to think we're all being manipulated

[newbluesofa]

I'm going to get flamed by reform voters here, and I think it'll come off as thinking I'm smarter than everyone but I genuinely don't, which is why I'm so confused by this.

To me, it is incredibly obvious that we are being completely manipulated by politicians and the media. They want us to blame immigrants and people who claim benefits for their failing to run the country properly. And it's worked.

I don't think we should have unregulated immigration, there are issues that need to be addressed. But there's a difference between sensibly discussing immigration from an economic point, and the nasty hate and vitriol that's everywhere now. It is what they WANT. As long as we're fighting amongst ourselves, no one is looking up at the people with the real power and money.

One example, newspapers describing immigrants as 'fighting age men'. 'Fighting' is not an age. Young men could also be fit, healthy, and able to work and contribute. They say 'fighting age' to scaremonger and promote anti immigrant rhetoric, and it works as people parrot the line.

It's always been the way that the ruling class look for ways to keep the masses infighting. Honestly I lose respect at anyone that falls for it. I don't get how it isn't so obvious to others, how can you not see you're being played?

noparklife

Thank you for your posts. I think you are perfectly articulating where the division occurs; one side enjoys the benefits of immigration and thinks the problems are invented to justify racism whilst the other side is experiencing real hardship.

This is absolutely the case. Just think about the misinformation about Brexit and the 'simple' messages targeting disaffected voters. It convinced people that the root of Britain's problems was being part of the EU and once we came out we would thrive economically, pump money into the health service, control migration etc. etc. I heard the other day that Cummings is involved in Reform campaigning and wouldn't be surprised as he sees himself as being a disruptor of mainstream politics and has a grudge against the Tories after Boris sacked him (as he felt he was the architect of the Tories electoral success and even held his own press conference from the rose garden in No 10!)

There's a really interesting snippet on 'The Rest is Politics' at the mo where they say that they created a few SM accounts in Germany and just let them run and most got populated with far right posts meaning the far right are either generating far more content than other political sites or that the algorithm is suggesting them more. Moderate politicians are going to have to engage with SM more to challenge this.

It's all a bit frightening. Who would have thought I would be rooting for the Tory party to pull themselves together into some sort of credible opposition!

No one is under any obligation to stay in their country and men have as much right to leave as anyone else.

I'll ignore your last comment since as well as being an example of the nastiness my thread is about, it completely misses the point of what I actually said

I would be happy to be flamed by a Reform voter, the I could tell them what shits they are, and point out that the Nazis were defeated eighty years and we don’t want them back again.

So how do you explain why they are easily manipulated?

I do have a son, yes. I'd be beside myself with fear and worry, like every mother of a young conscripted soldier before me. But what happens in a war or an invasion when no men are prepared to stay behind and fight to protect their country, preferring to give in and just run away? Where would Ukraine be now if all Ukrainian men had done that? Ukraine would be under Russian rule again and Russia would now be breathing down the necks of several other Ukrainian border countries.

Besides, there are relatively few wars going on right now and very few of these men seem to be from the countries where those wars are happening anyway.

Asylum is not supposed to be for economic migrants. Make no mistake, whatever the stories of these young men, in almost all cases they will be primarily fleeing poverty or lack of opportunity, seeing better opportunities to make good money in richer, more highly developed countries elsewhere. They are economic migrants plain and simple, in the vast majority of cases.

Absolutely true

But I could just as easily argue that you are the one who has been easily manipulated. You have been manipulated by ' your side' into thinking everyone who you disagree with must have been manipulated into that position. But where does thinking like that about each other get us?

My entire point is that instead of stopping to think all those people with concerns about immigration have been 'manipulated' why not stop and find out what their concerns and experiences have been?

You are starting off with a premise without even testing whether that premise is sound.

If you want to know what really heals division, its curiosity. Genuine, real curiosity. About what people you think you disagree with, really think and feel and why and the evidence behind it. Real genuine curiosity about whether what 'your side' are saying really stacks up and is rooted in evidenced reality.

