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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31951 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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How Peaceful Sweden Became Europe’s Gun-Murder Capital

This link is probably paywalled for most, so some of the salient points:

"Turf wars for control of the drug trade, driven by an influx of guns, personal vendettas and a pool of available youths, many from marginalized migrant communities, have resulted in a gun-homicide rate approximately 2½ times the European average, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention.

With 62 people shot dead last year, up from 45 in 2021, Sweden’s overall homicide rate is about one-sixth of the U.S.’s. But in a European context, it is extraordinary. Stockholm’s gun-murder rate was roughly 30 times higher per capita than London’s.

Perpetrators are becoming younger, and are also resorting to increasingly violent tactics such as throwing hand grenades and placing bombs, injuring a growing number of bystanders, including children.

Because most shootings in Sweden take place among individuals from migrant backgrounds, they have fueled a surge of right-wing populism. In the 2022 election, the Sweden Democrats, a party that has roots in Nazism and blames Sweden’s liberal migration policies for the violence, gained more than 20% of the votes to become the country’s second-largest. Today it rejects Nazism and white nationalism on its platform.

The new center-right government has promised to tighten migration policies, double sentences for offenses committed in “gang environments,” widen the use of electronic surveillance and expel more criminals who aren’t Swedish citizens.

“Compared internationally, we have had a much laxer criminal law. And we have now lost control over the situation,” said Daniel Bergström, an adviser to the Swedish minister of justice.

Experts, however, say there is no simple explanation for the violence.

Nikoi Djane, a former gang member turned criminologist, said authorities had failed to help refugees integrate into society, instead segregating them from society in housing estates with few job opportunities or treatment for conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder.

“The perpetrators have a responsibility, but they are also victims of their circumstances,” Djane said.

Manne Gerell, an associate professor at Malmö University with expertise in organized crime, said the problem was caused by poor integration and exacerbated by years of insufficient response from authorities, police and politicians.

Today, an estimated 75% to 80% of deadly shootings remain unsolved, and the low risk of getting caught has prompted a growing number of youths to kill for bounties issued by gang leaders, said Salihu, the crime expert.

It might also be helpful to look at this article in conjunction with this Free Press article on violence in Sweden: Two Bombings in One Night? That’s Normal Now in Sweden.

At least on its face, this situation has a clear cause (migration from non-Western countries) and a simple solution (stop accepting migrants and remove many of the migrants that are already in Sweden), but to even state these facts gets you labeled a "right-wing populist" (nice of WSJ to omit the customary "far right populist").

I do see where the Left is coming from here. Most migrants aren't committing violence, and it does seem cruel to kick out people who have been living somewhere for years or even decades. But I also think a given community has the right to maintain the integrity of its society and culture. That's also why I'm more okay with something closer to open borders in the USA: Our culture is already so hollowed out that migrants moving here are probably adding, not subtracting, from whatever "culture" there is in the US.

Most migrants aren't committing violence, and it does seem cruel to kick out people who have been living somewhere for years or even decades.

As someone on a work visa, no, not really. They knew what they were getting into. I've been living in this country for many years with my wife and kids and the.government of this country could tell us to fuck off at any time, as is their right. It's a risk a I consciously take. If I decide I no longer want to take that risk, I can just go back where I came from.

Most migrants aren't committing violence, and it does seem cruel to kick out people who have been living somewhere for years or even decades.

They aren't likely to apply these two particular principles fairly and even-handedly though, in my experience. It's well to be skeptical about this.

It seems overall there are two things floating around. Some want to say the US use to run an immigration successful on some argument of lots of demand for manual labor plus strong culture. But we still have a large amount of African Americans who have failed to ever adapt to America. And some may save native Americans too. The reservation population seems to have never integrated and I’m guessing the non-reservation population probably intermixed too much.

The Hispanic population in America does seem to be approaching the mean on a lot of categories. Like the Italians and Irish. Educationally I believe there are still gaps but criminality I believe is the same as whites now. That gives me a lot more faith that 50 years from now the Middle East population in Sweden will be ok. They are basically white adjacent or just white so the long term hbd concerns wouldn’t seem as big. At worse probably approach the Hispanic community in the US of close enough on criminality but lower educational attainment. Especially at the talked about 5-10% of the population.

But we still have a large amount of African Americans who have failed to ever adapt to America.

Unfortunately they didn't arrive as voluntary immigrants though, which is a relevant difference. And Native Americans don't exist as an immigrant minority either, but as dispossessed and defeated aborigines.

The most relevant difference from the typical immigration story is that both groups were functionally prevented from assimilating. It's hard to paint with a broad brush with respect to the Native Americans (many had no interest in joining the US and attempted to resist), but there were multiple attempts made by NA groups to integrate into the growing US, only to be rebuffed (sometimes violently) and mostly isolated on reservations. With African Americans, we can simply point to the history of segregation and interracial marriage bans across the country.

I'm pretty skeptical of this narrative. See:

http://www.anechoicmedia.org/blog/european_politics/

In short, it's a good takedown of the default, overconfident narrative of American migrant assimilation. If your idea of 20th century immigration is wretched refuse coming ashore, moving their way up, and merging economically and politically into the uniform White America we know today, that pretty much didn't happen. By most measures, identifiable European ancestries are still differentiated within America, and in ways that parallel their differences in Europe. The story of white America, then, is less one of assimilation, and more of selection bias and attrition.

There's not much selection pressure on Sweden's migrants if they and their children all get free rides.

I mean, even if cultural assimilation is weaker than civic nationalists would like to think, there is still the matter of literal assimilation. All the white Americans I knew growing up were either the stereotypical "1/16 Irish, 2/5 Italian, 1/4 German, etc." mutts that European nationalists like to make fun of, or the children of recent immigrants from Eastern Europe. The former cannot obviously be sorted into any of those individual categories, unless we are going by self-identification and not actual genetics (let's say our 1/16 Irish person claims to be Irish-American). But of course if we are going by self-identification then at best any differences are some mixture of culture and self-sorting by personality e.g. all the alcoholics identify as IrishPolish and they have some genetic factors in common apart from Polish ancestry.

The other way around this would be to claim that you can do a population-level analysis by the overall % ancestry from each immigrant group, rather than by counting individuals i.e. the way some people would analyze Latin Americans by the population level breakdown of European, Indigenous, and African ancestry, even if every individual is mixed. Whatever utility that has I doubt it works for differences between European ethnicities, if you could ever disentangle them (23andme can't even distinguish between French and German ancestry yet).

Well yes, actual interbreeding will do the trick, but again only if the ones who don't successfully make the jump to marriage with the native population don't continue reproducing themselves. If they do, you'll just end up with one partially- (slightly-)mixed population and a mostly-separate perpetual underclass.

In the US there used to be enormous economic incentive to integrate. Now we're subsidizing degenerate lifestyles on the backs of the productive.

I do see where the Left is coming from here. Most migrants aren't committing violence, and it does seem cruel to kick out people who have been living somewhere for years or even decades. But I also think a given community has the right to maintain the integrity of its society and culture.

Sweden had and still has that right.

They chose to let in migrants. They chose to have a non-ethnic conception of citizenship.

Everything happening is Europe's choice. None of these Ancient Roman comparisons really map. One of the wealthiest, highest human capital regions in the world is not being presented with a fait accompli by Somalians or a technical problem it can't figure out.

This is just what they chose.

