Is Fascism Inevitable in the Future of the West?

[South Acren]

I doubt fascism would make a comeback in the west. Riots, chaos, and overall unrest would likely happen as well as the few people supporting fascism possibly resorting to violence to fight those against it. Honestly if anything the west would likely tear itself apart before it became fascist.

[Purgatio]

You can call it absurd and irrational all you want, but it won't go away. You might not wanna hear this, but tribalistic and in-group thinking in human beings won't go away just because someone posts on NSG "but racism is irrational", that's not a policy solution and not a substitute for a substantive solution to this problem.

Humans have been defying nature for quite some time now. I don’t see why we should be beholden to our own.

Which sounds easier, cheaper and more efficacious to you - engaging in a massive social engineering programme and propaganda campaign to engineer the next generation into becoming race-blind multi-ethnic utopians, with limited chance of success, or simply crafting an immigration policy that is pragmatic in light of our tribalistic impulse?

[Alvecia]

Humans have been defying nature for quite some time now. I don’t see why we should be beholden to our own.

Which sounds easier, cheaper and more efficacious to you - engaging in a massive social engineering programme and propaganda campaign to engineer the next generation into becoming race-blind multi-ethnic utopians, with limited chance of success, or simply crafting an immigration policy that is pragmatic in light of our tribalistic impulse?

Ignoring the strawman, the path to success is not synonymous with the path of least resistance.

[Evil Dictators Happyland]

To address the topic of the thread before I reply to posts in it:
Fascism isn't any more inevitable than communism is. A few diehard fanatics backed up by some edgy memers does not a worldwide revolution make.
The possibility that some countries might fall to fascism is frighteningly likely, but that's simply because the chance is higher than 0% and it shouldn't be.

Engineer humans to think otherwise. We can't keep on hating each other.

How? Do you have a magical 'human social engineering' kit that I've yet to hear of?

I come from Singapore, a multi-ethnic country run by a government that firmly believes in social engineering, from cradle to grave our education system and State-controlled media pumps up the narrative that all races are equal and Singapore is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural utopia...and yet, tensions remain between the three main races in Singapore. An IPS study recently showed that large proportions of each race said they would be uncomfortable with their children dating or marrying someone of a different race, that they had no friends of a different race.

If Singapore, a country where one political party dominates the government, where the education and media is dominated and controlled by that same party, couldn't engineer Chinese, Indians and Malays out of the basic tribalistic impulse, doesn't that tell you something about how deeply-ingrained this impulse is in our natural human psyche? And if a one-party state like Singapore couldn't do it, what hope is there for your wishful utopian social engineering being implemented in a pluralistic liberal democracy?

Singapore is not the rest of the world, though, and most Western countries don't have ethnic tensions to the degree you're describing.

[Purgatio]

Which sounds easier, cheaper and more efficacious to you - engaging in a massive social engineering programme and propaganda campaign to engineer the next generation into becoming race-blind multi-ethnic utopians, with limited chance of success, or simply crafting an immigration policy that is pragmatic in light of our tribalistic impulse?

Ignoring the strawman, the path to success is not synonymous with the path of least resistance.

Why? That sounds like the path to success to me. Policy-makers by definition have to be pragmatic and pursue realistic solutions, maximising the chance of efficacious success in policy programmes.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Singapore is not the rest of the world, though, and most Western countries don't have ethnic tensions to the degree you're describing.

One could argue the US has it worse, and France and Germany are getting up there.

[Purgatio]

To address the topic of the thread before I reply to posts in it:
Fascism isn't any more inevitable than communism is. A few diehard fanatics backed up by some edgy memers does not a worldwide revolution make.
The possibility that some countries might fall to fascism is frighteningly likely, but that's simply because the chance is higher than 0% and it shouldn't be.

How? Do you have a magical 'human social engineering' kit that I've yet to hear of?

