That is one of many possibilities that make this sort of analysis distinctly unhelpful.
Years ago, Lawrence Auster wrote a nice piece about the nihilistic consequences of strictly numerical/stochastic approaches to human problems. This tends to be the blindness of the social scientist.
After all, if these numbers tell the whole tale, then not only Britain, but the entire west is finished, full stop, and there is not much more to be done about it.
But no meaningful social changes are a result of majority numbers. Are the people most affected by immigration more greatly incensed by the phenomenon now than they had been in the past? This sort of factor is far more important than merely counting what people tell pollsters about their attitudes on foreign arrivals. It was, after all, easy for most people to conceive and blithely express anti-foreigner attitudes at a time when such views were uncontroversial.
To see riots and say "but most Brits don't think this way" is like seeing a fire and saying "most of this area has not been ignited."
Yes, they do – although the difference isn't huge and probably can't account for much of the trend since 2010. (Note that Baby Boomers and the Pre-War generation are nearly all White British, yet both saw large reductions in agreement that employers should prioritise natives over immigrants.) I have more to say about this in a forthcoming article.
I just checked in the 2019 wave of the British Election Study, and excluding people with an ethnicity other than "White British" increases opposition to immigration by three percentage points. This means that immigrants and their descendants can only account for 10% of the gap between the 1960s/1970s and 2019, with the other 90% being explained by change within the White British population.
Those White British who support the immigration of low-IQ third-world people deserve what is happening to Britain; sadly, those that don't support it are screwed.
I must say that it’s a really stupid question. Immigration from Poland, India, or China does not have the same effects on British society as immigration from Sudan, Somalia, or Pakistan.
"Difference isnt huge" - You haven't shown this in the article since all your data here is confounded by immigrants.
"Large reductions in agreement that employers should prioritize natives over immigrants" - Ok, but that's only related to support for increasing immigration.
Would like to see the change in attitudes toward immigration in ethnic brits, which your title (imo) implies but your article did not deliver on.
Noah responded to this. Immigrants do support migration more (and the difference is likely to be substantial when you look at tail effects), but most of the change in attitudes is within-cohort.
Voters are just misinformed. The average person massively underestimates the numbers coming in and overestimates the benefits. Go read "What voters really think about immigration" from Onward.
As I noted in footnote 2, "You can argue that opposition would be higher if people were better informed about the scale of immigration and all of its downstream consequences, but that doesn’t change the facts on the ground."
And even if they weren't misinformed and knew the real numbers, they might STILL be in favour of high levels of immigration, simply because they've been through at least 13 years of indoctrination into the progressive liberal mindset in our schools, not to mentions TV, movies, songs etc. It's kind of amazing that ANYONE comes out the other end of that feeling even mildly positive about conservative values. The force must be strong with those.
It's not the raw number of immigrants which is the primary problem; it is the official policy of *non-assimilation* which is socially destructive.
I immigrated to Canada in 1987 (from Eastern Europe). There was an NGO specialized in helping new immigrants; I had a woman caseworker there. On the one hand, she helped me to score my first job (after approx. 3 months) in my chosen field of computer programming, something I'm very grateful for even after all these years.
On the other hand, when I said to her that "I want to become like Canadians are", she told me that I shouldn't be keen on that; I ought to keep my native culture. I couldn't understand her; if I wanted to keep my native culture then I would have stayed put where I was born & grew up.
It took me a decade or so to realize that she was pushing the 'multicultural' policy line. A policy which is as catastrophic in Canada as it is in the UK: when people are ethnically divided & import all of their old country prejudices & grievances to their new home, where they're *officially encouraged* to hold onto them.
The only people who benefit from this are the various ethnic activists, 'community leaders' & the global managerial class which plays them against each other.
Asking people simplistic questions about raw immigration numbers isn't just meaningless, but a proactive exercise in *political deception*.
It's part of the problem, but groups with substantial biological differences in ability and/or temperament are never going to 'assimilate' in the sense it's generally understood.
Well... they were wrong. ~50 years of black/muslim migration to western countries has obviously not produced similar results. I could get into the weeds of the HBD literature if you want, but the onus shouldn't really be on restrictionists to justify their skepticism at this point.
Which means that the Irish *did* manage to assimilate into the American population after the 1846-1929 wave of their immigration to the USA -- independently of their (average) IQ or any changes in it.
> the onus shouldn't really be on restrictionists to justify their skepticism at this point
Sure it is on them if they claim that
> groups with substantial biological differences in ability and/or temperament are never going to 'assimilate' in the sense it's generally understood
The exact point is that *when assimilation isn't expected* of any group of immigrants, then it is unknown if the possibility of assimilation is precluded by any putative "substantial biological differences in ability and/or temperament".
As far as immigration restrictionism goes: I was a legal immigrant to Canada, so I don't have any problem with the notion of *controlled* immigration. But I think that any such control ought not be based on group identity (i.e. ethnic/national origin or *private* religious convictions), but rather the willingness to assimilate into majority society -- primarily by (a) observance of the laws & (b) engaging in gainful employment or entrepreneurship, instead of becoming a public charge (from the time of arrival).