There was never a referendum on multiculturalism in Sweden just like there wasn't in America for the 1965 immigration act. This "people chose this themselves" is a tired and unconvincing argument.

just like there wasn't in America for the 1965 immigration act.

Honestly, when was America's last actual referendum? Usually, on federal issues, passing a law and never repealing it is as close as you get no?

This argument seems to do too much. It easily just collapses into a criticism of liberal democracies and how such polities choose anything. Which...I'm not inherently against but if you want to say that "America/Sweden/Whoever" didn't decide on this it can be applied to everything.

America especially was designed to have anti-populist mechanics. That's the foundational bargain of the country. It's a bit late to argue choices aren't legitimate cause they weren't done by plebiscite.

Getting a referendum is also a sign of commitment. The Brexit referendum happened cause Brexiteers were a loud and annoying enough constituency. If the Swedish people don't have the will to push such a thing on their government...that's on them no?

At least it can be said that the people didn't oppose with sufficient zeal to bother meting out any electoral consequences. 'The people chose it' is maybe a slight exaggeration but 'the people chose not to stop it' is basically right. And fwiw Hart-Celler polled pretty well.

The people who opposed it were often prevented from competing on fair terms electorally. In many cases, their party leaders were just jailed. This is a recent example. So no, I find the "let's blame the voters" unconvincing and frankly a sign of a mind unable to look critically at the system as it is.

Did this happen in Sweden? Your example is from very recently, Golden Dawn hardly did that well in 2019, a whopping 3% of the vote. Greek solution got another few percent, so still under 7% for the far righters. Can that poor of a performance really be blamed on your imagined unfair electoral terms; what was the unfairness in 2019?

The people chose it' is maybe a slight exaggeration

The exact phrase was "Sweden chose this"

Who voted for mass immigration?

Take the UK - since the 1990s both major parties consistently said they'd be tough and restrictive on immigration. They then proceeded to increase it while in power. https://twitter.com/t848m0/status/1560662923101347840

The governments of Europe and the European Union make the choices, not the people. Consider how much intense opposition there was to Brexit, something that really could be considered the people's choice! It eventually happened, after a great deal of fooling around and delaying tactics. Or the many times states have rejected EU integration in referendums, only to be made to vote again or their decisions were ignored. Capital punishment was abolished decades before it became unpopular.

What is the point of democracy if the major parties consistently lie about their plans and implement their agenda regardless of what the voters want? Or if they form a 'cordon sanitaire' to prevent political representation of undesirables? Or if they manipulate the media by omission, lies, slant and emphasis to enforce ideological orthodoxy? Middle East Wars are the primary example. Russiagate is a secondary example, now that the Durham report has been released.

In the UK we can't electorally reduce immigration, it is an issue decided by the people who work in the home office and legal system. If you want to reduce immigration then you have to change the opinions of those classes of people and wait a generation or two for the attitudes to get embedded in the bureocracy. Voting will never result in less immigration except for a short term fluctuation - 300 000 last year and 299 999 this year, see voting did make it drop! next year its 1000 000, etc.

These are flaws in the implementation of democracy, not indicators that we should abandon democracy altogether. There's a huge difference between European or American governance systems and those of a real dictatorship like Russia.

Immigration issues typically have a huge amount of fraudulent "compromise" because corporations like cheap labor, so they bribe (through political "donations" and other kickbacks) politicians to "compromise" on the issue, effectively relegating countries to open borders in some cases. Support to Israel is also held up above and beyond popular approval due to AIPAC corrupting the US political system.

These are flaws in the implementation of democracy, not indicators that we should abandon democracy altogether.

Democracy in principle is fine (referendums for example, which should be cheaper and more regular in the digital age). There's a role for the state of course. But democracy in practice is, as you say, grossly flawed.

I don't know if you've seen the famous 'We're Losing OUR DEMOCRACY' video. What is the point of Our Democracy anyway? What does it get us? Are we not spied upon intensely, as in China? Are we not dragged into costly wars by the government like Russia?

Is it a qualitative matter? Is Our Democracy keeping us a bit less corrupt than Russia? How do we even measure corruption, should we include lobbying and 'investments in underpriveliged communities'? Was Russia less corrupt during its brief experiment with Democracy? Are the wars we'd get dragged into less bloody than they'd otherwise be? In China, you can vote for your Party member. Here, we get to vote for different Parties, which mostly have the same policies.

If you want a more rigorous answer to this question, I recommend this book.

For a shorter answer, being democratic makes us massively less corrupt than Russia, even though, yes, corruption is still an issue in the US (and everywhere) but comparing the US to Russia is just worlds apart.

We're also far richer and have much better public services like education and healthcare. It's possible for some rich countries to be authoritarian, but it's the exception rather than the rule. Though there is some debate on which way the causality goes here, although I would personally say it's more a case of democracy --> stability --> rich.

For a shorter answer, being democratic makes us massively less corrupt than Russia, even though, yes, corruption is still an issue in the US (and everywhere) but comparing the US to Russia is just worlds apart.

Is that actually true? On an absolute scale the amount of corruption contained within the MIC and federal procurements systems alone would demolish Russian levels of corruption and if you include preferential legislation enacted to keep the big banks happy I think you could make a plausible case that they're actually more corrupt on a relative basis as well.

I don’t think that’s actually true. We spend a lot on overhead and standards but not so much on things “falling off the truck.”

But what do I know; I just work here.

The US spends more than ten times as much money on their military than Russia does, and everything I have heard about the US military procurement effort and pork-barrelling suggests to me that Russia would have to spend more than 100% of their entire budget on corruption in order to match up to US figures.

Corruption definitely happens in the US armed forces, but comparing what goes on to the Russians is at a whole different level.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc?

A better comparison would be democratic Russia vs. non-democratic Russia. Do you think Yeltsin's regime was less corrupt than Putin's (or Gorbachev's)?

And of course it's easy to find countries that mostly aren't democratic and are also less corrupt than the US. Liechtenstein in Europe is an example. So is Singapore really or Hong Kong when it was still under the control of the English.

Democratic Russia was indeed very corrupt, but the attempt at democracy only lasted for ~10 years. Democracy isn't a magic panacea that fixes everything instantly; rather, it's a way to change institutional incentives to slowly guide countries to better outcomes. The book I listed above goes into this more. It would have taken decades to root out the centuries of corruption that had been caked into East Slavic society through the Tsars and Bolsheviks. Even before the war Ukraine was still very corrupt, but its democratic path gave it a far better chance than Russia to actually fix its problems, which we're seeing now. Most other Warsaw Pact states like Poland saw massive reductions in corruption after they switched to democracy.

Assertion without evidence (I don't have time to read an entire book, sorry).

Russia was only getting more corrupt under its democracy and it's hardly the only example. Egypt had a brief fling with democracy that set it back decades. And all democracy seems to have done in South America is make it easier for the cartels to buy national governments.

As for Poland and the like, you seem to be forgetting that they were highly civilized functional countries in their fairly recent (generally non-democratic) past. A better explanation seems to be that those countries were doing well due to a myriad of reasons (good genes, cultural capital, etc...) until they got hit by the communism stick. After communism was gone, they reverted to their mean.

The comments on Ukraine are pure speculation. It's democracy certainly didn't seem to be helping given the multiple color revolutions and the constant conflict between it's two halves. Of course these would have been problems anyway but what's your evidence that Democracy made any of this better?

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The governments of Europe and the European Union make the choices, not the people.

