Kristallnacht -80 Years Later, How Have We Changed?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Or have we not changed all that much? Today, November 9th, 2018 marks the 80th anniversary of the beginning of Kristallnacht, the event that ramped up attacks on Jews during The Holocaust, resulting in at least 90 deaths, the destruction of over 1,000 synagogues and most of the Jewish businesses in Germany. It's not lost on me that this anniversary is occurring on the same week as our midterm elections here in the U.S. President Trump was the spearhead of the campaign for the Republican party, and one of the final ads he ran insinuated that Americans need to fear black and brown foreigners because they are a threat to our lives. His rise first started through the birther movement, accusing President Obama, the first African American president in our country's history, of being a foreign born Muslim who had no right to even be in the country, let alone be president. When he announced his candidacy for the Presidency, he did so by attack Mexicans. Throughout the campaign he attacked numerous religious and ethnic minorities.  And he won. Now, groups that track hate crimes like the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center are seeing huge spikes in hate crimes. Those same minorities Trump attacked are now expressing a heightened sense of fear. And most disturbing to me is hearing survivors of The Holocaust say that this feels somewhat like pre-Nazi Germany.

This problem is not unique to the U.S. It's sweeping across the Western world. The U.K. voted to leave the European Union, known as "Brexit," driven in part (debatable by how much) by fears of immigrants. France's second place candidate for President, Marine Le Pen, is considered by many to be a fascist. She is absolutely a nationalist. The same can be said of the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda. The League came in third place in the recent Italian elections.  Far right wing parties are on the rise across the continent. And the institutions and norms that were designed to bind these nations together are beginning to fracture. Yes right now these groups are fringe in most places, but they are in most places. And history is littered with examples of rapid rises of dangerous far right (and to a lesser extent, far left) parties.

We have to ask ourselves if this is just a short term experience or is this the direction the West will be heading towards for some time to come? I fear that xenophobia and bigotry will continue to rise. We've enjoyed relative peace since the end of World War II, but no peace lasts forever. If our institutions continue to erode and we have, say, a major financial crisis, where will we end up? With nationalism and populism on the rise, I fear the results could be quite dark. 

I think most people like to believe that we've become more civilized. And there's no doubt that we have. But is that civility stable? Could rapid negative events cause us to snap back to who we were when the world was a much darker place? Or have we truly become better people, strong enough to resist falling back into the perils of hate, ignorance and intolerance? On this anniversary I think it's wise to ask these difficult questions, and to remember our shared histories so that we best avoid making the same mistakes of the past.

Discuss. 

[Martell Spy]

Quote

We have to ask ourselves if this is just a short term experience or is this the direction the West will be heading towards for some time to come? I fear that xenophobia and bigotry will continue to rise. We've enjoyed relative peace since the end of World War II, but no peace lasts forever. If our institutions continue to erode and we have, say, a major financial crisis, where will we end up? With nationalism and populism on the rise, I fear the results could be quite dark. 

 

Well, it's not just an accident that this is all happening. Definitely, the Iraq war played a big part in setting things off, but authoritarians such as Putin are encouraging it.

Everyone in the West needs to unite against far-right politicians in our various systems. And we need to police our social media and voting systems better. If conservatives in the West keep voting for Nazis in order to gain tax cuts for the wealthy, we all may be in a lot of trouble down the line.

[Altherion]

45 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

We have to ask ourselves if this is just a short term experience or is this the direction the West will be heading towards for some time to come? I fear that xenophobia and bigotry will continue to rise. We've enjoyed relative peace since the end of World War II, but no peace lasts forever. If our institutions continue to erode and we have, say, a major financial crisis, where will we end up? With nationalism and populism on the rise, I fear the results could be quite dark. 

I think most people like to believe that we've become more civilized. And there's no doubt that we have. But is that civility stable? Could rapid negative events cause us to snap back to who we were when the world was a much darker place? Or have we truly become better people, strong enough to resist falling back into the perils of hate, ignorance and intolerance?