"Which means that the Irish *did* manage to assimilate into the American population after the 1846-1929 wave of their immigration to the USA -- independently of their (average) IQ or any changes in it"
How do you know it was independent of their IQ?
"The exact point is that *when assimilation isn't expected* of any group of immigrants, then it is unknown if the possibility of assimilation is precluded..."
"As far as immigration restrictionism goes: I was a legal immigrant to Canada, so I don't have any problem with the notion of *controlled* immigration"
Even selectively-admitted migrants, especially from non-euro backgrounds, show a robust tendency to vote for left-wing parties with insane migration policies, and regression-to-the-mean effects in the second generation make this problem worse. I'm sure there are many individual exceptions, but in combination with brain drain effects I honestly can't commend any kind of long-term migration policy as it exists in the modern era.
You linked to a piece which claimed that there was no change in the (average) IQ of the Irish.
> There are plenty of other ways to know this.
The linked piece discusses race-ethnic gaps in IQ. Unless it is shown *conclusively* that such differences in IQ *precludes* assimilation into the host society, it has no relevance to the question at hand.
> a robust tendency to vote for left-wing parties with insane migration policies
The same is true for a sizeable contingent of the 'native' population. Enoch Powell was denounced by the authorities of the UK when the share of immigrants in the population was lower, i.e. those authorities weren't voted into power primarily by immigrants.
> can't commend any kind of long-term migration policy
The main problem with that is the Total Fertility Rate being approx. 1.6 in the UK (& ~1.4 in Canada). As the population ages & 'native' birth rates drop, it becomes harder & harder for governments to provide retirees with various government subsidies (primarily healthcare & old age pension payments). Something got to give: either (a) 'natives' start having more children, or (b) considerably lower government subsidies provided for older people, or (c) there's enough immigration to fill the gap. Pick your poison.
Irish are genetically and culturally very similar to British Anglos. The genetic and cultural gap is much much wider with sub-Saharan Africans and Pakistanis
Raw numbers and origin of immigrants absolutely do matter when it comes to assimilation. You can see in France, Sweden, and the UK, 3rd generation descendants of poor, uneducated immigrants from Africa, Middle East, and Pakistan still lag behind natives on income, education, and crime indicators
Interesting. I didn't know that. But then I recently read that Britain's total immigrant population is only 6 percent of the total population. Is that correct? Does it include second generation immigrants? Would like to know more about the overall numbers.
What exactly is “White British”? Apparently most British Jews self-identify as “White British”. Would a third-generation British with some Polish or Romanian ancestry also identify like that? I’m not sure the boundary between “White British” and “White Other” is so clear-cut.
"My claim was that since they had voted overwhelmingly for pro-migration parties at the recent election, they must care more about issues like the cost of living, housing and the NHS." Those things are a direct result of immigration!
"In the 1960s and 1970s – around the time of Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech – there actually was an overwhelming consensus against immigration, with more than 80% of respondents saying that “too many immigrants have been let into this country”. Yet as of 2019, only 52% of respondents said the same thing." This begs the question: were they nurtured into this stance or is it in their nature to eventually be destroyed?
The flood of mass immigration that's swept across the West since the turn of the 21st century has come conjoined with a flood of mass propaganda, heavily moralized and romanticized, throughout all our educational, cultural and journalistic (sense-making) institutions.
Migrants etc have become another of the left-liberal's sacred victims (so much of our reigning Social Justice faith is essentially an energized application of the Parable of the Good Samaritan), meaning that these new arrivals, mostly because they appear as poor, brown and oppressed (the trifecta that tickles all the liberal erogenous zones), must never be questioned or opposed, must never be sent back to their home countries, must be welcomed and greeted with unlimited social benefits, because Justice and Equality demand it—and anyone who disagrees is a "far right" hateful extremist bigot who needs to be monitored by the govt and ostracized by polite society.
I'm surprised anyone under 30ish would publicly state any opposition to mass immigration, as it codes them as bad, backwards and benighted and can't be good for any future romantic or employment opportunities.
The future belongs to the hivemind and the hivemind demands that citizens be replaced by a single uniform right-thinking blob of processed humanity managed by our postnational therapeutic-egalitarian-humanitarian expert class.
Protests and riots etc will only lock in the postnational hivemind future quicker, more ruthlessly and more comprehensively. The nation-state will survive only in a Potemkin/Epcot form.
Reading your (very good) comment made me think of the film Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, where only those who had not yet been taken over by the alien Pod People and become part of a collective mush were struggling and desperate. The vast majority were zombified serene/numb.
In the film there is something that gives the replicants away: a distant coldness, as though the soul had been sucked out of them (they also, like most aliens, lack a sense of humour). What gives people away who subscribe to today's progressive liberal hivemind is that they always appear SO pleased with themselves that they hold the views they do. A few days ago I was watching some good, middle-class man being interviewed about why he was at an anti-right vigil. He thought that all good people should stand up against bigotry and instead be inclusive and on the side of peace and harmony. 'You unbearable, smug, sanctimonious, self-satisfied tosser!', I spat at my TV screen.
It's funny you should mention "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", my wife and I bring it up every time another of our friends starts spouting Soc Just jargon and praising things like race quotas and sex changes for children—this is when we know the hivemind/brain virus has got them too.
