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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.
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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.

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Supply and demand economic denialism is dangerously widespread.
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Yes, increasing demand for housing and increasing supply of labor definitely does nothing for both salaries and housing prices
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Perhaps those problems have other causes.
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What happens to supply of housing and demand for labor, and why?
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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.
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Sorry I don't get the reference
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> 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.

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> 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 our abhorrent culture, traditions and sometimes values hurt erstwhile peaceful societies.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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This reminds me of the Rwandan genocide as well. For months before, the radios were always talking about how the Tutsi ethnic group were parasites.
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Another point of the Rwandan genocide that's important to remember, is the party who eventually committed the genocide spent months talking about how the other side was about to use extreme violence and they were really the victim. This allowed them to preemptively use violence "in self defense."

Highly recommend the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast on it - https://www.iheart.com/podcast/256-lions-led-by-donkeys-podc...

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You're getting downvotes, but Rwanda has become a textbook study of how racist stresses were amplified to create the conditions for a genocide.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/04/1135902

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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.
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We were sold one thing and got another.
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What were you sold and what did you get?

I'm half tempted to make a HN for racists so they can finally say what they mean instead of beating around the bush.

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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.

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Funny, I usually hear that sentiment from left wing sources complaining about billionaires.
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Interesting, but what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
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I think they're saying the left and the right are the same
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Ah, horseshoe theory!
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The billionaries don't need/care about sympathy And most importantly, the billionares don't do hard work for minimun pay.
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Won’t somebody please think of the poor oppressed billionaires!
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It's possible to support all of the same policies without referring to human beings as "parasites," and I don't think we should be flippant about what language is used. It's relevant. It reflects a state of mind.

I personally do not ever see myself voting for (or otherwise indirectly supporting) a politician that speaks like that, regardless of whether you can steelman it with more neutral language.

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Isn't that what every politician who ended up doing an ethnic cleansing said?
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