184897777941307392 (video) https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-bad-genes-immigrants-hugh-hewitt-rcna174456 https://archive.is/nwOXF

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Here’s Trump’s National Security Advisor at the time

While, if anyone on the planet would continue to work for a man he believed condoned concentration camps while being terribly terribly offended inside, Bolton would be it, the sudden reveal of a serious flaw only in his book released long months after an acrimonious departure from the administration leaves... a lot to be skeptical about. It'd be more believable if Pottinger confirmed it, but all that's really happened is that Bolton's book claims Pottinger confirmed it; afaict, he hasn't done so publicly, and that's despite getting a letter from the Senate asking about it.

It's made more serious by Bolton neither providing specific quotes nor contexts: especially given that the Chinese government does not officially recognize these concentration camps as concentration camps, there's a lot of space for misleading summaries to be involved here.

See, all that would be more persuasive if Trump had ever personally said he disapproves of the camps. Despite, yes, getting asked about it as late as 2022 by people interviewing him for a book, and him ranting about China all the time. Has he? I can't find it if he has. The most generous plausible interpretation is that he thinks he'll alienate too many supporters if he condemns concentration camps. It's not about not wanting to offend China because, again, he talks all the time about stuff Xi is doing that he disapproves of.

And in that case, I mean, gosh, Trump sure does seem to hire a lot of people as close advisors who later turn out to be liars making up stories about their leader being a feckless wannabe-dictator. Maybe he shouldn't be in charge of hiring the next National Security Advisor if he keeps hiring traitors?

Damn I so much wish that your fears turn out right. A properly ruthless administration could spill into Europe so we can deport everyone that came illegally in the last 15 years.

You might want to double-check where you personally are in the "first they came for..." sequence. You seem to be prone enough to thoughtcrime that while living in a liberal European society you're responding to a post saying "Trump is fine with massacring people" with "I hope you're right." Are you going to turn into a perfectly credible conformist if your country goes fascist? If not, that's a lower bound on where you are in the priority queue.

So what is your vision? After my country turns to fascism someone someday knocks on my door and take me in? Poof gone? Don't forget that there are also people knocking on doors and people directing other people on which doors to knock. Someone will have to fine tune the LLMs that will be doing the selection.

And yes it will be fun to watch America slide into fascism - I would love to see the reaction in the eyes of currently very online activists when there is suddenly skin in the game.

But there is zero chance of this happening over Trump. People just need justification to keep freaking out for stupid shit and larping the resistance.

Don't forget that there are also people knocking on doors and people directing other people on which doors to knock.

In fascism, you can be on the one side of the door one day and on the other side the next day.

Take the fate of the SA leadership. They were Nazi through and though. They were the muscle of the NSDAP and instrumental in their rise to power. They ran the first 'wild' concentration camps and murdered political opponents. None of this saved them. The moment Hitler was in power, he threw them under the bus.

So if your plan for the fourth Reich is to be spared because you are helpful enough in their purges, I have every hope that you will join the rest of us after the first tiny internal power struggle hickup.

Frankly if the only choice is between a bullet in the back of the head from a friend vs an enemy, I'll choose a friend every time.

Ah, so you're the target audience for Don't Be A Sucker (1946). A fascist state operates for the benefit of the state, not its nominally model citizens/disposable cannon fodder.

I think that your model of how totalitarian states work (I do noticed that kids these days do think that national socialism, fascism, authoritarianism, dictatorship, and totalitarianism are interchangeable words that have the benefit of meaning nothing specifically but sounding scary for the mentally hoi poloi and the intellectuals yet idiots) is wrong - even if they sometimes have issues with the true believers, they usually leave the pragmatic people with no empathy alone or employ them.

Let's say the government takes "13/52" seriously and decides that Black culture is the reason for Black crime. To lower crime rates, it imposes the following restrictions on all Blacks:

  • wearing gang colors is outlawed
  • wearing saggy pants is outlawed
  • listening to gangsta rap is outlawed
  • speaking AAVE is outlawed
  • promoting irresponsible lifestyles is outlawed
  • consuming content promoting irresponsible lifestyles is outlawed
  • being a single mother by choice is outlawed
  • you are allowed to bear arms only if you live in a non-Black area, have passed a civics exam and have no infractions
  • if you live in a Black area you have to install an app on your phone that tracks your movement, browsing history and contacts

Anyone who is caught doing something outlawed is arrested and transferred to a reeducation camp, which is like a regular prison, except you are forced to learn a trade and to act White, pregnancies of single mothers are terminated, children of single mothers are confiscated and placed in residential schools. Repeat offenders, both mothers and fathers, are sterilized. Anyone caught talking AAVE instead of General American or wearing saggy pants is punished. You can only leave the camp when you show that you've learned a useful trade, consume only media that promotes responsible lifestyles, speak General American and want to get married before having children. Then you get a job offer and released. If you relapse or associate with the wrong people, back to the camp you go.

In return, you get to live in a clean neighborhood that has no crime and features family-friendly Black culture, like mom-and-pop soul food restaurants, rap radio stations that play songs about having a steady job and a stable family, breakdancing competitions (it's an Olympic sport, after all!) and other stuff like that. And a national guard post on every corner.

This is what's happening to the Uyghurs. Is it a genocide?

Leaving aside the points brought up by @HonoreDB and @Folamh3, yes, forced abortions and sterilisations on a mass scale employed with ethnic selectivity are literal genocide ("the killing of genes/races").

Not a lawyer, but I think that would meet the legal definition of genocide, which is maybe why the U.S. uses that word for it. But all of that just sounds like the CCP version of what's happening, not what refugees and defectors are saying. And see links and Folamh3's reply on the forcible organ harvesting analyses.