Unfalsifiable, else Brexit would have falsified it. You can’t expect the state to act on every whim of the populace. The promise of democracy is that the little guy gets some power, a backstop, not unlimited, on-call power.

Take away all his power, and he just might find himself in a Putin's invasion situation, where it’s not just a few dollars and soldiers on the line, but his life.

Say you're in a restaurant and you specifically order steak but get served tomato soup. Once, twice, three times... They say that steak is on the menu, yet keep giving you soup. Isn't this egregious? You're still paying for the meal. And it's not like they ran out of steak! You're not ordering something outlandish like unicorn fillet or dragon sausage, steak is well within the capacity of the restaurant.

If people were asking for low taxes and high spending, then sure, that's unreasonable. But it's not hard at all to reduce immigration. It's trivially easy, unless you have an enormously large border like Russia or perhaps the US. The UK has absolutely no excuse, it's an island. Don't grant so many visas, don't let people come in, expel those who do. The Royal Navy has plans to combat China in the Pacific, they should be able to secure the English Channel from unarmed boats.

Unfalsifiable, else Brexit would have falsified it.

Well the whole point of Brexit was to reduce immigration... which still has not happened. If you ask Brexit voters what they wanted, they would say they want reduced immigration.

If people were asking for low taxes and high spending, then sure, that's unreasonable.

Eyes national debt charts nervously...

else Brexit would have falsified it

It took multiple constitutional crises (including a proguation of parliament, which many regard as undemocratic), a general election in 2017 where parties promising won over 85% of the vote, the biggest defeat of those parties ever in the 2019 European election when they reached deadlock over Brexit (and 30.5% of the vote for the Brexit party, a completely unprecedented rise for a new party in UK political history), and Labour losing their MP in Bolsover.

It also involved setting up internal trade barriers in the UK, against the wishes of most people in Northern Ireland.

You can’t expect the state to act on every whim of the populace.

True, but it is typical that if the state seeks a mandate from the populace in a referendum for X, it doesn't choose to do X even if the referendum goes against X. Can you imagine what would have happened if the Remain side had narrowly won the referendum, but the Conservatives implemented Brexit anyway, saying that membership of the EU was unworkable? Or even had a second referendum a few years later, saying that the Remainers had misunderstood the issues?

Still, even if you argue that Brexit was a transient and uninformed whim, it's still not comparable to the public's desire for less immigration, which is a very persistent preference in the UK, and many other EU countries. The problem is that, at least on this issue, democracy has been ineffective as a means of incentivising politicians to act in accordance with that preference. I think that this is a general flaw with democracy: people generally vote for candidates, who come as package deals, and who can afford to change parts of that package after the deal in order to appeal to special interest groups who are better organised than most voters.

You might argue, with Churchill, that "Democracy is awful, but it is the worst system of government, save for all the others," but that's a prima facie argument for less government, not more democracy.

It also involved setting up internal trade barriers in the UK, against the wishes of most people in Northern Ireland.

They voted for a barrier. So there was going to be a barrier somewhere, either between the irelands or the islands. Democracy doesn’t have the power to alter reality to make people’s wishes come true.

Can you imagine what would have happened if the Remain side had narrowly won the referendum, but the Conservatives implemented Brexit anyway, saying that membership of the EU was unworkable?

You keep talking as if Brexit hadn’t happened.

They voted for a barrier. So there was going to be a barrier somewhere, either between the irelands or the islands. Democracy doesn’t have the power to alter reality to make people’s wishes come true.

Yes, my point was that implementing what people wanted was costly, partly because democracy is limited in what it can do.

You keep talking as if Brexit hadn’t happened.

No, the point is that the hurdles for Brexit were high, partly because a considerable majority of the political establishment was against it. Again, this is an instance of one of the limitations of democracy: a referendum result can be incompatible with the wishes of those with the power to implement it.

Do you agree that Brexit not happening after the referundum would have been evidence in favour of ‘elites make all the decisions’? Then Brexit happening is evidence against.

People don’t update generally, fine. But you’re using anti-evidence as evidence.

a referendum result can be incompatible with the wishes of those with the power to implement it.

Sure, but the thesis you're defending here is that those with the power to implement it get their way regardless of the will of the people or referendums.

But you’re using anti-evidence as evidence... the thesis you're defending here is that those with the power to implement it get their way regardless of the will of the people or referendums.

I didn't say that elites make all the decisions. I simply expanded the facts about Brexit, which are relevant to assessing the strength of elite opinion in developed democracies.

My own view is that democracy provides weak incentives for politicians to enforce majority preferences, except insofar as these preferences correspond to the balance of political profits from special interest groups. Of course, the circumstances vary, e.g. there are arguments that special interest groups are more influential in proportional representation systems, while widely-encompassing special interest groups are arguably less harmful. Mancur Olson's The Rise and Decline of Nations is a good introduction to this topic, even if Olson was pushing too hard for the One True Theory of Society.

They voted for a barrier. So there was going to be a barrier somewhere, either between the irelands or the islands. Democracy doesn’t have the power to alter reality to make people’s wishes come true.

Isn't it funny how democracy results in erecting barriers they don't want, and abolishing barriers they do want?

You keep talking as if Brexit hadn’t happened.

In practice, it kind of didn't.

Isn't it funny how democracy results in erecting barriers they don't want, and abolishing barriers they do want?

The problem though is 'the people' seemed to want no barrier at all, which was incompatible with the Brexit which they also apparently wanted. If they ask for no border in the Irish sea, and no border on the Irish border, but also a border somewhere, you can't blame the politicians for failing to deliver on the impossible wishes of the 'people'.

In practice, it kind of didn't.

How so?

The problem though is 'the people' seemed to want no barrier at all, which was incompatible with the Brexit which they also apparently wanted. If they ask for no border in the Irish sea, and no border on the Irish border, but also a border somewhere, you can't blame the politicians for failing to deliver on the impossible wishes of the 'people'.

What's impossible about letting in the Irish, but not other EU members?

How so?

A lot of policies end up copy-pasted from the EU anyway, I think that's what happened with the Even More Annoying Cookie Banner Directive. Another curious thing is how all of Europe, including the UK, is now simultaneously passing gender self-ID. To be fair I think the problem is bigger than the EU but also let's not pretend the UK is independent now and it's elites are listening to the people.

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You mean, aside from the barrier around Britain the elites didn't want?

As is often the case, the EU was just a scapegoat for pro-immigration forces which operate both inside and outside the EU. They have met the enemy, and it is them.

You mean, aside from the barrier around Britain the elites didn't want?

Which barrier is that?

As is often the case, the EU was just a scapegoat for pro-immigration forces which operate both inside and outside the EU.

Right, and now the scapegoat is the voting public, even though they voted against it

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They chose to help those poor, poor migrants. I don't think they chose to have murder and rape and mayhem. I mean, the latter is the consequence of the former, but I don't think they realized it when making the choice.

I mean, the latter is the consequence of the former, but I don't think they realized it when making the choice.

They were told (by bad people of course), and either they didn't believe or didn't care. When it happened, they denied, covered up, and still choose to help those poor, poor migrants. As I said, nobody ever updates.

As I said, nobody ever updates.

It is so ironic you say this given you had multiple people giving you examples of them updating. It sure sounds like you yourself didn't update.

Getting to selectively let in good immigrants is a great advantage for the US. Just opening the gates would result in the global south median person coming in in enormous numbers. Not exactly modern skilled workers. Our per capita GDP would drop, though some "numbers go up" people would correctly point out that GDP would increase because there's more people.

