It might surprise some people to learn that there are leftists who are against open borders. Angela Nagle, an Irish academic and writer, is one such person. It's interesting to read her criticisms of globalism, as they reinforce the arguments that we ourselves make.
In 2018 Nagel wrote a piece for American Affairs titled "The Leftist Case Against Open Borders". She observed of the modern left that,
Today’s well-intentioned activists have become the useful idiots of big business. With their adoption of “open borders” advocacy—and a fierce moral absolutism that regards any limit to migration as an unspeakable evil—any criticism of the exploitative system of mass migration is effectively dismissed as blasphemy. Even solidly leftist politicians, like Bernie Sanders in the United States and Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom, are accused of “nativism” by critics if they recognize the legitimacy of borders or migration restriction at any point. This open borders radicalism ultimately benefits the elites within the most powerful countries in the world, further disempowers organized labor, robs the developing world of desperately needed professionals, and turns workers against workers.
She points out that,
Developing countries are struggling to retain their skilled and professional citizens, often trained at great public cost, because the largest and wealthiest economies that dominate the global market have the wealth to snap them up...According to Foreign Policy magazine, “There are more Ethiopian physicians practicing in Chicago today than in all of Ethiopia, a country of 80 million.”
In a piece about her own country, Will Ireland Survive the Woke Wave?, Nagle predicts that Ireland will follow the same path as other Western nations:
As a former colony, historically unsullied by the sins of slavery and imperialism, Ireland’s national identity has been largely free of the culture of pathological self-hatred found across most of the liberal West today...But all of that is about to change.She believes that Ireland is too economically dependent on an international "progressive tech oligarchy" and that,
It will now be a second but no less bitter irony that the native Irish working class will soon find themselves in the same position as the British have — despised as reactionary by our own elites and morally and economically blackmailed into accepting their more enlightened values.
Like all doomed traditions, our banal ethno-nationalism has been passively held by the majority while the intellectual and moral foundations that once justified it have been slowly replaced and degraded while nobody was paying attention. When a full confrontation with the liberal internationalism we invited in during the Celtic Tiger years inevitably happens, those foundations will already be gone and we will no longer be able to explain why having any right to a national culture or national sovereignty is anything other than racist and exclusionary.
I've always maintained that Open Borders is fundamentally a right-wing ideology.
ReplyDeleteWell, you would be absolutely wrong about that.
ReplyDeleteThese leftists may be opposed to open borders, but it has nothing to do with the racial and ethnic intersts of the people's in those countries of their long term survival and interets.
ReplyDeleteThey are opposed to that, or indifference at best, and would be not be opposed to the destruction of the West if it brought about the economic and social conditions they deem desirable.
NOte, as just one example, that their concern is with how many Ethiopian doctors there are in Chicago, and how that effects Ethiopia, but not historic Americans IN CHIGAGO or America.
THAT never occurs to them. And there is a HUGE difference in that.
NOte, as just one example, that their concern is with how many Ethiopian doctors there are in Chicago, and how that effects Ethiopia, but not historic Americans IN CHIGAGO or America.
DeleteI think you're being a little unfair. It's possible to be concerned with the effects of immigration on both the West and on Third World countries and it sounds to me like Angela Nagle is concerned by both.
And if you're looking for an effective argument against immigration that is difficult to refute then the argument that it harms Third World countries is a very potent argument. It has the advantage of being an argument that allows anti-immigrationists to take the high more ground.
It puzzles me that so many anti-immigration people just do not seem interested in using arguments that might actually work.
DeleteIt puzzles me that you are completely indifferent to the harm third world immigration does to Western nations, so much so that you can't see that it IS the high moral ground.
You have implicitly taken the anti-White narrative and denied Whites even a say is the damage this does. THAT is all too common. YOu don't even see it. Why?
Every word anti-Whites say in response to the charge of #WhiteGenocide is a justification for that exact policy.
I see no evidence that Nagle is concerned with that.... for the very simple reason that if she was, it would be mentioned, and recognized as THE most compelling issue. AFter all, she literally admits that the impacts of immigration on third world nations is a major issue, but ignores that the impact of immigration on the West isn't just about harm, but SURVIVAL
It puzzles me that you are completely indifferent to the harm third world immigration does to Western nations, so much so that you can't see that it IS the high moral ground.
DeleteArguing that Third World immigration harms western nations is of course correct, but it hasn't been in practice a very effective argument. My view is that arguing that immigration harms both western countries and Third World countries might have a better chance of success. And might be a much more effective way of taking the high moral ground in a way that might actually have a chance of gaining some traction.
You have implicitly taken the anti-White narrative and denied Whites even a say is the damage this does.
No, I certainly haven't done that.
I see no evidence that Nagle is concerned with that.... for the very simple reason that if she was, it would be mentioned, and recognized as THE most compelling issue. AFter all, she literally admits that the impacts of immigration on third world nations is a major issue, but ignores that the impact of immigration on the West isn't just about harm, but SURVIVAL
It sounds to me like her views on Ireland indicate that she is very much aware of the threat to the West.
I don't understand why you would want to attack someone who is making cogent and passionate arguments against immigration, which is what she is doing. The anti-immigration movement surely needs all the allies it can get, and she is definitely an ally. Maybe you don't like her emphasis on economic arguments but the fact is that the economic arguments against immigration are extremely strong and they are arguments that have a chance of appealing to ordinary people.
Anti-immigration activists have to make a choice - do we continue to make the cultural arguments that are not proving to be very effective or do we broaden our potential base of support by embracing economic arguments as well, thus increasing our chances of success? Do we want to win or not?