The Missing European Leftwing Immigration

[arendt]

First, thanks to all for the immense response to the Debt Bondage OP. I am overwhelmed. (And still participating in that thread.) But, I just had a less well-formed thought, on which I need some feedback. I admit that this idea is sort of half-baked, but I'm hoping for help in making a better case. OTOH, I may be completely off-base here. I'm willing to considr that.

But, I just love to have an intelligent discussion.

arendt

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The Missing European Leftwing Immigration

Whether people recognize the fact or not, America has regularly been pulled towards the political left by waves of persecuted Europeans. It happened in 1848, after continent-wide revolutions against the reactionary "concert of Europe" system, set up by Kissinger's hero, Metternich. It happened around 1900, as Eastern European Jews fled persecution, and brought along sophisticated German Jews like Rosa Luxemberg and Karl Liebnicht (sp?). It happened again in the 1930s and 40s, as Jews and other talented leftwing people fled Nazi persecution.

Each wave of European leftists added their views to the American political scene. They were used to being opposed. So, when given a chance to engage in politics without being ridden down by a Cossak charge, they more than held their own. Their message, while often radical and rejected, nevertheless, created a space for trade unionism to grow in this country.

It's as if European immigration was a Nile Flood that regularly brought nutrients to the American left.

----

Today, America could really use an injection of sophisticated, progressive people. But, thanks to the Marshall Plan and the end of the Cold War, Europe is doing just fine, thank you. No one needs to flee. Eastern European countries are queueing up at the door to get into the EU.

Who is immigrating to America today? Well, whoever they are, they aren't progressively- minded.

As a techie, I have talked to a large numbers of Indian and Chinese engineers. The Indians think the American political system is great, compared to the corruption and class/caste-based discrimination back home. Besides, all we see here are the cream of the cream, who fought their way through one of the most perfectly-realized systems of Social Darwinism ever seen - the Indian technical university complex - to arrive at the prize: a job in America. Ditto the Chinese, where there are somewhere in the vicinity of 1,000 applications for every engineering school slot. Eastern European engineers (Russia, Yugoslavia, Poland) have the same Darwinist mindset, reinforced by years of hating their communist masters. That's the sophisticated side of the immigration.

On the unsophisticated side, we have massive numbers of legal and illegal immigration by dirt poor people, who expect the U.S. to be just as corrupt as whichever corporate-supported, right wing dictatorship they fled. Increasingly, their expectations are being met. These people just want to survive. They don't have the stomach to act on progressive ideas, which many expect will be met by violent police repression, if not job loss or deportation.

I'm not sure how much of this demographic nightmare to blame on the quota-by-country immigration system, or the extended-family exemption which reels in dozens of new citizens based on the first family-member getting in here.

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The issue is whether or not America, on its own, is any longer capable of generating a viable political left. The university system is under conservative lockdown, and besides, is being priced out of the reach of all but the elites. If you ask a European, they would say America has one reactionary party and one conservative-center party, and zero leftwing parties.

I submit for debate the proposition that without external immigration of progressive people, America is well on the way to becoming a vast, sun-baked desert of domestically-grown, reactionary thuggery.

Given the healthy state of Europe, such new immigration is highly unlikely. (Just an anecdote: I recently talked to a waitress in a bar who was here from Ireland on a one year visa. She said she was going back to Ireland because there was more opportunity there. Ireland, the poster child for emigration, seems better to an unskilled laborer than here! Meanwhile, waitressing and bartending is one of the few sectors generating new jobs in America.)

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NOTE: I have done my best not to stereotype immigrants by national origin. The only groups I specifically identified (various engineers and waitstaff) are hardly the targets of rightwing caricatures. I will not respond to people claiming that my post is "objectively racist" or any other such inflammatory nonsense.

[Angela Shelley]

1. FYI: A slice of American life has a German filling

On October 6, 1983, the first 13 German families arrived aboard the small ship "Concord, the "German Mayflower".

They founded Germantown in Pennsylvania and in 1688 issued the first manifesto against slavery.

