EU & Anglosphere – Refugees – Border Walls vs. Working Age Decline

While media, governments, think tanks, NGOs and politicians highlight, stress about, gaslight and promote negative tactics to stop refugees e.g. British government’s policies on channel crossings and using Rwanda as an offshore detention centre, there are gaps growing in the working age cohort due to demographic decline.

Not only is much of agitprop this drawn from old ideology by right wing or nativist politicians, while holding libertarian views on much else, a clear need for temporary and/or permanent immigration to plug employment gaps, pay taxes and support budgets for more retirees and pensioners using social services, is apparent.

Good examples are Britain and other OECD nations which share below replacement fertility, fewer youth and demographic decline in working age i.e. has passed the ‘demographic sweet spot’, but more retirees and ever increasing old age dependency ratios.

In short, we need well and better supported budgets for more retirees needing the support but they vote against their own interests e.g. Brexit?

See OECD data here on working age trends.

OECD (2023), Working age population (indicator). doi: 10.1787/d339918b-en (Accessed on 20 March 2023) 

However, nativist politics and talking points, targeting older voters on refugees, immigration, population growth and purported negative issues, then precludes the solutions i.e.  increase net migration, temporary or seasonal workers as ‘net financial budget contributors’ and more modest numbers of permanent migrants, going onto citizenship. 

Following analysis explains immigration and employment issues for the EU, from The EU Observer:

‘On migration, Europe needs to pivot from walls to work

By MICHELE LEVOY   BRUSSELS, 16. FEB, 07:00

It’s not news that Europe wants fewer migrants reaching its borders. What is less visible is that at the same time Europe is scrambling to get more migrants — to fill dramatic labour shortages, with little consideration for workers’ and human rights. The approach so far has been hypocritical, harmful — and self-defeating.

EU migration policies have long been promoting a narrative of migration as a threat, and something that should be tackled with a defensive and punitive approach.

The 2020 EU Migration Pact, still under negotiation, is billed as overhauling the EU migration system, but instead just expands existing measures like detention for anyone coming to Europe via irregular routes, including children, and speeding up deportations, while lowering human rights safeguards.

The never-ending fight against irregular migration

Last week, the European Council asked the Commission to fund border surveillance technology and to step up the use of visa agreements as a tool to pressure other countries into accepting swifter and more deportations of their citizens. Throughout 2022, several agreements were struck to increase joint policing at common borders, including between France and the UK, Germany and Switzerland, and Czechia and Slovakia.

The proposed revision of the Schengen Borders Code would allow border guards to stop and check people crossing borders internally within the EU if they believe that the individuals can’t prove their right to enter the country. There is little doubt that this amounts to legitimising racial profiling.

The demand for workforce

While Europe cracks down on migration, it also discreetly tries to get more migrants to fill ever more dramatic labour shortages in key sectors from hospitality to construction, from transportation to health care.

In practice, this means granting residence permits to people already living in the country through ongoing or new regularisation mechanisms, and creating work permits for people to come to work in the EU from abroad. Yet many of these measures may be driven by the demand for workforce, with little attention for workers’ rights.

France is negotiating a regularisation scheme for shortage occupations — but it’s been criticised for focusing on workers employed in the most physically demanding professions, while leaving out other key sectors and skills.

In January 2023, the right-wing Italian government increased the number of available permits for non-EU workers from 69,700 in 2022 to 82,705 but more than half are for seasonal work, which is often extremely precarious and rife with exploitation.

The 2020 Italian regularisation was largely prompted by fears that the country’s fields would remain without workers due to COVID-19 restrictions on international travel. The regularisation kept workers dependent on their employers, and conditions to apply were extremely strict and burdensome. The result is that only a third of the applicants managed to regularise their stay….’

For more articles about Ageing Democracy, Demography, EU European Union, Immigration, Media, Pensions, Tanton Network and White Nationalism:

Immigration to Australia – More Opportunities for Temporary Residents?

Collective Narcissism, Ageing Electorates, Pensioner Populism, White Nativism and Autocracy

Narcissistic Political Leaders – NPD Narcissistic Personality Disorder – Collective Narcissism – Cognitive Dissonance – Conspiracy Theories – Populism

Ageing Democracy, Nativism and Populism

Economic Research – No Negative Relationship with Immigration and Wages, Income or Employment

Anglosphere Legacy Media: White Nativist and Libertarian Propaganda for Ageing Conservative Voters – Australia, Brexit & Trump

Good article posted following from John Menadue of Pears & Irritations on White Man’s Media: Legacy media in the US and UK frames and conditions our thinking and actions the first of three articles.

