[Auracle]

I think you'd be surprised at how quickly that sentiment has moved from the far-right to close to the center. People are (rightly, in my opinion) pretty upset at their governments for letting mass migration happen with pretty much only downsides for their actual citizens. People are all about the idea of helping the downtrodden when it's just an ideal, but when they realize it's having negative consequences for them that can easily change.

[runjake]

From a US perspective, just up until a decade ago, it was a sentiment that left-center perspective that people like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton had.

I was caught quite off-guard by this new "open borders" perspective. It doesn't seem sustainable at all.

[microgpt]

Who supports "open borders" and what do they support exactly?

[criddell]

Radiolab (the podcast) did a good series on border policy that was pretty informative.

IIRC, the US-Mexico border was never open, but it was quite porous. People would come to the US, work for a season to make some money, then go home.

Then once border security started to be tightened, leaving was too risky so people would stay leading to a huge increase in the number of undocumented people living in the US.

[BigGreenJorts]

To expand on this. California has the majority of illegal migrants. A significant portion of them are "seasonal" fruit pickers where there exist some migrant farmer visas for them, but not nearly enough. Now should we have American citizens/PR holders doing these jobs? Maybe, but it's pretty hard to get Americans to do this back breaking work in the hot sun for a few weeks, travelling from farm to farm until all the fruit is picked. American fruit is really only as affordable (and available) as it is thanks to all this migrant seasonal labour.

I think there's probably some leftist argument against this system on account of how we're taking advantage of poor countries and something something workers rights, but I think removing the ability to leave, to go home is the worst of both worlds.

[DesaiAshu]

Strict borders have only existed for ~100 years, and many were drawn without much regard for the people living there, often constructed with intention of religious segregation, and to maintain europe's global superiority

They run counter to the notion of sovereignty and local agency which we value greatly in the US

The irrationality of strict country borders and heavy migration controls will emerge as a heavy global challenge due to economic and climate migration and aging populations

I don't think we have a good answer for what replaces them, but I don't believe there's enough evidence to state that hasty decisions made after WWI and WWII should forever govern global human freedoms - and we need a better approach than war to renegotiate some of this

[remarkEon]

Part of the reason this thread and this topic is so fraught is there are many people, like you, who are willingly and confidently lying about history. Strict borders have existed since ancient times. There are physical markers of them all over Europe that are more than 1000 years old. You can see other borders from space. This idea that only in the 20th century did this idea emerge is so wrong that it’s got the history completely and totally inverted. Why make stuff up like this?

[beepbooptheory]

How did they enforce strict borders in the distant past then?

[pfannkuchen]

“Look there’s an X, what is he doing here, get him!”

[nl]

To add to this, there are numerous well known examples.

For example the Bible defined borders of "The Land of Israel" which are still fought over today: https://www.biblica.com/bible/?osis=niv:Ezekiel%2047:13%E2%8...

The "Eternal Treaty" between the Hittites and Egyptians defined spheres of influence and position of various cities

The Peace of Antalcidas defined the border between Greek and Persian influence and assigned various cities to different powers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Antalcidas#Effects

One of the biggest drivers of strict borders was tax collection: they defined who could collect tax from which subjects. This was a common source of conflict and so anywhere feudalism was practiced strong border definitions were strongly enforced.

It's possible the grandparent is talking more about the idea of limiting travel across those borders. That is a more defensible position but even then it was more about the the costs of enforcement.

Trade routes had very strong border enforcement because the borders were places taxes were collected for example, and there were limits on who could travel various routes.

For example Venice, Genoa and the Ottoman Empire jealously protected European end of trade routes linking to the spice road.

[runjake]

> Who supports "open borders"

It's a very prevalent idea among US immigration activists and left-leaning people.

> what do they support exactly

Generally speaking, that people can move anywhere, if they want to. This article/interview/book covers it in more depth:

https://www.nyclu.org/podcast/the-case-for-open-borders

[loeg]

* * *

[amalcon]

The obvious solution to the problem of abuse of the asylum system (which is in fact a real problem) is to hire more immigration judges so that claims are processed in a timely manner. Apart from getting rid of the asylum process entirely, that's the only long term solution. It's something Joe Biden made progress on (though he did overstate his progress), and Donald Trump reversed.

