My ideas just follow from basing them on anti-colonial/imperialist logic. I'm not sure if I should be worried here...

Well, I agree with your ideas and I am no fan of anti-colonial/imperialist logic (at least in terms of how you are likely conceiving of those adjectives).

If the media has an agenda, it likely can be summed up in terms of various attachments to globalization, which is viewed variously but within the "liberal media" is seen most often as containing the seeds for the cure for its own corrosive effects.

Talking of agendas, there's this in Foreign Policy:

It's Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses

The headline is in earnest.

Talking of agendas:

In Foreign Policy: It's Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses

The headline is in earnest. — jamalrob

Spooky. I'm startled by a (related) middle-class liberal reaction that there is something illegitimate about the 'leave' vote, and that the EU and Europeanness are somehow the same: that to want to leave the institution is to want to deny one's Europeanness. That isn't how I feel at all. 'Leave' rhetoric was marred by anti-immigrant talk, but 'Remain' rhetoric is marred by this blurring of identity and cartel-membership.

Indeed. And I don't think the post-vote bitterness about Britain as a "rainy fascist island" is doing anything to help immigrants. On the contrary, it is whipping up fear and hatred. But I don't think the intention is to help anyway; often it seems to be just more virtue-signalling and the new snobbery--the need to mark oneself as a progressive, opposed to the culture of the white working class.

On the other hand, some Remainers are helping, by marching in solidarity with immigrants and so on. And I'm glad to see that some of the Remain-supporting commentators, such as Paul Mason and Owen Jones, are denying the narrative of resurgent racism and arguing for a positive Brexit now that the people have spoken, but I fear they may be in a minority.

In Foreign Policy: It's Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses — jamalrob

Must one assume that The Elites are of one mind and so are the "Ignorant Masses"? That it's either the elite's way or the highway? Is the choice between the corporate and institutional elite and fascism? James Straub, author of the linked article, seems to think so.

There are, of course, some people who have xenophobic, neophobic, racist, sexist, nativist, reactionary, know-nothing, climate change denying, fascist, creationist, and various other unwholesome opinions. The elites are not entirely free of such views. On the other hand, there are people who are disenfranchised, marginalized, and impoverished who just don't share the same interests of the affluent, successful, and dominant elite classes.

When marginalized citizens object to a rapid influx of people whose arrival seems to be the result of an elite's policy, they are dismissed as xenophobic. If they don't celebrate every new swirl of distant populations into their communities, often the result of some elite policy, they are racist or nativist. After they are forced to accept a reduced standard of income, fewer resources and services, diminished quality of life, poor education options, less health care, and so on (conditions they definitely didn't vote for) they are deemed economically irrelevant by the elite.

Sometimes elite policy blows up in the faces of elites, but generally the elites are able to arrange the circumstances of their lives. If they want to experience diversity, they can go to an ethnic neighborhood festival for the afternoon, or tour the inter-ethnic cocktail party circuit. If they are interested in other cultures, they can travel and study them in their homelands. If they don't happen to like where they are living, their employment, their house, their car, their school... they can move - leave; do their own little Brexit, or Deutschexit, Francexit, Indiexiit, Chinexit, or USexit.

Most of us are stuck, having to put up with whatever the global elite sends down the pike.

This is what we have been fed:



And this is what we excrete:



"The poor white remains on the caboose of the train, but he ain't to blame, he's only a pawn in their game."

Which is to say that devotion to democracy without truth is folly.

Must one assume that The Elites are of one mind and so are the "Ignorant Masses"? That it's either the elite's way or the highway? Is the choice between the corporate and institutional elite and fascism? James Straub, author of the linked article, seems to think so. — Bitter Crank

I agree that that's part of the problem. As I said in another post, I voted Leave for quite different reasons from the anti-migrant line that the main campaign eventually deplorably arrived at. And the way the debate developed became falsely binary. Democratic truths are plural, but there were no institutions in place to represent, for instance, my own leftie Leave view, which never got an airing in public space. Part of the bafflement of the main political parties in the UK now - except for the Scot Nats - is that they stood for one view and a large minority of their supporters, and very many of those they wish were their supporters, took a different view.

