There is a traceable arc from the violent end to French colonial rule in Algeria between 1954 and 1962 (the period of the Algerian War of Independence) to today’s toxic relationship between the French state and its citizens of North African descent.
I appreciate your skill at working through the logic of people’s arguments, and exposing the lack of logic!
However, political battles are not one on logic alone. We must consider the class background of the different actors involved. Because you don’t like to do this is the reason, I think, that you don’t get to the crux of the issues.
Middle-class people have very little social power (unlike big capital and the organised working class). They crave stability and security with limited means to achieve it. This tends to be what is behind their scapegoating. They do not experience the world in a cooperative way, the way workers do, which limits their opportunities to develop empathy with sections of society they are less familiar with. Workers are much more likely to experience migrants as fellow human beings as they are more likely to work alongside them. Middle class people, rather than demanding, let alone joining the struggle for, a fairer distribution of society’s resources, are prone to look for illogical shortcuts, and fall prey to divide and rule tactics coming from above.
These are some of the reasons I think it is imperative for left-leaning freedom people to organise separately to the right. This does not mean we never join in on actions and campaigns, but we need some way to come up with tactics, and to present a pole of attraction with a positive vision and program, free from racist and other anti-worker and anti-human positions. All attacks on traditional (non-woke) left-wing values are anti-human, yet many of freedom movement leaders are very ideologically driven against basic left-wing values.
I agree that the leadership of the left is hopelessly co-opted, but we need to orient to their *followers* and put pressure on the leadership when they advocate for anti-worker actions, like supporting lockdowns and medical mandates. It’s easier said than done at the beginning, but I believe we will get further doing that than aligning with hypocritical and anti-human right wingers and conservatives.
A broad class analysis was not in the remit/scope of this piece but would be interesting to attempt. I think you make some valid points about the middle class but I'm not sure it's all hugs and brotherly love between workers and migrant co-workers. I have personally witnessed expressed animosity which, reading between the lines, I put down to fear of competition. If we accept that the imperative of free movement of labour was to drive down costs and increase competition, then some friction is/was inevitable.
I absolutely agree that the animosity is real. It's further exacerbated when workers are told they are stupid racists for resenting their wages and conditions being held back or pushed down by immigration, yet have their grievances ignored, by a professional middle class, along with the 'progressive' side of the political class, who do not face the same level of competition, and who regard racism *purely* as a moral issue. It's understandable some workers have become resentful.
But it is another section of the middle classes, the lower middle class of sole-traders and small business owners, as well as the less-unionised sectors of the working class in smaller workplaces, who are prone to resent immigration, in the absence of the potential to use industrial struggle to push back (even in times of low industrial struggle, its always there, as a subconscious option). Many of the people who pushed back on Covid were small business people, and/or were already politically organised on the populist Right. These are also more likely to have narrow 'patriot' interests, more likely to hate left wing values, which they see as govt programs that don't benefit them, and they resent paying tax! They resented *their* freedoms being impinged upon, but they had never stood in the tradition of defending the freedoms of *others*, they didn't and still don't see the point. Not all, but many of them are like this.
As for the many more apolitical people who never took an interest in politics before the pandemic, they have a deep, well-founded distrust of govt. In the absence of a left response to immigration, that is, demanding more infrastructure and opportunities for all, they understandably see stopping/slowing immigration as a solution, at least in the short term, as you do. To counter the loud voices spruiking non-solutions like "immigrants won't integrate", a real Left needs to shout "more resources" louder than "racists!". And act on it.
I don't know about the UK, but after the defeat of the Voice referendum here, I was worried both the mainstream and populist Right would campaign hard on racist opposition to immigration. It's causing such a severe rental crisis though (due to the long absence of sound home building policies and social housing funding) that even the Labor govt is now implementing policies to curb migration. This takes some wind out of the racists' sails.
Sadly, the Australian govt's support for Israel has seen Islamophobia rear its ugly head again, but, thanks to pushback and a strong protest movement, our govt has had to walk back somewhat on it's initial strident support for genocide (I noticed the UK govt voted for a ceasefire in the UN recently too).