Snow Crash has a bit about open borders former US in a perfectly globalized world looking like prosperity from the point of view of a Pakistani brick layer. And it looks like living in a Brazilian favela from the point of view of a formerly prosperous American.

It's too good not to post:

When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:

music

movies

microcode (software)

high-speed pizza delivery

Bonus quote regarding "the Raft," a mass of floating trash and boats inhabited by millions that circulates on the Pacific current, picking up the global poor as it passes Asia and dumping them by the hundreds of thousands on the shore of California (cf. migrant boats/caravans):

"So you're creating your own news event to make money off the information flow that it creates?" says the journalist, desperately trying to follow. His tone of voice says that this is all a waste of videotape. His weary attitude suggests that this is not the first time Rife has flown off on a bizarre tangent.

"Partly. But that's only a very crude explanation. It really goes a lot deeper than that. You've probably heard the expression that the Industry feeds off of biomass, like a whale straining krill from the ocean."

"I've heard the expression, yes."

“That’s my expression. I made it up. An expression like that is just like a virus, you know–it’s a piece of information–data–that spreads from one person to the next. Well, the function of the Raft is to bring more biomass. To renew America. Most countries are static, all they need to do is keep having babies. But America’s like this big old clanking, smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight. Leaves behind a trail of garbage a mile wide. Always needs more fuel.”

"Now I have a different perspective on it. America must look, to those poor little buggers down there, about the same as Crete looked to those poor Greek suckers. Except that there's no coercion involved. Those people down there give up their children willingly. Send them into the labyrinth by the millions to be eaten up. The Industry feeds on them and spits back images, sends out movies and TV programs, over my networks, images of wealth and exotic things beyond their wildest dreams, back to those people, and it gives them something to dream about, something to aspire to. And that is the function of the Raft. It's just a big old krill carrier."

Finally the journalist gives up on being a journalist, just starts to slag L. Bob Rife openly. He's had it with this guy.

"That's disgusting. I can't believe you can think about people that way."

"Shit, boy, get down off your high horse. Nobody really gets eaten. It's just a figure of speech. They come here, they get decent jobs, find Christ, buy a Weber grill, and live happily ever after. What's wrong with that?

Getting to selectively let in good immigrants is a great advantage for the US. Just opening the gates would result in the global south median person coming in in enormous numbers. Not exactly modern skilled workers. Our per capita GDP would drop, though some "numbers go up" people would correctly point out that GDP would increase because there's more people.

This is exactly what happens in Europe, so yes. The ruling party of the UK are fanatical "line go up!" devotees. Numbers came out today that the economy grew 0.4% this year, while the population is projected to have grown 1.3%+ in the same time. So, per capita, we're all worse off. But holy GDP line went up! So infinite immigration good! It really is that facile.

the ruling party of the UK are fanatical "line go up!" devotees

They are not; NIMBYism, Brexit, lack of government capital investment (see HS2), if anything this government is interested in nothing more than managed decline, letting the economy wither away as long as Linda doesn't have to see any new builds across the street, have a rail line passing in her general vicinity and gets her way over grumbling about Brussels.

To older British people, it's probably nice to have an army of low-wage workers to serve them in their last couple decades.

The degeneration of society through mass immigration is just one more tax that the gerontocracy imposes on the rest of the country.

Wrong. Support for immigration is highest among young people.

I never said it wasn't. You have to read comments in context. The olds in the Conservative party support immigration because of "labor shortage" and to prop up the pension system. Young people support it for reasons of social justice.

Young people support it for reasons of social justice.

If young people face paying for an ever expanding welfare state aimed at the old (e.g. the UK state pension, which is designed to almost always provide an increased welfare income for the retired via the Triple Lock) then it's understandable that they would want more shoulders to carry the burden. True, that creates increased pressure for housing and perhaps wages, but the alternative is massive taxes and spending cuts on working younger people to pay for the welfare that older Britons demand.

The welfare state is a system designed for the demographics of the pre-Gen X eras. As the social democrat economist Paul Samuelson put it, things like Social Security are Ponzi schemes, presupposing perpetual increases in the numbers of young workers to ensure that ever generation is significantly larger than preceding generations. There are a variety of options, including:

(1) Have more children. Too late, at least for the current generation of middle-aged or old people.

(2) Move away from a pay-as-you-go welfare state, e.g. to the Singapore model of mandatory savings. Too late, at least for the current generation of middle-aged or old people, and a huge imposition on the young, who would be both paying for a savings-based retirement for themselves and a pay-as-you-go retirement for the old.

(3) Mass immigration.

(4) Cuts in welfare for existing retirees, plus a movement towards (1) and/or (2) somehow.

Unfortunately, (3) is the path of least resistance for politicians. Older people want the result of less immigration, but how many of them are willing to accept smaller state pensions, less state healthcare, higher taxes on their retirement incomes etc. to pay for it? "Wanting something" is an ambiguous concept: do you want it enough to undertake the process of getting it? Or would you just like it if it happened with less or no sacrifice?

Obviously some old people are in favour of immigration, but that doesn’t make that policy a result of gerontocracy. The opposite is the case.

That's also why I'm more okay with something closer to open borders in the USA: Our culture is already so hollowed out that migrants moving here are probably adding, not subtracting, from whatever "culture" there is in the US.

I knew this was coming. I have read too many “conservative” commentators who decry mass immigration to European countries but celebrate it in America (“because we’re a different sort of country, built on ideas”) to expect anything else. People are perfectly capable of looking at Syrian gang members shooting each other in a Stockholm mall (shouting in Arabic the whole time) and recognizing Those men are not Swedes. They will never be Swedes. Nothing short of a magic spell could turn them into Swedes. And yet when asked to apply the same logic to that same sort of men in America, an impenetrable mental block descends and makes it impossible for even the same commentators to reach the same conclusion.

America is not a special country that exists outside of history. It is not mysteriously immune from the realities of human biology and heredity. “American” is not a magical category that is infinitely capacious and malleable in a way that no other extant ethnicity or nationality is. It was, in fact, founded as an ethnostate, exactly the same way that Sweden was. The men who founded the country said so at the time, and the history of the demography of the country supports that reading. Syrians are no more capable of becoming Americans than they are of becoming Swedes.

There are tens of millions of Americans who can directly trace their descent to families who lived in this country 400 years ago. I am one of them! Those people were settlers and invaders who displaced the indigenous population that had previously occupied that land; that is also true of nearly every human population group on earth. The Europeans who showed up to displace the Iroquois and the Cree did not become Iroquois and Cree. They were a new people, capitalizing on the weakness and decline of the existing population. The exact same is true of the Syrians moving into Sweden.

Unlike the Iroquois, though, Swedes have the actual power and numbers to easily repel this invasion by force of arms at any moment. The Swedish military could locate and forcibly deport or eliminate nearly every Syrian in the country within a month if they desired to. If you believe it would be cruel to do so, that’s fine; I don’t even necessarily disagree! But the fact that they choose not to do so in no way means that the country is benefiting from the presence of those people. The same is largely true of the United States - only the scale of the problem is different.

There is an enormous regional disparity in Italy. Northern Italy is like Germany, rich and highly developed; Southern Italy is like Greece, poor and corrupt. This has been the case for as long as Italy has existed as a country, and no attempts to address the problem have succeeded.

