[tastyface]

I live in a "white" country and I like my nonwhite neighbors, some immigrant, some nth-generation, even ones who mostly socialize within their ethnic/cultural enclaves. I believe they belong here as much as I do. I don't want to give any money to racists who want to expunge them for some perceived ethnic transgressions. These parties are one step removed from extolling the virtues of the glorious Aryan race, and we all know where that leads.

[Saline9515]

What happens when they start to see their ethnicity or culture as political and fight to impose it, including using violence? Because at some point it will happen - democracy incentivizes clientelism and tribalism.

The USA, which is often touted as a "successful" melting pot model, is rife with similar problems.

[mrtesthah]

>democracy incentivizes clientelism and tribalism

Cite your peer reviewed sources.

[Saline9515]

This is a good intro by recognized researchers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dictator%27s_Handbook

If you want me to be more precise, I would say that clientelism and tribalism are especially rewarded for politicians in a multi-ethnic society.

Also a good definition: https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/clientelism/E23ABE88...

[zimpenfish]

"Michael C. Moynihan reviewing the book for The Wall Street Journal stated that the writing style is similar to that of Freakonomics."

Ouch. If someone said that about a book I'd written, I would simply move to a forest and never write a single word again. Quite the damning review.

[Saline9515]

I told you that it was an intro. Here is the more serious book, by the same authors:

https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/2425/The-Logic-of-Pol...

And there is nothing wrong with vulgarization, aside from comments from pedantic HNers.

[tastyface]

Civil strife? If it comes to violence, I (a white person) certainly won't be on the side of the white nationalists. Same for most of my peers.

Many of us love living in multicultural societies and will fight to protect our neighbors and our way of life.

[Saline9515]

Why is "civil war" the default situation here? How about domestic terrorism for instance?

Will you be on the side of the muslim terrorists who beheaded teachers and priests (among others), and killed 132 concert-goers (and injured 413 others) at the Bataclan in 2015? Will you tell the french people who were slaughtered that it was the price to live in a multicultural society?Damn.

Even if you don't go as far as terrorism, it's simple: multi-ethnic societies favor either identity politics (aka clientelism) or authoritarianism (only way to avoid it). The USA is a great example for this: the previous administration played identity politics to the maximum, and the new one used it to impose authoritarianism. It's very hard, if not impossible to escape this loop once you are in a minority-only society.

And of course you have to deal with collapsing social trust. The USA isn't the ultimate lawyer society, and the most armed one by pure chance. It's a logical consequence.

[tastyface]

What do the Bataclan terrorists have to do with 99.9999% of the Muslim population? Absolutely nothing. (Or, at least, as much as neo-Nazis have to do with the native white population.) Fact is, most people are extremely normal and just want to live in peace.

I'll be on the side of my nice Muslim neighbors (who did nothing wrong to anyone) against the red-faced white supremacist mobs. It is very obviously the correct moral position and will be viewed as such by our descendants.

In the US, the most heavily armed communities also tend to be the least diverse. It is largely a consequence of insular paranoia and hatred stoked by right-wing media.

[snackerblues]

Muslims when they get a majority will vote to execute gays, censor women and ban abortion.

You know what, you libs may be too stupid to see where your ideas will lead but you're actually totally correct Muslims are cool

[tastyface]

I'm actually a Christian from a conservative branch of the faith, but thanks for your input.

[Saline9515]

> What do the Bataclan terrorists have to do with 99.9999% of the Muslim population?

They share the same religion and ethnicity. French muslims were actually a large contingent in Daesh forces. This is a classic "no true scotsman" fallacy. Every muslim will tell you that the Charlie Hebdo covers about Muhammad were "haram" - because that's exactly what their religion says.

Not that they are all bad people, just like you had nice soviets, or I'm sure that there a nice North Korean Juche party members, too.