Over seven million German immigrants followed.

Today more than one-fourth of the population of the United States claims German ancestry.

[mac2]

2. And so what?

Are you trying to compare them to the recent immigrants? They did arrive with skills and money...or sponsors.

The new ones illegally sneak into the country some with drugs. They don't bring a "good thing" to our country.

[arendt]

4. I'm asking if, without them, the left in America can survive at all. n/t

[Angela Shelley]

5. Yes, the tool is called "internet"

[arendt]

6. The internet is JUST a tool. There has to be someone there to use the tool.

Did the Internet stop the media from creating the "permanent campaign"? Stop the relentless dumbing-down of the debate? Stop much of anything? Get impeachment started?

Other than Kucinich, who is really a leftist among the established brand names of the Democratic Party?

arendt

[mac2]

26. Or existed at all

European immigrants came here for a better life for themselves and their children. Their children due to public education could advance, etc. In Europe the social status of the elite got it all. They and our founders wanted something different. Because of the unions and the fight for freedom the average guy could have a better life.

That worked pretty well until King Bush who once again brought European type rule here. Now the two teir social system of rich and poor has been advanced by corporate power (and our wealth stolen). Empire Building with war after war is also a European type goal.

We threw them out once...let's do it again.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. Oh please.

The immigrants at the turn of the former century were just the same as the ones today.

So are the anti-immmigrant bigots.

[arendt]

13. If I believed that, I wouldn't have started that thread. Individually, what you say is true, but...

my question has to do with the groups/categories from which the individuals are drawn.

arendt

[Hydra]

3. There are a lot of lefties here in America

They're just scared to speak up, and with good reason, considering what is done to them.

There's always a war, always a bogeyman like communism to crush the left with.

Now, the left is mostly silent, or worse, afraid to act against the red menace the rabid repubs have become.

Things will have to spiral absolutely out of control for the Left to find it's fighting soul again, I think.

[mac2]

27. The lefties are silenced but they are the majority

I've read that most Americans want a Progressive society. We are being denied it by the few.

[Cleita]

7. Well, just off the top of my head a few problems. One of the reasons

we got so many Europeans who were unwelcome in their nations of origin is because they were white. We effectively, up until the middle of the last century, kept out most people of color with quotas. When the quotas were changed, then we saw larger immigrations of brown and yellow people. The fact is that the persecuted underclasses of the brown people from Latin America whom we are trying to keep out because white people really don't want them here would effectively fill the same niche.

[arendt]

9. I'm trying to keep this on political orientation, and off skin color...

what you say is historically correct. But, my issue is not about skin color. Its about the fact that the new immigrants we DO allow in are either rabidly pro-Robber Baron capitalist or the ground-down, politically apathetic lower class.

Are you saying that we keep out the leftwingers from South America, and let in only the apathetic? Please clarify.

arendt

[Cleita]

16. I'm from South America and know that the underclasses are

often too ground down in their day to day struggle of survival to become political but if they get someone, like Hugo Chavez, who fires up hope in them then they become left thinking and will become good Democrats in this country once they learn our system. I thought I was saying that we are trying to keep these people out and we shouldn't because they will become the new working class and the new Democrats.

I'm all for making sensible laws increasing our quotas from the south so that they can enter legally. Our fellow Americans apparently don't like this as many threads in DU can attest to. This is the one issue that seems to bring out the latent freeper in normally liberal Americans. Also, you are probably thinking of the Cuban upper classes who had to flee the Castro led revolution in Cuba and they are, like our robber baron class, definitely right wing in their thinking.

In most South American countries, even the middle class is much poorer than ours, but the upper classes are very rich and very much still wanting the fuedal patronage system to exist where they own everything and there is a vast class of near starving workers to keep them rich. They only tolerate some middle classes like teachers, doctors and others who are educated because it's necessary to do so, but these middle classes unless they have figured out how to become rich merchants are pretty poor. Also, that rich mercantile class is never recognized in the country club system of the elite and they are not invited to participate.