Sometimes I wish I could send all the Brits off on a ship back to the UK here in Thailand. They contribute nothing to Thai society except their cash and generally leave it in a worse state than it was previously and the lowest scumbag shitfucker who can barely afford a plane ticket comes over and finds out that they are now little royals with the 50/60:1 exchange rate and proceeds to trash our cities and beaches and knock up our women and proceed to leave fatherless children to be raised here by single mothers. They basically all have jobs ready for them here to teach English even though the vast majority of them weren't trained to teach anything -- hell, I'd be surprised most of them actually knew how to read -- but they proceed to get a salary well above median income in Thailand, successfully catapulting them to upper middle class status. No Thai person ever learns a lick of English from them and they smoke opium and drink two or three bottles of whiskey before coming in to teach their 9.30 AM class and sexually harass their underage students before committing statutory rape while teaching in school by forming British networks of pedophile rings. These fucking migrants must go. Don't even get me started on the ones coming here to find themselves in a Buddhist temple.

So does anyone know if the Daily Express is hiring?

I spent six months in Thailand a few years ago. Nice food and weather. Cheap beer. :)

Yeah fuck off! (just kidding, I'm sure you are one of the good ones, I'm just trying to keep up with the Leave spirit)

I readily grant that Romanians in England are hoping for a better life. So are the Poles and Pakistanis, Indians, and Bangladeshis, et al. However...

The principle that populations on the move must be allowed to migrate to wherever they wish, and no population already in place may object is problematic. The ethnically, economically, culturally, and racially mixed US has practiced this principle for 240 years, and it has had mixed success.

We were not only able to easily absorb many millions of migrants, the elite needed migrants to come to populate a continent targeted for manifest destiny. The railroad barons had trains to fill and lands to settle. Manufacturing and agriculture needed really cheap labor (a half-notch above slave labor) in areas where black slavery wasn't culturally preferred. The formerly slave populations became a generally unwanted group.

Many groups were, and/or are now, unwelcome. The Irish, Jews, Italians, Norwegians, Chinese, Greeks, Mexicans, Vietnamese, Lebanese, Japanese, Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Swedes, Estonians, Ukrainians, Indians, Finns, Cubans, Dominicans, Negroes, etc. were all at various times unwelcome as new community members. It took some European migrants generations to become accepted. Poles didn't get the Welcome Wagon treatment in Chicago. Jews gave Norwegians the creeps in Minneapolis. The American Japanese on the west coast got prison camps in WWII.

The elite was reasonably happy to receive the black Great Migration from the south to the north in the 30s and 40s to fill up the low end of the labor pool, but: stay in your ghetto, or else. When the blacks attempted to move out of their ghettos into nicer white neighborhoods, the boundaries of the ghetto moved with them and the whites left.

SO: Why should Europeans be any different? In the US settled populations (who were once newly arrived riff raff and Euro white trash) now want to hold on to whatever security and stability they have in suburban and exurban rings around core cities. The elites, who determine policy, pass laws, and direct enforcement, live well beyond the reach of the best of the white petite bourgeoisie, let alone the riff raff trash. I imagine that applies to Great Britain and Europe, as well.

What is at stake for the losers in population mobility is reduced autonomy. They come to realize that if they are not useful to the elite, for what ever reason, they can and will be at least diluted, if not replaced.

The latest would-be arrivistes are doing what the earlier would-be arrivistes did--try to climb and mostly not make it to the top of the tree. To the elite, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp" is a sentiment which keeps the riff raff working hard, and divided.

So does anyone know if the Daily Express is hiring? — discoii

Other newspapers are available.

Immigration reform is still necessary and the migrant crisis is still a crisis, despite the silly tabloids.

Immigration reform is still necessary and the migrant crisis is still a crisis, despite the silly tabloids. — Thorongil

No, that is the lie being peddled. The crisis is the collapse of the manufacturing regions the mining regions, and the fishing industry. These are the regions so deprived they qualify for EU funding, and these are the regions that voted to leave, because they were taught to blame the migrants, rather than the failure of the government to regenerate. There is no migrant crisis in London, evidenced by the remain majority, although it is the most multicultural city in the world.

So I take it none of these "great sources of information" were being sold by an underpaid and overqualified Eastern European Philosophy Professor or were they just busy serving tea and crisps in the Greater London area at a reasonable rate? ;)

Kind of explains it all for me and seems rather clear of a "arguement" that Mr. Steward Lee presents.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x23yv5y_stewart-lee-on-immigration-paul-nuttall-and-ukip_fun

Meow!

GREG

EDIT: (just in case...)