I come from Singapore, a multi-ethnic country run by a government that firmly believes in social engineering, from cradle to grave our education system and State-controlled media pumps up the narrative that all races are equal and Singapore is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural utopia...and yet, tensions remain between the three main races in Singapore. An IPS study recently showed that large proportions of each race said they would be uncomfortable with their children dating or marrying someone of a different race, that they had no friends of a different race.

If Singapore, a country where one political party dominates the government, where the education and media is dominated and controlled by that same party, couldn't engineer Chinese, Indians and Malays out of the basic tribalistic impulse, doesn't that tell you something about how deeply-ingrained this impulse is in our natural human psyche? And if a one-party state like Singapore couldn't do it, what hope is there for your wishful utopian social engineering being implemented in a pluralistic liberal democracy?

Singapore is not the rest of the world, though, and most Western countries don't have ethnic tensions to the degree you're describing.

You're right, Singapore is not the rest of the world, because everything I described is much, much worse in the West. At least in Singapore one race is 75% of the population (Chinese), but in countries like the US, non-White Hispanics only make up about 62% of the population, and that proportion is falling every year. Hence why the US is seeing alarmism, racism like Trump's open anti-Hispanic and anti-Arab rhetoric, hate crimes, neo-Nazis and the alt-right. Singapore doesn't have all those things. We don't have the alt-right, neo-Nazis, hate crimes against minorities, and demagouge politicians openly demonising racial groups as threats to the Chinese majority and engaging in alarmist rhetoric.

I brought up Singapore not to imply that Singapore and the West are the same, but I was actually trying to argue the opposite. If even Singapore has ethnic tensions, even though we have an immigration and citizenship policy designed to maintain and preserve existing racial demographics, the lack of social cohesion and inter-ethnic strife will be much, much worse in the West. And indeed it is.

[Alvecia]

Ignoring the strawman, the path to success is not synonymous with the path of least resistance.

Why? That sounds like the path to success to me. Policy-makers by definition have to be pragmatic and pursue realistic solutions, maximising the chance of efficacious success in policy programmes.

Given the current global state of of the world. Ethnic-statedom actually sounds incredibly unrealistic and not at all pragmatic. The logistics alone are mind boggling.
It might sound “easy” but I guarantee it is not as simple as you are likely imagining.

Tribalism as a whole is a particularly flawed concept to base national policy on, primarily because it does not occur only the national scale. Tribalism occurs in every aspect of life, from media, to communities. You may as well create nations based on the various sci-fi fandoms.
Just because people have a shared ethnicity does not mean they share an opinion on how a nation should be run. It’s arbitrary.

[Purgatio]

Why? That sounds like the path to success to me. Policy-makers by definition have to be pragmatic and pursue realistic solutions, maximising the chance of efficacious success in policy programmes.

Given the current global state of of the world. Ethnic-statedom actually sounds incredibly unrealistic and not at all pragmatic. The logistics alone are mind boggling.
It might sound “easy” but I guarantee it is not as simple as you are likely imagining.

Tribalism as a whole is a particularly flawed concept to base national policy on, primarily because it does not occur only the national scale. Tribalism occurs in every aspect of life, from media, to communities. You may as well create nations based on the various sci-fi fandoms.
Just because people have a shared ethnicity does not mean they share an opinion on how a nation should be run. It’s arbitrary.

To be clear, I'm not in favour of countries which are already multi-ethnic becoming mono-racial - you're right, that's impossible save for policies like ethnic cleansing which would not be humane or morally acceptable. But it is possible for governments to actively take race into account when granting new citizenships, to craft citizenship policy in such a way so as to assauge fears of the racial majority becoming a 'threatened' and 'endangered' people and put a stop to this alarmist impulse in human beings.

[Alvecia]

Given the current global state of of the world. Ethnic-statedom actually sounds incredibly unrealistic and not at all pragmatic. The logistics alone are mind boggling.
It might sound “easy” but I guarantee it is not as simple as you are likely imagining.