We've never walked too far from the edge of the abyss, but we're surely closer to it now than a quarter century ago. I don't think the nature of the people has changed at all; this would require either genetic engineering or millennia of directed evolution. However, we've constructed a large set of institutions to make sure that nothing like WWII (or what preceded it) ever happens again and, for the most part, these have held and are still holding today... but they can't hold forever if they're constantly being pressed and that's the case now.

There are several reasons for it (which we've discussed here before), but the important fact is that a large and growing number of people who are now angry and who believe themselves to either threatened or even attacked and an even larger number who believe that they're not getting what they're entitled to. You can see this anger pretty much everywhere. In mild forms, it is omnipresent in the media and, for example, in the drastic increase of the "if you're not with us, you're against us" attitude on this board. In harsher forms (which are becoming more common), you can see it in the clashes of the far left with the far right and in the ubiquitous incidents of violence.

I think we still have some time before the institutions and norms well and truly start to give, but once that happens, it's going to happen quickly.

[James Arryn]

5 hours ago, Altherion said:

We've never walked too far from the edge of the abyss, but we're surely closer to it now than a quarter century ago. I don't think the nature of the people has changed at all; this would require either genetic engineering or millennia of directed evolution. However, we've constructed a large set of institutions to make sure that nothing like WWII (or what preceded it) ever happens again and, for the most part, these have held and are still holding today... but they can't hold forever if they're constantly being pressed and that's the case now.

There are several reasons for it (which we've discussed here before), but the important fact is that a large and growing number of people who are now angry and who believe themselves to either threatened or even attacked and an even larger number who believe that they're not getting what they're entitled to. You can see this anger pretty much everywhere. In mild forms, it is omnipresent in the media and, for example, in the drastic increase of the "if you're not with us, you're against us" attitude on this board. In harsher forms (which are becoming more common), you can see it in the clashes of the far left with the far right and in the ubiquitous incidents of violence.

I think we still have some time before the institutions and norms well and truly start to give, but once that happens, it's going to happen quickly.

This crap you put out is bullsht. Racists have always felt that way. Over 2/3 of Americans said no to Jewish refugee children in 1939. 59% said no to Jewish refugees 20 years later. In ‘75 62% worried that Vietnamese refugees would steal their jobs. That same number didn’t want to let in more ‘boat people’ refugees fleeing the KR et al in Indochina in 78/79. In 1980 that exact same 62 % thought immigration needed to be lowered, most of those saying much lowered. In ‘93 63% didn’t want the US to admit the Haitian refugees fleeing yet more genocidal Duvalier treatment.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/syrian-refugee-crisis_us_564a31c7e4b045bf3df04d6a

It’s not anger, and it’s not situational. It’s selfish xenophobic bigotry using the same ‘scared/angry’ rationale people like you have always used. Racists almost never say ‘I’m doing this because I’m racist.’ They say, rather, that they are afraid and angry. Afraid that ‘they’ are changing our culture, stealing our jobs, endangering our populace’ and ‘angry’ that the government is giving ‘them’ too much, favouring them for political points, forgetting the needs of ‘real’ Americans because ‘they’ get more photo ops.

And it goes back forever. In the Middle Ages, one of the most common repercussions of a famine or plague were pogroms and/or massacres of ‘foreigners’. Those people were ‘angry’ too...and stupid people have always gotten angry and blamed outsiders for whatever ails them. Most Americans (by a significant margin) thought civil rights protesters and freedom marchers were more to blame for unrest than segregation and Lynch mobs. People have always been racist, racists have always been angry and America had always been more of both than most. ‘America First’ was a phrased first trumpeted by isolationasts and Nazi sympathizer like Lindbergh in the 1930’s, and America is the only foreign country Hitler praised in Mein Kampf for their...’America Firstness’, let’s call it. 