This phenomenon has an obvious HBD explanation: the Southerners are just genetically incapable of having a functional society. And indeed, the further south one goes down the Apennine peninsula, the greater the admixture of non-European genes.

But although most Italian immigrants to America came from Southern Italy (since it was poorer), Italian Americans have integrated seamlessly into White American society. How do proponents of HBD explain the disparity between Southern Italians in Southern Italy and Southern Italians in America? My guess would be that it is caused by cultural and institutional factors. Why do you believe that Syrians, unlike Southern Italians, are not "capable of becoming Americans", even though both groups come from highly dysfunctional societies?

Agree, we need to get rid of the Irish and Italians. The papists are ruining this once great nation.

And so have the birthrates...

More effort than this, please.

We're not scared of the boogeyman because we know how the movie ends.

But it could have gone very differently. The story of Italian and Irish assimilation is not a story of open borders. In fact, quite the opposite. Starting in the late 1920s the United States closed its borders, shutting down almost all immigration. After decades with very little new immigration, the existing migrant stock more or less assimilated into the rest of the population. Unlike today, this "melting pot" culture was deliberately encourage and celebrated.

This success story is the exact opposite of what the open border types encourage.

While I laughed, this kind of drive-by irony isn't the norm here, by design.

Agree it was low effort. I do think however think invoking the Irish is the best response to doomerism about immigration. Today 1/6th of Americans identify as Irish! The great replacement theory already happened by a group of starving refugees with different religions beliefs who answered to a foreign high priest and it worked out pretty well.

The Irish were ethnically almost indistinguishable from the English and Scottish settlers already present in America, and the Catholicism was not that big of a deal--it took America from English to more Dutch or German religious demographics. And even then, as the poster below me says, it caused problems. Also, there wasn't "replacement" going on because the native birthrate was above replacement.

There is not a good comparison to modern immigration policy here.

Ehh. The Irish still were footsoldiers for the big city machines and early 20th century progressives, who, in the end, have made America much worse as a whole.

Historically, the US was in fact capable of assimilating diverse immigrant populations. Maybe we’ve lost that ability due to philosophical trends. Maybe it always was an accident of history, and nations without the economic snowball of the late 1800s can’t replicate such a feat. But clearly, we managed to assimilate Irish and Italian and other cultures to the point they usually get labeled as white.

I live in Texas. We have an enormous South and East Asian population, which has not generated unrest. It’s not that they’re just the best and brightest. Opening up a nail salon or restaurant is not a high-skill occupation. What it does require is buy-in to the American paradigm of advancement. The same is true for Sweden, which is perfectly capable of assimilating anyone who wants to buy in.

It’s easy enough to believe that gangbangers aren’t interested in advancement by legitimate means. Those men aren’t Swedes because they don’t care about being Swedes. They probably wouldn’t become Americans, either (though I guess our cultural products are a lot stronger than the Nordics). Cool, don’t let them in.

I don’t think this applies to the general category of Syrians. Sweden was right to expect an Ellis Island scenario where they get a bunch of productive workers ready to do cheap labor. It’s their implantation of the filters which has fallen short. Improve their ability to reject bad actors—or to convert them into cooperative ones—and Sweden can get this under control.

Those men aren’t Swedes because they don’t care about being Swedes. They probably wouldn’t become Americans, either (though I guess our cultural products are a lot stronger than the Nordics).

Arguably many immigrant-background gang criminals etc. in Sweden and other European countries have assimilated - they just haven't assimilated to the European mainstream cultures but to the omnipresent, America-originated (though these days somewhat detached from that root, ie. UK roadman subculture becoming more common as a point of reference) global underclass subculture, or subcultures.

Many of the biggest issues in Sweden re: immigrants are due to outlaw biker gangs (Saturadah is known to be immigrant-oriented), but biker gangs have been an issue in the Nordic countries even before immigrant crime really became a thing. There arguably is not a single form of organized crime more American, both regarding its origins and cultural signifiers, than outlaw biker gangs.

Furthermore, of course, there are a plenty of immigrants in Sweden and immigrants who have assimilated completely to Swedish mores, even if these might be liberal Swedish mores. During my career in left-wing youth politics here I visited Sweden to meet the local left youth organization a few times, and saw little difference between members coming from native Swedish or immigrant backgrounds; often both types were able to trigger an automatic Finnish "goddamn Swedes..." reaction somewhere in my subconsciousness.

I think most of the issue is a problem that’s really based on the idea that there’s no gradation to ideas, and that no ideas are inherently better or worse than any other ideas. It’s lead us to become the culture of the indulgent parent who cannot help but give the children in their home exactly what they want exactly when and how they want it. That’s probably the biggest difference between the Great Assimilations of the past and now.

If you moved to America or Sweden or anywhere in Western Europe, you were expected to assimilate. You had to speak English in America, you had to learn to dress like Americans, to like American culture (or at least be okay with it). You had to send your kids to American schools where they would absolutely learn American culture. The same sort of process happened in other countries. I don’t think that a Muslim immigrant in 1900 would have been permitted to wear a Hijab or skullcap. They certainly wouldn’t have been able to demand that schools and workplaces install ritual baths or schedule their work/school day around prayer times. That forced them to assimilate.

We’re honestly doing the opposite, and not only not forcing new immigrants to join the mainstream, but actually unassimilating our native populations by allowing various “lobby ethnics” to simply carve out accommodations for whatever weird fetish, weird dress or hairstyles they want to wear, or practices they want to do. And the rest of us are taugh very early on that raising any objections to weird thing people do is wrong. It’s even wrong to express the idea that there is or should be a norm. Teaching the old books, talking about the old religious heritage, all of this is simply thought crime.

And thus we’re creating a cultural chaos where you can never exactly trust that anyone around you shares anything with you. Maybe he has a pooping on the floor fetish. Maybe he believes in jihad. Maybe he just meditates all day. Maybe they’ll wear pajamas, maybe he’ll dress in a Muslim robe or wear Tizit, or a suit. They might speak English or not. It’s impossible to share a culture.

You had to speak English in America, you had to learn to dress like Americans, to like American culture

Really? Could not all sorts of languages be heard on the streets of the large cities (and in some cases elsewhere) for decades and decades after the immigration took off, whether it be Yiddish, German, Polish or something else? Indeed one occasionally reads those stories about the remnants of an immigrant community in some place or other where the old-timers still speak another European language.

True, but if you for some reason want to go out into the wider world — for work, for recreation, for education, whatever it might be, you had to at least get onboard with the dress, customs, and language of America. You couldn’t get a job and expect them to accommodate your cultural or religious garb. You wouldn’t be allowed to continue to speak your native language outside the enclave especially at work or school. This forced people to eventually assimilate.

Some of the difference is technology. I have Google translate and I can thus understand at a basic level, most languages well enough to do a very basic interaction. The rest is a sort of malaise that assumes that a country can actually survive as a cohesive unit without at least some baseline of a shared culture. The idea that one should be permitted to “let their freak flag fly” is corrosive because it’s precisely those shared expectations, morals, and folkways that produce social trust. I can’t really know that a person who behaves wildly out of the mainstream shares any of my values. I don’t know what would and wouldn’t offend them. This leads to less social interaction and often much shallower interactions because I can’t know what’s safe for polite conversation.

Yeah, non-English, native language institutions and schools were the norm for most of American history, and were even legally codified in many states. That only reversed during our WW1 xenophobic fervor, and even then the Supreme Court ruled its illegal to forbid native language schools.

