There\n are prominent politicians around the world who propagate a fallacious \ntheory on immigration and, when extremists embrace such ideas, those \npoliticians wash their hands of any culpability. The fear of immigrants \nis magnified by lies and language. Fear of migrants brings in votes for \npoliticians. Politicians feed on the fear. Fear of migrants brings in \nviewers and readers for the media. Yet multiple studies have found that \npeople who have direct contact with immigrants have much more positive \nviews about their work ethic and supposed reliance on welfare, and are \nmuch more open to increased immigration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conspiracy theory<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There\n is a conspiracy theory pervading the far right. It is centered on the \nidea of white genocide with the belief that \u2018Western, Christian\u2019 culture\n is under siege by immigration from non-white countries, resulting in a \nreplacement of white people via demographics, i. e, foreign-born \nout-breeding the native-born. This is despite numerous studies \ndismissing such paranoia. The Great Replacement Theory claims that a \nwhite Christian European population is being systematically replaced by \nnon-European, non-white, Muslim immigrants. Renaud Camus, credited as \nthe originator of this pernicious theory, cites Enoch Powell\u2019s 1968 \n\u2018rivers of blood\u2019 speech as an influence on his thinking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hungary\n recently hosted an international summit on demography attended by \ndelegations from dozens of countries. The fear of rising populations in \nother parts of the world was the dominant theme during the summit. \nBoosting native birthrates was a priority for the long-term development \nof their countries. Procreate or face extinction was the message \nconcerning their shrinking population. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hungary\u2019s\n Prime Minister, Viktor Orb\u00e1n, said it was conceivable that his country,\n due to low birthrates and emigration of Hungarians to EU states further\n west, could simply disappear, explaining to the conference: \u2018If Europe \nis not going to be populated by Europeans in the future and we take this\n as given, then we are speaking about an exchange of populations, to \nreplace the population of Europeans with others. There are political \nforces in Europe who want a replacement of population for ideological or\n other reasons\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n His\n minister for family, youth and international affairs, Katalin Nov\u00e1k, \nsaid \u2018Europe has become the continent of the empty crib whereas in Asia \nand Africa they face demographic challenges of the opposite type.\u2019 The \nHungarian government doubled family spending between 2010 and 2019, with\n the goal of achieving \u2018a lasting turn in demographic processes by \n2030\u201d\u2019. Fertility rates have gone up from 1.2 to 1.5 children per woman,\n according to government figures. This is still far from the 2.1 figure \nthe UN says is the number required for a sustainable population. This \nyear the Hungarian government introduced a 10m forint (\u00a327,000) \ninterest-free loan for families, which does not have to be paid back if \nthe couple has three children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Former\n Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott saluted the Hungarian leader for \nhaving \u2018the political courage to defy political correctness\u2019. Abbott \nsaid dying populations, not climate change, were the biggest threat to \nwestern civilization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shooters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The\n manifesto of the Australia-born Christchurch shooter in New Zealand was\n entitled \u2018The Great Replacement\u2019 and began with: \u2018It\u2019s the birthrates. \nIt\u2019s the birthrates. It\u2019s the birthrates.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n The\n El Paso shooter said in his text, \u2018This attack is a response to the \nHispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me. I am \nsimply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought\n on by an invasion\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In\n the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, the shooter\u2019s social media posts \nrevealed he was punishing Jews for, as he saw it, inducing the death of \nwhiteness by orchestrating immigration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Six\n weeks later another shooter murdered a woman and wounded several more \nat a synagogue in Poway, California, leaving a manifesto that blamed \nJews for \u2018funding politicians and organisations who use mass immigration\n to displace the European race\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Fear\n of the \u2018great replacement\u2019 was echoed in the chants of \u2018You will not \nreplace us,\u2019 and \u2018Jews will not replace us!\u2019 in the white supremacist \nmarch in Charlottesville.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the USA, Fox News airs reports about Hispanic immigration at the Mexican border in terms of \u2018invasion\u2019 or as Fox TV host Laura Ingraham put it, \u2018<\/strong>replacing\n the current American population, or swamping the current American \npopulation, with a new population of people.\u2019 In the UK, that media \ndemagogue Katie Hopkins expresses much the same sentiments. \u2018Do you \nthink that happened by chance or by design to keep the London mayor in \nMuslim hands. Our capital city, our<\/strong><\/em> capital city, your <\/em>capital city is run by a Muslim mayor who has a Muslim police association, a Muslim housing association\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This view is also reflected by Spectator <\/em>associate\n editor, Douglas Murray, who claims that \u2018Europe is committing suicide\u2019 \nby allowing Muslim immigration. He warns of \u2018white Britons\u2019 becoming a \nminority in \u2018their own capital city\u2019 and claims London has become a \n\u2018foreign country\u2019 because of so many black, Asian and mixed-race Brits \u2013\n no matter if they\u2019re born there \u2013 living there, arguing: \u2018London is now\n less than 50 per cent white British. It is not healthy for the native \npopulation to be a minority in their own capital\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Racism\n and nationalism exists because capitalism produces endemic problems in \nemployment, housing, and welfare. The working class suffer the misery of\n these problems but they do not understand their cause. They are, \ntherefore, ready to be persuaded to blame the problems onto scapegoats, \nwhether immigrants or any other minority that can be readily \nidentifiable. Racism and nationalism are issues which working people \nmust deal with as an obstacle to their progress to a sane social system.\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Socialists\n sympathise with the suffering of our fellow-workers of whichever \nethnicity and we ask them all to set aside their nationalism, their \nreligious bigotry, their ethnic hatred and racism and to join together \nto put an end to the real problem \u2013 capitalism. The Socialist Party \nappeals to our fellow workers to unite, irrespective of nationality or \ncolour, to defeat racism and nationalism. We are opposed to all \nrestrictions on the free expression of ideas and do not support \nsuppression of opinion, no matter how false or distasteful we believe \nthat opinion to be. In our view, the way to counter irrational racist \nconspiracy theories is in the open unfettered discussion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ALJO<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n From Socialist Standard January 2000<\/a> article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are prominent politicians around the world who propagate a fallacious theory on immigration and, when extremists embrace such ideas, those politicians wash their hands of any culpability. The fear of immigrants is magnified by lies and language. Fear of migrants brings in votes for politicians. Politicians feed on the fear. Fear of migrants brings…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2899,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2897","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2898,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2897\/revisions\/2898"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}