It is what it’s always been, and people like you are saying what they’ve always said, and part of what has always been said is that ‘this time is different, this time people have just been pushed too far.’

Know thyself.

[SeanF]

11 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Or have we not changed all that much? Today, November 9th, 2018 marks the 80th anniversary of the beginning of Kristallnacht, the event that ramped up attacks on Jews during The Holocaust, resulting in at least 90 deaths, the destruction of over 1,000 synagogues and most of the Jewish businesses in Germany. It's not lost on me that this anniversary is occurring on the same week as our midterm elections here in the U.S. President Trump was the spearhead of the campaign for the Republican party, and one of the final ads he ran insinuated that Americans need to fear black and brown foreigners because they are a threat to our lives. His rise first started through the birther movement, accusing President Obama, the first African American president in our country's history, of being a foreign born Muslim who had no right to even be in the country, let alone be president. When he announced his candidacy for the Presidency, he did so by attack Mexicans. Throughout the campaign he attacked numerous religious and ethnic minorities.  And he won. Now, groups that track hate crimes like the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center are seeing huge spikes in hate crimes. Those same minorities Trump attacked are now expressing a heightened sense of fear. And most disturbing to me is hearing survivors of The Holocaust say that this feels somewhat like pre-Nazi Germany.

This problem is not unique to the U.S. It's sweeping across the Western world. The U.K. voted to leave the European Union, known as "Brexit," driven in part (debatable by how much) by fears of immigrants. France's second place candidate for President, Marine Le Pen, is considered by many to be a fascist. She is absolutely a nationalist. The same can be said of the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda. The League came in third place in the recent Italian elections.  Far right wing parties are on the rise across the continent. And the institutions and norms that were designed to bind these nations together are beginning to fracture. Yes right now these groups are fringe in most places, but they are in most places. And history is littered with examples of rapid rises of dangerous far right (and to a lesser extent, far left) parties.

We have to ask ourselves if this is just a short term experience or is this the direction the West will be heading towards for some time to come? I fear that xenophobia and bigotry will continue to rise. We've enjoyed relative peace since the end of World War II, but no peace lasts forever. If our institutions continue to erode and we have, say, a major financial crisis, where will we end up? With nationalism and populism on the rise, I fear the results could be quite dark. 

I think most people like to believe that we've become more civilized. And there's no doubt that we have. But is that civility stable? Could rapid negative events cause us to snap back to who we were when the world was a much darker place? Or have we truly become better people, strong enough to resist falling back into the perils of hate, ignorance and intolerance? On this anniversary I think it's wise to ask these difficult questions, and to remember our shared histories so that we best avoid making the same mistakes of the past.

Discuss. 

Where I'd take issue is that we leave in unusually troubled times.  The times we live in are the norm, even in prosperous countries,  What we did have was a generation between the late eighties and the Great Financial Crash  (outside Yugoslavia and the Middle East) where one could say that history was coming to an end.  Everyone was gradually embracing liberal capitalism and democracy.

Go back a few years before that though, into the fifties, sixties, and seventies, and things were much more bitter and violent.  There were coups in France, much of Europe was ruled by dictators, the US was in the throes of Vietnam and the Civil Rights conflict, terrorists like the IRA, ETA, OAS, Red Brigades etc. were very active in Western Europe, and many countries experienced high inflation and industrial conflict.  And over all this, was the risk of nuclear annihilation,.

All societies fail eventually, and perhaps Western democracy is about to fail, but we have pulled through harder times during the lives of many who can still remember them.

 

[Altherion]

10 hours ago, James Arryn said:

t’s not anger, and it’s not situational. It’s selfish xenophobic bigotry using the same ‘scared/angry’ rationale people like you have always used. Racists almost never say ‘I’m doing this because I’m racist.’ They say, rather, that they are afraid and angry. Afraid that ‘they’ are changing our culture, stealing our jobs, endangering our populace’ and ‘angry’ that the government is giving ‘them’ too much, favouring them for political points, forgetting the needs of ‘real’ Americans because ‘they’ get more photo ops.