I don’t think that a Muslim immigrant in 1900 would have been permitted to wear a Hijab or skullcap.

To be precise, they would have been legally permitted, but people would have been permitted to deny them employment or services on those grounds. In at least some respects, it was a freer time all around.

  • I don’t think that a Muslim immigrant in 1900 would have been permitted to wear a Hijab or skullcap. They certainly wouldn’t have been able to demand that schools and workplaces install ritual baths or schedule their work/school day around prayer times.

I mean, unless they were in a Muslim-heavy immigrant community. You certainly had thatt sort of... not quite enclave, but significant presence, in some areas, I believe down to things like German-language newspapers, for instance.

Sweden was right to expect an Ellis Island scenario where they get a bunch of productive workers ready to do cheap labor.

Completely inaccurate. It's not like there weren't previous examples to draw from. Mass immigration to Europe didn't start with the Syrian War.

One look at the French banlieues should have given an observant Swede all he needed to know. Ellis Island comparisons from a hundred years ago strain credulity when there are recent examples much closer to home.

I don’t think this applies to the general category of Syrians. Sweden was right to expect an Ellis Island scenario where they get a bunch of productive workers ready to do cheap labor.

What why? These are literally men who refused to take a side in a civil war.

I don’t follow.

A male Syrian refugee had the option of, instead, joining the Syrian Armed Forces, the Syrian National Army, or the Free Syrian Army and/or providing material support for one of those.

This is a very easy comment to make from, one imagines, the comfort of the West.

The comforts of the West having been provided to me because some of my ancestors took the hard road. Look at the Constitution wise men wisely put in the word "Posterity".

I think you should read what the founders thought about titles of nobility. They explicitly say it's bad to consider yourself any more special or claim any special privileges due to what your ancestors did.

Ignoring "all men are created equal" because of this one single word "posterity" that may not even mean literal descent is bizarre. I'm always confused by people who identify so much with being Western or American and still hold such anti-individualistic and anti-meritocratic values.

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And if you were John Paul Jones I would not have quibbled with the comment. You don't get to take some sort of vicarious credit for the actions of your ancestors, and that their actions helped deliver the prosperity you live in that hardly gives you the right to pontificate on the bravery or otherwise of Syrian refugees.

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Of course.

If you're suggesting his unwillingness to join one of those armies means he will be reluctant to do normal labor, I have to disagree. Staying in a warzone is unappealing for any number of reasons. A wife and kids, for example.

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America has never been an ethnostate. If anything it is the literal anti-ethnostate. As far back as 1776, Thomas Paine pointed out that less than a third of Pennsylvanians were of English descent and so any claims of being an English nation were already moot.

The direction has been clear since then: from just Anglos to accepting all Germanic and Celtic peoples to accepting all "Judeo-Christians" and so on. I too have colonial ancestry, but I don’t see how my New England Puritan, New Netherland Dutch, and Palatine German ancestors formed any sort of ethnos. They certainly wouldn't have said so, those of them that even had a language in common to communicate in. Their blood may be mingled in me now, but so is that of subsequent waves of immigration from Europe and Asia. Where do you draw the line?

There is a path towards a single American nation, the same one followed by the Romans from a civic identity that encompassed the whole of the Mediterranean world from Gauls to Numidians to an ethnic one of Greek-speaking Romanoi living in the Eastern Empire after losing most of the Middle East to the Arab invasions.

However, the road to Byzantium is a hard one and involves the loss of prestige and power on the world stage and a retrenchment into more parochial, local concerns. In many ways we are already on it, but it is not the rediscovery of a centuries old white ethnic identity (though depending on the exact demographics it may be framed that way by some) but rather the binding together of those populations that are already here, be they of European, African, Asian, or indigenous descent, and from our perspective it may seem as strange for that new people to claim the mantle of "American" as it would be for Augustus to see some Greek Christian from Anatolia in the 10th century claiming to be "Roman."

America has never been an ethnostate. If anything it is the literal anti-ethnostate. As far back as 1776, Thomas Paine pointed out that less than a third of Pennsylvanians were of English descent and so any claims of being an English nation were already moot.

While it is true that Pennsylvania and the Southern upcountry weren't ethnically homogeneous by any means, the colonial and early US absolutely had an ethnic nation: Yankee New England. It was a ridiculously homogeneous area -- culturally and ethnically -- for North American subsequent experience. Their culture was also very influential on American culture generally for a long time, too. So, America has historically had at least sub-national ethno-states in the past.

Now, however, they have greatly subsumed into 'general American' culture, fully assimilating into the broader gestalt of the republic. When was the last time you ever saw someone called a 'WASP'? Even New England itself is plurality Catholic these days so, while Yankee heritage is still probably very widespread there, there is a new ethnicity living in New England that is descended from the Yankees and a whole lot of newcomers.

There are tens of millions of Americans who can directly trace their descent to families who lived in this country 400 years ago. I am one of them! Those people were settlers and invaders who displaced the indigenous population that had previously occupied that land; that is also true of nearly every human population group on earth.

I have ancestors who were on the Mayflower, and mostly-indigenous ancestors from Mexico, and I work with a bunch of guys from India. Even if we acknowledge the "realities of biology and heredity", my intuition is that there's plenty of "good stock" from the rest of the world that we can import into the United States to our own and their benefit. Every culture has its elites, and even "backwards" cultures like Ireland have been able to overcome low IQ's and become functional societies with an influx of resources.

It's a big 'if', but if we were able to screen every immigrant for either high-IQ or high-Conscientiousness, and remove those with violent criminal histories, I wouldn't have any issue letting in massive numbers of people into the country, up to what we could safely educate into American culture and values. America would definitely change, but that would inevitably happen even with closed borders, and an America built of either the smartest or hardest working people in the world seems like one that I would be proud to pass on to my children, even if wasn't 100% identical to the America I grew up in.

but if we were able to screen every immigrant

What would have to happen in America to make this true?

You admit it's a big if, it sounds more like an impossible dream to me.

We don't even get everyones name now.

I agree with you that there was a point at which the US had a meaningful culture to defend. My point is that at some point along the line, the waves of mass migration to the US, along with economic ("right wing") and cultural ("left wing") liberalism, destroyed any meaningful, unified culture the country had. Yes, there are people who can trace their descent to the Mayflower, but they are a very small percentage of the current US population (and I also think that a lot of them no longer care about, protect, or even know the culture and traditions their ancestors brought here). Given this situation, I think the benefits of ~open borders (to both the migrants and the country) outweigh the harms. If you talked to me 70 years ago, maybe I'd go the other way, but we're way past the point that Sweden only passed about a decade or two ago and could still meaningfully reverse.

Culture isn't a glass that can only be emptied. It can be filled as well.

After the U.S. stopped almost all immigration in the 1920s, there was a considerable amount of ethnogenesis and culture building that happened for the next several decades.

If we stopped mass immigration again (still allowing for small amounts of talented immigration) I think we could see a similar result. The America that emerges in 2070 wouldn't be the same as today, but it would be distinctly American as opposed to the corporatized globalhomo we're descending into today.

Globohomo is neocolonialism. It's pushed by more than our corporate overlords. It's the state religion of PMC women, homosexuals and their allies.

it would be distinctly American as opposed to the corporatized globalhomo we're descending into today

What is "corporatized globalhomo" if not distinctly American? Ask any Frenchman, Russian, or Indian and they will tell you quite clearly where it comes from. Now that doesn't necessarily make it good, but some monsters are homegrown.