One is shocked at the social narratives and sub-optimal communication in Australia, possibly due to media influence, exemplified by slogans, 20 second sound bites and closed questions round Anglo conservative ‘values’, identity or immigration (avoiding environment), property or FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate), sport, trivia/entertainment, culture and libertarian cost of living or need to avoid taxes;  Australian legacy media no longer informs but manipulates how voters think, or not which includes avoidance of serious issues e.g. environment.

Menadue highlights how legacy media in the Anglosphere of US, UK and Australia is being used to promote and reinforce nativist and conservative libertarian policies, against Australia’s interests, while our media and politics of the centre through right lacks diversity i.e. ‘skip’, still predominantly Anglo-Irish with some European heritage. 

Australia’s legacy media landscape is also being scrutinised for monopoly behaviour, proximity to the LNP, IPA etc., dog whistling, opaque regulatory benefits, promoting the ‘great replacement’; and authoritarians’ preferred tactic of SLAPPs or shutting down tricky narratives with defamation suits.

While we have closer and more lucrative trading relationships with the Asia-Pacific region, and also significant with the EU, many Australians using legacy media have significant antipathy towards both Europe and/or EU and Asia (except for trip), while deferring to the ‘Anglosphere’ or old white Australia attitudes.  

The Asian region now accounts for most immigration, temporary churn over, international education, tourism etc. and with ongoing post WWII European immigration, ‘Eurasian’, but viewed as an environmental hygiene issue through the prism of unexplained ‘population growth’ (imported via white nationalist Tanton Networks). 

This part of electoral or political focus groups, promoting (negative) policy, polling, campaigning and media PR favouring the nativist conservative libertarian LNP coalition is being helped by ageing citizens, regions, less education, less diverse and ‘white’ in the now dominant upper median age voter cohort.

The concern or question is, same for the GOP in the US and UK Tories, how do you win and maintain power with more diverse and empowered citizens emerging, versus declining demographics of the LNP’s key target cohort but expressing Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Irish values and identity?

From Pearls & Irritations:

‘White Man’s Media: Legacy media in the US and UK frames and conditions our thinking and actions

By John Menadue     Jan 11, 2022

The US Department of Defence maintains, in its own words ‘full spectrum dominance’ throughout the world.  Legacy media in the US and the UK has the same dominance. It frames and  influences how we think and particularly how governments act.

US legacy media – CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, Fox News  and Western news agencies- in association with drivers of US power and privilege, the military, business, think-tanks and security agencies  exert dangerous and destructive influence that has contributed to the killing of millions of people.  Add to that the way legacy media has helped excuse the way in which the US has attempted and often successfully, to overthrow numerous governments around the world.  The ‘indispensable state’ regards it as quite natural that US hegemony should be enforced everywhere.

Just as the British East India Company effectively ran Britain and its empire, so the US military and business complex, along with its elite supporters particularly in the media supports Western hegemony.  No US president, and certainly no Australian prime minister or Leader of the Opposition is prepared to challenge the US Imperium.

Australian media tugs the forelock to the Imperium. A person from Mars who reads and listens to Australian media would conclude that we are an island parked off New York or London.

Our media is dominated by the domestic events and issues of interest to UK and US readers – the latest antics of the British royal family, Donald Trump, the Governor of New York or vaccination rates in Alabama.

Much worse the ‘world view’ we get in Australia is a view of the world as seen from London, New York and Washington.

Most of the news we get in Australia about China, Indonesia, India and Vietnam is via Western news agencies. These media snapshots  are usually about the exotic and dangerous- a coup here, a flood there. Not surprisingly we remain ignorant and fearful of Asia.

Our ‘colonial’ media structure was laid down long ago.  It remains today.

We talk glibly about our future in Asia, but we are stuck in a US and UK media cul de sac.

With the active encouragement of our media, we have been drawn into countless US military disasters not just for the US but overwhelmingly for the people that are attacked.  On top of that, we had the war on terror.  Now we have the vilification of China, perhaps even a war.

It is not that Chinese behaviour and its human rights record has worsened. What has changed and what is feared is the growing power and influence of China. It is successful. That is seen as a threat to US full-spectrum dominance.  That fear of China is reflected in our legacy media in the US and the UK spewing out an endless daily campaign of anti-China stories. And other media follow.

Led by the US, our media showed no interest in ‘democracy’ in Hong Kong throughout over a century of British rule.  But now that Hong Kong is properly recognised as part of China, the US government, supported by its media, suddenly became concerned about democracy and independence for Hong Kong. They encouraged the 2019 insurrection.