Tribalism as a whole is a particularly flawed concept to base national policy on, primarily because it does not occur only the national scale. Tribalism occurs in every aspect of life, from media, to communities. You may as well create nations based on the various sci-fi fandoms.
Just because people have a shared ethnicity does not mean they share an opinion on how a nation should be run. It’s arbitrary.

To be clear, I'm not in favour of countries which are already multi-ethnic becoming mono-racial - you're right, that's impossible save for policies like ethnic cleansing which would not be humane or morally acceptable. But it is possible for governments to actively take race into account when granting new citizenships, to craft citizenship policy in such a way so as to assauge fears of the racial majority becoming a 'threatened' and 'endangered' people and put a stop to this alarmist impulse in human beings.

Which, basically, I see as arbitrary and unecessary.

[Purgatio]

To be clear, I'm not in favour of countries which are already multi-ethnic becoming mono-racial - you're right, that's impossible save for policies like ethnic cleansing which would not be humane or morally acceptable. But it is possible for governments to actively take race into account when granting new citizenships, to craft citizenship policy in such a way so as to assauge fears of the racial majority becoming a 'threatened' and 'endangered' people and put a stop to this alarmist impulse in human beings.

Which, basically, I see as arbitrary and unecessary.

Putting a stop to alarmist rhetoric demonising ethnic minorities as 'invaders' who will 'replace' white people isn't arbitrary and unnecessary, for those racial minorities it could even be life-saving.

[Alvecia]

Which, basically, I see as arbitrary and unecessary.

Putting a stop to alarmist rhetoric demonising ethnic minorities as 'invaders' who will 'replace' white people isn't arbitrary and unnecessary, for those racial minorities it could even be life-saving.

I was referring to the citizenship bit. Assuaging alarmist tendencies is all well and good, but I don’t think the way to do that is by giving in to them.

[Purgatio]

Putting a stop to alarmist rhetoric demonising ethnic minorities as 'invaders' who will 'replace' white people isn't arbitrary and unnecessary, for those racial minorities it could even be life-saving.

I was referring to the citizenship bit. Assuaging alarmist tendencies is all well and good, but I don’t think the way to do that is by giving in to them.

So what's your solution? How do you intend to end that alarmism and fear without addressing the underlying cause of the fear within the white majority in the US (the fear being that they will become a minority in future)? Unlike whatever you propose, I'm proposing a solution that actually addresses the root and foundational cause of the problem.

[Ifreann]

You don't need strange and wild events, though. It doesn't need to be Canada getting nuked. Between that Telegraph article being written in 2013 predicting White Britons(as opposed to White Irish or White Polish or Black British or Asian British) becoming a minority by 2066 and today we've had the Migrant Crisis and Brexit is on-going. The assumption that current trends as of 2013 would hold true for 50 years has been proven completely false and no nukes have been dropped on anyone. Despite the best efforts of North Korea.


We certainly aren't going to make policy decisions based on projections 50 years into the future because that is a long time on a human scale. To assume that nothing of consequence will change for that long is nonsense. Ye gods, do you think that anyone in the 1960s could have projected what the 2010s would be like based on data going back to 1910? Of course not. We will base policy decisions on much shorter term projections, because in the shorter term we have better chances of seeing big changes coming. But even then, those are just projections. They can be wrong. Maybe some terrible virus will emerge unpredictably. Like HIV did. Maybe some new medicine will be developed. Like antibiotics.

And there is, of course, the elephant in the room. Race is a social construct with no basis in biology. Once upon a time the Irish and Italians weren't considered white. But today they are. Today Hispanics are counted separately from whites, but that's arbitrary. I mean, where do Americans think Hispania is? Mark my words, just like the Irish and Italians were brought under the white umbrella, Hispanic Americans will be also. And that's gonna fuck your projections right up.

Again, I don't deny unpredictable events will happen which have an impact on current migration trends, death rates, birth rates etc, and yes the Oxford study obviously couldn't have predicted the UK leaving the EU or the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean, but how significant are these events in disrupting the trend that the Oxford study talks about? A lot of these demographic changes are simply the inevitable product of the differing fertility rates between races already in the US and UK, and the fact that whites generally have the highest median age compared to the other races in the US and UK, at most events like Brexit will delay the 2066 prediction by a few years rather than have a bigger impact on the demographic projections so noted.