You missed the part where Chinese doctors have privately admitted to harvesting the organs of Uyghurs in these camps; that numerous Chinese people have given testimony that they were told they would be able to receive a vital organ transplant on a specific day (only possible if the surgeons in question knew that a specific person with a viable organ would die on that day i.e. it's impossible that the organ came from an unforeseen traffic accident); that the rate at which China conducts organ transplants is far in excess of the number of people who have signed up to the voluntary donor list; and that even the number of people China executes every year is insufficient to explain the shortfall (even assuming that any transplanted organs came from people who had been executed - not a doctor and open to correction, but I imagine a lethal dose of sodium thiopental would probably irreparably destroy a heart or liver).

(even assuming that any transplanted organs came from people who had been executed - not a doctor and open to correction, but I imagine a lethal dose of sodium thiopental would probably irreparably destroy a heart or liver)

I don't think the usual injection regimen (anaesthetic/muscle relaxant/potassium chloride) destroys organs - certainly not to the degree that most natural toxins like amanitin, diphtheria toxin or ricin do. The cause of death from lethal injection is failure to get oxygen to the brain, not cytotoxicity, and the brain is far more sensitive to that than any other organ. Obviously, the organs of a clinically-dead body die if not removed relatively quickly, regardless of cause of death, but when you're doing a planned execution that's pretty trivial to avoid. They do also execute people by shooting them, and a shot to the head is about the ideal scenario for a transplant assuming you have the equipment on hand.

With death by firing squad, aren't riflemen typically instructed to aim for the heart rather than the head?

WP says it's not actually a firing squad; it's a single point-blank shot, apparently usually an assault-rifle hollowpoint to the head (which, credit where it's due, is about as reliably painless as executions get).

That's fair. Assuming this is the preferred method of execution in China, they're probably a source of some of the organs transplanted.

Apparently most of them these days are lethal injection rather than the bullet to the head, but as I said I think the organs from the former would still be usable anyway.

Googling this, one of the first results was an NPR article, which is mostly about the damage that lethal injections inflicts on the lungs (it certainly sounds like lungs wouldn't be viable for transplant after a lethal injection, and China carries out 250 such transplants a year), but also mentions the effect on the heart in passing:

Lubarsky warns that if the first drug isn't anesthetizing the inmate, then they're likely to feel not only the suffocating sensation of pulmonary edema, but also the pain of the third drug: potassium chloride.

"It's like a burning cocktail coursing through your veins," says Lubarsky, referring to potassium chloride. "Once it reaches the heart, it stops the heart, and you do die. But in the process there is a period of just intense and searing pain."

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I imagine it's more like "pistol shot in the back of the head while walking them down the hallway".

No offense intended, but in 2016 we were repeatedly told all of the above would happen if Trump was elected. Trump was elected, and none of it did. In fact, Trump deported fewer people than the previous President, who also first got elected on an aggressive anti-immigration platform, having previously voted in favour of a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border to deter illegal immigration.

In 2016, these predictions about Trump carried weight precisely because he was an unknown quantity: not only had he never been President before, he'd never held an elected office of any kind. That is no longer the case - we lived through four years of a Trump administration and have a very good idea of what to expect from one, and a much better idea of what to expect compared to a Harris administration (unless you believe that Harris has been secretly pulling the strings for the last four years - I mean, obviously someone other than Biden has been calling the shots, but I don't know if I buy that it was Harris all along). If history is any guide, if Trump is elected, his administration will immediately witness a steep drop-off in deportations and repatriations compared to the preceding Democrat administration (Biden expelled 2.8 million migrants in his first two years in office, and "the Biden administration’s nearly 4.4 million repatriations are already more than any single presidential term since the George W. Bush administration").

Put hard numbers on your predictions, the way Scott did in "You Are Still Crying Wolf" (which he subsequently graded). If Trump is elected, how confident are you that literal concentration camps will be constructed; that hate crimes against Hispanic migrants, Muslims or ethnic groups will be significantly higher than during the current administration; that deportations will be significantly higher than under the current administration etc.?

Unrelated to the main thrust of your post, but I make frequent donations to the Uyghur Human Rights Project, and strongly encourage all of you to do the same.

Thank you for your support for the Uyghurs, first of all.

I don't quite see why any of this is relevant to my argument, actually. You don't know me. I'm not asking you to take my word for anything, just trying to alert you to the necessity of looking freshly at what Trump is saying and reevaluating past judgments. No amount of previous mistakes, alarmism, or other rhetorical malfeasance by Democrats can exempt a politician from all scrutiny.

This time around, Trump has the opportunity to be more effective, if he wants to be--he can start fresh with more loyal civil servants and a more ruthless Cabinet, has a more loyal party in Congress, has more experience, has four years of the likes of Stephen Miller making plans now that he knows he actually needs them and can't just order the Deep State to do it. It's not like he deported fewer people because he wanted to deport fewer. He also has rhetorically positioned himself differently--before it was primarily "immigration is dangerous, especially illegal immigration, because it includes bad people, we need to build a wall to keep them out and pause legal channels until we figure out how to filter out the poisonous Skittles better." Now it's "There are tens of millions of evil people newly in this country poisoning our blood with their evil genes, and also by smuggling in literal poison, and whatever other terrible rumor you've heard about them is probably true, so we urgently need to revoke all their legal statuses, round up all suspected illegals, figure out which ones are actual illegals, and deport them." I think this reflects an altered worldview and altered intentions and expectations.

In terms of my personal gut probabilities (with conditional ones indented):

Deportations will be significantly higher than under the previous administration -- 80%

...and deaths in detention will be higher too -- 99%

...and deaths in detention will be later found to have been underreported -- 75%

...that detentions will happen at a scale, brutality, and death rate high enough that most of the world will view it with horror once the truth comes out -- 25%

Trump will revoke temporarily protected statuses granted under the Biden administration -- 80%

...and try to go further with retroactively making people illegal -- 80%

 ...and succeed -- 50%

Trump being elected will not increase the number of hate crimes -- 60%

Regardless of whether he wins, he'll call for pogroms more and more explicitly -- 75%

and deaths in detention will be later found to have been underreported -- 75%

What does "later" mean? During the following administration? Within a decade of Trump taking office? Twenty years?