Corporatized globalhomo is not distinctly American. It is merely what happens when there is no unifying national identity or purpose. It takes root anywhere there is not something strong to resist it. Which is why it has also colonized Germany, Australia, UK, and Canada (but less so France and much less Japan).

France is so globohomo that gay men told me when I was there, that there are no gay bars anymore (outside of Paris) because it's depassé so all the gays go to straight bars. I assume that means they're so integrated into mainstream society that the distinction between gay and straight bars just doesn't exist. As a gay man this sounds horrible because I don't want to be rejected by 90% of the men at a straight bar and I don't want to just hit on the obviously homosexual ones.

And regarding Japan, have you watched the NHK lately? Their news is more globohomo than NPR half the time (though I suspect it's more reflective of an attempt at fawning to the international media/pleasing Americans as propaganda than any actual reflection of the beliefs of the people of Japan). Their traditional culture does seem like a strong defense against globohomo however, I would broadly say that South Korea feels more globohomo than Japan though it's hard to say how much of that is due to SK's much more recent modernization than Japan's. Japan feels more mid-20th century while SK feels more 21st century, so SK has more globohomo while Japan has more of a mid 20th century hippie Beatles energy (still!).

Germany has gone so globohomo because of a very German obsession with not appearing to align with Nazism and don't seem to have the desire to dream up anything other than the American globohomo enterprise. The UK actually feels less globohomo to me as the culture is so pessimistic that they don't take globohomo very seriously and just seem to put up with whatever's going on in a passive way. I haven't been to Australia at all or Canada very much so I can't comment on the globohomo invasion of these places.

Edit: After re-reading your comment I do actually agree with what you said, I formulated my response as a knee-jerk reaction to the idea that France and Japan aren't globohomo at all (which isn't what you said.) So excuse me. I do agree that strong local cultures are a bulwark against globohomo.

It was, in fact, founded as an ethnostate, exactly the same way that Sweden was. The men who founded the country said so at the time, and the history of the demography of the country supports that reading.

Where was this?

No, I mean where is the proof that the people founding America intended it as an ethnostate?

I figured that is where you where asking for, but you where not asking very clearly. Here is an example of an American founding father speaking on the subject of race and ethnicity.

https://reimaginingmigration.org/benjamin-franklin-and-german-immigrants-in-colonial-america/

Okay. But that is one person, is this a more widely held opinion?

But how could America have been founded in America if America didn't exist prior to the founding of America?

Don't post low-effort jeers like this.

And yet when asked to apply the same logic to that same sort of men in America, an impenetrable mental block descends and makes it impossible for even the same commentators to reach the same conclusion.

Part of the issue here is that America defines nationality not along ethnic lines, but by citizenship (so does France, although this appears less in Anglophone discussions). Swede refers both to citizenship and generally to a specific subset of Scandinavian heritage. I'd say these map generally to language groups, but that's not fully the case (there are Swedish-speaking Finns): identity is a complex and often locally-defined concept, and Americans have generally embraced the "Melting Pot" outlook that "American" is not an ethnic group.

The problem is that "Those men are not [Americans]. They will never be [Americans]" is not obviously a true statement: one can absolutely (with appropriate vetting, which is hopefully not open to gang members shooting each other in malls) choose to become an American. One can become a citizen of Sweden, but our linguistic blurring of Swede referring to both heritage and citizenship makes "becoming a Swede" less obviously correct.

there are Swedish-speaking Finns

Who are actually ethnic Swedes living in Finland.

If one wants to be pedantic, there are also Swedish-speaking Finns living in Sweden. (As in, people belonging to the minority called "Swedish-speaking Finns" - and I know enough Swedish-speaking Finns to know that is indeed exactly their self-identification - who have migrated to Sweden.)

If I’m reading the OP correctly, he’d say that form of “becoming” an American isn’t good enough. Unless one adopts American values, one effectively remains in their original culture. I’m pretty sure he’s saying American values require something very similar to being a WASP.

Another term is to call it a Lockeian understanding of individuals and nations.

One must always take claims re supposed crime surges with a bit of a grain of salt; neither this data nor this data indicates that there is much of a crisis.

But I also think a given community has the right to maintain the integrity of its society and culture.

That seems to be a bit of a sleight of hand; your evidence is re crime rate, which is very different than cultural integrity. Concerns re "cultural integrity" usually refer to concerns about the culture of immigrants per se, rather than the effect one way or the other of immigrants on crime, etc.

Sweden has a population of 10.5M. Eyeballing the numbers on country of origin, it appears to have about 500k of the migrants people are concerned about, i.e. about 5% of the population (from much lower numbers on a roughly 2010-2020 time scale).

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

More plausibly, since this is a fairly recent issue, the complaint is probably about the "Syrians". Note that Europe faced a flood of immigrants claiming to be Syrian after their civil war but it's widely believed that many are not.

Assuming they are 5x as violent as natives - along the lines of African Americans in the US - that would result in a 10% increase in crime overall. That would not show up in the graphs you chose to post.

I did notice one graph you did not choose to post which shows a 5x increase in sex crimes over the period of "Syrian" migration.

https://bra.se/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics/sexual-offences.html

In any case "there are very few migrants so even if they do lots of crimes per capita they don't do many in total" is a poor argument for importing more.

I did notice one graph you did not choose to post which shows a 5x increase in sex crimes over the period of "Syrian" migration.

OP talked specifically about murders, so that is what I looked at.

In any case "there are very few migrants so even if they do lots of crimes per capita they don't do many in total" is a poor argument for importing more.

Perhaps, but I did not make that argument. But that is a strawman, since surely the arguments for increasing immigration relate to the benefits thereof, to Sweden and to the migrants, rather than to the costs.

Concerns re "cultural integrity" usually refer to concerns about the culture of immigrants per se, rather than the effect one way or the other of immigrants on crime, etc.

In a straightforward sense certain norms and ways of life become untenable with a high enough crime rate. If your culture is noted for being one where people help strangers and strike up conversations on the street then an increase in criminals who take advantage of that fact is going to change your culture in the direction of being hostile to strangers.

Sweden isn't known for any of those things though. Swedes are known to be stand-offish and not helping strangers, or even acquaintances!

Your point still stands to some extent but your example doesn't really describe any Nordic nation and especially not Sweden.

Fair, I don't know enough about Nordic cultures to pick something specific to them, I was thinking more my own experience of British/Irish.

I don't think crime rate is separate from questions of "culture." I'd argue that in fact the crime rate is a reflection of culture. How often a given group of people commit crimes is a behavioral fact about that group of people just as much as any other behavioral fact that we consider "cultural" (like a tendency to listen to certain types of music, adhere to certain religions, etc.). To the extent that some group enters a society and increases that society's crime rate, I'd argue they are changing that society's culture.

As to the statistics you cite, it does seem as though I may be indulging in a bit of hysteria here, so thanks for the context.

non-Western countries

This is an odd way to frame the demographic problem.

As of 2014, according to Statistics Sweden, there were around 17,000 total asylum immigrants from Syria, 10,000 from Iraq, 4,500 from Eritrea, 1,900 from Afghanistan, and 1,100 from Somalia.[13] In the year 2017, most asylum seekers come from Syria (267), Eritrea (263), Iraq (117), and Georgia (106)

The refugees are entirely Muslim and from middle-eastern or adjacent nations. What kind of term is non-western ? As if there can be any homogeneity in a group that you've created as a negation of another group.