The US has rained death, destruction and displacement on tens of millions of Muslims in the Middle East over the past 20 years.  Now the US media shows a remarkable and belated concern about the persecution of Muslims in China. The US record, like Australia’s treatment of Indigenous people, is a blemish for all time. But who seems to care? Certainly not our own media, who waste no opportunity to attack China. We cherry-pick human rights abuses that suit our agenda.

The association of legacy media with the powerful is everywhere. As  Alex Lo wrote in August ‘It has long been known that the Department of Defense in the US and other governments such as the CIA, not only support film and cable production in Hollywood but also actively intervene and manipulate their content.’

And in June, Lo described how a long list of former US security chiefs e.g. John Brennan and James Clapper, joined US media — NBC, MSNBC and CNN.

Australian security heads have been leading the demonisation of China with help from the Five Eyes.  But we get a double whammy when our derivative media draws heavily on US legacy media that in turn is heavily influenced by former US security chiefs with their ‘expert opinions’.

But Australian media does not have a problem just being dominated by legacy US and UK media.  We have a particular problem. Its name is Rupert Murdoch, an American citizen who owns two-thirds of Australia’s metropolitan dailies and more.

News Corp was a key supporter of the Iraq War — the Murdoch War. Of the 173 Murdoch papers worldwide only one, The Hobart Mercury opposed the war. Murdoch told us in 2003:

‘I think Bush acted very morally, very correctly. US troops will soon be welcomed as liberators’. His foreign editor on The Australian, Greg Sheridan, could not contain himself. ‘The bold eagle of American power is aloft, high above the humble earth. For as it soars and sweeps it sees victory, power and opportunity’. He is still in his job. Murdoch prefers loyalty to competence in all those around him, including his family.

Even some of the legacy media apologised for their support of the illegal war in Iraq. But never Murdoch nor for that matter John Howard.

News Corp in Australia for over a decade has also led the campaign of denial on climate change.

The US military/business/security complex exercises destructive and pervasive power.  Legacy media supplies a favourable frame for that complex.

Our derivative media ties us to the white legacy media of the North Atlantic. It frames our view of the world.

This is the first article in a series on White Man’s Media which we will be running over the next 2 to 3 weeks. Articles in the series can be found here.’

For more related blogs and articles on the Anglosphere and media click through:

Anglosphere – Radical Right Libertarian Socioeconomics and Authoritarianism

Eco-System of Libertarian Think Tanks and White Nativism in the Anglosphere 

Dumbing Down and Gaming of Anglosphere Media, Science, Society and Democracy

Anglosphere Triangle – Immigration – Environment – Population Growth – Radical Right Libertarians

Nationalist Conservative Political Parties in the Anglosphere – Radical Right Libertarian Ideology and Populism for Votes

Anglosphere Libertarianism in US, Australia and UK Tories with Dominic Cummings

Why are Vaccinated GOP Republicans and Fox Media Killing their Constituents through Covid Denial?

Afghan and Islamic Refugees – ADL – The Great Replacement Theory – Nativist Conservative Media, Politics and Public Discourse

With recent events in Afghanistan i.e. the collapse of the coalition supported regime while the Taliban reemerge, we again have observed more political agitprop in Europe, Australia, US, UK etc. focused upon immigration, refugees, Islam and Renaud Camus’ ‘The Great Replacement’ based on Raspail’s ‘Camp of the Saints’ and eugenics.  

These factors have become mainstreamed in and by white Christian nationalist governments with media support, for political and electoral advantage in targeting ageing and/or nativist electorates.  

However, this has reached the point that governments which chose to become involved in Afghanistan or Iraq are now constrained in what responses or solutions they can offer genuine refugees, due to political or electoral kick back from mainstreaming ‘The Great Replacement’, too successfully.

From ADL the Anti-Defamation League report on “The Great Replacement:” An Explainer

Once largely relegated to white supremacist rhetoric, “The Great Replacement” has made its way into mainstream consciousness in the past several years. From the chants of “Jews Will Not Replace Us” on the University of Virginia campus to then-U.S. Rep. Steve King’s tweeted protest, “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson’s complaints that the Democratic party is attempting to “replace the current electorate” with “third-world voters,” the racist conspiracy theory has well and truly arrived.

The following provides an introduction to “The Great Replacement:” Where it began, how it feeds into white supremacist grievances and which “mainstream” personalities have used it to score points and signal (not so subtly) their nativist point of view.