It doesn't show up in the short term numbers because it is a long-term solution. But Americans aren't interested in long-term solutions.

[loeg]

I agree that that would be an improvement. I don't know that I would call it the solution.

[Auracle]

Tell me, how do you, as an immigration judge, actually judge someone that says their life is at risk due to x,y, or z but you have no way of actually verifying that? Especially when they crossed quite a few countries to get here? I don't see how that's an actual solution to the problem.

One could easily argue that Trump made for more progress as far as the immigration courts being backed up by simply not having an almost completely open border like we did with Biden.

[jimbokun]

It’s shorthand for the policies of the Biden administration, who oversaw an unprecedented level of immigration.

[xdennis]

Biden. His policies led to a huge increase in illegal immigration.

Look at the huge jump due to his policies: https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20240127_EPC...

The same was not true for Obama, who was actually much better than Bush.

[SmirkingRevenge]

Biden did not support "open borders", nor did he cause the immigration surges during his term. CATO of all places refutes both of these ideas:

- https://www.cato.org/blog/biden-didnt-cause-border-crisis-pa...

- https://www.cato.org/blog/biden-didnt-cause-border-crisis-pa...

- https://www.cato.org/blog/biden-didnt-cause-border-crisis-pa...

(Also, FWIW, those immigration surges were good things (for the US), and likely helped the US stick the "soft landing" instead of slipping into a post-covid recession)

[mondrian]

A better chart: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/f3fb/live/1ca3d...

[loeg]

Not better, just different? GP's chart includes two prior administrations for context; yours includes Trump 2, which also provides additional context (but excludes Bush and Obama).

[triceratops]

What was the policy change though?

[Auracle]

Biden: "Here's an app where you can make an appointment to illegally cross the border. Our system will be so backed up that you won't need to go to actual immigration court for years, and even then if we tell you to leave and you don't we probably won't go after you. You'll have plenty of time to make an anchor baby. Oh, I can't close the border without a bipartisan bill that essentially enshrines a certain level of illegal immigration. Can't be done."

Trump: "Border is closed. We're deporting people, starting with mostly those that have committed serious crimes."

[triceratops]

> I can't close the border without a bipartisan bill that essentially enshrines a certain level of illegal immigration

How did it do that?

[devindotcom]

the graph actually makes it look like the jump was due to Trump's policies, since the spike started in his term. if anything the graph shows that Biden policies arrested it shortly after. I recall reading deportations were actually very high during Biden's term.

[paulryanrogers]

Biden, his party, and some Republicans worked for years on the toughest border legislation ever endorsed by a Democratic president. Trump demanded it be shot down so he'd still have an issue to campaign on.

[loeg]

Biden's executive actions resulted in the loosest de facto border in recent memory. That he later worked on some legislation that was ultimately ineffective isn't a great defense. He could have just directed the executive branch to be less lax the whole time!

[paulryanrogers]

> That he later worked on some legislation that was ultimately ineffective isn't a great defense.

The in-effectivity was due entirely and directly to Trump interfering in the matter. How can a president sign legislation that doesn't reach his desk because the party in control of the legislative body is in the pocket of a man who cares more about his career than the nation's well-being?

[knubie]

The current Mayor of New York City and three candidates that just won congressional primaries in the city belong to a political party called Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). They will be joining two more DSA members in congress. This is the DSA's platform on immigration:

> Allow workers to freely migrate between countries to seek employment without restrictive immigration controls. Demilitarize the border, end all immigrant detention and deportations, immediate amnesty for all immigrants regardless of current immigration status, and provide access to jobs, labor rights, and social services to all immigrants.

https://platform.dsausa.org/foreign-policy/

[jkaplowitz]

In other words, give labor the same mobility as capital. Nothing inherently unreasonable about that.

Note they say “to seek employment” and “without restrictive border controls”, not “for any purpose” and “without border controls”. This does not mean they’re advocating to let in convicted murderers or people who just want to migrate for welfare benefits. Calling it “open borders” is an exaggeration in absolute terms, though it is for sure accurate as a relative comparison to what we have now.