Така че аз го нито един от тези "велики източници на информация " да вземе са били продадени от ниско и свръх-квалифицирани от Източна Европа професор по философия или са те просто зает сервиране на чай и чипс в района на Голям Лондон в разумен размер ?

No migrant crisis just because Londoners voted to remain? Lol.

I agree. We ought to allow that the lies be said and the truth be ferreted out naturally. Everyone believes they possess the truth anyway, so it's not clear who gets to sanctions the liars. We all have a point of view. We tend to be more forgiving of those who use a bit too much force when selling a point of view we agree with.

Er no, lol.

My thesis is that migration is not critical to any degree, but migrants are used as a diversion from real structural crises in society. The misery in places like Oldham, for example are in no way caused but rather somewhat mitigated by by an influx of migrants. The community is suffering from economic depression, unemployment, and the consequent loss of working class status and values. People feel useless, unloved, helpless neglected, etc. The decline of the working class has been evident for most of my life, and almost nothing has been done about it apart from the above evidenced scapegoating.

Instead, the scrap heaped ex-workers in coal, steel, shipbuilding, etc, who have lost their cultural and economic base have seen the migrants who are necessarily more adaptable, and often better educated and more ambitious, overtake them.It is because people have lost their place in society that they are in crisis, not because other people have found a place.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-oldham-idUSKCN0ZB0LU

It's all there, ironically expressed by the son of Pakistani immigrants. He is not the problem, it must be those others. It is frankly ridiculous to blame immigrants for the neglect of the infrastructure, the lack of schools, jobs economic activity. The mills have closed and nothing has replaced them. Local government is starved of funds and central government has done nothing.

Er no, lol.

My thesis is that migration is not critical to any degree — unenlightened

That should be, "er, yes," then. Make up your mind.

Migrants haven't traditionally been more educated. Mexican migrants rarely have any meaningful formal education, for example.

It's likely immigrant labor and overseas labor is used as a scapegoat for other societal and individual failings, but certainly not all. The economic impact to a society is real when high numbers of jobs are performed by others.

My thesis is that the lack of consistent and meaningful immigration policy and the allowance of foreign nations with minimal labor regulation to perform domestic tasks has had a real negative impact on the working class. If we cure that failing will it be the panacea the working class needed? Of course not, but I'm a bit skeptical of any suggestion that immigration reform measures must be rooted in xenophobia or scapegoating at some basic level. You can't just open up all jobs to all comers and not expect a damaging effect on those who previously didn't have that level of competition for those jobs.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-oldham-idUSKCN0ZB0LU

It's all there, ironically expressed by the son of Pakistani immigrants. He is not the problem, it must be those others. It is frankly ridiculous to blame immigrants for the neglect of the infrastructure, the lack of schools, jobs economic activity. The mills have closed and nothing has replaced them. Local government is starved of funds and central government has done nothing.

Immigrants, the poorest ones anyway, end up in those places that are most deprived for obvious economic reasons; they don't create the deprivation or even add to it. Remove the immigrants from Oldham, and watch house prices further shrink, housing stock deteriorate, economic activity decline further and the place become a ghost town.

Migrants haven't traditionally been more educated. — Hanover

True. What migrants have as an advantage is hope; hope of bettering themselves. This is what living in a declining area deprives one of. Thus the second generation Pakistani has become native in outlook.

If I've been inconsistent year to year, I don't know. Point out my prior comment, and I'll respond. It is true that migrant workers do take some jobs the locals don't want (like.certain agricultural jobs), but no doubt others they do compete with the local market, especially overseas labor.

There is a worker class, middle class, upper class, etc. That's not a leftist notion. Anyone can categorize based upon income or job description regardless of political leaning. I don't think anti-Marxists argue there is no working class. The debate centers on the cause of the alleged struggle and it's solution.

It's no to your fatuous straw man. I have provided evidence by examples that the tendency to blame migrants is closely associated with declining regional economy and also that where the economy is not declining, there is less blaming of migrants although there may be more migrants. I do not claim that one example proves anything. But these are facts that are better explained by reference to the regional economy than by reference to migrants.

I suggest to the contrary that migration stimulates regional economies to the extent at least of slowing the decline.

We appear to be talking past each other. Best to leave it at that.

We appear to be talking past each other. Best to leave it at that. — Thorongil

It may look that way to you; to me it looks as if I have presented an argument supported by evidence that migration is a manufactured problem and you have responded with no argument and no evidence that it must be a problem because lol.

Keep telling yourself that. You're living up to your username.