Origin Story

• “The Great Replacement” theory has its roots in early 20th century French nationalism and books by French nationalist and author Maurice Barres. However, it was French writer and critic Renaud Camus who popularized the phrase for today’s audiences when he published an essay titled “Le Grand Remplacement,” or “the great replacement,” in 2011. Camus himself alluded to the “great replacement theory” in his earlier works and was apparently influenced by Jean Raspail’s racist novel, The Camp of the Saints.
• Camus believes that native white Europeans are being replaced in their countries by non-white immigrants from Africa and the Middle East, and the end result will be the extinction of the white race.
• Camus focused on Muslim immigration to Europe and the theory that Muslims and other non-white populations had a much higher birth rate than whites. His initial concept did not focus on Jews and was not antisemitic.
• The “great replacement” philosophy was quickly adopted and promoted by the white supremacist movement, as it fit into their conspiracy theory about the impending destruction of the white race, also know as “white genocide.” It is also a strong echo of the white supremacist rallying cry, “the 14 words:” “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
• Since many white supremacists, particularly those in the United States, blame Jews for non-white immigration to the U.S. the replacement theory is now associated with antisemitism.
• The night before the August 2017 the Unite the Right rally, white supremacists, marching across the University of Virginia campus, shouted, “Jews will not replace us,” and “You will not replace us,” clear references to Camus’ theory.

Use By Individual Extremists

• In October 2018, white supremacist Robert Bowers killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA, after writing a Gab post blaming Jews for bringing non-white immigrants and refugees to the U.S.
• In March 2019, white supremacist Brenton Tarrant livestreamed himself killing 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand. Tarrant also released a manifesto online called “The Great Replacement,” an homage to Camus’ work.
• In April 2019, white supremacist John Earnest killed one and injured three at a synagogue in Poway, CA. In a letter he released online, Earnest claimed that Jews were responsible for the genocide of “white Europeans,” and cited the influence of Bowers and Tarrant.
• In August 2019, white supremacist Patrick Crusius opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, TX, killing 23 people and wounding almost two dozen. In a manifesto, Crusius talked about a “Hispanic invasion” and made reference to the great replacement.

Use By Politicians

• In April 2019, Heinz-Christian Strache, campaigning for the Freedom Party of Austria ahead of the 2019 European Parliament election,  endorsed the “great replacement” theory.
• The Identitarian movement, a white nationalist movement in Europe, has promoted the “great replacement” theory. Martin Sellner, the head of Generation Identitaire in Austria, is a particularly vocal promoter.
• Marine Le Pen, a far-right French politician, also promoted the idea of the “great replacement.”
• In March 2017, then-GOP Congressman (IA) Steve King tweeted his support for Geert Wilders a well-known anti-immigration activist from Europe.  “Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny,” the Congressman wrote. “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” The tweet, which won praise from white supremacists, was a clear reference to replacement theory. In August 2018, King gave an interview to a far-right magazine in Austria, in which he promoted the “great replacement” theory.
• In an interview on Fox News Justice with Judge Jeanine in July 2020, GOP Congressman Matt Gaetz claimed that an “attempted cultural genocide” was occurring in the US and that the left wanted to “replace America.

Use by Media/Tech Personalities

• In July 2017, Lauren Southern, a Canadian far-right activist, released a video titled, “The Great Replacement,” promoting Camus’ themes. That summer, Southern was involved in “Defend Europe,” a project lead by European white nationalists to block the arrival of boats carrying African immigrants. Southern’s video further popularized Camus’ theory.
• In October 2018, on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham said, “your views on immigration will have zero impact and zero influence on a House dominated by Democrats who want to replace you, the American voters, with newly amnestied citizens and an ever increasing number of chain migrants.”
• In October 2019, Jeanine Pirro was discussing Democrats’ hatred of Trump on Fox Nation’s The Todd Starnes Show. She declared, “Think about it. It is a plot to remake America, to replace American citizens with illegals that will vote for the Democrats.”
• On April 8, 2021, on Tucker Carlson Tonight, the host explicitly promoted the ‘great replacement” theory. Carlson discussed “Third World” immigrants coming to the US who affiliate with the Democratic Party. He asserted, “I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate — the voters now casting ballots — with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World, but they become hysterical because that’s what’s happening, actually. Let’s just say it. That’s true.”
• On April 11, 2021, Andrew Torba, the founder of Gab, posted on his own platform: “Now today the ADL is trying to cancel Tucker Carlson for daring to speak the truth about the reality of demographic replacement that is absolutely and unequivocally going on in The West. These are not ‘hateful’ statements, the objective facts that can no longer be ignored.”

For more related blogs or articles on Demography, Evangelical Christianity, Immigration, Media, Political Strategy, Population Growth, Populist Politics and White Nationalism click through.