Demographic projections explicitly based on assuming that migration trends remain the same are obviously going to be seriously impacted by Britain leaving the EU. Obviously. That Telegraph article was scaremongering about Britain being overrun by Poles and Romanians. That's why it was talking about white Britons, not white people. It obviously won't come to pass if Britain leaves the EU's common travel area.

The reason I keep bringing up 'wild events' like countries being nuked or certain ethnic groups like Asians leaving en masse to a future economically-developed China and India is because these are extreme events which actually have a potential to disrupt the massive structural factors, at present, which support the demographic projections that whites will become a minority in these nations at some point in the future (fertility rates, death rates, median age etc). Smaller events like Brexit and the refugee crisis are, simply put, a blip on a wider statistical scale. Heck, between 2014 to 2017 the number of asylum applications to the UK, during the migrant crisis, was around 50,000 every year (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44660699), when we're talking about demographic projections drawn from populations of millions of residents these kinds of events produce statistically-insignificant events. Hence, why I keep saying, barring something extreme like Canada getting nuked or Asian-Americans collectively packing up and leaving for China and India en masse, these projections are probably going to come to fruition.

Unless Canada gets nuked, Eastern Europeans will continue to migrate to Britain at the same rate as they did in 2013, no matter what arrangements the UK and EU come to regarding immigration. And India wants easier immigration for their citizens to be a condition of making a trade deal with Britain post-Brexit. But I'm sure that won't change the number of Asian Britons.

And the reason I bring up policy decisions is that Western countries have very short-sightedly failed to consider the social and cultural consequences of these massive demographic changes, failed to consider the tribalistic, in-group mentality of human beings (even if we consider such thinking to be irrational), and it is crucial the US and UK and Europe start having that conversation. We've already seen the effects these demographic changes have had on social cohesion, communal violence and inter-ethnic strife, and if we want to structure our immigration policy in view of these social consequences, that will require demographic projection into the future. I drew the comparison to ageing population because I think that is an example of a policy discussion based on a demographic projection and extrapolation into the future, which is exactly what I think needs to be done with regards to projected racial demographics.

At the start of this post immigration policy didn't matter, the trends were a result of fertility rates and median ages, and little things like Britain leaving the EU won't change anything. Now immigration policy needs to be informed by these projections because politicians need to stop demographic change from happening.

Immigration policy can't change these projections, and also immigration policy needs to change these projections.

Your claim that the Irish and Italians faced discrimination in the past in the US is obviously true, although to be clear the Irish and Italian were always considered white Europeans (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/22/sorry-but-the-irish-were-always-white-and-so-were-the-italians-jews-and-so-on/?utm_term=.d34a357a1486),

Sorry, the Washington Post doesn't want to share this gentleman's opinion with me.

but you're right that people in the US in the past considered the US not a 'White Country' but an 'Anglo-Saxon country', hence the rampant discrimination against these ethnic groups, with rhetoric similar to the anti-Hispanic immigration rhetoric today. But I bring this up because I don't agree with the comparison that 'just as the Irish and Italians became white, so can Hispanics', the difference is the Irish and Italians were always white, they look like ethnic white Europeans, the problem was America was viewed as an Anglo-Saxon-Protestant country (hence the acronym WASP) to the exclusion of Mediterraneans, Slavs and Catholics. In contrast, no one considers Hispanics who aren't white-passing as white. Yes, obviously we can sit here and have a discussion about how 'Hispanic' is simply a broad term used to describe people who are the descendants of an admixture of white, black and Amerindian, and that that admixture differs from Hispanic to Hispanic, and in reality the line between Hispanic and white is highly-blurred in terms of genetics and ancestry, but do you really think the average racist on the street is so nuanced in the way he perceives his racial identity and that of others? Obviously not. The mentality of the average racist is simplistic - if a Hispanic looks white, he's white. If he doesn't look white, in his subjective judgment, then he's Hispanic and a threat to the white identity of America. That mentality is not going away any time soon.