Also, their political party, as such, is the Democrats. DSA is not a political party. But yeah they are members of DSA as well as being Democrats.

[saghm]

From the Wikipedia article:

> Markus Allard initiated heavy debate in 2025 by claiming that Sweden is "the land for/belongs to the Swedes"

> In a debate hosted by Studio3 with Liberal member of parliament Martin Melin, Allard asked: "why won't the Liberals push for deporting 100 000 social welfare-Somalis?" and in the same debate said that "Sweden belongs to the Swedes.

I don't think it's particularly hard to figure out what these are dog whistles for, and equating my vehement disagreement with it as being in favor of "open borders" is absurd.

[tim333]

It doesn't sound much of a dog whistle? More pretty plain spoken. I think Sweden had one of the lowest crime and high trust societies and then admitted a lot of Somali refugees and now has gang warfare and much rape from the guests. Not sure it's that ridiculous to suggest they go home?

[runjake]

I am confused. Are you using multiple HN accounts or something? I was not reply to the saghm account and your saghm account isn't even present up the thread.

[saghm]

No, this is my only HN account. I'm equally confused why you think that claiming that being in favor of "open borders" being a common perspective wouldn't generate reactions from the type of people holding the views that you mischaracterize as that.

[runjake]

> I'm equally confused why you think that claiming that being in favor of "open borders" being a common perspective wouldn't generate reactions from the type of people holding the views that you mischaracterize as that.

I'm having trouble grokking your statement, but "open borders" is not a pejorative. It's a belief that people, more or less, should be able to freely flow across borders and live where they like.

Again, I am speaking from a US perspective. It may carry different connotations in other countries. It's too prescriptive to apply the same immigration policies at a global level. There's too much nuance and geographical differences.

[dpoloncsak]

I think, all pretty recently (atleast in the 'States), there's been much news and noise about the abuse and fraud of these systems designed to help the downtrodden.

Now whether that's all true, has always been true, is propaganda...whatever, but it's easy for me to understand why sentiment has been changing as the spotlight is focused more and more on the abuse of the systems as opposed to the benefits.

I also think there's some 'hierarchy of needs' going on here, where as the economy shifts and more and more Americans are struggling to afford housing, groceries, and other necessities, it's easy to feel like you should be putting yourself first over strangers. Combine that with the prior point, and you have a great recipe to build resentment. Selfish, maybe, but I can understand how you get there.

This is NOT to say 'There is no xenophobia' or anything...racism in general is alive and well in the USA... but I have pretty sound-minded people around me starting to echo this mindset, and this is my best understanding of what's been brewing.

[agar]

For what it's worth, the most effective propaganda is that which reinforces latent biases.

Humans en masse are selfish, self-serving, and tribal, so it's incredibly easy to believe that there is massive abuse of social services like SNAP/EBT, those delivering services are incompetent, and that we should investment more in fraud reduction.

However, the reality is that the US spends $3.75 for each $1 of fraud discovered. And, "fraud" includes clerical errors made by the government, so the actual ROI of enforcement is even lower.

So much of the propaganda -- "immigrants steal benefits paid for by hardworking US taxpayers, so we should ramp up enforcement spending to make more room for [white] citizens" is designed to simply reinforce our biases because it's just so darned believable to a cynical and tribal people.

In reality, spending more on benefits enforcement just loses taxpayers more money while cutting more US citizens off from benefits they both need and are eligible for. It results in the opposite of its stated goal and this is well known to any policymaker.

So if saving taxpayer money, and punishing those guilty of fraud, isn't the actual objective of all this toxic propaganda, you have to ask yourself what is.

[froh]

every $$ spent on this "abuse" is a $$ not spent on tax evasion while giving an impression of "finally someone is doing something" and the $$ that could be made in plugging corporate tax evasion by gar outrun the $$ saved on the no income side.

in Germany we talk 350Mio€ vs 10Bio€ y/y

the us numbers will have a similar ratio

[ashley95]

Comparing the US and Sweden, it's also useful to know that the proportion of refugees accepted by these two countries is wildly different. Sweden has historically taken in many refugees (including draft dodgers from the US). In 2015 (an outlier) they accepted rouhgly 1 refugee (163k) for every 60 people (~9.4m) in the country. At its peak in 2024, the US admitted 100k refugees, significantly fewer than the Swedish peak. The impact of refugees is much more visible (also in budgetary allocations) in Sweden than the US because of this difference.