[arendt]

17. Thanks for clarifying. Worse than I thought - the elites even shit on rich merchants...

what a medieval hell-hole, run with a high-tech, paramilitary police force and torture.

This is what the ruling class intends to bring back home to America when they apply shock therapy to the U.S. And that will be any day now, what with the cratering economy, $100/barrel oil, outsourced jobs, credit market meltdowns. Just apply a false flag terror incident or a staged fight with Iran, declare martial law, and turn lose Blackwater and Haliburton.

How is there any resistance at all left in S. America after what they have lived through?

arendt

[Cleita]

18. It's exactly what they are doing.

Also, all those elitist dicatorships were propped up and funded by our country because they let American and British corporate interests do what they wanted to do for fun and profit. I believe they have decided in back rooms that it worked so well there, why not do it here?

[alfredo]

8. The new left is from south of the border. The more they are slimed by

the right wing, the more leftist they become.

[arendt]

12. It seems logical, but where are the organizers and the organizations?

Other than that giant coast-to-coast immigration rally, I'm not aware of the new left from SOTB.

That rally offered very little to those who want to stop the total destruction of existing leftwing movements (i.e. those who are focused on causes other than immigration). My concern is that, if we are not careful, the left will either be gradually shifted to where immigration is its major issue; or immigration will be used as a wedge issue to disrupt the left.

Don't get me wrong. I think its great that S. America is finally getting the SOTA-sponsored dictators off its neck. I think that the more that happens, the less desperate immigrants will arrive here. I just don't see dealing how dealing with the issue that the OUTPUT of the pipeline creates here (i.e., illegal immigration) has anything to do with stopping the INPUT to the pipeline in S. America.

I would love to hear of a Hispanic-oriented left wing organization (And, yes, I remember Caesar Chavez.) that is relevant to my causes.

arendt

[Hannah Bell]

15. If I'm not mistaken...

there's union growth precisely in the low-wage immigrant sectors. and my own experience with latino immigrants is that they tend to be idealistic strivers rather than dope dealers - to answer the poster who painted them as "bringing drugs".

The folks "bringing drugs" are much more well-heeled.

[alfredo]

22. SEIU is one.

[mac2]

28. So if south of the border is so left how come they don't

have it there?

[DCKit]

11. There are severe limits placed on the number of immigrants from "developed" countries.

The whole system is rigged to increase the number of low-skilled, low-paid workers to the detriment of the country.

Those here on H1B visa's don't always stay, and many shouldn't be here to begin with and are paid lower wages, on average, than the skilled Americans whose jobs they are taking. Additionally, the H1B visa program is used to import all manner of unskilled labor, contrary to it's intent.

I'm second generation on my Dad's side, so I'm far from being anti-immigrant, but the current program is working against our national interest. We thrive on diversity, what we're getting is anything but.

[Elspeth]

14. Look up the 1967 immigration bill

It completely changed the immigration priorities.

[ProgressiveFool]

19. I'm not entirely sure I buy your premise, though it's an interesting case to argue

I think the "liberal" ideals are baked into the cake, as it were, in the Constitution, and every once in a while, we just have to reach a crisis point and have someone appeal to the angels of our better nature.

Human memory is too short, and human nature is perhaps too greedy. People forget the golden ages, and begin to grab for more and more of the pie until we end up in some Dickensian period where the rich hold everything and the rest of us fight for scraps. That's when the left gets energized, makes the populace understand how it is being treated unfairly, and ushers in another golden age, until people start to forget about things again. That's what the stage now is set for.

[arendt]

20. Right. You just argued the conventional case. I wonder if that isn't wishful thinking...

about the pendulum swinging back.

What if America - a vast country of disconnected people - is so intrinsically anti-progressive that it takes a constant resupply of progressives from Europe, or it will sink into Pottersville?

arendt

[ProgressiveFool]

24. it could very well be - the Robert Scheer article linked elsewhere in GD

makes that point, that no matter who the next president is, it's going to be rough trying to curb the MI complex and begin to use our resources for the good of the people. And I'm sure there must be some point at which it becomes impossible to end the slide into the far right reactionary world-view short of a cataclysm on the order of WWII.

