Dustin:
The levels of deliberate denialism and ignorance are simply astounding.
K: and this is directed to…?
Kropotkin
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Let’s take just one of the European roots of the US - England. England was made up a bunch of groups that warred on each other. Yes, later, three of them would get lumped together, but the Angles Saxons and Jutes warred against each other, you know with all the killing of kings, raping of the other groups women and so on. The Danes (Vikings) made war on those guys. They all made war on the Celtic Britons. The Normans came in later and killed and/or replaced the Anglo-Saxon royalty and spoke yet another language - which is why English has so many words for the same things. The Normans were semi-French Vikings that had settled in France and become kinda French, but were still very warlike. They set up a colonial apartheid in English, which shows how close they felt to the people they’d colonized.
Different groups became Christian at different times and happily desecrated other groups places of worship and religious artifacts. Since there was Roman blood in there also, given the distances involved and the diversity of cultures that became the English, we are talking about a muliticultural, globalist society emerging from groups that hated each other and enthusiatically made war on each other for a long time.
That’s one source of Americans.
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My mistake. When I asked you about expanding legal immigration, you compared that to “resolving murder rates by making murder legal”, suggesting that you see immigration as a problem in need of “resolving” whether or not it’s legal.
I’ve asked you to state your position explicitly a few times, and I’ll ask again:
- Would the current rate of immigration be OK if everyone coming in passed through some government process? (think Ellis Island)
- Should we expand legal immigration? Should we restrict it? Why?
- Assuming you want some sort of screening for legal immigrants, what are you screening for? Does the current legal immigration process successfully screen for it?
- What’s your theory for why legal immigrants commit more crimes than illegal immigrants? and for why native-born citizens commit more crime than either?
This house/country metaphor seems like a crux of our disagreement, so let’s tease it out.
We can come up with some similarities between a house and a country: both have defined boundaries; both have people that live in them and people that don’t; both often have rules about who can cross the boundary and under what conditions.
But there are also important differences. The most important difference, to my mind, is this: my country is full of strangers, and my home isn’t. I know quite a lot about every single person who enters my home at any given time, but almost everyone living in my country is as completely unknown to me as almost everyone living outside my country. That has nothing to do with borders or immigration.
By contrast, when I’ve lived in shared living spaces (dorms, apartments), I have not felt entitled to prevent strangers from entering the building. I fully expect strangers to enter the building, because the building is full of strangers who live there. If a stranger wants to rent the apartment next to mine, I have no say in who that stranger is, and that seems perfectly reasonable.
Similarly, my country is full of strangers, and if a stranger wants to buy the house next to mine, I have no problem with that, I have no say in the matter, and I don’t know why it would make a difference if that stranger is moving there from a different country.
How so? How are Muslims in Europe “destroy[ing] the western world”?
I’m talking more generally about the international far-right movement. It’s necessarily globalist in practice, but they identify politically as nationalists. And roughly every European ‘nationalist’ movement is connected to it.
Absolutely. Ethnocentrism is abhorrent on its own terms, but it also prevents the creation of a more just society generally, and in many cases it’s intentionally stoked to do exactly that.
Ethnonationalists are not only bigoted, they’re also absolute rubes. Murdoc is from Australia, Thiel is from Germany, Musk is from South Africa, and they are all huge funders of the anti-immigrant politics in the US.
I agree with this (and most of the rest of your post), and it’s worth repeating that this conversation is exactly the kind of distraction that stirring up ethnonationalist sentiment is meant to create.
But it’s a hard balance. Ethnonationalist ideas are actually harmful in themselves, separate from the harms they enable. The ideas themselves motivate real-world violence and immiseration, and where they don’t, they sow fear and division that makes everyone worse off.
It’s worth confronting the ideas, it’s worth pointing out that they are the kind of evil idea that good people rightly reject, it’s worth connecting them to the evil ideas of the past that are regarded as evil even by people who embrace ethnonationalism.
I think it’s worth fighting over the ideas. What’s happening in the west is not just a policy failure, it’s a collapse of enlightenment values more generally. Defending immigration entails explaining the values that gave us things like democracy and rights and a nation of laws. Ethnonationalist ideas are incompatible with those things.
My least empirically justified belief is that people are rational, that they care about the truth and they care if their ideas are inconsistent, and they can be persuaded by reason. So I argue with ethnonationalists.
But you’re right, it’s worth keeping in mind that there are structural problems that will often require us to hold our noses and form conflicted coalitions to fix. And most of my meaningful political contributions are that kind of thing.