The refugees are entirely Muslim

Not necessarily. Sweden, in particular, has a long history of hosting Christian refugees from Muslim countries. Eritrea is approximately half Christian.

It's not the best definition, although Danish crime statistics actually have a category for 'non-Western' so it's useful to stick to it when making comparisons.

By non-Western I mean to indicate that I don't think Sweden would be having these problems if all of these immigrants were, say, (non-immigrant) Germans or French. Admittedly, they probably wouldn't have them if the immigrants were Asian either.

Asian is also useless category as it ranges from hardcore Pakistani Muslims to Spanish speaking Filipino Catholics, high achieving Indian IT professionals but of course also Chinese/Japanese/Korean people. So there is that.

It's more useful than you might imagine. To get from Asia to the West, one needs to pay for the trip. The cost is high enough to serve as a sort of IQ filter.

Where would they be deported

Many countries offer citizenship by blood. See the Shamima Begum case.

how serious would a crime need to be to result in stripping citizenship?

I'd like to set the line at "any crime, at all", but I will settle for "anything that would result in jail time per sentencing guidelines."

Mass deportations are hardly needed.

But they are desirable. And crime is only one of the negative facets of mass immigration.

Why use the blunt tool of mass deportations when we have a much more precise tool in criminal law?

Because every crime committed by a migrant or their descendants is by definition a crime that did not need to happen here. And residency in this country is a privilege, not a right.

So you're descended from the aborigines? Not the Johnny-come-lately American Indians, the ones the Clovis people pushed out.

Any crime at all? A young Swede with immigrant parents rides his scooter so fast and recklessly that it counts as a crime and we're going to deport him over it?

And deported to where? What if Syria or wherever says they don't want him? He was born in Sweden, he's your problem now.

Yeah why not. Odds are they're not providing a net positive to the natives of Sweden anyway.

In that case it just becomes a quickdraw contest on who can withdraw their citizenship first. Last one on the draw has to take them.

These children of immigrants probably lack foreign citizenship. They could perhaps pursue and get it. But they aren't automatically given multiple citizenships just by being born to immigrant parents.

These are Swedes and stripping them of citizenship probably makes them stateless.

As we learned from Shamima, you can do this if they're eligible for an unclaimed citizenship.

any crime, at all

No caveats? A parking ticket or public drunkenness charge doesn’t feel, to me, like a betrayal of the social contract. Not like shooting up a mall or even selling drugs. Is this just supposed to apply to probationary first-gen citizens?

Maybe tangent to your main point but I believe current Swedish law agrees with you and neither of your two examples (felparkering, fylleri) are criminal (brottslighet) in and of itself. IANASL

Ideally not. It should be very easy to deport people, so that we only have the best and most obedient, if we must have any at all.

Any of what? I cannot tell if you are talking about people in general, all races but one, a particular race, first-gen immigrants, or what.

Immigrants in general, sorry.

Many countries offer citizenship by blood

True, but this surely just narrows the question to those who don't qualify for that, either because their origin country doesn't recognise it or they are third generation (so no Syrian national parents), or something else. Also, even if technically you could deport a second generation immigrant to Syria (I mean really they couldn't because that would presumably turn them into an international pariah, the costs of which would surely exceed the costs of just putting them in prison in Sweden), that is surely very cruel, to deport someone who has never even lived there to a country in active civil war?

True, but this surely just narrows the question to those who don't qualify for that, either because their origin country doesn't recognise it or they are third generation

Forced relocation to overseas territories, I guess. Good old prison islands. Give them a lower tier of citizenship that only applies to these containment zones and nowhere else. Quarantine, essentially.

I mean really they couldn't because that would presumably turn them into an international pariah

It's long past time we stopped giving a shit about this. We in Europe cannot simply let ourselves be destroyed just because "oooh what will the neighbours think?"

that is surely very cruel, to deport someone who has never even lived there to a country in active civil war?

Better than them causing a civil war in a first world country. I don't really give a fuck what happens to the kind of scum that joins a criminal gang, to be perfectly honest.

I don't really give a fuck what happens to the kind of scum that joins a criminal gang, to be perfectly honest.

Then execute them. There's precedent for this, even. After all, a gang is just an insurgency writ small. Corner them, and give them severe punishment followed by lifetime monitoring (and no association with their past gang members on penalty of death). Roger Trinquier perfected this system nearly half a century ago. The Israelis also have quite a bit of prior art to draw upon.

It's long past time we stopped giving a shit about this. We in Europe cannot simply let ourselves be destroyed just because "oooh what will the neighbours think?"

For better or for worse, what the 'neighbours' think does matter. Good luck remaining in the Customs Union/EU and joining NATO, or indeed enjoying Western military support after you deport all your Syrians to an island prison for the crime of being a refugee.

I don't really give a fuck what happens to the kind of scum that joins a criminal gang, to be perfectly honest.

Talk about undermining Western values; I came not to call the righteous, but the sinners to repentance.

I take no pleasure from the death of the wicked, but that they turn from their ways and live.

Better than them causing a civil war in a first world country. I don't really give a fuck what happens to the kind of scum that joins a criminal gang, to be perfectly honest.

Didn't you just say you would deport people for parking tickets? That's very different from joining a gang.

I mean, I said ideally, but I'm willing to be flexible. A little.

Better than them causing a civil war in a first world country.

Your proposal itself would be enough to start a civil war in a first world country. The "we" in your case is not some silent majority of Europeans but a tiny minority that would first have to carve a bloody swathe through your own kin to seize the kind of power needed to conduct mass deportations.

It is the Laestadians, traditionalist Catholics, and other rapidly growing Christian sects who have the right approach, as they have the potential to weather the coming storm and outbreed the other survivors.

Mass immigration is deeply unpopular. I think the tiny minority of pro-migration people will just quietly shut up, to be honest. They're not the types that go in for conflict.

Maybe it's true that 'mass immigration' is deeply unpopular, but deporting second-generation immigrants to Syria over minor offences would definitely be much more unpopular. There was a substantial minority in favour of letting Shamima return and she joined ISIS, the shitstorm over an equivalent case for a minor offence would be extraordinary.

There was a substantial minority in favour of letting Shamima return and she joined ISIS

Yes, we have a substantial minority of traitors in this country. They should not be heeded. This is a problem with England that even Orwell has noted, that it's academic class generally loathes the country. I also routinely have arguments with people who think foreign rapists and murderers should NOT be deported.

More comments

There's a big difference between opposing mass immigration and supporting mass deportation. The closest thing to what you propose that I can think of was the expulsion of the Germans from Eastern Europe in 1945 and that was at the conclusion of a genocidal war and carried out by a communist government crueler than any a modern western European population could ever produce.

Can you quantify the "mass" in mass deportations?

Literally anyone and everyone for whom deportation is even tenuously possible. I don't know what that number is. There would be some nominal requirements -- reassess all asylum claims from the last 20-25 years (and put a hold on any new ones until this is done) with the criteria that if the source country is not actively at war right now, you're gone. Anyone with a criminal record including jail time, gone. Anyone who doesn't speak the language of the country fluently (to at least the standard of a native 16 year old), gone. Along with any dependants of any of those people.

In a dream world this would also include anyone who has been resident for more than 3 years, and has been a net tax detriment during that time. Sorry, you're not contributing, goodbye. I don't know if that kind of thing is tracked or easy to calculate, though.

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