But we try not to be too scornful of them, most people absorb all the reigning ideas and beliefs of the people around them, especially when the price of dissent is so high (and especially when they're presented as simple kindness and proper etiquette).
Ideas and beliefs are (wisely) much less important to almost everyone than food, security and social acceptance.
You're right. Being scornful of people who breathe in their ideas from the air around them would leave you with almost no friends at all, unless you happen to live next to John Derbyshire and Ed West. Parties would be - and usually are - unbearable.
It's only when I read something genuinely surprising to me that I think, 'Hmm, until now I've accepted that without ever really thinking about it'. I'm sure that's true of most of my beliefs. I've just lazily imbibed them. I'm always amazed that Isaac Newton even questioned why things fall down rather than up. 'They just do' is my answer to most things.
I remember my surprise 25 years ago when first reading Richard Dawkins, discovering that he, along with all other sensible scientists, believed that genes as well as environment play a role in who we become. Who would have thought it?
The difference between my friends with liberal-ish views and myself - my Irish friend sometimes refers to me as 'the racist', hopefully jokingly - seems to be that I quite enjoy having my mind changed, despite those changes often being from 'default nice' to 'dissident nasty'.
Most people appear to think that believing nice things will make it more likely that things will turn out nice, and anyone who dissents from this view must actually WANT the world to be a nasty place.
"Most people appear to think that believing nice things will make it more likely that things will turn out nice, and anyone who dissents from this view must actually WANT the world to be a nasty place."
YES, THIS.
I've tried a few times to explain IS/OUGHT to a friend or two, but by the time I'm on the second sentence their eyes glaze over and they're gone...and yes, like you, they've all been programmed to immediately accuse me of some sort of bigotry or of only using so many words as a ruse to hide my inherent bigotry.
Or I'll say something like "Most men are stronger and more aggressive than most women", and immediately be met with: "But you're not aggressive!"
It is just very hard for almost everyone to escape the constant urgent needs of the self or see/think of anything outside their self and other adjacent selves.
Playing with ideas starts with a certain orientation and then requires some level of practice and the desire to see multiple perspectives and wander past the boundaries of social taboo.
Now I know why Socrates and all of history's famous dissenters usually ended up dead or exiled. The In-Group hates the Out-Group and vice versa, but EVERYONE hates a philosopher.
'It is just very hard for almost everyone to escape the constant urgent needs of the self'.
I totally agree. Yet sometimes I'm able to do it, and occasionally without much effort. I'm soon coming up to retirement age but feel that old people don't need the extra payments the government gives them. I even think old people like me should have saved up, rather than relying on younger people to finance them into their ever-increasing decrepitude. Yet the two older people I've spoken to are up in arms at the government taking away their £200 winter heating allowance (or whatever it is). They somehow feel they have to fight the corner of old people simply because they themselves are old. The idea of what is fair, as seen from some theoretical neutral position, doesn't enter into their calculations.
I agree until your last two paragraphs. Nature will out, and humans are unsuited to forms of organization larger than the nation state.
This doesn't necessarily mean that "hiveminders" will see the error of their ways; just that the decay and incompetence that comes with the position will open its adherents to defeat by those who refuse to think in this way. It's happening in Ukraine (and possibly the middle East) as we speak.
I sincerely hope you are right, as I agree that the nation-state has proved the best way for a people to organize a polity to protect and nurture themselves and their families and societies, which is the simple purpose of govt after all.
I just look at how the nation-state has been hollowed out in the past few decades and extrapolate that 1) as those of us older folks who remember being citizens not just consumers, and who also have some level of gratitude for our open prosperous societies and our ancestors, die off and are replaced by the children of the algorithm who seem to be afflicted with terminal amnesia and only know whatever their devices tell them; and 2) as more of human life is uploaded to the cloud and becomes virtual and digitized, that the future may very well be a marriage between a managerial Controller class who coordinates across countries to monitor and manipulate what they call our "cognitive infrastructure" and a docile populace of screen junkies fed algorithmic dopamine much like soma in Huxley's "Brave New World".
Thus, as I said before, we'll have Potemkin/Epcot nation-states where all our decisions are made elsewhere by other people, where some old traditions (July 4 etc) are kept alive to maintain a sense of continuity and the illusion of a shared nation, but where "freedom" exists as long as you always obey.
It does. Again, though, I don' think such a society will run for long. You already see this happening. Most of the guts-level civilizational competence is possessed exactly by what you call "older folks who remember being citizens not just consumers".
So many firms responsible for infrastructure are desperately asking white boomer men to "unretire" when there are emergencies; entire lines of work are losing continuity in capability -- screen watchers and refugees can't be substituted freely for the kind of cultural continuiny that comes with national belonging. This affects not just manners and morals, but concrete abilities as well.
A good example to think about is the moon landing. I'm not one of those people who disbelieves the moon landing, but asking hard questions about it is instructive. Because, to see how it was done, you come to understand that aside from good luck, they also relied upon a kind of working-together that is no longer possible. We've simply *lost* many of the capabilities to replicate the feat, and many of the scientists/engineers will tell you this outright. How can this be so, when we've got faster chips? Better graphics? Finer machine tech?
