The political game is largely responsive to the mechanics of supply and demand.
If a party makes an offer that meets a growing demand from the electorate, it will go up, and vice versa.
Everywhere
The far right has won in Italy. In Sweden, she made an amazing breakthrough.
In many other European countries, it is progressing.
What is the offer of these parties that meets the growing demand?
Just listen to those parties and these voters.
Listen to Joseph Vakal’s editorial on Richard Martineau’s daily 9:48 a.m. show. Across Radio QUB :
The answer can be summed up in one word: migration.
Growing numbers of voters are increasingly uncomfortable, if not outright hostile, to mass immigration, and these parties echo that concern.
These parties may have simplistic or misleading answers, but they are not deafening or condemning the voter who expresses their dissatisfaction.
Why this rise in anti-immigration sentiment? After all, immigration is nothing new.
Four aspects of the problem have changed.
The first is folders.
A handful of communities, including Quebec, are receiving massive and unprecedented amounts of immigrants, beyond their ability to integrate, and as a result native-born citizens see the neighborhoods they grew up in transformed without their consent, and end up looking like strangers at home.
The second is where immigrants come from.
When the immigrants were Italians, Portuguese, Greeks, Latin Americans, and Vietnamese, integration was easier.
These new arrivals came from cultural, religious, or linguistic realms less distant from the host society.
Let’s not pretend: Today, tensions often stem from disturbing religious claims or practices, and militant Islam is at the center of the majority of controversies.
The third is the position of many immigrants.
When my family and I arrived in 1970, we were filled with two feelings: reticence and gratitude.
It was about blending into the landscape, turning to Quebecoa as much as possible, keeping our own customs in the private sphere, not asking to change the laws for us, and showing gratitude to the people who didn’t have to make room for us.
Nowadays, it is difficult to avoid the impression that many immigrants are asking the host society to adapt to them.
For problematic situations, in the particular case of Quebec, we can add the frequent refusal to learn French: why learning a language is less important, as many newcomers say to themselves?
always more
The fourth change is the dominant ideology.
There is already a quasi-monopolistic immigration ideology in our media and in our education system. .
It is based on three points: a) always more, b) emigration is uniformly necessary and positive, and c) any criticism can only be malicious intent and morally reprehensible.
Put it all together and you’ll understand why tensions rise and escalate, here as elsewhere.