I am unable to read their minds so I can only react to their words and actions and these seem pretty angry to me. In fact, despite the emphasis placed by the media on the internal mental state of people the media representatives have never seen (or at most spoke a few words to), this internal state is mostly irrelevant when answering the question "Could rapid negative events cause us to snap back to who we were when the world was a much darker place?" The relevant piece of information for this question is that there are currently large numbers of angry people on both sides.

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

I am unable to read their minds so I can only react to their words and actions and these seem pretty angry to me. In fact, despite the emphasis placed by the media on the internal mental state of people the media representatives have never seen (or at most spoke a few words to), this internal state is mostly irrelevant when answering the question "Could rapid negative events cause us to snap back to who we were when the world was a much darker place?" The relevant piece of information for this question is that there are currently large numbers of angry people on both sides.

There have always been large numbers of angry people "on both sides."

What's -relatively- new is that in the past few decades Western elites have progressively let the culture wars rage so that the socio-economic structure will not be put into question. Or perhaps it's that the collapse of the Soviet Union robbed the left of an ideal. At any rate, ethno-nationalism is making a political come-back because the masters of the world prefer it to other more dangerous movements -for them. But racism & all has never left.
 

[Altherion]

3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

There have always been large numbers of angry people "on both sides."

What's -relatively- new is that in the past few decades Western elites have progressively let the culture wars rage so that the socio-economic structure will not be put into question. Or perhaps it's that the collapse of the Soviet Union robbed the left of an ideal. At any rate, ethno-nationalism is making a political come-back because the masters of the world prefer it to other more dangerous movements -for them. But racism & all has never left.

Not angry enough for the more radical ones to duke it out in the streets. I agree with you that the various in-group/out-group ideas have never left (that's why I wrote above that we've never walked too far from the edge), but I'm not sure that your point about the elites is true worldwide. For example, in the US, there are no dangerous socioeconomic movements worth mentioning; the conflict is between groups based on identity (i.e. on mostly immutable physical characteristics).

19 hours ago, Triskele said:

Frum has a thought-provoking piece.  I didn't know it was known in the Jewish Community as the "Day of Fate."  

It isn't. It's the Germans (not the Jews) who call it that because it coincides with two critical events in their history (Kristallnacht and the fall of the Berlin Wall) and maybe also some lesser ones.

[Galactus]

Not angry enough for the more radical ones to duke it out in the streets.

Yes? Look at the 1970's, and late 1960's. There were multiple violent clashes (that included deaths) in the period. 

[Rippounet]

10 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Not angry enough for the more radical ones to duke it out in the streets. I agree with you that the various in-group/out-group ideas have never left (that's why I wrote above that we've never walked too far from the edge), but I'm not sure that your point about the elites is true worldwide. For example, in the US, there are no dangerous socioeconomic movements worth mentioning; the conflict is between groups based on identity (i.e. on mostly immutable physical characteristics).