Then you come to realize that even tech is cultural. You can run on the fumes of past glory by making small refinements, but without some shared overarching goals, assumptions, common adherence to a tradition of work... none of these small "advancements" can cohere into anything bigger -- especially if their very existence comes from outsourced procedures.
I brought up Ukraine as the most immediate example because nearly all of the vaunted high tech Western weapons systems have been getting a major smackdown from the Russians there. There is no little question that they are well ahead of us (on military matters, at least). This is, to my mind, directly related to the corruption of our social and scientific institutions.
Gotta say, I'm old but it's only on very rare occasions that I feel gratitude to either the propserous nation state that fostered me or to my Anglo-Saxon ancestors, direct or distant. It just seems to be a human trait that remembering to count your blessings is bloody hard - not as hard as being constanly thankful for your adrenal gland that keeps you going but in the same ballpark. Only when you are in the process of losing something, as we are now, do you finally appreciate it. Only when I'm gasping my last breathe will I think, 'Hmm, air'.
Gratitude is a virtue, and all virtues are hard. I like to think gratitude is the chief virtue of the rightist: it's the foundation of everything else that preserves the good in society. People who possess none of it -- people who are too preoccupied with their own grievances to extend good feeling about their inheritance at all, or recognize what they've been given -- will never be decent citizens.
Leftism, really, is weaponized ingratitude.
You're right, though, gratitude requires cultivation and practice, and governments that thwart it will reap the whirlwind -- eventually.
You are certainly right that leftists are the least grateful people on earth. Just as their goal for society is an Impossible Utopia, so their expectation for now is not much short of that and a constant source of diappointment, resentment and frustration.
You may also be right that gratitude needs to be cultivated and practised but I'm always wary of purposefully trying to make myself feel something I don't feel. People tell me that our time on earth is short so we should view it as precious. Well maybe, but that's not how I feel and I'm not going to jack myself up into a contrived California-style, 'Wow, what it is to be alive!'. I prefer the miserableness of Russians.
Which is also how I view religion. Modern, educated people have to try and cultivate a belief in something that is quite patently absurd. (I excuse peasants and the unreflexive). I even get a bit embarrassed on their behalf when I see the self-deception some people indulge in.
Having said that, if through a combination of thinking about other things and natural change gratitude happens to settle on me, I certainly won't drive it away since I can see how a grateful mindset, like love, changes everything for the better.
The author seems to forget that the population base being queried by these polls has also changed with the times. More immigrants are now being asked if they favor immigration. And what do you think their responses would be? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know the answer to that question, but evidently it escapes the author's thoughts.
I assume all Brits around 60 yrs old and younger, like the same cohorts in America, have been subject to relentless anti-racist propaganda in schools, entertainment, media, etc. their entire lives.
Does any survey ask about immigration in terms of city populations. Ie. Are you happy that we have to build a new Birmingham every two years to accommodate net immigration of 700k?
I would think younger people would be more anti-mass immigration than their parents and grandparents as their generation will be facing more arrogant and aggressive migrants and ‘second and third generation’ non-British who are only so because of their passports and being born in the UK more intent on sweeping whites aside and marginalizing them as much as possible on all levels; Socially, politically, and economically. All the people opposed to immigration and the demographic transformation of Britain through the 1950s, 60s, 70s and were condemned as horrible racists and fascists were entirely correct in what they saw developing in the future. If Britain and its native peoples survive and regain control of their homelands men like Powell, Mosley, Tyndall, Griffin, and many others will be viewed as heroes who correctly foresaw the dangers several decades ahead through the treasonous and irresponsible policies of British ruling elites.
You should do an article about the (specifically Jewish) NG0'S, who have financed and organized this PLANNED illegal immigration wave; such as HIAS, ISRA-AID, IRAP, AJR, PAIDEA, etc. Maybe feature the Barbara Learner Spector clip where she openly admits that Jews are playing a LEADING ROLE in forcing Europe (and all former White European majority nations) to be "multicultural". She says Jews will be resented for their leading role in immigration.
"Only whites can be racist ",institutional racism ,"islamophobia" are the terms that have been weaponised in the UK for many years now and many people have clearly taken stances accordingly
One other comment here; One can be non-conservative and oppose immigration. In fact, if Europe and its overseas colonies are saved it will be by means and philosophies far beyond conservatism.
Do the immigrants and their descendants favour more immigration? That would make sense and skew the numbers.
My thoughts exactly. Unless immigrants were excluded from the surveys, the results could be misleading and indeed, self-serving.
That is one of many possibilities that make this sort of analysis distinctly unhelpful.
Years ago, Lawrence Auster wrote a nice piece about the nihilistic consequences of strictly numerical/stochastic approaches to human problems. This tends to be the blindness of the social scientist.
After all, if these numbers tell the whole tale, then not only Britain, but the entire west is finished, full stop, and there is not much more to be done about it.
But no meaningful social changes are a result of majority numbers. Are the people most affected by immigration more greatly incensed by the phenomenon now than they had been in the past? This sort of factor is far more important than merely counting what people tell pollsters about their attitudes on foreign arrivals. It was, after all, easy for most people to conceive and blithely express anti-foreigner attitudes at a time when such views were uncontroversial.