But here, I fight bad ideas.
In the US, Native Americans are a legally distinct class. That distinction still exists in the Constitution, and for better or worse it’s still the law of the land. The colonists and the early US entered a number of treaties with Native Americans and treated them as members of a sovereign state, and that treatment continued as their lands were swallowed up by US expansion.
That’s why they have direct control over membership and limited ability to decide the law on designated tribal lands. I think that’s bad for many of the reasons I’ve offered against ethnostates.
And it’s been terrible for the people, native lands are deeply impoverished. They’re relegated to low-value land to begin with, but generally they’re poorer than surrounding areas. And ironically they have a similar dynamic with the relatively wealthy beneficiaries of those laws, e.g. casino owners, who I imagine want to keep what remains of the legal distinctions because it keeps them empowered.
And in many places the modern expression of those culture is somewhat fictional, it’s a pastiche of elements of distinct cultures that colonized and waged war on each other before Europeans arrived. Native Americans were repeatedly displaced and grouped together indiscriminately. The surviving culture is then disney-fied because the legal situation makes commoditizing what’s left one of the biggest exports available to their descendants.
But as I’ve said, I’m not against culture, I’m against treating people differently under the law. I think we should celebrate Native American cultures because they’re interesting, they’re rich, they’re unique, and they tell us something about humanity. There’s a lot about the US that can’t be fully understood without reference to those people and cultures (including, arguably, the idea of a federation of states).
But yes, deciding legal status based on genetics is racist.
This is partly why I keep bringing up migration between US states, and migration within the EU. There was a time when that was considered immigration, and it’s not anymore.
I’m not sure this is true. Judaism is also a religion, but antisemitism isn’t about the belief system. And I think Islamophobia functions in a similar way, it’s an expression of racism. Like, there are plenty of Middle Eastern Christians, and I don’t think Islamophobes are any less fearful of them.
I would add electing fascist regimes that seek to undermine democracy and the rule of law. That is actually a threat to liberalism and Enlightenment ideals. That’s another tension.
Much has been written about how much intolerance should be accepted in a tolerant society. To a great extent, I think this is a problem that solves itself: People who grow up in diverse places tend to embrace universalism, liberalism, equality, tolerance. When there’s no majority, it’s easy to see the value of minority rights.
Also worth noting that telling someone they’re wrong is not anti-Enlightenment. The freedom to disagree is core to liberalism.
Sure, I can agree with that. We have lots of social constructs, and we should reinforce the ones that are beneficial and dissolve the ones that aren’t.
There is a real world, and our social constructs affect the way we interact with it. We should choose constructs that help us form resilient, productive societies.
That doesn’t seem controversial.
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Then what exactly are your problems with the social constructs of race, ethnicity, and culture?
Is it because it doesn’t meet the standard of social construct in your ideals of global assimilation?
Why should people embrace your more liberal and global social constructs? Why shouldn’t they be dissolved right now?
For one thing, because of how those concepts are defined, they fall apart around the edges after at most one generation.
But it’s also harmful within a single generation: treating a more or less arbitrary distinction as though it conveys something important about people is a bad way to run a society.
On the other hand, giving everyone equal rights is useful. Equality under the law is useful.
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Again: because of religion. Muslims won’t give up their religion, Christians won’t give up their religion. Atheists also reject Islam. As the number of Muslims keeps growing, they are destined to clash more and more. This is already in progress and will get worse over time. Christians and atheists will expect Muslims to integrate and Muslims will expect Christians and atheists to integrate.
Putting the two gods together, the Christian God and Allah, didn’t work for over a thousand years, why should we assume that it will work now?
So you’re basing your idea of nationalism on what the far-right wants you to base it on. Many people on the rest of the “right” and on the “left” also identify as nationalists, they just don’t stoop so low as to appropriate the nationalist label. There is no inherent connection between the far-right and nationalism.
Oh how I long for the old daze…living in West Germany…fighting the Cold War…one beer tent at a time…
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Yet wokies, who are invariably pro mass immigration (or pretend to be), are the very people who are obsessed with ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’. It’s ALL they talk about (when they aren’t simpering over men in dresses and bad wigs). If everyone is ‘the same’ then what exactly is a ‘minority’? What are you going to label them when they are no longer a ‘minority’? Or does ‘minority’ just mean ‘convenient receptacle for virtue-signalling brownie points’ and whoever is the latest fashion accessory for wokedom? Not all ‘minorities’ are created equal 
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On the one hand, atheism used to be punishable by death in Christian Europe, and it isn’t any more. On the other hand, Catholics and Protestants still kill each other from time to time, but they mostly live side by side peacefully.