You have a point here (hasty generalizations like mine are always tricky). But why have truly dangerous socioeconomic movements struggled to take hold in the US? Precisely because racial and cultural conflicts have been at the forefront for decades, if not centuries. And recently, a number of European political parties have been working hard to copy American culture wars.
Even if generalization is always difficult to defend, there are specific examples that deserve attention. In several European countries, formerly socialist parties have recently moved away from socialism and closer to an American version of socio-cultural liberalism while embracing economic liberalism. The result is that the European left (what I see as the "true" left, i.e. movements favoring economic equality) has been devastated and neo-liberalism is now unequestionably dominant. What used to be mainstream leftism/socialism is now viewed as "extreme" and marginalized (relentlessly attacked and ridiculed in the media) like Corbyn's Labour in the UK, LFI in France, Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece... etc. Instead, the choice is made to appear to be between "liberals" and "illiberals" as symbolized by the recent face-off between Macron and Le Pen. And of course the media is hard at work painting socialists as being as illiberal as the far-right.
If one was to believe the media, Macron and Trump are polar opposites. In actuality, their economic policies are remarkably similar in purpose, and quite often in content as well. While everyone is focused on Trump's nationalism, it is easy to forget that the differences between nationalist neo-liberalism and globalist neo-liberalism are in fact very small, almost negligible for the common citizen's economic condition.
Just today I read an interview of Christine Lagarde praising Macron's reforms... While being careful not to criticize Bolsonaro, praising him instead for his pension reform! I believe this is very revealing. For someone as close to the top as Lagarde, it doesn't matter that much whether the winner of elections is a liberal like Macron or an illiberal like Bolsonaro, what matters is that they implement the neo-liberal agenda. Pushing the logic one step further I have come to believe that the masters of the world are content either to let the culture wars rage or fuel them when necessary. It's the perfect weapon to kill socialism for the foreseeable future.
I'm always tempted to say this is irresponsible because of the consequences. But for the masters of the world, it matters little if the culture wars devolve into armed conflicts and autocracies, so long as their financial assets are safe they can easily find a new home if necessary. Not that it is even necessary at this point in time: billionaires tend to be safe under all but the very worst regimes. Since we haven't come to the worst yet, their plan is working admirably.

[Free Northman Reborn]

I question the idea that it is perpetuated by the elites. Rather, it is a grass roots movement, with ordinary people increasingly concerned about the impact of globalization on their culture and way of life.

The economic argument around migrants is a side issue, used as a proxy for the real concern. Which is that large portions of the population simply don’t want their societies to change as a result of an infusion of people from elsewhere, with different customs and practices. And I don’t see why the multiculturalists see that legitimate concern as so undesirable.

So politicians on the left going to great lengths to prove that each migrant brings a net gain of $xxx or €xxx to the economy (even if that can be established) doesn’t matter to people who fear migration for cultural reasons, economics be damned.

[DMC]

6 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

And I don’t see why the multiculturalists see that legitimate concern as so undesirable.

So politicians on the left going to great lengths to prove that each migrant brings a net gain of $xxx or €xxx to the economy (even if that can be established) doesn’t matter to people who fear migration for cultural reasons, economics be damned.

Maybe.  Just..maybe, it has to do with the fact "multiculturalists" view welcoming migration as the very part of their own social and political culture.  Like, that whole melting pot thing.  And that huge woman statue with the torch and things.  Has it always been a battle against racist bastards that want to do what-hell-may-come to immigrants?  You bet.  That don't mean we're giving up.

[Werthead]

7 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I question the idea that it is perpetuated by the elites. Rather, it is a grass roots movement, with ordinary people increasingly concerned about the impact of globalization on their culture and way of life.

The economic argument around migrants is a side issue, used as a proxy for the real concern. Which is that large portions of the population simply don’t want their societies to change as a result of an infusion of people from elsewhere, with different customs and practices. And I don’t see why the multiculturalists see that legitimate concern as so undesirable.

So politicians on the left going to great lengths to prove that each migrant brings a net gain of $xxx or €xxx to the economy (even if that can be established) doesn’t matter to people who fear migration for cultural reasons, economics be damned.

Countries like the US and UK are mongrel nations, they always have been (the US in a more condensed period of time, though). They've been multicultural nations for centuries with everything from "national dishes" to the people who work in vital services coming from abroad, and it's the sudden denial of this which is aggravating for those who know anything about history. Cultural shifts are almost much more heavily driven from one generation to the next by technology or other economic factors (such as the availability of birth control, drugs or cheap holidays).

Most people also don't give a shit about globalisation. Historically its been the radical left who've been more concerned about globalisation for driving down local wages and allowing businesses to outsource overseas at the expense of local labour, but a lot of people have benefited from that with cheap technology, goods and food. Trump loudly complaining about this is actually an ironically left-wing argument he's embraced out of populism, whilst blindly ignoring the fact that if, for example, smartphones were made in the US, people would be paying two to three times as much for them (as a minimal example) and enthusiasm for the idea would quickly vanish at that point.