To see riots and say "but most Brits don't think this way" is like seeing a fire and saying "most of this area has not been ignited."
Well put
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Would be interesting to see a breakdown of the respondents by ethnicity.
Yes, they do – although the difference isn't huge and probably can't account for much of the trend since 2010. (Note that Baby Boomers and the Pre-War generation are nearly all White British, yet both saw large reductions in agreement that employers should prioritise natives over immigrants.) I have more to say about this in a forthcoming article.
I just checked in the 2019 wave of the British Election Study, and excluding people with an ethnicity other than "White British" increases opposition to immigration by three percentage points. This means that immigrants and their descendants can only account for 10% of the gap between the 1960s/1970s and 2019, with the other 90% being explained by change within the White British population.
Those White British who support the immigration of low-IQ third-world people deserve what is happening to Britain; sadly, those that don't support it are screwed.
The survey doesn’t distinguish between immigration from Pakistan and immigration from Poland.
I want immigration to Britain. But not random people from underdeveloped countries.
I must say that it’s a really stupid question. Immigration from Poland, India, or China does not have the same effects on British society as immigration from Sudan, Somalia, or Pakistan.
"Difference isnt huge" - You haven't shown this in the article since all your data here is confounded by immigrants.
"Large reductions in agreement that employers should prioritize natives over immigrants" - Ok, but that's only related to support for increasing immigration.
Would like to see the change in attitudes toward immigration in ethnic brits, which your title (imo) implies but your article did not deliver on.
Noah responded to this. Immigrants do support migration more (and the difference is likely to be substantial when you look at tail effects), but most of the change in attitudes is within-cohort.
Voters are just misinformed. The average person massively underestimates the numbers coming in and overestimates the benefits. Go read "What voters really think about immigration" from Onward.
As I noted in footnote 2, "You can argue that opposition would be higher if people were better informed about the scale of immigration and all of its downstream consequences, but that doesn’t change the facts on the ground."
And even if they weren't misinformed and knew the real numbers, they might STILL be in favour of high levels of immigration, simply because they've been through at least 13 years of indoctrination into the progressive liberal mindset in our schools, not to mentions TV, movies, songs etc. It's kind of amazing that ANYONE comes out the other end of that feeling even mildly positive about conservative values. The force must be strong with those.
It's not the raw number of immigrants which is the primary problem; it is the official policy of *non-assimilation* which is socially destructive.
I immigrated to Canada in 1987 (from Eastern Europe). There was an NGO specialized in helping new immigrants; I had a woman caseworker there. On the one hand, she helped me to score my first job (after approx. 3 months) in my chosen field of computer programming, something I'm very grateful for even after all these years.
On the other hand, when I said to her that "I want to become like Canadians are", she told me that I shouldn't be keen on that; I ought to keep my native culture. I couldn't understand her; if I wanted to keep my native culture then I would have stayed put where I was born & grew up.
It took me a decade or so to realize that she was pushing the 'multicultural' policy line. A policy which is as catastrophic in Canada as it is in the UK: when people are ethnically divided & import all of their old country prejudices & grievances to their new home, where they're *officially encouraged* to hold onto them.
The only people who benefit from this are the various ethnic activists, 'community leaders' & the global managerial class which plays them against each other.
Asking people simplistic questions about raw immigration numbers isn't just meaningless, but a proactive exercise in *political deception*.
The “community leader” label really is quite Orwellian isn’t it. It implicitly reifies the notion that a nation should, in fact, be fragmented
It's part of the problem, but groups with substantial biological differences in ability and/or temperament are never going to 'assimilate' in the sense it's generally understood.
The same was said of the Irish when they started to immigrate to the USA *en masse* after 1846.
Well... they were wrong. ~50 years of black/muslim migration to western countries has obviously not produced similar results. I could get into the weeds of the HBD literature if you want, but the onus shouldn't really be on restrictionists to justify their skepticism at this point.
Also: https://russellwarne.com/2022/12/17/irish-iq-the-massive-rise-that-never-happened/
> they were wrong
Which means that the Irish *did* manage to assimilate into the American population after the 1846-1929 wave of their immigration to the USA -- independently of their (average) IQ or any changes in it.
> the onus shouldn't really be on restrictionists to justify their skepticism at this point
Sure it is on them if they claim that
> groups with substantial biological differences in ability and/or temperament are never going to 'assimilate' in the sense it's generally understood
The exact point is that *when assimilation isn't expected* of any group of immigrants, then it is unknown if the possibility of assimilation is precluded by any putative "substantial biological differences in ability and/or temperament".
As far as immigration restrictionism goes: I was a legal immigrant to Canada, so I don't have any problem with the notion of *controlled* immigration. But I think that any such control ought not be based on group identity (i.e. ethnic/national origin or *private* religious convictions), but rather the willingness to assimilate into majority society -- primarily by (a) observance of the laws & (b) engaging in gainful employment or entrepreneurship, instead of becoming a public charge (from the time of arrival).
"Which means that the Irish *did* manage to assimilate into the American population after the 1846-1929 wave of their immigration to the USA -- independently of their (average) IQ or any changes in it"
How do you know it was independent of their IQ?