[Auracle]

Why are you just comparing refugee numbers? That's incredibly disingenuous. A very large portion of the US's population is here illegally, and it would be significantly larger if we didn't have birthright citizenship.

They're effectively the same thing.

[radicalbyte]

Migration in my part of Europe (Holland) has largely been workers for jobs the Dutch won't do. These people are abused as a sort of semi-serf labour mainly in the farming sector.

Some groups are a big net benefit to our (looking at the income the group benefits / social support costs) and others slight net negative. But once you take the economy into account it's positive.

[denismenace]

It has been shown repeatedly in multiple studies (you might have heard a very prominent one from Denmark) that Non-European/Non-Western migrants are a net loss for the economy during their lifetime and also their children are a drag on the economy. Meaning the money spent by the government to support them is never made back (from the working) during their whole lifetime.

So no, most migrant groups are not a big benefit. Especially considering that this is only taking the economy into account. When you take into account the societal disruption and anti-values that they bring with them, then its clear how negative they have been for Europe.

[deanishe]

> largely been workers for jobs the Dutch won't do.

The Dutch were happy to do those jobs 50 years ago.

After every single "jobs the natives won't do", there's an unspoken "for the dogshit pay we offer."

[radicalbyte]

No they weren't, 50 years ago is when they were working very hard to get people in from Turkey/North Africa to do those jobs because they wanted to pay peanuts and the natives had options.

These are all hyper exploitative industries based on capital exploiting the poor. Which is something we both agree on.

[picofarad]

You'd have to stop importing the things you're not paying people enough to produce, otherwise your own products will be more expensive than the next nation over that has no qualms about poor pay for agriculture or whatever.

It all sounds great until the last 40+ years goes away, with the apples year round and bananas, etc.

Going back to just what you can produce in your country is gunna be a rude awakening for billions.

[schnitzelstoat]

People wouldn’t be willing to pay those prices for food, so they’d just end up importing it all.

You could force people to accept the low wages by removing all welfare but that has its own problems.

[throwaway85825]

I don't see neo feudalism as a positive.

[grafmax]

Immigrants are a timeless scapegoat for the problems faced by the working class.

[mindslight]

At least from a US perspective, the problem is that the downsides are the deliberate policy goals of the political class. Immigration was but one tool used to achieve them, and now the immigrants themselves serve as a convenient visceral scapegoat for releasing the grassroots political pressure. We finally built enough political capital to do something about the economic vise most Americans find themselves in, only for it to be squandered on performative vice signalling.

[Computer0]

There’s expected to be 1 billion climate refugees by 2050. What will be this factions answer to that? Bullets?

[remarkEon]

What is a climate refugee?

[Computer0]

A refugee who is leaving their home country due to direct or indirect impacts of climate change. Think a devastating flood or something.

[remarkEon]

A flood is temporary. Do you mean to say that people can become refugees because the weather gets bad?

[microgpt]

Yes. Isn't that how most factions answer that? Even most of the ones that are nominally left.

[microgpt]

How can you be sure the opinion moved to the center and not that the center moved to the right?

Migration is all a distraction anyway. Brown people existing doesn't hurt you. Whenever you think they drive up rents or whatever, that has nothing to do with the brown people, that has everything to do with the system that sets rents.

[saberience]

"Brown people existing doesn't hurt you"

Yes, existing doesn't hurt. But when you import mass amounts of people who don't talk your countries language, have no intention of learning, and have no intention of getting a job, and on top of it are intensely religious supporting a religion which is antithetical to your values, then it DOES hurt.

Western Europe has simply allowed too many Muslim immigrants in than they could ever successfully have integrated. Now Europe is full of ghettos of Muslim immigrants who don't get jobs, don't learn the languages, and sap resources which the countries cannot afford.

Note: this isn't about being racist or not, it's just common sense. There is a limit of how many immigrants a country can take, financially and culturally.