I think you should put a hard time limit on this prediction, and if no persuasive evidence has been presented to this effect before that time limit expires, you should admit you were mistaken. Without that, this has all the hallmarks of dragon-in-my-garage conspiratorial thinking - "I can't prove that Trump is Literally Hitler, but the evidence proving it will out before long! Any minute now..."

that detentions will happen at a scale, brutality, and death rate high enough that most of the world will view it with horror once the truth comes out -- 25%

This one is sort of meaningless, because "most of the world" (and half of the US) already views anything Trump says or does with horror. Even if what he's doing is objectively less severe in scale to what Democrat Presidents have done (e.g. the aforementioned greater number of deportations under Obama than Trump).

Regardless of whether he wins, he'll call for pogroms more and more explicitly -- 75%

What, in your opinion, would an explicit call for a pogrom from Trump look like? Do you think any public statements he's made to date could reasonably be characterised as such? If so, which ones?

I think you should put a hard time limit on this prediction

6 years should be plenty.

"most of the world" views anything Trump says or does with horror

Citation needed. Trump is broadly-disliked but controversial. I mean something a bit stronger--that it'll be an uncontroversial entry in lists of atrocities. I could in theory operationalize it with numbers but I won't because I don't want to spend a day going over atrocity statistics.

What, in your opinion, would an explicit call for a pogrom from Trump look like? Do you think any public statements he's made to date could reasonably be characterised as such? If so, which ones?

In my mind it's a continuum, not a binary, hence the "more and more." Especially when it's Trump, with his communication style I feel like he has to say something at least three times before it's uncontroversial to claim that he said it on purpose and meant it. I do think it's pretty reasonable to characterize e.g. this video https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1840483582433009711 as Trump calling for a pogrom, but the implication is that you're only supposed to get really violent with known thieves who are maybe even actively robbing you. So there's room for it to get worse, if and when he says the same thing but about some conspiracy theory about an ethnic group.

6 years should be plenty.

After Trump takes office, or leaves office?

I do think it's pretty reasonable to characterize e.g. this video https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1840483582433009711 as Trump calling for a pogrom, but the implication is that you're only supposed to get really violent with known thieves who are maybe even actively robbing you.

I don't see anything untoward about the claim that you're entitled to defend yourself if someone is trying to steal from you. It may not always be the best idea, and in many cases from a self-preservation perspective one might be better off just taking the L and letting the mugger take your wallet rather than fighting back and risking getting yourself killed. But in terms of ethics, if someone comes up to you on the street and says "give me your wallet or I'll stab you", you are perfectly entitled to defend yourself.

As an aside, the fact that Trump says "if someone's trying to steal from you, you're entitled to defend yourself using force if necessary" and you apparently hear "oh my God he's encouraging people to go out and beat up Hispanic people!" in itself strikes me as more than a little racist.

I don't think he's talking about Hispanic people in that video but I haven't checked. What he is doing, explicitly, is saying that people should break certain rules restraining their violence that they are currently obeying, and get really rough as a deterrent, and the authorities should look the other way.

Be that as it may, there's a world of difference between "authorities should look the other way while ordinary civilians dispense mob justice on the criminals who are victimising the ordinary civilians" and "authorities should look the other way while ordinary civilians go around beating up members of a specific ethnic group". Both assertions are troubling for different reasons, but I can imagine certain specific circumstances in which the former might be defensible (e.g. when the authorities are unable or unwilling to enforce the law themselves and ordinary civilians must choose between taking the law into their own hands or allowing themselves to be victimised - if I owned a grocery shop in the middle of the 1992 LA riots, I probably would have followed the rooftop Koreans' lead). I don't for a moment accept your inference that the former implies the latter. Ergo, I think your claim that Trump was directly calling for a pogrom is ridiculous, unless you're using an extremely expansive definition of "pogrom" in which you're essentially treating "career criminals" as an ethnic group.

Why should Americans care about what Chinese do to Uhygurs, or what Turks do to Kurds, or what Israelis do to Palestinians? (I noticed you left out the current administration’s tacit approval of that genocide. What a bunch of Nazis!!!)

America has a proud history of making trade and diplomacy with authoritarian dictators. The problem is with the arrogant internationalists who want to impose their neoliberal capitalist pride-flag agenda on the rest of the world against their will. It’s cultural imperialism… and yet Trump is the Nazi for opposing this. Because 2024 became the year that up is down and 2 + 2 = 5.

Why should New Yorkers care about Texans? Why should people in London care about people in Birmingham? Why should I care about you? Why is nationalism the only permissible criterion for whom to care about? I can live in a pluralist society with nationalists, but I don't see why Americans shouldn't be allowed to vote that they care about foreigners too.

I'm personally also against the current admin's support for the current Israeli admin's actions, but more importantly, we need a norm in discourse that you can condemn one genocide even if there's another one also going on. I should be allowed to condemn the CCP's actions and our administration's lack of response without also having to list every other similar case past and present.

Why should New Yorkers care about Texans?

They don’t, nyc turned against open borders because Greg Abbott dumped penniless migrants on them to commit crimes and suck up public resources in a space inconvenient for New Yorkers instead of inconvenient for Texans.

...not really the point, but also, nope, having massive numbers of unwilling immigrants whose intended support network was in Texas bussed in at once is inconvenient, especially for them, but they're still going to make us richer and safer in the medium term (three years is generally how long, see e.g. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/12265934.2022.2093261). We've been a sanctuary city for longer than ICE has existed, what more do you want from us?

"Oh, you think there shouldn't be a federal law against people giving you free pie? Then you can't object to me confiscating a thousand pies in Texas, driving them to New York, and firing them at you with a t-shirt cannon, right?"

