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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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On the other hand, if they want to keep appealing to their white nationalist faction while still appearing respectable, they're going to have to come up with some new justification for being opposed to immigration other than racial animus or the still-unacceptable euphemism of "cultural homogeneity"

How much of the GOP is actually white nationalist and how much of it is just illegal immigration radicalizing people? A lot of people didn't accept Roe or max abortion rights. Now that they get to vote on it again they almost certainly won't vote for the max pro-life position. But it's hard to tell how it'll shake out when Roe is a unifying enemy.

How much of the GOP is actually white nationalist.

In my experience, almost none. In fact in my experience, the vast majority of white nationalists (or at least the most vocal ones) tend to vote Democrat either for accelerationist reasons or out of enimity towards the wider GOP coalition.

Yeah, it's an interesting question. My impression is that Republican opposition to immigration has been fairly constant for the last ~thirty years, but I could be wrong.

Speaking as a Republican living in the southwestern US, legal immigration and the requirements thereof are broadly seen as things reasonable people can disagree on.

It's illegal immigration and specifically the sort of immigration where some douche-canoe from NYC says "they're just doing the jobs real Americans wont" (tacitly admitting that they are trying to undermine the wages of people who are here legally) that is hated witn the fire of a thousand suns.

Opposition to illegal immigration has been a pretty consistent Republican talking point since Reagan’s amnesty, if not sooner. But Republicans’ opinions on legal immigration have been much more mixed. This chart only goes up to 2018, unfortunately, but it shows that around 30–40% of Republicans have supported current legal immigration levels for the past 20 years, and an additional 15–20% have thought it should have been increased. Even today, 71% of Trump supporters would like to see more highly-skilled immigrants allowed to come to this county legally.