You seem to be acting like an ostrich, putting your head in the sand to avoid problems. Face reality and read about Islam, which is inherently a political religion. Read also about the Muslim Brotherhood (or similar orgs).

> US armed communities.

How about latino gangs? Are they operating with nerf guns? Besides, the safest places in the US are those that are monoethnic, such as New Hampshire.

[constantius]

Your observation about multi-ethnic societies is rather interesting (though I would add slme caveats), but then you unfortunately are blinded by your preconceptions. The parent comment is right about 99.9...% of Muslims not being in any way related to terrorism.

A large country with 10% of Muslims being a large minority in a small terrorist force is not surprising. I would bet that Americans and foreigners in general are a large minority in Canadian far-right groups, for example.

The drawings of Muhammad were objectively haram, as you say, but almost none of the people who'd agree to that would also agree that murder was the right answer.

You can be anti-immigration without descending into racism and Islamophobia, actually it would greatly reinforce your points.

[tastyface]

I share the same(-ish) religion and ethnicity as white supremacist terrorists. Does this make me complicit in their degenerate world views? Obviously not.

All the same stuff was said about Jews in pre-Nazi Germany. It's always bullshit. Neither Muslims, nor Jews, nor white people, nor any broad group of people ever acts as a united bloc. Again: most people just want to live in peace and ensure a good future for their children.

[hackinthebochs]

>I believe they belong here as much as I do.

This sentiment is just so utterly foreign to me that I can't comprehend how someone could rationally think this way. I mean, I'm a black man whose ancestors have lived in America since the slave ships, and I easily recognize that some people are more American than others. And Americans only have like 1% of the cultural and ethnic identity that most European nations have. Why are you blind to the importance of the deep historical roots that bind a nation together? Why do you think the very force (namely kinship ties) that has driven humanity forward for the last hundred thousand years has, in the blink of an eye, become irrelevant?

[b40d-48b2-979e]

As a blacker man whose ancestors found their way to the Americas before the year of our Lord Jesus, what are you even talking about? America has never had "deep historical roots" to bind us together.

[hackinthebochs]

You'll notice my mention of European countries in my comment. You might have guessed that my point about deep historical roots was in reference to that.

[tastyface]

I come from a family of recent immigrants. We're considered white so we get a pass for behaviors that our nonwhite peers get side-eye for. My ethnicity has its own enclaves. Those enclaves get treated as a cute cultural artifact rather than a threat -- even worth visiting on a tourist trip. My ancestral culture lives under the protective umbrella of "Western culture," but in practice, the overlap with prevailing Protestant/Anglo culture is minimal along almost any axis.

And yet, we are all American by almost any reasonable definition. If anything, the people beating their chests for having some random ancestors on the mayflower or whatever are the impostors here. What have they actually done for this country?

Also, I'm kind of surprised that you believe these things as a black man. You do realize that a large percentage of the country doesn't consider you "true" American either, right? They can't kick you out, but they will do everything in their power to disenfranchise you and turn you into second-class citizens. The signaling could not be any more clear.

[hackinthebochs]

Yes, it is hard to pinpoint exactly what makes one an American. It is not hard at all to pinpoint what makes one an X for any given European nation. It is strange how much Americans project our weak identity to the rest of the western world.

[Capricorn2481]

> This sentiment is just so utterly foreign to me that I can't comprehend how someone could rationally think this way

For someone who is so befuddled by the idea of being unbothered by a heterogeneous culture, you don't make any convincing argument against it. Why are you complaining about leftists who see immigration as inherently "good" if you can't even explain why it's bad? If it's so obviously bad, surely you can outline what will tangibly happen?

> I'm a black man whose ancestors have lived in America since the slave ships, and I easily recognize that some people are more American than others

If it's so easy to recognize, then what is it? What makes you American, and what makes you not American enough to be worthy of deportation? You aren't "easily recognizing" anything, you are having a feeling about people different from you and trying to rationalize it afterwards.