Religious conflict is not new, but it is manageable in a liberal society.
I’m talking about people who call themselves nationalists, and who espouse the kinds of policies advanced in this thread, for reasons similar to ones offered in this thread.
If you don’t want to call them nationalists, do you. My point is that they, and not Muslims, are the current biggest threat to the Western world.
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Americans almost invariably fail to realize that the issue of putting Islam into Christian countries is NOT like the ones you mentioned. Another “one true god” is introduced, and the planet should be unified under him. Allah didn’t agree to said liberalism.
Obviously Muslims aren’t the current biggest threat to the Western world.
My favorite part of liberal western societies is that you can be thrown into prison up to twenty years for a victimless crime like Holocaust denial or revisionism in Germany, arrested for mean Tweets in England, and in Nebraska you can face up to six years in prison for destroying a gay pride flag.
This is what western liberal social values is all about. Our cherished freedoms at work.
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Oh, the little down thumb. How cute. Do you do that in court? 
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No dangers of economic financial capitalism in the western world?
What would a D.C. financial lawyer have to say on the subject?
MrAuthoritarian:
My favorite part of liberal western societies is that you can be thrown into prison up to twenty years for a victimless crime like Holocaust denial or revisionism in Germany, arrested for mean Tweets in England, and in Nebraska you can face up to six years in prison for destroying a gay pride flag.
This is what western liberal social values is all about. Our cherished freedoms at work.
K: and like a good conservative, you simply ignore context…
Germany for instance, had a little situation you may have heard
of, you know, the Holocaust…and their laws, whether we agree
or not, we aren’t living in Germany, are we? anyway, that is simply
a reaction to Germany’s past… and as far as Nebraska goes, it
can be a felony to take someone flag depending… for example if you take
a flag off a porch, and set it on fire, you can be prosecuted for property theft,
or criminal mischief or arson… or you can be prosecuted for a hate crime,
again, depending… so, your statement is not actually true…
because there are some variables there… the why makes the
difference… so, if one paints a remarkable broad picture,
as you did, you get the results you got… but get specific
and the picture you paint goes bad…
Kropotkin
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One of the rare times I’ve AI, and it said this:
AI Overview
Yes, one can be arrested and prosecuted in England for social media posts, depending on whether the content crosses the legal threshold into specific criminal offenses rather than just being perceived as “mean” or rude.
So, once again, you are wrong… maybe try some research next time…
Kropotkin
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Yes, we all know how consistent and rational everything is now, where words like ‘suicide’, ‘paedophilia’, and anything that ‘misgenders’ someone are censored on videos, but police cam videos that are highly likely to CAUSE suicide, and others that show things like a woman being found with a headless toddler in the trunk of her car are good to go.
Yep, a world where so-called ‘Nationalism’ (what does that even mean?) is called the ‘biggest threat to everyone and everything’, where it’s perfectly acceptable to call for the death of Jews and where an ideology that specifically preaches this is protected at all costs and criticism of it can bring on a ‘hate speech’ arrest.
Yes. People are so normal and sane.
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That doesn’t contradict what he said. It’s obvious you have asked AI a ‘leading’ question. ‘Mean’ or ‘rude’ can also be illegal you know ‘Hate speech’ is entirely subjective, so yes, plenty of people have been arrested because of the feigned hurty feelies of someone in a ‘special protected group’ (like thunking great men in frocks–so ‘vulnerable’ and ‘marginalised’).
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What should the punishment be for destroying someone else’s property?
Sure, and I’ve criticized capitalism in its modern form. Extreme wealth inequality is corrosive.
I started to reply, but your posts are all over the place, I don’t know where to begin. The ‘wokies’ are bad because they like immigration, talk about race, talk about gender, say everyone is the same, don’t let you talk about gender, don’t talk about gender the way you want, virtue signal, ban the word suicide, cause suicide, post videos of headless toddlers (…?), call for the death of Jews, and prosecute hate speech.
You seem to believe there’s a political ideology that endorses everything you don’t like, it is absolutely dominant and controls every government and corporation, and if someone disagrees with you on anything they are implicitly endorsing the entire bundle.
Yeah, thumbs down.
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Not six years in prison.