...not really the point, but also, nope, having massive numbers of unwilling immigrants whose intended support network was in Texas bussed in at once is inconvenient, especially for them, but they're still going to make us richer and safer in the medium term

In what way are the bussed migrants "unwilling"? I thought it was pretty clear that Texas is bussing volunteers.

What was the "intended support network" in Texas, and why is it better than that of self-declared "sanctuary cities" like New York? My understanding is that absurdly massive numbers of illegal immigrants have been flooding into small Texas towns with poor infrastructure for quite some time now.

Texas is bussing in people who wanted to be in Texas, were captured and detained, and then they let them out and had a man with a gun offer them a free bus ticket to NYC without being too specific about what the alternative was, right? That is volunteering in a certain very specific sense.

Their intended support network is other immigrants they know, obviously, that's how it works here too. But if you can't handle the volume, then sure, please send us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, just don't be a dick about it. I'd recommend "git gud" (and/or "git more federal funding to help you git gud") because more people is more better, but you do you.

Do you have any evidence for the claim that the illegal immigrants in question specifically wanted to live in Texas, as opposed to "somewhere in the US where there are jobs"?

You can google "stories from people who were bussed out of Texas" as well as I can, or just infer from the fact that they're humans who just did a dangerous and difficult thing that they had a plan, or note that if immigrants are showing up in inconveniently large clumps in some towns it's probably because they know each other. (Texas does actually try to send people to cities they wanted to go to anyway, I think, which I'm all for.)

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Indeed, the claim that the migrants wanted specifically to live in places like eagle pass and Uvalde is A) implausible and B) clearly false.

You can criticize Abbott for things like dumping them in Denver and Chicago without checking the weather first, but the claim that migrants are being forced not to live in tiny, rural towns on the southern border where border security is the main employer doesn’t pass the sniff test or comport with what those migrants themselves tell us.

Are you saying that nobody can ever again organise large-scale deportations of illegal immigrants because Hitler once used it as an excuse 80 years ago? Or that they can only do it if their arguments are purely economic and make it clear at all times that they love and approve of immigrants & hate Nazis and Xi?

(And of course everyone will take these professions at face value and not at all accuse him/her of being a secret Nazi trying to sound harmless.)

Other than mass amnesty, what is your proposed policy?

Kind of the second one? I'm saying we should have a firm ethical principle that we never authorize putting large numbers of people at the mercy of the state unless we're confident that all of the relevant decision-makers prefer positive outcomes for those people, either inherently or via incentives. (To me that's a core American value.) And, as a special case of that, that because of what Hitler did and said, we should treat any willingness to speak like Hitler and court the pro-ethnic-cleansing vote as disqualifying. I'm not saying that anyone should be able to veto any policy or politician by accusing a politician of being secretly Hitler (everyone I've ever voted for has had a non-zero chance of being secretly Hitler), but yes I do think somebody proposing retroactive illegalization and mass deportation should have to spend a lot of time credibly signaling that they're not secretly Hitler, enough that 50%+1 of voters believe them. Trump is more focused right now on signaling that he is, if anything. His response to being called a fascist by his ex-Chief of Staff was to call him a lying degenerate, not even to rotely say "I believe in freedom and compassion" as used to be the bare minimum standard for running for elected office.

Kind of the second one? I'm saying we should have a firm ethical principle that we never authorize putting large numbers of people at the mercy of the state unless we're confident that all of the relevant decision-makers prefer positive outcomes for those people, either inherently or via incentives.

What's your position on the current crisis taking place in Palestine? If you're really concerned about ethnic cleansing and minorities being rounded up into concentration camps there's a much more motivated effort taking place over there with Harris/Biden's full support. If you're seriously concerned about these issues then you're also going to have to take a firm stand against the left as well.

Discussed elsewhere in this thread.

Thank you for giving a serious and clear answer (to both posts). I respect your conviction, but I think that there is no realistic chance of Not-Hitler satisfying your conditions.

The only positive outcome for these people is being allowed to stay where they are; they know it and we know it. That’s why the destroy all of their original documentation. So anyone who can credibly promise to deport people is going to be someone for whom positive outcomes for natives ultimately trumps (ha) positive outcomes for immigrants.

as long as your government can credibly promise to do it humanely

I’m fine with this, but it depends on where you set the bar for credible. As far as I’m concerned, all modern Western first world societies (including Trump’s America) hit this bar by default. Note that China isn’t deporting anyone, they’re dealing very harshly with a permanent population, which I would expect to encourage more cruelty rather than less. Once you deport people you don’t have to worry about their future behaviour.

Personally, I don’t believe that Trump is secretly Hitler.

His response to being called a fascist by his ex-Chief of Staff was to call him a lying degenerate, not even to rotely say "I believe in freedom and compassion"

This is just standard politics. Saying “I believe in freedom and compassion” makes you sound like Hitler being mealy-mouthed. Being made to recite slogans is a standard feature of any show trial because it’s humiliating and it makes you look guilty. Calling your accuser a liar is the better look, regardless of your political inclinations.

Por qué no los dos? I agree that Trump can no longer manage to say anything anti-Hitler that sounds strong and sincere, or emphasize part of his platform that is blatantly un-Nazi, that's kind of the point.

I'm saying that for twenty years now right-wingers have gone up on platforms and said variations on, "I think maybe the immigration rate should be a little lower. I don't dislike immigrants, I'm not Hitler, I have immigrant friends please don't hurt me". It's a humiliation ritual that doesn't stop people calling them Nazis and makes them look pathetic. Raw politics is about impressions a lot of the time, and repudiating views you genuinely don't hold looks bad. It looks defensive and makes you dance on other people's strings.

In short, even though Trump is not a Nazi and has a platform that is definitely un-Nazi, it is not a good political move for him to spend time repudiating Nazi accusations.

As an existence proof that you can be a pro-freedom and pro-compassion right-wing opposition leader and not sound weak and performative, have some Churchill.