[paulryanrogers]

So is the religion the biggest problem or just a symptom?

I'd agree immigration must have limits and don't recall any prominent voices calling for unlimited migration or even limitless compassion.

Being a union, one can hope the load of migrants fleeing wars and violence would be spread among all the states, in proportion to their ability. Economic migration is a more complex matter since everyone benefits from it up to some threshold. Where it crosses into an undeniable problem is subjective. If it negatively affects me personally then it's bad, especially if I can overlook all the benefits I accrued (like lower prices of commodities and services).

[antonkochubey]

Yes, increasing demand for housing and increasing supply of labor definitely does nothing for both salaries and housing prices

[TheOtherHobbes]

Perhaps those problems have other causes.

[saghm]

This may shock you, but not all numbers greater than zero are equal. Something might cause a price to go up by some amount, but something else might make it go up by an even larger amount, so stopping that first thing might not stop it from still going up higher than people want.

[microgpt]

What happens to supply of housing and demand for labor, and why?

[mandevil]

So for housing it depends on the local laws (1), but for labor this has actually been heavily studied, and the general consensus (2) is actually higher demand for native-born labor. All of those immigrants need goods and services, after all, so they increase demand. Focusing on immigrants providing labor without mentioning that they buy things as well is assuming your conclusion.

And the demand is not just for doctors and other highly credentialed labor. The most nativist work on the Mariel Boatlift (3) (by Borjas) only found a decrease in wages for native-born high-school dropouts, and the general consensus of other economists seems to be that his work was faulty. The general consensus on Mariel (cite fn2 again) is that it was good, economically, for the native-born people in the Miami labor force when an additional 7% of the labor force suddenly arrived as immigrants over the course of a few months.

1: How much housing can be built legally is the key factor here. Immigrants can drive up the prices if no more housing can be built but that's just another way of saying that "no more housing can be built" is a really terrible policy that is enormously destructive. If building housing is relatively easy, then it doesn't drive up prices. In fact, immigrant labor is often used to build this new housing. Don't let your area become like the Bay Area and you'll be fine.

2: Wearing my physics hat, I am not comfortable saying that anything in economics is actually proven.

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariel_boatlift

[SmirkingRevenge]

Yep, this is exactly right.

When people are added to the economy, demand increases, including demand for more labor.

The downward pressure on wages that one might intuitively expect from immigrant labor is basically erased by those increases in demand. It's self-reinforcing.

[peyton]

Look up the Curley Effect for an explainer of what might be going on. I’m not Swedish but feel it may be worth examining given their rhetoric.

[microgpt]

Sorry I don't get the reference

[mandevil]

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w8942/w8942...

Some economists theorize that a long time Mayor of Boston (James Curley) used economic populism (taxing wealthy people of English descent and redistributing to poorer, usually of Irish descent) and anti-British rhetoric to reshape the electorate in ways that benefited him, even if it didn't benefit the city as a whole. The theory goes, he had a plan to drive out the wealthy people of English descent so the poor people of Irish descent would make up a larger share of the electorate and he could win more elections.

My understanding is that even most economists think that this isn't actually real. It's largely a couple of economists building a mathematical model, and then looking at cherry-picked examples, e.g., minority mayors during the 1970's and assuming that it was the result of a dastardly plan by the minority mayors rather than the result of larger social forces driving White Flight from cities.

In general, I think that mayors might make dumb decisions, but they largely do it because they think it will be good for the city and are wrong, not because they are twirling their mustache and cackling away.

[nathan_compton]

Do you resent it when babies are born?

[nec4b]

> Brown people existing doesn't hurt you.

Why did you feel the need to say "Brown people" instead of migrants? Are you trying to play the racist card? Poles are white and when they migrated en mass to Britain they were also making locals very unhappy.

[nly]

Ironically most of the polish I know who came to Britain returned home to Poland for better prospects.

Adjusting for purchasing power parity, GDP per capita in Poland isn't far behind the UK.

[microgpt]

We all know they are not going to expel Canadians.

[bit-anarchist]

Why not?

[xdennis]

> Brown people existing doesn't hurt you.