There are also related issues: more than half of the countries in the world are now experiencing negative birth rates, which means that global populations will, in the medium and long term, start to fall. This is excellent news. There's too many people on the planet and a reduction of say 50% of the planetary population over a century or two will help our long-term survival as a species. However, the currently-dominant economic-industrial system is based on continuous growth into the future. This will become impossible and companies will have to console themselves with simply making a profit, even if that profit drops (or can only increase by downsizing operations). This will cause problems with keeping people in jobs and will also naturally result in a much larger population of older people with medical and day-to-day care needs with a smaller and smaller number of younger people working to provide the tax income to support them (this can already be seen happening in Japan). Coupled with the onset of climate change, automation and AI on scales never before seen, this means that nationalism or none, Brexit or none, immigration or none, our entire mode of existence will need to be rewritten from the ground up to account for these now-inevitable issues. Yet the right is pretending it's business as usual and burying their heads in the sand.

[butterbumps!]

8 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

The economic argument around migrants is a side issue, used as a proxy for the real concern. Which is that large portions of the population simply don’t want their societies to change as a result of an infusion of people from elsewhere, with different customs and practices. And I don’t see why the multiculturalists see that legitimate concern as so undesirable.

So politicians on the left going to great lengths to prove that each migrant brings a net gain of $xxx or €xxx to the economy (even if that can be established) doesn’t matter to people who fear migration for cultural reasons, economics be damned.

What are examples of things people are trying to preserve that multiculturalism threatens to destroy, as you see it?  

[Larry of the Lawn]

10 hours ago, Galactus said:

 

 

Yes? Look at the 1970's, and late 1960's. There were multiple violent clashes (that included deaths) in the period. 

Thanks for pointing this out. The 60s and 70s in the US had much more political violence than we're seeing right now.  Not sure why that doesn't count for Altherion. 

[Rippounet]

10 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I question the idea that it is perpetuated by the elites. Rather, it is a grass roots movement, with ordinary people increasingly concerned about the impact of globalization on their culture and way of life.

I call bullshit on that. In 2002, Le Pen was at about 18%. In 2017 his daughter scored 33%. In those fifteen years, did globalization have that much of an impact? Nope. And immigration actually went down in France. So what changed? Easy. The media's coverage of the National Front changed.
First the NF under Marine Le Pen stopped bein overtly racist, started adopting coded messages instead, and the media pretended to buy it. Then the 2015 terrorist attacks happened and the NF went from being tolerated to being respectable.
Globalization played no part in all this. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. You still have about 18% of racist scum that are "increasingly concerned about the impact of globalization on their culture and way of life," but the reason why Le Pen is likely to win the next election has nothing to do with that.

[Free Northman Reborn]

10 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I call bullshit on that. In 2002, Le Pen was at about 18%. In 2017 his daughter scored 33%. In those fifteen years, did globalization have that much of an impact? Nope. And immigration actually went down in France. So what changed? Easy. The media's coverage of the National Front changed.
First the NF under Marine Le Pen stopped bein overtly racist, started adopting coded messages instead, and the media pretended to buy it. Then the 2015 terrorist attacks happened and the NF went from being tolerated to being respectable.
Globalization played no part in all this. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. You still have about 18% of racist scum that are "increasingly concerned about the impact of globalization on their culture and way of life," but the reason why Le Pen is likely to win the next election has nothing to do with that.

Pretty sure the European migrant crisis happened between 2002 and 2017. That’s a rather big event/factor to ignore in this context.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Immigration is down in the US too.  Any change happening that might be bugging @Free Northman is coming from within.  