"The exact point is that *when assimilation isn't expected* of any group of immigrants, then it is unknown if the possibility of assimilation is precluded..."
There are plenty of other ways to know this.
https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/a-plethora-of-evidence-for-genetic
"As far as immigration restrictionism goes: I was a legal immigrant to Canada, so I don't have any problem with the notion of *controlled* immigration"
Even selectively-admitted migrants, especially from non-euro backgrounds, show a robust tendency to vote for left-wing parties with insane migration policies, and regression-to-the-mean effects in the second generation make this problem worse. I'm sure there are many individual exceptions, but in combination with brain drain effects I honestly can't commend any kind of long-term migration policy as it exists in the modern era.
> How do you know it was independent of their IQ?
You linked to a piece which claimed that there was no change in the (average) IQ of the Irish.
> There are plenty of other ways to know this.
The linked piece discusses race-ethnic gaps in IQ. Unless it is shown *conclusively* that such differences in IQ *precludes* assimilation into the host society, it has no relevance to the question at hand.
> a robust tendency to vote for left-wing parties with insane migration policies
The same is true for a sizeable contingent of the 'native' population. Enoch Powell was denounced by the authorities of the UK when the share of immigrants in the population was lower, i.e. those authorities weren't voted into power primarily by immigrants.
> can't commend any kind of long-term migration policy
The main problem with that is the Total Fertility Rate being approx. 1.6 in the UK (& ~1.4 in Canada). As the population ages & 'native' birth rates drop, it becomes harder & harder for governments to provide retirees with various government subsidies (primarily healthcare & old age pension payments). Something got to give: either (a) 'natives' start having more children, or (b) considerably lower government subsidies provided for older people, or (c) there's enough immigration to fill the gap. Pick your poison.
Irish are genetically and culturally very similar to British Anglos. The genetic and cultural gap is much much wider with sub-Saharan Africans and Pakistanis
Raw numbers and origin of immigrants absolutely do matter when it comes to assimilation. You can see in France, Sweden, and the UK, 3rd generation descendants of poor, uneducated immigrants from Africa, Middle East, and Pakistan still lag behind natives on income, education, and crime indicators
Interesting. I didn't know that. But then I recently read that Britain's total immigrant population is only 6 percent of the total population. Is that correct? Does it include second generation immigrants? Would like to know more about the overall numbers.
It doesn't include second generation immigrants. In the 2021 census, only 74% of people in England and Wales gave their ethnicity as "White British".
What exactly is “White British”? Apparently most British Jews self-identify as “White British”. Would a third-generation British with some Polish or Romanian ancestry also identify like that? I’m not sure the boundary between “White British” and “White Other” is so clear-cut.
16% of the UK population is now foreign-born
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migrants-in-the-uk-an-overview/
"My claim was that since they had voted overwhelmingly for pro-migration parties at the recent election, they must care more about issues like the cost of living, housing and the NHS." Those things are a direct result of immigration!
"In the 1960s and 1970s – around the time of Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech – there actually was an overwhelming consensus against immigration, with more than 80% of respondents saying that “too many immigrants have been let into this country”. Yet as of 2019, only 52% of respondents said the same thing." This begs the question: were they nurtured into this stance or is it in their nature to eventually be destroyed?
Well written and demoralizing.
The flood of mass immigration that's swept across the West since the turn of the 21st century has come conjoined with a flood of mass propaganda, heavily moralized and romanticized, throughout all our educational, cultural and journalistic (sense-making) institutions.
Migrants etc have become another of the left-liberal's sacred victims (so much of our reigning Social Justice faith is essentially an energized application of the Parable of the Good Samaritan), meaning that these new arrivals, mostly because they appear as poor, brown and oppressed (the trifecta that tickles all the liberal erogenous zones), must never be questioned or opposed, must never be sent back to their home countries, must be welcomed and greeted with unlimited social benefits, because Justice and Equality demand it—and anyone who disagrees is a "far right" hateful extremist bigot who needs to be monitored by the govt and ostracized by polite society.
I'm surprised anyone under 30ish would publicly state any opposition to mass immigration, as it codes them as bad, backwards and benighted and can't be good for any future romantic or employment opportunities.
The future belongs to the hivemind and the hivemind demands that citizens be replaced by a single uniform right-thinking blob of processed humanity managed by our postnational therapeutic-egalitarian-humanitarian expert class.
Protests and riots etc will only lock in the postnational hivemind future quicker, more ruthlessly and more comprehensively. The nation-state will survive only in a Potemkin/Epcot form.
Reading your (very good) comment made me think of the film Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, where only those who had not yet been taken over by the alien Pod People and become part of a collective mush were struggling and desperate. The vast majority were zombified serene/numb.
In the film there is something that gives the replicants away: a distant coldness, as though the soul had been sucked out of them (they also, like most aliens, lack a sense of humour). What gives people away who subscribe to today's progressive liberal hivemind is that they always appear SO pleased with themselves that they hold the views they do. A few days ago I was watching some good, middle-class man being interviewed about why he was at an anti-right vigil. He thought that all good people should stand up against bigotry and instead be inclusive and on the side of peace and harmony. 'You unbearable, smug, sanctimonious, self-satisfied tosser!', I spat at my TV screen.