The Irish and Italians and Slavs and very much the Jews were considered to obviously be a different race, separate from Anglo-Saxons. Today we're obviously all "white". People's idea of what differences constitute "other" changes.

[Evil Dictators Happyland]

To address the topic of the thread before I reply to posts in it:
Fascism isn't any more inevitable than communism is. A few diehard fanatics backed up by some edgy memers does not a worldwide revolution make.
The possibility that some countries might fall to fascism is frighteningly likely, but that's simply because the chance is higher than 0% and it shouldn't be.


Singapore is not the rest of the world, though, and most Western countries don't have ethnic tensions to the degree you're describing.

You're right, Singapore is not the rest of the world, because everything I described is much, much worse in the West. At least in Singapore one race is 75% of the population (Chinese), but in countries like the US, non-White Hispanics only make up about 62% of the population, and that proportion is falling every year. Hence why the US is seeing alarmism, racism like Trump's open anti-Hispanic and anti-Arab rhetoric, hate crimes, neo-Nazis and the alt-right. Singapore doesn't have all those things. We don't have the alt-right, neo-Nazis, hate crimes against minorities, and demagouge politicians openly demonising racial groups as threats to the Chinese majority and engaging in alarmist rhetoric.

I brought up Singapore not to imply that Singapore and the West are the same, but I was actually trying to argue the opposite. If even Singapore has ethnic tensions, even though we have an immigration and citizenship policy designed to maintain and preserve existing racial demographics, the lack of social cohesion and inter-ethnic strife will be much, much worse in the West. And indeed it is.

I for one know maybe one person who deliberately doesn't make friends across ethnic lines and I live deep in the heart of Texas *clap clap clap clap*, so I highly doubt the idea that (excluding the fanatics who've weaseled their way into high positions) America's ethnic tensions are in any way worse than Singapore's.
Also, Singapore is a city state. I'm pretty sure that you cannot apply its model to the rest of the world any more than you can apply Andorra's model to all of Europe.

[Alvecia]

I was referring to the citizenship bit. Assuaging alarmist tendencies is all well and good, but I don’t think the way to do that is by giving in to them.

So what's your solution? How do you intend to end that alarmism and fear without addressing the underlying cause of the fear within the white majority in the US (the fear being that they will become a minority in future)? Unlike whatever you propose, I'm proposing a solution that actually addresses the root and foundational cause of the problem.

You aren’t really addressing the problem, you’re putting it off. Tribalism will always occur even within ethnicly homogenous states, it just won’t be between different ethnicities. Then you’ll have to come up with a solution to deal with that particular issue.
Class/income is a good example.
I’m no sociologist but I’d instead promote interactivity between the two “tribes” to build common values that they can relate to. Give them something to rally around together.

[Purgatio]

Again, I don't deny unpredictable events will happen which have an impact on current migration trends, death rates, birth rates etc, and yes the Oxford study obviously couldn't have predicted the UK leaving the EU or the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean, but how significant are these events in disrupting the trend that the Oxford study talks about? A lot of these demographic changes are simply the inevitable product of the differing fertility rates between races already in the US and UK, and the fact that whites generally have the highest median age compared to the other races in the US and UK, at most events like Brexit will delay the 2066 prediction by a few years rather than have a bigger impact on the demographic projections so noted.

Demographic projections explicitly based on assuming that migration trends remain the same are obviously going to be seriously impacted by Britain leaving the EU. Obviously. That Telegraph article was scaremongering about Britain being overrun by Poles and Romanians. That's why it was talking about white Britons, not white people. It obviously won't come to pass if Britain leaves the EU's common travel area.