All this means that the people of any country have the right, and should have the power by constitutional action, by free unfettered elections, with secret ballot, to choose or change the character or form of government under which they dwell; that freedom of speech and thought should reign; that courts of justice, independent of the executive, unbiased by any party, should administer laws which have received the broad assent of large majorities or are consecrated by time and custom. Here are the title deeds of freedom which should lie in every cottage home. Here is the message of the British and American peoples to mankind. Let us preach what we practise – let us practise what we preach.

I have now stated the two great dangers which menace the homes of the people: War and Tyranny. I have not yet spoken of poverty and privation which are in many cases the prevailing anxiety. But if the dangers of war and tyranny are removed, there is no doubt that science and co-operation can bring in the next few years to the world, certainly in the next few decades newly taught in the sharpening school of war, an expansion of material well-being beyond anything that has yet occurred in human experience. Now, at this sad and breathless moment, we are plunged in the hunger and distress which are the aftermath of our stupendous struggle; but this will pass and may pass quickly, and there is no reason except human folly or sub-human crime which should deny to all the nations the inauguration and enjoyment of an age of plenty. I have often used words which I learned fifty years ago from a great Irish-American orator, a friend of mine, Mr. Bourke Cockran. “There is enough for all. The earth is a generous mother; she will provide in plentiful abundance food for all her children if they will but cultivate her soil in justice and in peace.” So far I feel that we are in full agreement.

I'm sorry, did you just refer to Winston Churchill as pro-compassion? Churchill the same guy whose inaction during the Bengal famine probably caused millions of additional deaths, and who stated that any relief efforts sent to India would accomplish little to nothing, as Indians were "breeding like rabbits"?

On Native Americans and aboriginals:

I do not admit ... for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.

On migration to the UK:

In 1955, Churchill expressed his support for the slogan "Keep England White" with regards to immigration from the West Indies.

On Arabs:

Churchill described the Arabs as a "lower manifestation" than the Jews, whom he viewed as a "higher grade race" compared to the "great hordes of Islam". He referred to Palestinians as "barbaric hordes who ate little but camel dung".

On the Chinese:

In 1902 Churchill called China a "barbaric nation" and advocated for the "partition of China". He wrote:

I think we shall have to take the Chinese in hand and regulate them. I believe that as civilized nations become more powerful they will get more ruthless, and the time will come when the world will impatiently bear the existence of great barbaric nations who may at any time arm themselves and menace civilized nations. I believe in the ultimate partition of China – I mean ultimate. I hope we shall not have to do it in our day. The Aryan stock is bound to triumph.

More on the Chinese:

Violet Bonham-Carter asked Churchill's opinion about a Labour Party visit to China. Churchill replied: "I hate people with slit eyes and pigtails. I don't like the look of them or the smell of them..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Winston_Churchill

The fact that you're arguing "Trump comes off as so racist and cruel - he should be more like Churchill" leads me to wonder if this entire thread is just an elaborate troll. Or if you're really just that historically illiterate.

I'm saying we should have a firm ethical principle that we never authorize putting large numbers of people at the mercy of the state unless we're confident that all of the relevant decision-makers prefer positive outcomes for those people, either inherently or via incentives.

This implies we should never go to war, even defensively.

We should never fight a war wherein our leaders want the enemy dead as a terminal goal, only as a regrettable instrumental one.

I don't think the rightness or wrongness of an action can be determined solely on the basis of which moods are missing.

Netanyahu: "I will not rest until Yahya Sinwar and the rest of Hamas leadership are dead in the ground, as punishment for the shocking cruelty of October 7th."

You: "Boooo!"

Alternatively:

Netanyahu: "While I'm not happy about it, the destruction of Hamas is the only way to ensure peace and stability in Israel, Palestine and the surrounding region. I wish there was another way, but we've exhausted all other possibilities."

You: "Yaaay!"

Followed by literally zero difference in the military strategy and tactics the IDF pursue.

I think you're putting far too much stock in the (intrinsically unknowable) motivations and psychological states of political leaders, as opposed to the actual actions they undertake. You seem to be saying that a just war, conducted with humility, a clearly defined goal and taking care (insofar as is practicable) to minimize civilian casualties is wrong if the people behind it are pursuing the destruction of their enemy as a terminal goal; whereas a brutal, bloodthirsty war, with no clearly defined end state, in which war crimes are a commonplace, and displaying utter callousness towards collateral damage - such a war could be a-ok in your book, provided the leaders make the right noises about the military action being "regrettable". (I leave it up to you to decide whether Israel's military action in Gaza is better described by the latter or former.) It's politics of the symbolic, again.

You seem to be saying that a just war, conducted with humility, a clearly defined goal and taking care (insofar as is practicable) to minimize civilian casualties is wrong if the people behind it are pursuing the destruction of their enemy as a terminal goal

Not quite. I'm saying that it's wrong to support a war you expect to be brutal, bloodthirsty, etc. and that one of the fallible-but-important heuristics feeding into that is if the people who would be leading it are saying brutal and bloodthirsty things. Also that "vibes" are the main thing that determine whether your occupying armies so kind they inspire cults praying for their return or whether they tend to massacre civilians in their downtime. But yes I only care about vibes to the extent that they're predictors or causes of actions.

Putting aside our inability to read minds, if they conduct the war the same way the latter speech does seem preferable to the former. Rage and hate are pretty unpalatable in anyone not already firmly on your team.

Rage and hate are pretty unpalatable in anyone not already firmly on your team.

No they aren't.

Remember Scott's article about not sounding like a robot. Refusing to express rage when you've been grievously wronged makes you sound like a robot and reduces sympathy for you.

we should treat any willingness to speak like Hitler and court the pro-ethnic-cleansing vote as disqualifying

Per my earlier comment, the Biden administration repatriated as many or more immigrants than the Trump administration. By any objective measure, Biden has done as much or more to promote "ethnic cleansing" in the last four years than Trump did in the four years prior. But that's okay says you, because while Biden's actions may have promoted ethnic cleansing, he wasn't "speaking like Hitler" while doing it. He refused to "court" the pro-ethnic-cleansing vote in his speeches or public statements - he merely gave them a significant chunk of the policy package they wanted.