BBC:

    About 58% of men convicted in Sweden of rape and attempted rape over the past five years were born abroad, according to data from Swedish national TV.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45269764

[fakedang]

> How can you be sure the opinion moved to the center and not that the center moved to the right?

I'm pretty sure he meant that what used to be a far-right view is now considered mainstream. Which is true, since even the EU Parliament has now begun passing laws vs migrants, and governments all across Western Europe are now taking steps against migrants.

> Brown people existing doesn't hurt you.

Correct, and I'm one of them. Unfortunately some abhorrent elements of our culture, traditions and values hurt erstwhile peaceful societies.

[throwaway85825]

Supply and demand economic denialism is dangerously widespread.

[microgpt]

What is supply and demand economic denialism?

[Auracle]

[flagged]

[dang]

Can you please not post in the flamewar style? You crossed into that here and it's the opposite of what we're trying for on this site. You're welcome to make your substantive points thoughtfully.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[Auracle]

You're right, apologies. I was trying to cut off an argument before it started but I went about it completely wrong.

[decimalenough]

> Brown people existing doesn't hurt you.

In Sweden, brown people are heavily overrepresented in violent crime, so many people are getting hurt.

Obligatory disclaimer: the problem is not caused by skin color, but by a complex mess of poverty, lack of opportunity, societal attitudes within and against immigrant groups, etc. But voters hearing about a steady drum beat of robberies, rapes, drive by shootings (yes, in Sweden!) don't really care.

[tim333]

Culture's a thing too. If you admit a bunch of Somali warlords they may keep behaving like Somali warlords irrespective of the other factors you mention.

[paulryanrogers]

Perhaps voters aren't being offered the tools to solve the root problems?

Scapegoating entire skin colors for systemic failures doesn't seem like it's going to make things better for anyone.

[noworriesnate]

What solution do you have in mind? And is it guaranteed to work? Because deporting the people who are massively over represented in crime is guaranteed to work.

[decimalenough]

Indeed, but scapegoating people who are Different(tm) has a long history of being a successful political tactic, at least if you measure success solely in terms of getting elected.

[exiguus]

That's how populism works and people act if they don't understand that manipulation.

[arjie]

Considering the history of labor unions and their support for the banning of Asian citizenship in the US, I think the right frame is that migration support / opposition has something to do with other things but not entirely. There are only a few ways to come to the US and the employment-based approach is probably the most widely used by unconnected foreigners seeking to live in the US and that pathway is intended to be abolished by Senator Bernie Sanders with no replacement planned. I think it's hard to describe that senator as particularly right-wing.

Likewise, it was a labour union in Georgia that lobbied to get Koreans deported from the US. It should be unsurprising that those who hold to the Lump of Labor economic school should oppose immigration and that's quite popular among the left-wing.

[17761989]

they can exist @ home

[microgpt]

Where's home?

[noworriesnate]

Africa, the Middle East, etc. There’s not just one answer.

[Geonode]

[flagged]

[dang]

Religious flamewar is not allowed on HN so please don't post like this here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[nec4b]

There is one person/bot here with well over 30 comments in this comment section making all about race and racism even though the topic is migration. Don't you have any guidelines about that?

[dang]

Of course we do: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Don't make the mistake of assuming moderator omniscience (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...)! - we don't see most of what gets posted to HN, and we mostly don't read the threads sequentially.

[nec4b]

I don't assume you are omniscience, but I do expect you have at least minimal tools/stats where you can see things getting of charts. You did have to find the comment to which you replied and reminded the author of not starting religious wars somehow too.

[peterfirefly]

I see several pro-mass immigration posters who try to pretend opposition to mass immigration is about racism. Don't think any of them are bots.

[olelele]

„Letting mass migration happen „ is such a fallacy in and if itself.

[vrganj]

Sentiment hasn't moved from far-right to the center. If it feels like that to you, it sounds like your perspective changed because you moved from the center to the far-right.

[NoGravitas]

It does appear that the Overton Window has shifted far to the right on immigration, such that far-right views are mainstream enough to be highly visible, and found in representatives of formerly or otherwise centrist parties. I consider this shift deplorable, but it's clear that it has happened.