I appreciate your skill at working through the logic of people’s arguments, and exposing the lack of logic!
However, political battles are not one on logic alone. We must consider the class background of the different actors involved. Because you don’t like to do this is the reason, I think, that you don’t get to the crux of the issues.
Middle-class people have very little social power (unlike big capital and the organised working class). They crave stability and security with limited means to achieve it. This tends to be what is behind their scapegoating. They do not experience the world in a cooperative way, the way workers do, which limits their opportunities to develop empathy with sections of society they are less familiar with. Workers are much more likely to experience migrants as fellow human beings as they are more likely to work alongside them. Middle class people, rather than demanding, let alone joining the struggle for, a fairer distribution of society’s resources, are prone to look for illogical shortcuts, and fall prey to divide and rule tactics coming from above.
These are some of the reasons I think it is imperative for left-leaning freedom people to organise separately to the right. This does not mean we never join in on actions and campaigns, but we need some way to come up with tactics, and to present a pole of attraction with a positive vision and program, free from racist and other anti-worker and anti-human positions. All attacks on traditional (non-woke) left-wing values are anti-human, yet many of freedom movement leaders are very ideologically driven against basic left-wing values.
I agree that the leadership of the left is hopelessly co-opted, but we need to orient to their *followers* and put pressure on the leadership when they advocate for anti-worker actions, like supporting lockdowns and medical mandates. It’s easier said than done at the beginning, but I believe we will get further doing that than aligning with hypocritical and anti-human right wingers and conservatives.
A broad class analysis was not in the remit/scope of this piece but would be interesting to attempt. I think you make some valid points about the middle class but I'm not sure it's all hugs and brotherly love between workers and migrant co-workers. I have personally witnessed expressed animosity which, reading between the lines, I put down to fear of competition. If we accept that the imperative of free movement of labour was to drive down costs and increase competition, then some friction is/was inevitable.
I absolutely agree that the animosity is real. It's further exacerbated when workers are told they are stupid racists for resenting their wages and conditions being held back or pushed down by immigration, yet have their grievances ignored, by a professional middle class, along with the 'progressive' side of the political class, who do not face the same level of competition, and who regard racism *purely* as a moral issue. It's understandable some workers have become resentful.
But it is another section of the middle classes, the lower middle class of sole-traders and small business owners, as well as the less-unionised sectors of the working class in smaller workplaces, who are prone to resent immigration, in the absence of the potential to use industrial struggle to push back (even in times of low industrial struggle, its always there, as a subconscious option). Many of the people who pushed back on Covid were small business people, and/or were already politically organised on the populist Right. These are also more likely to have narrow 'patriot' interests, more likely to hate left wing values, which they see as govt programs that don't benefit them, and they resent paying tax! They resented *their* freedoms being impinged upon, but they had never stood in the tradition of defending the freedoms of *others*, they didn't and still don't see the point. Not all, but many of them are like this.
As for the many more apolitical people who never took an interest in politics before the pandemic, they have a deep, well-founded distrust of govt. In the absence of a left response to immigration, that is, demanding more infrastructure and opportunities for all, they understandably see stopping/slowing immigration as a solution, at least in the short term, as you do. To counter the loud voices spruiking non-solutions like "immigrants won't integrate", a real Left needs to shout "more resources" louder than "racists!". And act on it.
I don't know about the UK, but after the defeat of the Voice referendum here, I was worried both the mainstream and populist Right would campaign hard on racist opposition to immigration. It's causing such a severe rental crisis though (due to the long absence of sound home building policies and social housing funding) that even the Labor govt is now implementing policies to curb migration. This takes some wind out of the racists' sails.
Sadly, the Australian govt's support for Israel has seen Islamophobia rear its ugly head again, but, thanks to pushback and a strong protest movement, our govt has had to walk back somewhat on it's initial strident support for genocide (I noticed the UK govt voted for a ceasefire in the UN recently too).