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Comment by mcphage | Hacker News Reader

> I do think that, were we living in an economic golden age, people would be able to ignore and excuse the increased prevalence of foreigners on "their" streets.

I don't fully know what's going on in Europe, but in the US we have several TV news networks dedicated to making you upset about the increased prevalence of foreigners. And they've been doing it for 30+ years, so it's working, no matter how good the age is or isn't.

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In Europe the terrorist attacks and crime is real though, that doesn't happen much in the US but in Europe it happens quite a lot since the immigrants are different. So there is no need for any propaganda to get people to turn against unlimited immigration, what they see on every news station paints the same picture.

The news in western EU never cover the bad parts of illegal immigration, only the rosy part, so the people turning against immigration aren't doing it due to what they see on the news but mostly due to what they, rightfully or wrongly, perceive themselves .

Not sure about the EU, but in the UK the support for the far-right is highest in areas with the fewest numbers of immigrants. It's not about peoples personal perceptions, as the areas with relatively high numbers of immigrants are invariably also the areas where there's low support for the far right.

We need to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants. Plenty of legal immigrants also vote right wing because they hate illegal immigrants which is the core issues.

Except the places in the UK where illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, tend to congregate (cities) are the places with the lowest support for Farage etc.

I.e. people voting for Farage are not the ones living next door to asylum seekers.

Maybe it's different in the EU and US.

People see problems (mainly caused by the cost of housing) and hear people like Farage blaming it on the "small boats", and people on the other end of the spectrum blaming it on millionaire landlords.

The reality is it's not caused by the 3 asylum seekers per 10,000 people increasing demand, but instead by essential legal immigration (to perform jobs as the native workforce reduces in number) and crucially the inability to build enough houses for everyone.

This thus pushes up price thanks to the age old supply/demand curve. How else would we ration housing? Nepotism? Sexual favours? Lottery?

>crucially the inability to build enough houses for everyone

Sure, but if you have an inability to produce more housing, how is importing more foreigners helping with the situation of the locals who are already struggling with the housing market?

I'm not defending Farage or his voters, but don't people have a right to be pissed about this situation?

But people aren't actually pissed at the cause of the problem. They will go out and march against a new housing development in their local area before turning around and sending a letter to the paper complaining about a lack of housing. They'll moan about a lack of staff in their local hospital but then support the immigration rules which prevent people from working for the NHS. They'll complain about low wages in the public sector but then fight against the growth in the economy which would allow those wages to increase. They'll complain about millionaires and then whine that it's unfair millionaires are taxed "so much".

>In Europe the terrorist attacks and crime is real though, that doesn't happen much in the US but in Europe it happens quite a lot since the immigrants are different.

We're having some similar problems in the US, but not at the same scale. It used to be MS-13 was the big foreign crime boogeyman, now it's the Venezuelan gang "Tren de Aragua": https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/its-spreading-americas...

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/migrant-population-charl...

Also a lot of our terrorist attacks aren't described as such by the media. it seems you're not a terrorist if you're a white US citizen.

Can you point to any statistics which indicate life is even remotely as dangerous in Europe as life in the US is?

I can't even come up with enough terror attacks in Europe to reach 100 deaths in 2024.

I don't need any TV channel nor statistics for my girlfriend to come home shocked because a friend of her got his apple watch and bag stolen that day, to witness a Japanese girl at an event having her bag stolen during the night, to be aggressed verbally in the station, to have a friend shot in a terror attack (Bataclan), to have an islamic attack at the Christmas market in my town, etc. all the common point here are immigrants or their descendants from non white and non Asian countries.

> I can't even come up with enough terror attacks in Europe to reach 100 deaths in 2024.

Go touch grass ffs! Your reply is infuriating to any victim of terrorism. A single death or wounded from islamic terrorism (the only that really exist) is too much already. If that's not enough for you, please line up with your family and friends and sign to be the next victims and we'll see if "not even 100 deaths" is a good thing or not.

Should we extend that "zero tolerance" principle for, say, traffic deaths? Even 1 death is too much right? Yet over a hundred people die on European roads every day. Surely we should tackle this many times more seriously than we tackle the comparatively minor issue of Islamic terrorism?

What about pollution? Kills thousands upon thousands of people too! Why are we wasting our time and attention with 24/7 news reports about terrorism every time some nutter stabs someone in the street, when we could be directing our efforts towards eradicating coal, diesel engines, etc?

See where I'm going with this?

> Should we extend that "zero tolerance" principle for, say, traffic deaths?

Many already are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero

I have lived in Europe all my life. I cannot name a single person I know, nor anyone that they know, that has ever been remotely affected by Islamic terrorism.

I can however name a hundred other things that affect most of their lives daily like inflation, racism, corruption of both the media and political organs by corporate interests, degrading of public infrastructure and institutions that are not aimed at churning out a profit, declining quality of the education system to systemic stress imposed on teachers, etc.

I didn't mean to belittle anyone impacted by terrorism personally. I just am saying it is so rare that it doesn't register as relevant for me. I worry more about speeding cars.

As a society we must focus our attention to those things which really matter. Terrorism is just trying to get our attention.

I also live in a town of 4m which was impacted in the last 10 years by a single terror attack. Should it affect my life? Should I be suspicious of every member of the ethnic group from which the terrorist comes? I couldn't even identify them.

The last terror attacks in my country were part of an organised campaign to try and burn down mosques explicitly because of unhinged propaganda on TV and online. The fact that these attacks were not called "terrorist attacks" on any single news station tells you all you need to know about propaganda here.

There is no such thing as unlimited immigration

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