Thanks for the kind words.
It's funny you should mention "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", my wife and I bring it up every time another of our friends starts spouting Soc Just jargon and praising things like race quotas and sex changes for children—this is when we know the hivemind/brain virus has got them too.
But we try not to be too scornful of them, most people absorb all the reigning ideas and beliefs of the people around them, especially when the price of dissent is so high (and especially when they're presented as simple kindness and proper etiquette).
Ideas and beliefs are (wisely) much less important to almost everyone than food, security and social acceptance.
You're right. Being scornful of people who breathe in their ideas from the air around them would leave you with almost no friends at all, unless you happen to live next to John Derbyshire and Ed West. Parties would be - and usually are - unbearable.
It's only when I read something genuinely surprising to me that I think, 'Hmm, until now I've accepted that without ever really thinking about it'. I'm sure that's true of most of my beliefs. I've just lazily imbibed them. I'm always amazed that Isaac Newton even questioned why things fall down rather than up. 'They just do' is my answer to most things.
I remember my surprise 25 years ago when first reading Richard Dawkins, discovering that he, along with all other sensible scientists, believed that genes as well as environment play a role in who we become. Who would have thought it?
The difference between my friends with liberal-ish views and myself - my Irish friend sometimes refers to me as 'the racist', hopefully jokingly - seems to be that I quite enjoy having my mind changed, despite those changes often being from 'default nice' to 'dissident nasty'.
Most people appear to think that believing nice things will make it more likely that things will turn out nice, and anyone who dissents from this view must actually WANT the world to be a nasty place.
"Most people appear to think that believing nice things will make it more likely that things will turn out nice, and anyone who dissents from this view must actually WANT the world to be a nasty place."
YES, THIS.
I've tried a few times to explain IS/OUGHT to a friend or two, but by the time I'm on the second sentence their eyes glaze over and they're gone...and yes, like you, they've all been programmed to immediately accuse me of some sort of bigotry or of only using so many words as a ruse to hide my inherent bigotry.
Or I'll say something like "Most men are stronger and more aggressive than most women", and immediately be met with: "But you're not aggressive!"
It is just very hard for almost everyone to escape the constant urgent needs of the self or see/think of anything outside their self and other adjacent selves.
Playing with ideas starts with a certain orientation and then requires some level of practice and the desire to see multiple perspectives and wander past the boundaries of social taboo.
Now I know why Socrates and all of history's famous dissenters usually ended up dead or exiled. The In-Group hates the Out-Group and vice versa, but EVERYONE hates a philosopher.
'It is just very hard for almost everyone to escape the constant urgent needs of the self'.
I totally agree. Yet sometimes I'm able to do it, and occasionally without much effort. I'm soon coming up to retirement age but feel that old people don't need the extra payments the government gives them. I even think old people like me should have saved up, rather than relying on younger people to finance them into their ever-increasing decrepitude. Yet the two older people I've spoken to are up in arms at the government taking away their £200 winter heating allowance (or whatever it is). They somehow feel they have to fight the corner of old people simply because they themselves are old. The idea of what is fair, as seen from some theoretical neutral position, doesn't enter into their calculations.
I agree until your last two paragraphs. Nature will out, and humans are unsuited to forms of organization larger than the nation state.
This doesn't necessarily mean that "hiveminders" will see the error of their ways; just that the decay and incompetence that comes with the position will open its adherents to defeat by those who refuse to think in this way. It's happening in Ukraine (and possibly the middle East) as we speak.
I sincerely hope you are right, as I agree that the nation-state has proved the best way for a people to organize a polity to protect and nurture themselves and their families and societies, which is the simple purpose of govt after all.
I just look at how the nation-state has been hollowed out in the past few decades and extrapolate that 1) as those of us older folks who remember being citizens not just consumers, and who also have some level of gratitude for our open prosperous societies and our ancestors, die off and are replaced by the children of the algorithm who seem to be afflicted with terminal amnesia and only know whatever their devices tell them; and 2) as more of human life is uploaded to the cloud and becomes virtual and digitized, that the future may very well be a marriage between a managerial Controller class who coordinates across countries to monitor and manipulate what they call our "cognitive infrastructure" and a docile populace of screen junkies fed algorithmic dopamine much like soma in Huxley's "Brave New World".
Thus, as I said before, we'll have Potemkin/Epcot nation-states where all our decisions are made elsewhere by other people, where some old traditions (July 4 etc) are kept alive to maintain a sense of continuity and the illusion of a shared nation, but where "freedom" exists as long as you always obey.
Hope that makes sense!
It does. Again, though, I don' think such a society will run for long. You already see this happening. Most of the guts-level civilizational competence is possessed exactly by what you call "older folks who remember being citizens not just consumers".
So many firms responsible for infrastructure are desperately asking white boomer men to "unretire" when there are emergencies; entire lines of work are losing continuity in capability -- screen watchers and refugees can't be substituted freely for the kind of cultural continuiny that comes with national belonging. This affects not just manners and morals, but concrete abilities as well.