The reason I keep bringing up 'wild events' like countries being nuked or certain ethnic groups like Asians leaving en masse to a future economically-developed China and India is because these are extreme events which actually have a potential to disrupt the massive structural factors, at present, which support the demographic projections that whites will become a minority in these nations at some point in the future (fertility rates, death rates, median age etc). Smaller events like Brexit and the refugee crisis are, simply put, a blip on a wider statistical scale. Heck, between 2014 to 2017 the number of asylum applications to the UK, during the migrant crisis, was around 50,000 every year (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44660699), when we're talking about demographic projections drawn from populations of millions of residents these kinds of events produce statistically-insignificant events. Hence, why I keep saying, barring something extreme like Canada getting nuked or Asian-Americans collectively packing up and leaving for China and India en masse, these projections are probably going to come to fruition.

Unless Canada gets nuked, Eastern Europeans will continue to migrate to Britain at the same rate as they did in 2013, no matter what arrangements the UK and EU come to regarding immigration. And India wants easier immigration for their citizens to be a condition of making a trade deal with Britain post-Brexit. But I'm sure that won't change the number of Asian Britons.

And the reason I bring up policy decisions is that Western countries have very short-sightedly failed to consider the social and cultural consequences of these massive demographic changes, failed to consider the tribalistic, in-group mentality of human beings (even if we consider such thinking to be irrational), and it is crucial the US and UK and Europe start having that conversation. We've already seen the effects these demographic changes have had on social cohesion, communal violence and inter-ethnic strife, and if we want to structure our immigration policy in view of these social consequences, that will require demographic projection into the future. I drew the comparison to ageing population because I think that is an example of a policy discussion based on a demographic projection and extrapolation into the future, which is exactly what I think needs to be done with regards to projected racial demographics.

At the start of this post immigration policy didn't matter, the trends were a result of fertility rates and median ages and little things like Britain leaving the EU won't change anything. Now immigration policy needs to be informed by these projections because politicians need to stop demographic change from happening.

Immigration policy can't change these projections, and also immigration policy needs to change these projections.

Your claim that the Irish and Italians faced discrimination in the past in the US is obviously true, although to be clear the Irish and Italian were always considered white Europeans (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/22/sorry-but-the-irish-were-always-white-and-so-were-the-italians-jews-and-so-on/?utm_term=.d34a357a1486),

Sorry, the Washington Post doesn't want to share this gentleman's opinion with me.

but you're right that people in the US in the past considered the US not a 'White Country' but an 'Anglo-Saxon country', hence the rampant discrimination against these ethnic groups, with rhetoric similar to the anti-Hispanic immigration rhetoric today. But I bring this up because I don't agree with the comparison that 'just as the Irish and Italians became white, so can Hispanics', the difference is the Irish and Italians were always white, they look like ethnic white Europeans, the problem was America was viewed as an Anglo-Saxon-Protestant country (hence the acronym WASP) to the exclusion of Mediterraneans, Slavs and Catholics. In contrast, no one considers Hispanics who aren't white-passing as white. Yes, obviously we can sit here and have a discussion about how 'Hispanic' is simply a broad term used to describe people who are the descendants of an admixture of white, black and Amerindian, and that that admixture differs from Hispanic to Hispanic, and in reality the line between Hispanic and white is highly-blurred in terms of genetics and ancestry, but do you really think the average racist on the street is so nuanced in the way he perceives his racial identity and that of others? Obviously not. The mentality of the average racist is simplistic - if a Hispanic looks white, he's white. If he doesn't look white, in his subjective judgment, then he's Hispanic and a threat to the white identity of America. That mentality is not going away any time soon.

The Irish and Italians and Slavs and very much the Jews were considered to obviously be a different race, separate from Anglo-Saxons. Today we're obviously all "white". People's idea of what differences constitute "other" changes.

