Douglas Murray on intolerant politics

I had to google 3rd generation immigrant

I think I’m going to add “if you don’t know it, don’t bother looking it up” to the resolutions list.

It’s so sad to have hit adulthood in a world where this was irrelevant and find that now people are looking at this level of detail.

It depends on which families though Flying - many of my friends were the daughters of accountants, doctors, dentists etc so were actual 3rd generation.
Fair enough. Do you think it had anything to do with the importation of Wahhabism through mosques and imams funded by KSA? That's another possibility I suppose.

It depends on which families though Flying - many of my friends were the daughters of accountants, doctors, dentists etc so were actual 3rd generation.

And yes, my sister did her childcare placements in special needs settings and had some very upsetting stories so whilst I don't know the stats, I'm aware of the issue.

AutumnRose1
Where a sponsoring spouse doesn't earn the minimum £18,600 they have to prove they have savings to support the foreign spouse.
www.freemovement.org.uk/appendix-fm-financial-requirements/#What_if_I_earn_less_than_18600_a_year
It has to be held in the account for six months. The link has a few case studies.

I hate the trend to mention colour in everything

Two threads going on at the moment referring to “white men” as a collective for no reason at all

Xpost woth Flying what is the 35k thing please?

Antibes agree, everything is about GDP and an endlessly growing economy.

Molten that sounds awful and scary.
Sorry if it’s a stupid question but why do you now know details of the backgrounds of friends?

Oh and in so doing we undermine the efforts of people (women mostly) from those demographic groups who work hard to undo these social expectations.

MoltenLasagne
But there's a social phenomenon in British Muslims whereby it is common to have a first generation in every generation, as a spouse for a UK born child is found from the home country.
So it makes it way more difficult to integrate. The £35000 thing was intended to combat this but it doesn't work; the families just pool the money temporarily to meet the Home Office requirements.
It's a very specific phenomenon that is off-limits. Consanguineous marriage is also an issue, I'm sure you've seen the study for babies with birth defects in Birmingham from Muslim consanguineous marriages.

If we cared about these people as fellow Brits we would be actively discouraging the practice, we would be explaining the dangers to babies, we would be exploring what it means to people. But instead we stick our fingers in our ears and sing "lalalalala I'm not racist".

Politicians will support that path if it maintains GDP because nobody wants a recession.
The quickest way to raise GDP is to import a bunch of people and then sell them credit.
GDP per capita is falling as GDP rises.

I'm not sure Flying but in Birmingham there was a lot of tension between new immigrants and 3rd generation. Growing up a lot of my friends were from a South Asian background but there wasn't really any divisions apart from some friendly rivalry during the cricket. That changed a lot after new immigrants started shaming Muslim families who let their daughters hang around with us non-Muslims.

It segregated pretty fast, with a few girls from the wealthier (and slightly more secular) Muslim families being shunned for continuing to hang out with us. In the space of 3 years I went from having a vague idea of the backgrounds of my friends to knowing explicitly who was from where originally and which denomination religion they were, and God help those who were from mixed backgrounds.

It's like BAME. I mean, what is that? It covers bloody everyone! What does a 3rd generation Kashmiri from Keighley have in common with a newly arrived Nigerian student? Nothing but humanity, and yet they are both "BAME"
Exactly, it's just racist to clump the two together. They have nothing in common.

I think the biggest mistake was for local politicians to adopt the practice of talking to 'community's leaders
"Community Leaders" really boil my piss.

Imagine if "everything white English people thought" was arbitrarily decided by old Keith down the pub who knocks his wife about. Keith does the postal vote for his whole extended family, Keith is on the local council but doesn't attend much, Keith opposed evening classes for women on the grounds that they should be at home making dinner, Keith has been accused of keeping crime secret and encouraging everyone in his community to ignore or resist the police. Keith is always on telly being consulted. Half of the people who know him hate him, but Keith is in charge. When laws are made, Keith's opinion is asked and no-one else's. Keith knows everything about his community and everything it needs and doesn't have to consult with anyone else. Keith himself does quite well out of all this financially.

Let's face it. If the left wing were truly about sharing everything out more equally, we'd have to equalise with the whole world, and we'd be as fucked as the rest of them are (poor buggers). Very few of even the most left wing are truly that egalitarian if they are honest with themselves. We want to equalise a bit more locally. That needs solidarity, not equality.

Yes Autumn I have although it was a while ago.

Conspiracy is a loaded word so I would prefer to say I think there are financial/corporate vested interests that may see problems but will deliberately continue on the same path if it is making them money, but they won't want to shout about it. Politicians will support that path if it maintains GDP because nobody wants a recession. That leads to a whole 'nother debate about consumption v the environment...

Yes flying I agree about open borders. What you write fits with the above, namely that global corporations may not like nation states with their pesky different rules.

I think the biggest mistake was for local politicians to adopt the practice of talking to 'community's leaders rather than recognising the huge range of opinions in any group. As a librarian I spent a lot of time with real people who had very different ideas who were just ignored.
I was always in favour of multi cultural approach, celebrating different festivals, the wide range of brilliant stories and folk tales. It was really positive and fun, then it all went sour, I'm not sure when or why.