Well, at least you criticize capitalism. Of course the reluctance of liberals to embrace economic Marxism fully speaks volumes.
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He’s not wrong. Insulting is one of the criteria that can get you arrested. The UK has arrested people for the most ridiculous ‘speech’, because the new law has the wording grossly offensive. Which opens the doors for subjective reactions to lead to prosecutions. Often people have the charges dropped, sometimes after serving their punishments, but the arrests are common and ridiculous.
Further, what are considered borderline or even, yes, angry posts, lead to visits from the police. That is intimidation and anthetical to liberal values. Yes, many of these cases get overturned, but this is a really dangerous shift away from free speech. Massive Volume of Filings: Between 2014 and 2019, police forces in England and Wales recorded over 120,000 Non-Crime Hate Incidents. By 2022, forces were logging an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 NCHIs per year. The legislation and policy around this has NO lower threshhold. If someone saw something they didn’t like and were offended or whatever, they can report it and it will get investigated. It’s not Stasi, but it’s on the way there. The state is validating people reporting other people for non-crimes!!! and investigating. Because officers were required to “investigate” the context of a complaint, they frequently visited homes or workplaces. In many cases, officers explicitly told citizens they were not under arrest and no crime had occurred, but that they were there to “warn” them or “check their thinking.”
And there is also the political side of this where free speech around political issues has led to arrests and intimidation. I make that list after the absurd idiocy cases.
The US has better protection for free speech, especially around politics. Imagine the amount of artworks that could be taken down for grossly offensive (and to whom). Laws such as Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 and Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 criminalize words or behavior deemed "abusive, insulting, or grossly offensive. IOW there is trend in legislation towards restrictions that do not fit with a free society.
And note, the people getting arrested are not just conservatives. It includes liberals, leftists and people with many different political views.
Absurd idiocy cases
A 15-year-old boy was standing peacefully outside the Church of Scientology headquarters in London holding a cardboard sign that read: “Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult.” Police officers confiscated his sign, issued him a court summons, and threatened him with prosecution under Section 5, claiming the word “cult” was “abusive and insulting.” Facing widespread embarrassment, the CPS dropped the summons shortly after.
For example, a young woman had a tweet with a rap song in it. The song was popular and all over the internet. It had the N word in it. She was convicted, but after her punishment this was overturned. Despite the song being all over the internet and her intent was to honor a friend who had died who liked the song, she got arrested and convicted, wasting tax dollars and doing her harm.
Paul Bussetti After filming a group of friends burning a cardboard model of Grenfell Tower on a bonfire, Bussetti shared the video in a private WhatsApp group. The clip was leaked to YouTube and went viral. Bussetti was arrested and prosecuted under Section 127 for sending a grossly offensive video. I mean, how many movies of exploding buildings were there during that time. There’s that idiotic one where the house of parliament was blown up - no one arrested the producers directors and special effects people. This shit is aimed at little people.
Oxford University student Sam Brown was walking home after celebrating his exams when he passed two mounted police officers and jokingly asked one, “Do you know your horse is gay?” When he refused to apologize for the joke, the officer called for backup. Two squad cars arrived, and Brown was arrested under Section 5 of the Public Order Act for “homophobic comments,” spent the night in a police cell, and was handed an £80 fine. He refused to pay, and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) eventually dropped the case before trial. – how is that question homophobic???
Seven police officers arrived at a home in Leeds to escort a 16-year-old autistic girl back after a report. In her hallway, the girl offhandedly remarked that one of the female officers, who had short hair, “looked like my lesbian nana”. The girl’s grandmother is, in fact, a lesbian. The officer claimed the comment was a “homophobic public order offense” and called for backup. Video footage showed police forcibly dragging the screaming, panicking teenager out from under her stairs. Following public outrage, West Yorkshire Police dropped the investigation.
Hampshire Police sent five officers to the house of Darren Brady after he retweeted a meme on social media depicting Progress Pride flags arranged into a swastika shape as a critique of modern identity politics. When Brady asked the officers why he was being placed in handcuffs at his own door, an officer responded on video: “Someone has been caused anxiety based on your social media post, that is why you have been arrested.” He was taken to a police station, but the force later admitted the arrest was inappropriate and took no further action.
Musician Simon Ledger was performing a live acoustic gig at a bar on the Isle of Wight. As he sang the famous 1974 disco hit “Kung Fu Fighting,” a passerby of Chinese descent overheard the performance, felt offended, and called the police. Officers arrived at the venue, arrested Ledger on suspicion of a racially aggravated public order offense, seized his microphone, and held him in custody. Police later realized the absurdity of prosecuting someone for singing a mainstream pop song and released him with no charge.