Exactly. When Poland and Romania became part of the EU, it would have been perfectly legal for the UK to place more limits on immigration, but David Cameron and co chose not to. Their thinking was probably to maintain a supply of cheap labour, masking the structural problems and lack of investment caused by Tory austerity policies.

Toeing. Not towing. You're not pulling it anywhere!

Glasgow has the highest number of illegal immigrants in the UK!

I popped into Dunfermline the other day - the high street was FULL of them.

No idea why you think we haven't got the same problem up here.

Also, I'm not sure they are only placed in poorer areas. Have a look at The Royal Court hotel in Coventry. It is in one of the most affluent areas - the Tamworth Road, where you cannot get a house for under £1M - you guessed it, it's a migrant hotel.

There’s no reason the UK should accept any more economic migrants. None. We do not need them. If you were born elsewhere in the world and don’t particularly like it, that’s a shame, but that not the UK’s problem, nor its responsibility to fix.

I think you're missing the point. The point is that if you are prepared to listen you might find that manipulation isn't after all the only reason for someone's views, that maybe it's more than that, and that even if it is sometimes, things like different life circumstances and experiences are more relevant than stupidity when it comes to making someone vulnerable to manipulation.

If you've decided in advance that everything is the result of the manipulation of stupid people, then you'll miss the things that aren't and you'll also fail to fight the manipulation because you won't understand the circumstances that make people vulnerable to it.

They do have a right to leave yes, but they certainly don't have a right to decide exactly where they'd like to live instead. You can't just pitch up to any country of your choice and announce that you will live there. Unless they are a citizen of an EU member state moving to another member state, and even then there are certain caveats and requirements that you should be adhering to. In theory at least.

No country, and especially not one the size of the UK, can or should just open its doors to everyone who would like to come, just because it would be the nice 'tolerant' thing to do. National borders exist for very good reason. One month in a world without them is all it would take to have WW3 and an armageddon on our hands of the sort that we will never socially or economically recover from. I think it would be the beginning of the end of the world, frankly.

Work visas exist for a reason. Controlled Immigration should be every bit as much about what a country needs from potential immigrants as it is about what immigrants wish to gain by moving there.

God knows we do not need ONE SINGLE MORE Uber Eats driver on an electric bike.

There’s a revised version of this going round 2025 version where murdoch has a massive pile of cookies

Except that was in 2004 respectively 2007 and Cameron was not PM at the time. He only became PM in 2010.

Yes, someone posted it upthread.

Do you think we should get rid of passports, visas etc?

I agree.

I think some people are understandably terrified of being seen as eg "listening to racists", but I think we have to accept that risk. If you listen to 50 people maybe some will turn out to be simple racists, but for a some it will be much more complex. The risk is that if no one ever listens to any of those people then they will all end up voting with the racists because no one else is listening to them.

You missed a bit off the end of your paragraph there. ‘… whilst the other side is experiencing real hardship that’s not caused by immigration’
That’s the con trick. To be told that inflation, lack of access to housing (private or public), crumbling schools and overstretched/underfunded NHS is caused by ‘the others’. It’s not. And that rhetoric stops people from examining the real causes of these problems - the ones that are complex, entrenched, secret and very difficult to fix. It’s so much easier to say ‘Stop the Boats’ or ‘Leave the EU’ and all those real hardships will go away.

What is Britain, ultimately?

Is it to be the lifeboat for the world? By current asylum standards, 720 million people worldwide have the right to seek it here. It’s impossible to solve this issue. There’s no end in sight, and there will always be more people following them.

Is this just to be one big social experiment over which we have no control, and that we must be forced to participate in?

But there's a difference between sensibly discussing immigration from an economic point, and the nasty hate and vitriol that's everywhere now.

For a lot of people though, certainly on this site any discussion of immigration is immediately deemed hateful and vitriolic.

We’ve always been manipulated by politicians. They all lie and make promises they don’t keep. Nothing new. 🤷‍♀️

No, that's quite a stretch from what I said

I didn't miss anything from my post that I actually wanted to say but your arrogance in "correcting" me does demonstrate the point I and others are trying to make.