[zug_zug]

I think it's phrasing and the phrase "damn parasites" that makes it far-right.

The idea of changing immigration policies is not unique to any political party. However the quote isn't that, it's trying to stir up an angry us/them reaction at a large group based on national/racial lines. Also "damn parasites" is somewhat dehumanizing (whether you apply it to billionaires or immigrants).

[foxes]

You mean the Overton window or whatever has drifted right.

Nationalism is a right wing concept.

[throwitaway222]

We were sold one thing and got another.

[microgpt]

What were you sold and what did you get?

[nekusar]

To be fair, it already mostly exists.

Its 4chan politically incorrect. https://boards.4chan.org/pol/

And yeah, its as terrible as you can possibly imagine. And then even more so.

[jackb4040]

A "free speech" HN is just HN. It would end up with the same cryptic way of describing replacement theory, because it's not for the purpose of evading censors. It's for the purpose of cosplaying having "dangerous opinions". The idea of left-wing censorship on Paul Graham's website is a joke.

[dbingham]

No. That sentiment didn't "move toward the center".

What happened is that the far-right -- and, lets not use euphemisms like "the far right" here, we're talking about fascists and literal Nazis (ethno-fascism is Nazism) -- have successfully taken control of much of our mass media. They've also more or less captured the government of one of the world's super powers. Those two things put together have allowed them to make their views appear mainstream.

This is exactly what happened during the 1920s and 1930s prior to World War II. And similarly, you were finding Nazi views expressed openly and proudly and being given a veneer of respectability. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Squ...)

But they are no less extreme now than they were then. They are still fascist and Nazi views. And they still ought to be abhorrent to anyone who considers themselves a decent human being.

[Auracle]

It's beyond incredible that anyone thinks that the far right has taken control of the mass media. It's clearly the left that has control of most of the media, which makes sense. People in cities tend to be on the left. Journalism majors tend to be on the left.

[agar]

Have you looked at media ownership recently?

The days of a scrappy newspaper or local market newscast are over. Reframe your statement from "People in cities tend to be on the left. Journalism majors tend to be on the left" to "People who own media firms tend to be on the right. People who set journalistic standards for their outlet tend to be on the right."

[plagiarist]

Which specific mass media are controlled by the left?

[Auracle]

NPR. NBC. ABC. CBS has decided to try being moderate, so we'll see how that goes. MS NOW or whatever they call themselves now. The New York Times. The Washington Post. Politico. USA Today. Vox. Slate. The New Yorker. Huffpost. The Atlantic. Much of the gaming media, weirdly. Reddit. Twitter was. Bluesky is. Wikipedia, if that counts as media.

Allsides even lists the AP as left leaning, though I don't ingest enough direct AP stuff to verify. I'd disagree with them listing the BBC as neutral on quite a few topics, nowadays, and put them towards left - but that's just me.

Sure, there are right-leaning places like The National Review, but apart from the opinion section of the WSJ and Fox News as a whole they're pretty small.

[NoGravitas]

Washington Post is owned by Bezos, so at best center-right. CBS (and its associated properties like Paramount) are owned by a family of far-right oligarchs, who will also soon own Warner Bros Discovery. Said oligarchs appointed a far-right political commentator as a political officer to control editorial content at CBS.

A lot of the rest you list are not left leaning, but centrist (derogatory).

[dbingham]

None of these are left.

You could make an argument that some of them are "classical liberal" or "neoliberal", but that was the center in the US and everywhere else it is center-right.

Definitions are helpful here.

"Classical liberal" is what the US was founded as. It was a liberal Republic. Classical liberals value political freedoms, civil rights, and free markets. They are anti-monarchy and anti-authoritarian. Most of the revolutions of the 1700s and 1800s were driven by Classical Liberals seeking political freedom

In the origination of "left" and "right", Classical Liberals were "center left". "Center right" were the moderate constitutional monarchists. In the US where we have zero interest in constitutional monarchy, Classical Liberalism was always the center.

Since World War II, that center became a settled question in much of the western world. The answers are "Yes, constitutions", "Yes, political freedoms", and "Yes, civil rights". Though in many places, civil rights were incompletely extended and so much of the argument has been about extending them fully.

