DML wrote:captain red dog wrote:Karl wrote:I know I prattle on about it, but here 'engaging' with the far-right has got us into a situation where even ostensibly left-wing politicians use barely-concealed racist code-phrases like [/b] "legitimate concerns about immigration"[/b] to appeal to racist voters. How do liberal centrists convince far-right voters that they 'understand' them, without giving the impression that it's OK to hold their horrible views? Normalising those points of view will make things worse -- look at the spike in hate crime after the referendum.
I'm confused there, you think having legitimate concerns over immigration is a racist position?Trump didn't win by just convincing far right America. He convinced enough of the centre ground to support him in key states.
Honestly, the world is becoming a smaller place whether people like it or not. I wouldn't say its racist, but I would say its utterly backwards.
I think there is plenty of room to legitimately criticise immigration and how it has been handled, certainly in the UK at least. I'm not overly familiar with the problems people say they have in the US as I find it difficult to understand when they have so many ethnic groups from a long history of immigration and actually seem to have tighter border restrictions than Europe.
In terms of the Trump appeal, I put it down to a long line of factors that he has been able to capitalise on. Jobs have been lost to automation (which will only increase), cheap overseas labour, the economic downturn earlier this decade and to a much smaller scale immigration and illegal immigration. I think those communities have been largely abandoned in a similar way I guess to northern mining towns, former fishing communities and the motor industry in the UK.
Ironically the Republicans are responsible for most of those issues in my opinion, but Trump isn't your typical republican.