There is an obvious argument for immigration as an inherent good. It brings business, it brings talented specialists, it brings new ideas, it brings a bigger market. We are one of the most powerful countries on earth. If immigration was so obviously bad, do you think a nation of immigrants would be able to get to this point? Culture is our main export. We are a cultural powerhouse. We are envied by other countries for our soft power. That's what the Riyadh comedy festival was about. We are strong arguably because we are such a melting pot, and we have a rich cultural tapestry. Black culture exists specifically because people didn't assimilate to white culture, and it's fascinating to enough people that Koreans halfway across the world are emulating it.

The idea that we suddenly have a homogeneous "way to act" that is easily identifiable, and we need to deport people that don't act that way, is farcical and stupidly self-defeating. It's also laughably overconfident for a country that can't make cars or keep employed, tax paying citizens from drowning in medical debt. We should probably play to our strengths, not self-sabotage.

[Saline9515]

If the nation of immigrants is so great, why are so many people protecting themselves with guns and why are there so many lawyers to compensate for the absence of social trust?

And why are so many people still talking and being unhappy about race and ethnicity if that's a total success?

Having a good cultural distribution channel doesn't mean that it's inherently good. Japan has a great cultural soft power too, however I don't know if many people would tolerate life in Japan (for real). On the other side most people can't locate Denmark on a map but would love the life there.

[zimpenfish]

> If the nation of immigrants is so great, why are so many people protecting themselves with guns

I think you'll find that's a particularly American problem - the UK, for example, is a nation of immigrants and we have basically zero guns (compared to the US.)

> And why are so many people still talking and being unhappy about race and ethnicity if that's a total success?

Because they have been told that immigrants are bad, that immigrants take their jobs, that immigrants sponge off the state[0], that immigrants are eating their pets, etc. All easily fact-checked and debunked but people, alas, are easily lead by media-driven bigotry.[1]

[0] Schrodinger's Immigrants: simultaneously taking your jobs whilst also sponging off the state.

[1] Now this we -do- have in the UK, largely from the same Murdochian sources.

[Saline9515]

The UK is historically not a notion of immigrants. The recent immigration carried massive problems (mass rapes among them), and a brutal authoritarian repression of free speech. The anti-weapon laws are systematically directed against the immigrants - I doubt that white british people threaten their neighbors with "ninja swords" or throw acid at the women who marry outside of their community.

> Because they have been told that immigrants are bad, that immigrants take their jobs, that immigrants sponge off the state[0], that immigrants are eating their pets, etc. All easily fact-checked and debunked but people, alas, are easily lead by media-driven bigotry.[1]

The fact that it applies too to black people, who are not really immigrants show that your argument is false. Besides, your point 1) is easy to refute, as the State can subsidize migrants to allow them to accept lower wages than the natives. By giving them free housing, for instance.

How many british girls will need to be raped so that you will start to see the reality? The only biggot here is you, along with the ones who allowed Henry Nowak's murder to happen. You are just an enabler for the british elite, who hates its native proles and has no problem replacing them with more obedient ones.

[Capricorn2481]

Americans have had guns since its birth, even if they live in one of the safest neighborhoods in the world. White suburbans buy whatever they think will keep them safe, even if the most dangerous thing they did in the last decade was drive to Target.

> And why are so many people still talking and being unhappy about race and ethnicity if that's a total success?

Because people who are citizens are being shipped to Texas even with their papers? A friend of mine was called the N word to his face by an ICE agent. Why would the existence of racism in the U.S. be evidence that immigration is bad? That's evidence that some people are racist and will blame all their problems on people that don't look like them. Nobody is denying that.

> Japan has a great cultural soft power too, however I don't know if many people would tolerate life in Japan

That supports what I said. They are a famously homogeneous culture that is difficult to live in, but still draws admirers through soft power. If you care about the values of your culture, it would behoove you to be seen favorably, and not run by fickle children who think 5% of the population is responsible for all their problems.