Jamie Murray, who ran a Christian-themed cafe in Blackpool, had a TV screen mounted on the wall playing silent Bible verses (such as passages from 1 Corinthians). Two police officers entered the cafe and warned Murray that displaying biblical text referencing traditional morality constituted a “hate crime” under Section 5 of the Public Order Act, warning him he faced arrest if he did not turn the screen off.
During a formal public ceremony proclaiming King Charles III in Oxford, a local resident named Symon Hill called out a single sentence from the crowd: “Who elected him?” Police immediately seized him, placed him in handcuffs, and arrested him under newly expanded public order powers. Police later dropped the investigation after acknowledging that asking a question in public did not meet the legal threshold for a breach of the peace.
Suppression of political views
In August 2024, 12 police officers (including plainclothes counter-terrorism officers) raided the home of pro-Palestinian online commentator and activist Sarah Wilkinson. The Speech: Wilkinson frequently posted online commentary, news updates from Gaza, and anti-war political posts criticizing Israeli military actions. Police Action: She was arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 explicitly for “content that she has posted online”. Police seized her electronic devices, searched her house, and released her under strict bail conditions that initially banned her from using electronic devices.
In August 2024, independent left-wing journalist and anti-imperialist commentator Richard Medhurst was intercepted by police as he stepped off a plane at London Heathrow Airport. The Speech: Medhurst had produced extensive video commentary and social media posts criticizing UK foreign policy, NATO, and Israel. Police Action: He was arrested under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000—a clause making it an offense to “express an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization”. He was held in isolation for nearly 24 hours, questioned about his political opinions and journalistic sources, and had his phones and recording equipment confiscated
Jennifer Swayne, a disabled feminist activist in Wales, was arrested by Gwent Police while riding her mobility scooter and putting up stickers around Newport. The stickers contained gender-critical political slogans, including “Humans cannot change sex,” “No male violence in female spaces,” and slogans questioning trans women in female changing rooms and prisons. Police Action: Swayne was arrested on suspicion of a hate crime and criminal damage, held in a cell for over 12 hours, and had her home searched by police. Officers confiscated her stickers, her phone, and several academic books on feminist and gender theory as “evidence”. Outcome: The arrest sparked widespread criticism over police confiscating academic literature and policing political expression on sex-based rights. She was released, and police took no further action. You may disagree with this feminist, PK, but it is anti-liberal to suppress her political views.
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce (2022–2023) – “Silent Prayer” Near an Abortion ClinicVaughan-Spruce was standing completely still on a public pavement near an abortion clinic in Birmingham within a “buffer zone” established by a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO). She held no signs, made no noise, and did not approach anyone. Police Action: Officers approached her and asked if she was protesting. When she said no, an officer asked if she was praying. She responded, “I might be praying in my head.” Police searched her, handcuffed her, and arrested her for committing an offense under the buffer zone order. Outcome: She was arrested twice for silent prayer. In 2024, West Midlands Police paid her a £13,000 (~$17,000) settlement after she filed a legal claim for unlawful arrest, false imprisonment, and breach of her human rights.
Graham Smith & Republic Activists (2023) – Pre-emptive “Not My King” Arrests
During the Coronation of King Charles III in May 2023, Graham Smith, the head of the anti-monarchy group Republic, was unloading placards that read “Not My King” alongside five other organizers in central London. Police Action: Metropolitan Police utilized brand-new powers under the Public Order Act 2023 to arrest Smith and his team pre-emptively before any protest had occurred. Officers claimed that the luggage straps used to secure the placards were potential “locking-on equipment” (a newly criminalized protest tactic). Outcome: Smith and the protesters were detained in custody for 16 hours—ensuring they were locked up for the entirety of the coronation. Police later expressed “regret” for the arrests and admitted there was no evidence of intent to disrupt the event, but critics pointed out that political protest had been successfully silenced when it mattered most.
Police have frequently used communications laws against environmental activists (from groups like Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion) not just for blocking roads, but for sending messages or hosting public talks: Planning / Exchanging Posts: In multiple instances, activists have been arrested in dawn raids under Section 127 of the Communications Act or “conspiracy” charges simply for organizing Zoom calls, posting public invitations to peaceful blockades online, or tweeting calls to action before any physical protest took place.
There are many, many other cases.
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