This is politics of the symbolic from top to bottom. You can do whatever you want as President, as long as you're "nice" and "civil" about it, and don't remind people (even inadvertently) of old Adolf.

I'm not sure how to democracy if I can't use "this politician seems like he might do X" to inform my voting decisions. I disapprove of the deportations under Biden, but I mostly attribute them to weakness, not ideology. This ultimately matters, because, again, I don't want the state to kill millions of people due to a very well-known failure mode of ideology. And I don't trust anybody who's unusually willing to tapdance on the edge of that cliff, because even if they don't end up falling, they're betraying a fundamental lack of moral center.

When Trump ran in 2016, I was mainly worried that he was shifting the Overton Window and otherwise laying the groundwork for the next President like him to be significantly worse. Give or take the Grover Cleveland of it all, this is basically still what I'm afraid of.

Of course you can and should use "this politician might do X" to inform your voting decisions. I'm just countenancing you that you ought to consider the fact that Trump has already been in office for four years and nothing remotely like the sequence of events you're describing transpired.

I mostly attribute them to weakness, not ideology.

How convenient, that whenever Republicans do something one disapproves of it's because they're moral mutants, but whenever Democrats do something one disapproves of (up to and including literally the same thing you were just criticising Republicans for) it's because their hands were forced. It couldn't possibly be that Biden (who co-authored the 1986 bill introducing sentencing disparities for crack vs. cocaine, widely criticised as racist; and who once eulogized a former Exalted Cyclops in the KKK) is more racist than he presents himself, or that spending 8 years as VP for a President who got elected on an anti-immigration platform might have rubbed off on him? No, perish the thought.

Fundamental attribution error in a nutshell. Out of curiosity, is there anything a Democrat President has done which you disapprove of and which you believe represents a moral failing on their part?

All of the negative things I've attributed to Biden are ones I see as (partly) moral failings, as well as the big one where he insisted on running for re-election, and still hasn't stepped down from his office, despite being increasingly incapable of performing his duties, out of what seems to be selfish pride. And yes, totally agree that he's at least historically been racist. Most of the immigration policies I hate were put into place under Bill Clinton, and I think that's at best him callously sacrificing people he didn't need to sacrifice in pursuit of largely imaginary gains. I could definitely go on.

I don't know, I feel like I probably don't need to be in this thread anymore since Harris and Trump seem to be making basically the same case as their joint closing argument. I guess I am curious to hear your account(s) of why A: lifelong/devout Republicans who have worked with Trump closely seem to be making the same attribution error as I am, despite coming from completely different biases, and B: why Trump can talk about the degenerate traitors saying he likes concentration camps all day and never get around to saying "concentration camps are bad."

I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you're asking me by questions A and B.

Criminalize hiring illegal immigrants.

I'm pro-immigration (especially if it's illegal, since that means we don't need to pay for their welfare.) But that's legitimately the policy I would propose if somehow I was in charge and republicans offered to completely capitulate on climate change if I found a way to put illegal immigration near-zero.

You wouldn't even need to spend government funds to enforce it. Just copy that abortion bounty law-- let people sue anyone they point to that can't prove they only hired people with work authorization.

Without the "pull" factor of jobs, economic migrants just wouldn't come here.

You'd have to criminalize renting to illegals, both residential and commercial. And selling property to them too. Setting up a business entity/LLC. They can and do just set up entire mini economies in some areas of cities. You'd have to criminalize so many different things to make moving here unappealing. And I'm sure even then there'd be a way for them to enjoy their lives here more than in whatever country they came from.

You'd have to criminalize renting to illegals, both residential and commercial. And selling property to them too. Setting up a business entity/LLC. They can and do just set up entire mini economies in some areas of cities. You'd have to criminalize so many different things to make moving here unappealing.

And? If murder and theft are bad, then it's completely sensible to criminalize assisting people to murder and thieve. If illegal immigration is bad...

Though regardless, it wouldn't even be necessary. If nobody was willing to hire illegal immigrants, they wouldn't have any money to pay rent, or buy property. If they make a shell and hire themselves... boom, illegal, you get to sue them directly and also deport them. (And also you get to sue anyone who hires such a shell company without doing their due diligence.)

And if someone really wants to come here to spend their own money, not take any local jobs, and not be eligible for welfare... Congratulations! You have a tourist industry.

They'll still take local housing and compete with local businesses. My point is only stopping employers from hiring them isn't enough.

I don't see why competition with local business is is bad, though admittedly I am a capitalist. That being said, my proposal still makes that effectively impossible. If they're offering services directly, they're employees, and you can sue anyone who hires them. If they're offering services through a company, then they're employees of that company, and you can sue the company. Maybe you're thinking of some loophole that lets companies break hiring laws without any individual in particular being liable, in which case I'd also support closing that on its own merits-- if a company refuses to abide by the civil rights act, somebody should be liable. I suppose illegal immigrants could technically sell items at a markdown vs. local shops... but that basically just covers dropshipping and the sort of handicrafts one person could make without employees. The former immigrants can also do from their home country, and the latter, well, I seriously doubt handicrafts are any major fraction of your local economy. Some people would still hire immigrants anyways, and they wouldn't all move out instantly. I guess they would be taking up local housing in the interim, until their money ran out. But I guarantee my proposal would solve 90%, probably even 99%, of the "problem."

A very good first start, and something we already do in the UK as far as I know. But what happens when they refuse to go? Most of these people don't come from nice countries, it's why they destroy their papers when they arrive. When they start organising unofficial employment and shadow economies, or become criminals? Are we allowed to deport them then?

