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Is that the official platform of any French far-right party? I don't know, I'm asking. I don't know anything about French politics.
Repatriation doesn't have to be forced. It can be voluntary and financially incentivized instead. That's the platform of Patriotic Alternative in the UK, for example.
It isn't the official platform of any French far-right party that has achieved electoral success.
As for 'voluntary repatriation', Europeans imagine that it's like 'how much would I have to pay the average Greek-French to go back to Greece?' and the answer is maybe a couple hundred thousand euros or something. The calculus for the average Algerian, Senegalese, Ivorian or Malian Frenchman is completely different. Firstly, even returning to Abidjan with €200,000 isn't enough to make you an Ivorian elite by any means. Secondly, your entire extended family, corrupt local politicians and tax collectors and various other hangers-on will immediately take the money, and you know this. Then you will have no more safety net. You'd have to offer millions, even then it would be a tough choice.
It’s not analysis, it’s just making the case for mass deportation which presumably his entire readership agrees with. The objective analysis would note that, regardless of one’s personal opinion, getting to the stage where stripping people of citizenship and deporting them based on ancestry is inside the Overton window would seemingly involve a colossal shift in public attitudes toward ethnic nationalism, immigration and identity in Western European countries. In France, even collecting data on people’s race is banned, there are people of Middle Eastern and African descent in the highest offices in the land, billionaires, in business, in the arts, in almost every prominent national sports team. People’s acceptance of interracial marriage is extremely high, many French have non-native friends and coworkers.
Consider just how much of a total 180 turn in views on identity, on race and on nation would be required to get to the stage where repatriation is a widespread and popular viewpoint. Then consider that the media, state and other powerful organizations (like the EU) are institutionally opposed. There doesn’t seem to me to be a viable strategy for the far-right activist you link other than hoping the public suddenly “radicalizes”, which they didn’t do after the spate of terrorist bombings from 2001 to 2005 and again from 2011 to 2017, so it seems unlikely they’d do so now.
What do you think?
I read the Wall Street Journal and New York Times almost cover-to-cover (from politics and international to recipes and book reviews and fashion) every single day from the age of maybe 7 until I left home at 19. I also read general interest stuff like NatGeo and Scientific American every single month through my whole childhood. Then in my teenage years I was very online on tumblr, reddit, sometimes other forums. I met people from all over the world through family and in college, and since I started work I've been fortunate to meet some people who have a bunch of great stories. So I have a lot of general knowledge. I very much doubt I'm smarter, though, you've written some well-researched comments and I thought your criticism of some of the QAnon hmmposting a week or two ago was good.
But 'intelligence' is a large component in one's ability to prioritize facts to remember and use them to come up with interesting or novel points to make. And most people who are well read and know a lot across a wide domain still synthesize those facts into mediocre rationalizations of existing ideas or novel babble. On the upper end of that is a Tinkzorg, and on the lower end are internet schizos who ramble into the void. You seem to be one of the smartest mottizens imo, but it's hard to judge intelligence broadly from a single domain, there are plenty of people at the top of mathematics or science whose political opinions are still incoherent culture war stuff.
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Agree that the value of a Western Europe citizenship as opposed to Sub-Saharan Africa is millions easily.
Since we're talking outlandish ideas, here's a repatriation scheme that would work: Colonies. Deport people to French-run places in Africa. Living in a French colony in Ivory Coast would not be as great as living in France but certainly miles better than being ruled by Ivorians.
What if France paid Ivory Coast to lease some of their land? It would even be a win-win for both countries. France would lose their least productive citizens, and also develop a source of cheaper labor without the attendant welfare and public safety drain. Ivory Coast would get cash as well as the economic benefit from having a region that doesn't completely suck.
This would be a public relatons disaster (and politics get affected by public relations). Colonialism looks extremely bad in the modern era regardless of the facts on the ground.
Obviously. So is repatriation. I'm just suggesting an "out there" idea that would work if people were actually on board with it. 0% chance of actually happening. Just like repatriation.
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Yes, there would be a lot of details to work out in any voluntary repatriation scheme. How much money is involved, what countries are available as destinations, would those countries even accept taking people in, etc. It would be hard to come up with a package that any substantial number of people would accept. But that's sort of the whole point. Living in western Europe really is just that much better than living in these people's ancestral homelands. Which thus damages the credibility of any claims that non-whites are living under an oppressive regime of systemic racism.
It's a rhetorical gesture more than anything: "We were going to pay you to leave, but you chose to stay here of your own free will. Thus by continuing to stay here, you agree that you are fundamentally a guest in a society that belongs to us first and foremost. We're not going to actively antagonize you, but you should understand that our society is set up to cater to the interests and preferences of our native people, not yours."
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