I wouldn't say "obviously" with respect to the Jews, anti-Semitism remains a big problem in the US and hate crimes against Jews rose by 37% last year (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/13/fbi-data-hate-crimes-rise-us-report). I agree with the underlying point that our perception of who falls under "us" and who falls under "them" changes over time, but with respect to the rise of 'white solidarity' or whites in the US viewing all white Europeans as part of the same race with common interests, a big reason for that is because the US has become more diverse. When other non-white races start coming into the US, human tribalism pushes the individuals who are phenotypically more similar (Anglo-Saxons, Mediterraneans, Slavs) to hunker down together and form a common identity defined by the 'other' who are pouring into the country or having more children than them (African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans etc), this process of 'otherisation' ironically erases differences between sub-groups within the 'White/European' race.

Do you anticipate a similar process happening between Hispanics and whites in the US today? What 'other' group do you anticipate will emerge within the US and makes Hispanics and whites form a common racial identity in reaction to the increasing 'other'?

[Purgatio]

You're right, Singapore is not the rest of the world, because everything I described is much, much worse in the West. At least in Singapore one race is 75% of the population (Chinese), but in countries like the US, non-White Hispanics only make up about 62% of the population, and that proportion is falling every year. Hence why the US is seeing alarmism, racism like Trump's open anti-Hispanic and anti-Arab rhetoric, hate crimes, neo-Nazis and the alt-right. Singapore doesn't have all those things. We don't have the alt-right, neo-Nazis, hate crimes against minorities, and demagouge politicians openly demonising racial groups as threats to the Chinese majority and engaging in alarmist rhetoric.

I brought up Singapore not to imply that Singapore and the West are the same, but I was actually trying to argue the opposite. If even Singapore has ethnic tensions, even though we have an immigration and citizenship policy designed to maintain and preserve existing racial demographics, the lack of social cohesion and inter-ethnic strife will be much, much worse in the West. And indeed it is.

I for one know maybe one person who deliberately doesn't make friends across ethnic lines and I live deep in the heart of Texas *clap clap clap clap*, so I highly doubt the idea that (excluding the fanatics who've weaseled their way into high positions) America's ethnic tensions are in any way worse than Singapore's.
Also, Singapore is a city state. I'm pretty sure that you cannot apply its model to the rest of the world any more than you can apply Andorra's model to all of Europe.

Who is friends with who is obviously less significant than factors and trends like racially-motivated hate crimes, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, the alt-right, terrorism by far-right groups. Singapore doesn't have any of those problems, by definition our ethnic tensions are clearly not as bad as the US. The day 'Chinese Supremacists' start organising in Singapore, holding rallies screaming 'Malays and Indians shall not replace us' and driving cars into counter-protests is the day I agree with you that my country has it just as bad as the US when it comes to racial tensions.

[Purgatio]

So what's your solution? How do you intend to end that alarmism and fear without addressing the underlying cause of the fear within the white majority in the US (the fear being that they will become a minority in future)? Unlike whatever you propose, I'm proposing a solution that actually addresses the root and foundational cause of the problem.

You aren’t really addressing the problem, you’re putting it off. Tribalism will always occur even within ethnicly homogenous states, it just won’t be between different ethnicities. Then you’ll have to come up with a solution to deal with that particular issue.
Class/income is a good example.
I’m no sociologist but I’d instead promote interactivity between the two “tribes” to build common values that they can relate to. Give them something to rally around together.

Ah yes, the 'interaction promotes tolerance' thesis that has come under increasing challenge from within sociology itself. See Putnam's 'hunkering down' thesis which found a short-term inverse correlation between community trust/social cohesion and racial/ethnic diversity (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x)

[Alvecia]

You aren’t really addressing the problem, you’re putting it off. Tribalism will always occur even within ethnicly homogenous states, it just won’t be between different ethnicities. Then you’ll have to come up with a solution to deal with that particular issue.
Class/income is a good example.
I’m no sociologist but I’d instead promote interactivity between the two “tribes” to build common values that they can relate to. Give them something to rally around together.

Ah yes, the 'interaction promotes tolerance' thesis that has come under increasing challenge from within sociology itself. See Putnam's 'hunkering down' thesis which found a short-term inverse correlation between community trust/social cohesion and racial/ethnic diversity (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x)

That would be where the promoting interaction comes in. To “bring them out of their shell”, so to speak.