And to move on to the more contentious area of legal immigration, if a leader like Boris Johnson or Angela Merkel has a rush of blood to the head and imports millions of people over the protests of the native population, it doesn't seem right that we're just stuck with them forever. You can tinker with citizenship requirements but you end up with the same problem once all those visas expire: what do you do when you have millions of people in your country who have no right to be there and refuse to leave?

(The fact that mass migration allows governments to inflict permanent demographic and cultural changes that can only be reversed by applying force on a vast scale is why I think that "the government will neither permit, nor facilitate, large-scale migration" must be an absolute principle of any functioning democracy, on a level with or higher than free speech and habeas corpus.)

(And yes, I am willing to concede huge capulations on climate change in exchange for making immigration near-zero. Climate policy can be reversed decades or centuries later, immigration can't.)

what do you do when you have millions of people in your country who have no right to be there and refuse to leave?

You create duty to self deport by a certain date. Punishment for failure is life in prison or death.

You came into UK and destroyed your passport - your problem, you have embassy. Get away - it's not our problem how. Then we will punish you until you comply.

The problem with migration is one of will, not means.

but what happens when they refuse to go?

You're looking at this in completely the wrong way. Immigrants aren't "refusing to go." they're "deciding to stay." Illegal immigrants (unlike refugees) are ineligible for welfare and therefore pulled only by the prospect of relatively well-paying jobs at their destinations. Without those jobs, they don't have a reason to stick around. Yes, there would still be some need for traditional border security work: spot removals of immigrants that turn to crime would still be necessary. But mass deportation would require a draconian expansion of government power to work while at the same time just not being necessary. The vast majority of illegal immigrants would just leave if job opportunities dried up.

You're fixated on deportation as a solution, but deportation is build-the-wall style performative nonsense. It's like trying to catch-and-release house mice. All the incentives remain the same. As long as your trash is open and there's food on your floors, the mice come back. Republican political leaders don't support deportation because they think it'll work, they support it because they know it won't. People angry about immigration vote for them-- and the rich people that own the factories, meat packing plants, industrial farms, and hotels illegal immigrants work in vote for them too.

And besides-- you've heard about the difference between positive and negative rights, no? Turning "freedom from immigration" into a positive right requires government enforcement... and government enforcement requires sufficient political consensus that your enforcement apparatus can't be subverted by money-grubbing contractors or suborned by the opposition (i.e, me). That's why the only effective solution is the bounty system-- turning it into a negative right that citizens can largely enforce themselves by pointing out immigration-friendly businesses that "harmed" them.

Also, before you say something about how I like immigration and therefore am incentivized to propose a bullshit plan that wouldn't actually work, I'd like to point out that I'd take effectively the same approach to fighting climate change, and am in favor of the existing abortion bounty law and also in favor of the SEC whistleblower reward process that works similarly.. Getting citizens to inform on each other works. Imagine if your neighbors could sue you for getting your recycling wrong. You'd be a LOT more invested in separating the glass, paper, and aluminum, right? I'm pro-illegal-immigration, but this is genuinely how I'd try to stop it.

I think your ideas are sensible. I’m entirely happy to try what you suggest, and I expect it to have some effect.

The prior that I have and you don’t, is that being a beggar or a criminal in a rich country is as good or better for many people than their original situations. Realistically, it is hard to demand that every service require citizens ID. If we only implement your proposed scheme, it seems to me that the jobless illegals will go to soup kitchens, or run drugs and then spend their money legally in supermarkets. Hospitals will continue to take them if they break their leg, and every instance where someone is denied help for not having an ID will generate huge negative press.

Reducing ‘pull’ factors has to be part of the solution. Incentives matter. And indeed we already had that: the ‘hostile environment’ was British policy for a decade. But I think that it won’t work completely and the ones who remain anyway will be the most violent or desperate of the bunch. So I would be happy to implement your solution in conjunction with more active removals.

I am also dubious about relying on clever-clever legal schemes that work through unmeasurable incentives. They can be watered down in a hundred different ways by a hostile legal establishment and subject to perpetual warfare from international bodies. They can also be gimped from the start by the same government that lied to me about reducing immigration for 15 years. Whereas somebody is either deported or not, and it’s visible for all to see.

Are you european? Our priors might differ due to differences in american vs european immigration patterns. I can't speake for housed but homeless people (e.g., the kind of people I see in shelters) because I don't see them. But all the unhoused people I see seem to be natives, and all the illegal immigrants I've met have been hardworking and gainfully employed.

Also, from my experience being in latin america-- while the quality of social services is lower, I would FAR prefer to be unhoused there than here (assuming my support system has already abandoned me, anyways.) The climate is better, there's much less enforcement against shantytowns, and the police don't hassle you for laying out a blanket and selling random trash on the street. Plus, everything is cheaper so what little money you make goes further.

And in any case, your average unhoused person is constantly breaking low-level laws. There's not much appetite for police enforcement because they won't pay fines and it costs money to keep them in jail, but illegal homeless people could just be deported.

British. The government estimates that each (legal) migrant is a net loss of 150,000 GBP between arriving at 25 years old and reaching the pension age of 60. If they survive to 80, the bill becomes 500,000 pounds: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/12/low-skilled-migrants-cost-taxpayers-150000-each/. The largest cited reason for recent immigration is to join their family in the UK (i.e. not working).

There is also the issue of, frankly, racial politics. There isn't reliable data for the last few years, apparently, but English migration is primarily Polish, Indians, and Pakistanis (and I believe that the proportion of Eastern Europeans is dropping off now that Poland is becoming more prosperous). The Indians and the Pakistanis are extremely clannish, and many hate us for historical reasons. Then they have children who get the full woke treatment at school (often surrounded only by members of their own race). BurdensomeCount's "we will colonise you like you colonised us" is a sentiment I've heard several times now, and not as trolling.* There are maybe 55 million white English, our birth rates are terrible, and we import 0.7 million every year now. The future for us in a multiracial county looks like the future of Christians in the middle east.

illegal homeless people could just be deported

Right. I'm happy to do the other stuff you suggest, as long as this doesn't have to be given up.