I always thought it was hilarious how my conservative relatives that whined about immigration had so much in common with the immigrants I worked with from Mexico- they were all religious and focused on family and work.  

[Rippounet]

49 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Pretty sure the European migrant crisis happened between 2002 and 2017. That’s a rather big event/factor to ignore in this context.

Ah, I'd genuinely forgotten about this "crisis."

So yes, there was a "migrant crisis" between 2015 and 2018. Apparently about 880,000 sought to migrate to the EU in 2015.
At the time, France was supposed to welcome 19,714 people. It actually welcomed 5,029 people.
Different numbers that tell the same story. In 2017, 538,000 people applied for asylum in Europe, 175,800 of whom came from Syria. 432,000 were denied. In other words, only only 106,000 asylum seekers entered the EU in 2017.
You will probably find slightly different numbers depending on your source.
If I check the government's official website for instance, France welcomes about 200,000 immigrants a year (230,000 in 2016, 260,000 in 2017). Syrians? Nah. In 2016, about 70,000 came from our former colonies in the Maghreb (Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco), 16,000 from China and 7,000 from the US. Syria doesn't make it in the top 5. Asylum seekers? We only had a few thousand of those, as I said.
Where the hell did these Syrians go, eh?

Oh, sure there were lots of images on TV and in the newspapers. Merkel's Germany made bold choices. The rest of the EU... It varied, though of course, Greece and Italy experienced more pressure than France.
Anyway, there was no crisis in France. Again, nothing, zilch, nada. But you're right, the media presented it as a crisis. Lots of terrible images, all these brown people who seemed to want to come to our homes... Most of them ended up in camps at EU borders of course, but that story was not to be told.
Instead we had the migrant "crisis," combined with a few terrorist attacks while Marine Le Pen was busy improving her image. So of course she got 33% of the vote in 2017.
The impact of globalization on French culture and way of life, meanwhile, remained negligible.

[Werthead]

21 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Ah, I'd genuinely forgotten about this "crisis."

So yes, there was a "migrant crisis" between 2015 and 2018. Apparently about 880,000 sought to migrate to the EU in 2015.
At the time, France was supposed to welcome 19,714 people. It actually welcomed 5,029 people.
Different numbers that tell the same story. In 2017, 538,000 people applied for asylum in Europe, 175,800 of whom came from Syria. 432,000 were denied. In other words, only only 106,000 asylum seekers entered the EU in 2017.
You will probably find slightly different numbers depending on your source.
If I check the government's official website for instance, France welcomes about 200,000 immigrants a year (230,000 in 2016, 260,000 in 2017). Syrians? Nah. In 2016, about 70,000 came from our former colonies in the Maghreb (Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco), 16,000 from China and 7,000 from the US. Syria doesn't make it in the top 5. Asylum seekers? We only had a few thousand of those, as I said.
Where the hell did these Syrians go, eh?

Oh, sure there were lots of images on TV and in the newspapers. Merkel's Germany made bold choices. The rest of the EU... It varied, though of course, Greece and Italy experienced more pressure than France.
Anyway, there was no crisis in France. Again, nothing, zilch, nada. But you're right, the media presented it as a crisis. Lots of terrible images, all these brown people who seemed to want to come to our homes... Most of them ended up in camps at EU borders of course, but that story was not to be told.
Instead we had the migrant "crisis," combined with a few terrorist attacks while Marine Le Pen was busy improving her image. So of course she got 33% of the vote in 2017.
The impact of globalization on French culture and way of life, meanwhile, remained negligible.

This is reflect in the "immigrant crisis" in Britain, where we accepted less than 10,000 refugees, a lot of whom actually ended up in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The invading hordes of brown immigrants never materialised here, but it's caused some consternation.

The real "migrant crisis" in the UK was seen as perfectly legal immigration from other European countries of people coming here to work, paying more tax into the system and propping up the health and services industries which native British people are refusing to do, which for some reason is some kind of sin that has to be repaid by a massive act of economic self-harm.