A good example to think about is the moon landing. I'm not one of those people who disbelieves the moon landing, but asking hard questions about it is instructive. Because, to see how it was done, you come to understand that aside from good luck, they also relied upon a kind of working-together that is no longer possible. We've simply *lost* many of the capabilities to replicate the feat, and many of the scientists/engineers will tell you this outright. How can this be so, when we've got faster chips? Better graphics? Finer machine tech?
Then you come to realize that even tech is cultural. You can run on the fumes of past glory by making small refinements, but without some shared overarching goals, assumptions, common adherence to a tradition of work... none of these small "advancements" can cohere into anything bigger -- especially if their very existence comes from outsourced procedures.
I brought up Ukraine as the most immediate example because nearly all of the vaunted high tech Western weapons systems have been getting a major smackdown from the Russians there. There is no little question that they are well ahead of us (on military matters, at least). This is, to my mind, directly related to the corruption of our social and scientific institutions.
Gotta say, I'm old but it's only on very rare occasions that I feel gratitude to either the propserous nation state that fostered me or to my Anglo-Saxon ancestors, direct or distant. It just seems to be a human trait that remembering to count your blessings is bloody hard - not as hard as being constanly thankful for your adrenal gland that keeps you going but in the same ballpark. Only when you are in the process of losing something, as we are now, do you finally appreciate it. Only when I'm gasping my last breathe will I think, 'Hmm, air'.
Gratitude is a virtue, and all virtues are hard. I like to think gratitude is the chief virtue of the rightist: it's the foundation of everything else that preserves the good in society. People who possess none of it -- people who are too preoccupied with their own grievances to extend good feeling about their inheritance at all, or recognize what they've been given -- will never be decent citizens.
Leftism, really, is weaponized ingratitude.
You're right, though, gratitude requires cultivation and practice, and governments that thwart it will reap the whirlwind -- eventually.
You are certainly right that leftists are the least grateful people on earth. Just as their goal for society is an Impossible Utopia, so their expectation for now is not much short of that and a constant source of diappointment, resentment and frustration.
You may also be right that gratitude needs to be cultivated and practised but I'm always wary of purposefully trying to make myself feel something I don't feel. People tell me that our time on earth is short so we should view it as precious. Well maybe, but that's not how I feel and I'm not going to jack myself up into a contrived California-style, 'Wow, what it is to be alive!'. I prefer the miserableness of Russians.
Which is also how I view religion. Modern, educated people have to try and cultivate a belief in something that is quite patently absurd. (I excuse peasants and the unreflexive). I even get a bit embarrassed on their behalf when I see the self-deception some people indulge in.
Having said that, if through a combination of thinking about other things and natural change gratitude happens to settle on me, I certainly won't drive it away since I can see how a grateful mindset, like love, changes everything for the better.
The author seems to forget that the population base being queried by these polls has also changed with the times. More immigrants are now being asked if they favor immigration. And what do you think their responses would be? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know the answer to that question, but evidently it escapes the author's thoughts.
I assume all Brits around 60 yrs old and younger, like the same cohorts in America, have been subject to relentless anti-racist propaganda in schools, entertainment, media, etc. their entire lives.
Does any survey ask about immigration in terms of city populations. Ie. Are you happy that we have to build a new Birmingham every two years to accommodate net immigration of 700k?
I would think younger people would be more anti-mass immigration than their parents and grandparents as their generation will be facing more arrogant and aggressive migrants and ‘second and third generation’ non-British who are only so because of their passports and being born in the UK more intent on sweeping whites aside and marginalizing them as much as possible on all levels; Socially, politically, and economically. All the people opposed to immigration and the demographic transformation of Britain through the 1950s, 60s, 70s and were condemned as horrible racists and fascists were entirely correct in what they saw developing in the future. If Britain and its native peoples survive and regain control of their homelands men like Powell, Mosley, Tyndall, Griffin, and many others will be viewed as heroes who correctly foresaw the dangers several decades ahead through the treasonous and irresponsible policies of British ruling elites.
You should do an article about the (specifically Jewish) NG0'S, who have financed and organized this PLANNED illegal immigration wave; such as HIAS, ISRA-AID, IRAP, AJR, PAIDEA, etc. Maybe feature the Barbara Learner Spector clip where she openly admits that Jews are playing a LEADING ROLE in forcing Europe (and all former White European majority nations) to be "multicultural". She says Jews will be resented for their leading role in immigration.
Figures Lie and Liars Figure.
Bean Counters are Counting while Europe and Western Civilization is being murdered.
Imagine the World in 50 to 100 years without Western Civiliation.
A evil S%^thole to say the least.
"Imagine the World in 50 to 100 years without Western Civiliation."
It will happen much sooner than that.
Here is an article that addresses the UK's problems. The fact is that the UK, as well as most of Western Europe, does as the United States tells them.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/08/yucky_uk.html
"Unless this trend is somehow arrested, restrictionists are in big trouble."
Britain is in big trouble, as is all of Western civilization. For some reason, Carl continues to downplay the low-IQ immigration problem.
"Only whites can be racist ",institutional racism ,"islamophobia" are the terms that have been weaponised in the UK for many years now and many people have clearly taken stances accordingly
One other comment here; One can be non-conservative and oppose immigration. In fact, if Europe and its overseas colonies are saved it will be by means and philosophies far beyond conservatism.