But the ordinary people I see around me, even those who don't pay attention to every little detail of what's going on in the country, are starting to get fed up, specifically with corporations, corporate media and our political establishment, and all of the incestuous relationships that they have amongst themselves. As an optimist, I have to hope that that means something.

I guess I prefer to think of the liberal impulse as being something within all fair-minded people, rather than having to rely on influence from abroad to arouse it.

Also, the elected governments of many European countries aren't exactly liberal at the moment, such as Germany and France, so they might actually have reached an opposite stage to us, where they've enjoyed the benefits of a liberal society for so long that they're comfortable with accepting a bit of creeping conservative thought.

[apocalypsehow]

21. Interesting thesis, I haven't really studied the issue. Food for thought.

[blindpig]

23. It's up to us.

Thanks for that very thoughtful piece.

The debt that the American left owes to European immigrants is certainly great but I don't think that we are entirely hapless in this matter. We still have socialist and communists parties, there are still some unions fighting for economic justice, and let's not forget the Black Panthers.

We should not be too hard on our people, they are subjected to the most intensive full court propaganda effort in history. The intensity of this effort is proof of the Man's fear of us.

It's up to us. There is no fixing the two party system, it's a stacked deck. It's back to the street, online discussion will not a revolution make. We must learn from radical union organizers, from the socialist who have been thanklessly bearing the torch for decades.

It will certainly not be easy, but what worthwhile is?

[arendt]

25. Yes. Back to the movement. Back to union organizing. That seems to be where...

we have to begin all over again.

Geez. After watching them tear up everything that the 60s fixed (institutional racism and sexism, rampant pollution, sexual repression), now I get to watch them tear up the first half of the 20th century (what's left of the union movement).

arendt

[mac2]

29. Illegal immigrants weakened the labor movement not

helped it. They do work for cheaper wages. Union wages are depressed by them.

[Tech 9]

30. Pardon me, but in addition to being nonsense

this is just one extended, bad Euro-hard on fantasy. The "smart" immigrants drove the trade union movement over the last 100-150 years? Sigh..

But let's take this from the top. "Sophisticated, progressive people"? Uh-huh. Where in Western Europe would you like to cull these wonderful glitterati from? Germany..ha, they are, wait for it, MORE xenophobic than us, which is saying something. Great Britain? That's likes a Eureka! moment while scratching your ass -- "the Great Dingleberry comes to save!" France? Well, sorry, no need to insult your intelligence I guess. I think we can leave Eastern Europe out of this since that would insult *eveyone's* intelligence..

Europe is indeed more "progressive" than us, I guess I have to concede the point. Which means exactly jack shit. You recall this for us with the comment that burning left wing messages were "often radical and rejected". But, on the bright side, we got a consolation prize or two. I just filled the cup. Only not.

The majority of "unskilled" immigrants are coming from RW dictatorships? Really..you mean like..MEXICO? I can't tell where the hyperbole stops and the insanity begins. Maybe its a gestalt of both.

You need to look at where the struggle is taking place right now in the real world and WHO is being consumed by the conflagration. HINT: it's not us. We're just a corpulent, bloated, decrepit, flatulent mock go at an Empire, one which, as it crumbles, might do everyone a very important service by dissolving airy phantasms of Democracy and Freedom and Personal Liberty. Probably not though.

You seem to want a new vanguard party. I have the perfect one in mind for us -- the People's Front of Judea (Revival Movement). It'll be great!

(And if the PFJRM isn't for you, the Judean People's Front is sitting right over yonder)

PS A little exercise you might try: repeat the following 100 times

The Third World does exist. They do exist. They do exist!

[arendt]

32. I said I was willing to discuss it. I assumed to discuss it with someone who is sane.

> Europe is indeed more "progressive" than us, I guess I have to concede the point. Which means exactly jack shit.

You begin by accepting my premise. Then you dismiss its relevance.