I don't know Flying but the idea of accepting segregation is soaked through all public service organisations; local council, NHS etc. I think it began as a way to be respectful of non UK cultures, but it has ended up with acceptance of a lot of things that are not great e.g women not learning English and whole estates populated by people from the same country. It feels to me like it actually breeds suspicion between cultures.
I also find it quite..I don't know the word.. .patronising? Like, oh these immigrants and the way they live, they don't know any better.
It's like BAME. I mean, what is that? It covers bloody everyone! What does a 3rd generation Kashmiri from Keighley have in common with a newly arrived Nigerian student? Nothing but humanity, and yet they are both "BAME" . It seems so mealy mouthed and meaningless to me.
And I know, I know, there has to be a better way to say " not white" but BAME could mean white anyway! (Polish and so on)..
Sorry I went on a rant and I'm not even sure what my point is!

It used to be accepted that when you move to a new country you try to fit in, adopt the customs to some extent, learn the language, get involved.
Thinking about this; who decided this was no longer important? My best guess is that it wasn't immigrants themselves.
Unless someone finds themselves in the UK under duress (not trafficked but they'd rather be elsewhere) then most immigrants are pretty pleased to be here and had a positive view of the UK.
So who decided segregation (which is what multiculturalism is in a nutshell) was better than integration?
I know communities naturally want to live close together etc but the idea of cultural relativism, "community leaders" and the practice of leaving isolated and often troubled communities entirely to their own devices seems to be a deliberate ploy.
It's been a long day but I wonder if multiculturalism was thought up by racists who just wanted cheap labour imported to suppress wages but who didn't actually want immigrants anywhere near them.

I still think there is something odd going on with Open Borders.
It's a terrible idea?

Seriously though, it really is. There's no way it could possibly work in practice.
No borders equals no nation. No nation equals no set of laws. No set of laws equals biggest corporation wins. And ironically the only people from the global south who could feasibly take advantage of a no-borders policy in a developed country would be the better off.
Never mind the fact it's the righteous giving away what isn't theirs (again). There's a pattern. Here, EU, have national sovereignty! Here, men, have women's spaces and sports! Here, all of you, come and have Lincolnshire!

Antibes have you read Murray’s book on immigration?

If we’re going for cock up rather than conspiracy, then I can see that having caused havoc, the politicians responsible don’t have a clue what to do.

I don’t think there’s a conspiracy though, that’s too mad...but props to any politicians willing to tackle it. And apologies for the Americanism there 😂

But pretty much every London office based job has been wokeified. Presumably also retail, judging by changing room sagas. Two friends in hospitality - chain hotel - say the same.
I meant more that there was less chance of them being exposed to different people. I guess my view has been influenced by working for large employers myself and having enjoyed meeting all different types of people.
You're probably right though, it might not make much difference if the company has set political views its serfs are supposed to parrot.

Does identity politics help fragment the national identity and undermine the nation state? Does somebody want it to?

I still think there is something odd going on with Open Borders. It matches with other recent developments: being proud of being British is labelled nationalistic rather than patriotic. If you are English, liking your own culture and wanting to preserve your own community
is labelled by some as racist and xenophobic. Not supporting open borders or continued high net immigration: ditto.

We are mixed in together and instructed to be culturally relativistic and completely tolerant (but also highly cognisant!) of each other's differences and promised social nirvana as a consequence.

But to don my tinfoil hat, the moral bullying from on high and refusal to debate the problems and clashes that have arisen gives me a sense of a hidden agenda to it all and that makes me dig my heels in intellectually.

Harriet I have been depression, anxiety, asthma and a couple of other chronic health issues. I try to keep them quiet. Interestingly, I’ve been listening to Sam Fender’s music recently, love his stuff, and I heard something about him having health issues but also not wanting to make them public because it changes the narrative of a career. Advance warning, he does have a song about “white privilege” though! Groan.

Flying “Broad churches like workplaces are now less influential for young people working gig jobs”

But pretty much every London office based job has been wokeified. Presumably also retail, judging by changing room sagas. Two friends in hospitality - chain hotel - say the same.

So if the gig economy means that someone who might have worked in one job for a couple of years is now gigging, I’m thinking they might be exposed to a bit more freedom and a bit less woke. And have less company woke forced on them. I really hope delivery drivers arent being asked to wear their pronouns on a badge....

My post wasn't meant to be laden with patronising cliches. It was laden with observations of my husband, who's spent years working minimum wage jobs in one of the most deprived areas of Europe. It's based on the observations of a white, native English speaking immigrant who constantly gets people non-ironically complaining to HIM about bloody immigrants, because, let's face it, they're not talking about the white English speaking ones, THOSE ones are okay.

I am an environmental doomsdayer. I think there are huge problems with immigration, and that it will get worse and worse and horrifically worse in the years to come. But I still think that racism plays a huge part in a lot of people's views on it.

And I cannot help but think that there is something else going on when a single mother working 16 hours a week moans about having no sympathy for benefit scroungers, not realising that half the population think that she is one of them.

The scary thing about the internet is not that you can meet people exactly like you, but that you can exclude people who aren't exactly like you. Broad churches like workplaces are now less influential for young people working gig jobs.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c9sm

This is worth a listen.