*Obligatory reminder that while the British colonised India, they were not settler colonists in any meaningful sense.

EDIT: I’m sorry, this doesn’t really answer your point. I think you are right about the different patterns of immigration causing different priors. I think due to a combination of poverty and political problems at home, many people are very reluctant to return.

It looks like we've converged on the question of, "what would actually, practically stop migration." To restate-- criminalize hiring illegal immigrants, and deport any immigrant (legal or illegal) that commits crime a deportable crime*. (E). So if you'll permit me to, I'll address the the larger discussion ("Under what conditions is immigration good? Do we presently exist in those conditions?")

First, I do want to point out that the topline figure you posted (150,000 GBP) applies only to "low-wage" migrants.The article you linked is under a paywall so I can't argue specifics, but I'd wager there's some debate to be had over

  • where they're drawing the "low-wage" line and whether that's useful to assess the net effect of immigration
  • Whether this figure is useless because it fails to include how the the money saved by hiring an immigrant, and the recursive economic benefits, can also be taxed.

All that being said, I will admit that I'm largely ignorant of British immigration issues. I'm provisionally willing to take your word for its dangers. Instead of trying to convince you that your system is good, I'll try to convince you that the american system is better.

When I said, "immigration is good, as long as it's illegal," I wasn't joking. America's high rates of illegal immigration are an actual strength. Basically all of our legal immigrants are rich enough that we don't have to pay for their welfare, and then illegal immigrants work cheaply, contribute to our economy, don't drain the government purse, and stay terrified of committing crimes and getting deported. Sure, they also have anchor babies, which as you've pointed out would be/are threats to the cultural stability of european nations. But luckily america is blessed with an especially vigorous culture that's only gotten better at assimilating immigrants over time. The fact that the entire midwest is already populated by completely acculturated germans wasn't even our final form! Immigrants become culturally american extremely rapidly.

I understand why low-skill workers and people concerned with the maintenance of specifically white and/or protestant power don't want immigration, even despite the fact that culturally it's a nonissue and economically it's a benefit. And I wouldn't expect the arguments above to sway any of those people. (I have other arguments I could deploy, but they're admittedly much less convincing than the economic-cultural arguments.) But-- correct me if I'm wrong-- I suspect none of those things describe you.

* I'm being intentionally tautological here because it's a bit fiddly defining exactly what "deportable" means. Some crimes are major enough that we want the criminal kept around and punished. Some crimes should sensibly result in the deportation of any criminal that commits them, legal and illegal. Some crimes should be treated differentially-- legal immigrants get punished in-country, illegal immigrants get deported. And the smallest crimes (think, jaywalking) should mostly just result in fines for even illegal immigrants. I'm not a legal theorist so I wouldn't know whether to draw the lines, and thinking about how this could "really" be done probably makes you wary of too-lenient progressives ruining things. But I'd posit that that's more a crime-and-justice issue than an immigration issue... Barring weird edge cases like the nordics, you'll have a hard time finding people who want the justice system to be more lenient specifically against illegal immigrants rather than in general. So this fight boils down to the usual order vs. justice debate rather than any qualms you hold specifically about illegal immigrants.

Ideally, fix the economic problems that incentivize shadow economies and/or crime, but sure, I think mass deportations approved by a majority and compliant with the constitution are almost always a bad idea but I might be wrong and it should be considered ethically permissible...as long as your government can credibly promise to do it humanely. There's no way a 25% chance of death camps for millions of people is worth it for the net benefits to the remainder.

I don’t think that ‘the remainder’ is the right way to think about it. By that logic, if two people break into my house (where I live alone), then I should be removed by the police for the net benefit of the remainder.

(Or I should let them squat permanently on the basis that the trigger-happy police are unacceptably likely to harm them. )

You could of course say that this is the position of the Māoris/Aborigines/Native Americans etc. and you’d be right. This is why I’m fixated on getting immigrants out of the country while they’re still new arrivals and 15% of the country and not the established multi-generational 40% they are swiftly becoming given observable birth rate disparities.

Are we talking deontology here now because I think there are a few deontological arguments against death camps.

We're saying that my house is my house is my house, no matter how many other people come in. There is no remainder whose wellbeing has to be balanced. It's role ethics, if you like.

If someone is in somebody else's house, and that person doesn't want them there, there is an escalating series of possibilities, ordered by decreasing preference.

  1. The owner asks the intruder to leave. The intruder leaves politely.
  2. The owner asks the intruder to leave. The intruder leaves shouting curses or threats.
  3. The owner asks etc. The intruder refuses to leave, the owner threatens to call the police and the intruder leaves quietly.
  4. The intruder refuses to leave, the owner actually does call the police, then the intruder leave quietly.
  5. The intruder refuses to leave, the owner has to call the police, there's a fight, the intruder leaves on a stretcher.
  6. The intruder refuses to leave, the owner has to call the police, they beat the intruder and drag him away.
  7. The intruder refuses to leave, the owner has to call the police, they shoot the intruder.

Again, 1 is clearly preferable to 7. But you seem to be arguing that at some level on that list, the owner has a moral requirement to allow the intruder to stay on the basis that the benefit to him of the intruder leaving is not comparable to the damage the intruder incurs.

This just doesn't work as a way to run a society. It gives power to the most bloody-minded people at the expense of the kind and the reasonable, and makes a mockery of ownership and citizenship. It's how you get the bike theft meme. I once saw a drunk man with no ticket hold up a bus for an hour by standing in the doorway, because he knew it was legally dangerous to physically remove him.

I would think very badly of somebody who starts at 7 but if the intruder refuses to leave then the owner cannot be blamed for escalating. The possibility of escalation is what allows most conflicts to end at 1 or 2.

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On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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