> You recall this for us with the comment that burning left wing messages were "often radical and rejected".
> But, on the bright side, we got a consolation prize or two. I just filled the cup. Only not.

This is incoherent. WTF are you talking about? Consolation prize? Cup? :crazy:

> The majority of "unskilled" immigrants are coming from RW dictatorships? Really..you mean like..MEXICO?

Let's talk about Mexico. The last presidential election there ended in a month-long standoff with charges of fraud. The standoff ended when the army dispersed the protestors. Mexico is a corrupt hell-hole that has been ruled by Harvard-trained butt-lickers for as long as I can remember. It is a democracy in name only, which sold out its own people with NAFTA so that its elites could make a killing. They have an income distribution that is medieval.

So, YES, Mexico is run by a bunch of Right Wing thugs.

Next question.

Hmm. No more questions. Just an even more incoherent rant:

You need to look at where the struggle is taking place right now in the real world and WHO is being consumed by the conflagration. HINT: it's not us. We're just a corpulent, bloated, decrepit, flatulent mock go at an Empire, one which, as it crumbles, might do everyone a very important service by dissolving airy phantasms of Democracy and Freedom and Personal Liberty. Probably not though.

You seem to want a new vanguard party. I have the perfect one in mind for us -- the People's Front of Judea (Revival Movement). It'll be great!

(And if the PFJRM isn't for you, the Judean People's Front is sitting right over yonder)

PS A little exercise you might try: repeat the following 100 times

The Third World does exist. They do exist. They do exist!

You just beat me up for saying Mexico was a third world hell-hole and now you beat me up for ignoring the third world? :wtf:


Can someone please call the guys in white coats? :crazy: :crazy:

arendt

[Tech 9]

33. Hacking through the undergrowth

Oh no, you're not getting off that easy. I'm insane? Really.

Lets disentangle from some of this ideological thicket you've surrounded yourself in.

1. I don't particularly subscribe to the term Third World and used it only as a convenience. It is beyond obvious that we're talking predominantly about the Global South when we apply the term. Mexico is qualitatively NOT in the same condition as others no matter how many apt comparisons we might draw. In another context they would be (are) the proverbial "barbarians at the gate". Not that they don't have competition of course (Chinese, Arabs in Europe -- we have so many fictitious Visigoths these days) Again, there are a great many valid and urgent parallels, but overgeneralizations mask as much truth as they reveal.

2. OK, if Mexico is a RW dictatorship..isn't the United States as well? Hell, more so? This is the danger of hyperbole..we are what we are and there is no need to dress it up as something its not. To say "Mexico is not a dictatorship" is not the same as defending the current Mexican government. If you'd like to argue that Mexico is a de facto dictatorship, do so.

3. Progressive is a buzzword that is emptier than the empty suits who lay claim to the moniker and their venerating empty head toadie acolytes. Progressives don't effect change, they apply balm -- both to intolerable inhuman mass immiseration AND to their consciences.

Q: How many progressives does it take to change a light bulb

A: Progressives don't change anything

4. The true struggle lives, breathes, dies and is reborn time and again in mainland China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Haiti, Cuba, and a thousand other places..but not London or Seoul or Washington, DC. Yet rather than acknowledge that as the real truth you'd sooner pray for bloodless European intellectuals to save us with their programs designed for no other reason than fecal incontinence..too fucking late (a simpler way is to eat a lot of rice). Like a bullet in the chamber, the shit and debris exits the pucker at 300,000 km/s and when it hits the wall it's a fucking piledriver, sheer momentum slicing through granite, concrete and steel and cheaply made plasterboard like it ain't even there. It rolls over cities and gutters in a rain/reign of fire and smoke and combustion. Its kinetic, its alive.

Better buckle your chin strap soldier, cuz John Henry's on a deadline and he don't give a rat's ass what Old Europe thinks.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

31. Someone told me that many recent immigrants have been sponsored by churches.

That the catholic churches have been working in the Latin countries to indoctrinate them into heavy duty right-wing evangelism and then bringing them over here.

I don't know if this is true or not - but I wouldn't put it past the right wing.