The other side of the argument is "the social question" which got rebranded as "economics". It boils down to how much do we allow power and wealth to concentrate. This became more and more of an element of the revolutions starting in the 1850s -- the revolutions of 1848 were the first to really feature a true left as it is understood today: socialist, communist, and anarchist. (At the time, it was just socialist. Communism as a theory didn't exist yet and anarchism was nascent.). And just to be clear, the "left" refers to Classical Liberals as "Bourgeoisie liberals" -- capitalists and capitalist defenders -- and does not consider them to be part of the left.

The center in the US since the 70s has been a neoliberal consensus which argues for allowing the Capitalist markets to do their thing with minimal intervention. And most of the debate has been about how much that minimal invention should be -- with the two sides mostly arguing between "almost none" and "minimal".

Neoliberalism is more or less a form of libertarianism (US Libertarianism edges into Anarcho-capitalism).

For all of the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, Neoliberalism was the center and was the entirety of both the Democratic and Republican parties. The "left" vs "right" argument was focused on things like foreign policy and whether we complete the extension of civil rights to everyone.

For most of those decades, all of those sources you just named arranged themselves squarely around that center. They were all Neoliberal. They all took rotating positions on foreign policy, aligning with each party based on the political winds of the moment. Many of them did include arguments in favor of the continued extension of civil rights, but many of them also included arguments against it. Few of them whole-heartedly endorsed that extension until after the fact.

We've never had much of a truly left mass media to speak of.

In the last decade and a half, authoritarianism, fascism, and neo-Nazism have seen a resurgence world wide. And in the US an explicitly fascist movement with Nazi elements captured the Republican party and then the government. Anyone with a political science background taking an honest, empirical look at the MAGA movement will identify it thus. That movement directly pulled from the Nazi playbook in their rise to power. Trump has often cribbed directly from Hitler's speeches, barely even paraphrasing them.

During that movements rise to power, we have seen large elements of the wealthy elite that controls much of the media align with that movement.

At this point, most social media sites are controlled by actors who either have explicitly aligned with the US fascist movement or have effectively acquiesced to it.

Meta has added fascist aligned members to its board and put fascist aligned people in executive positions through the company. They've also voluntarily acquiesced to the regime's requests to silence anti-regime activists.

Twitter is explicitly fascist. Elon Musk is a core member of that movement.

TikTok has been captured by that movement through an orchestrated buyout.

Most of our media is social media, and right there you now have the biggest source of news and information for the vast majority of people fully captured by the fascist movement.

As for traditional media, CBS has been captured. Bari Weiss is a part of the fascist movement and her elevation was part of their pressure campaign.

The Washington Post is owned by Bezos who has aligned with that movement and is explicitly exerting editorial control.

News Corp (Fox News and the WSJ) is aligned with the fascist movement and is arguably one of its originators. Sinclair group, which owns most local TV stations, is also aligned with that movement.

And to be clear, I watched this happen. I've long made a habit of subscribing to sources from across the spectrum and made a hobby study of political science and trying to identify source's biases by political taxonomy vs the frustratingly simplistic left / right spectrum. I used to subscribe to The National Review, Reason, The American Conservative, the Weekly Standard, and others. I've largely tried to avoid those that are blatant, ingenuine propaganda (which Fox News has always been) in favor of those making earnest well founded arguments. And one by one, I've watched them fall to the fascist movement over the last decade. Reason is the last hold out, truly committed to civil liberties and libertarianism -- though it hasn't yet recognized the fascist movement for what it is (or hadn't last I checked in on them -- I haven't had the time to read as much lately).

It's pretty clear that you're in the fascist propaganda bubble, based on your posts and where you put things, and that is badly skewing your perception of where the center is.

I would strongly encourage you to get out of that bubble.

[Auracle]

I'm not the one in the bubble. You are so far left that think that MS NOW, Huff Post, Vox, etc. aren't on the left in a No True Scotsman type manner, and in your comment you used the word 'fascist/fascism' over 10 times in reference to people that are simply right leaning or even very centrist.

I personally have individual beliefs that align with both of our two major political parties, which is something very few people can actually say, for what it's worth.