[jee1shi]

> Curiously the places with the least foreigners are the most xenophobic ones and vice versa.

That's actually the standard. It's easy to be xenophobic when someone has very little exposure to other cultures. Once they get exposed over a long period of time, people realise that they are just people too.

[LudwigNagasena]

It’s also easy to be tolerant towards someone you don’t have to interact with. Once you get exposed to other cultures you realize that they are different.

[blowski]

I guess the realisation we're talking about is going from thinking "they eat human babies" to "they drink different types of tea".

[galfarragem]

I would say that is more like different cultures have different values:

Different ways of treating women, different ways of treating animals, different ways of treating the ambient, different ways of looking at work, different ways of looking at state, different ways of looking at religion, different ways of looking at morals, different ways of looking at neighbors, different ways of looking at property, different ways of looking at mating (...) While elites from any culture may be open minded and flexible, the average individual is not.

Elites may thrive in a multicultural society but the other incumbents don't. It's not surprising when they idolize any politician that respect them.

[blowski]

I agree with you in part, particularly with why there has been a backlash against multiculturalism. Also with the reality that different cultures tend to have different views to a wide range of issues.

But I’m not sure what you mean by elite. Donald Trump and the whole modern Republican Party are the elites, and I wouldn’t describe them as flexible and open-minded.

[blowski]

Exactly. When your main exposure to other cultures is via tabloid media versions of those cultures, it's not surprising that you believe strange things about them.