[Evil Dictators Happyland]

I for one know maybe one person who deliberately doesn't make friends across ethnic lines and I live deep in the heart of Texas *clap clap clap clap*, so I highly doubt the idea that (excluding the fanatics who've weaseled their way into high positions) America's ethnic tensions are in any way worse than Singapore's.
Also, Singapore is a city state. I'm pretty sure that you cannot apply its model to the rest of the world any more than you can apply Andorra's model to all of Europe.

Who is friends with who is obviously less significant than factors and trends like racially-motivated hate crimes, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, the alt-right, terrorism by far-right groups. Singapore doesn't have any of those problems, by definition our ethnic tensions are clearly not as bad as the US. The day 'Chinese Supremacists' start organising in Singapore, holding rallies screaming 'Malays and Indians shall not replace us' and driving cars into counter-protests is the day I agree with you that my country has it just as bad as the US when it comes to racial tensions.

The statistics you were quoting addressed cross-ethnic friendships, so I addressed the same point. I fail to see how this was a logical failing on my part.
And Singapore has a population of 5.6 million. There aren't enough people living there to have any serious neo-Nazi movements, since fringe ideologies don't garner a large percentage of the vote and you need a lot of people to have a large movement. New York City doesn't have many Nazi demonstrations, last I checked, and it has a population of over 8 million, so can I use that to demonstrate that America doesn't have serious ethnic tensions?
You can definitely claim that some or even most Asian countries don't have ethnic tensions to the degree America does, but Singapore is a terrible example of this (and also just about everything else tbh) because of its small size.

[Purgatio]

Who is friends with who is obviously less significant than factors and trends like racially-motivated hate crimes, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, the alt-right, terrorism by far-right groups. Singapore doesn't have any of those problems, by definition our ethnic tensions are clearly not as bad as the US. The day 'Chinese Supremacists' start organising in Singapore, holding rallies screaming 'Malays and Indians shall not replace us' and driving cars into counter-protests is the day I agree with you that my country has it just as bad as the US when it comes to racial tensions.

The statistics you were quoting addressed cross-ethnic friendships, so I addressed the same point. I fail to see how this was a logical failing on my part.
And Singapore has a population of 5.6 million. There aren't enough people living there to have any serious neo-Nazi movements, since fringe ideologies don't garner a large percentage of the vote and you need a lot of people to have a large movement. New York City doesn't have many Nazi demonstrations, last I checked, and it has a population of over 8 million, so can I use that to demonstrate that America doesn't have serious ethnic tensions?
You can definitely claim that some or even most Asian countries don't have ethnic tensions to the degree America does, but Singapore is a terrible example of this (and also just about everything else tbh) because of its small size.

To be fair, when I brought up Singapore at first, I originally wasn't using Singapore as an example of low ethnic tensions, the context in which I brought it up was in direct rebuttal to an earlier claim that 'social engineering' can magically end racial tensions. Going back to that earlier argument, the fact that Singapore is small actually bolsters my point, because its generally easier to implement nationwide social engineering educational programmes in a small country, and if it didn't eliminate racial tribalism in Singapore, to argue it would work if implemented in the US and UK is wishful utopian thinking. That was the context in which I was bringing up Singapore, not to argue we are some model for the world to follow, but the exact opposite point (that if a small country run by one party couldn't engineer away racism, don't expect it to work elsewhere).

As for your claim that Singapore is too small to have neo-Nazis, that might be true but it doesn't change the overall crime rate. In the US, there were 7,175 hate crimes in 2017 (https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2017/topic-pages/incidents-and-offenses), a rate of 0.022 per 1000 people. In contrast, Singapore's overall violent crime rate (not racially-motivated violent crime, all violent crime generally) is a rate of 0.51 per 100,000 people (https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Singapore/United-States/Crime), or 0.0051 per 1000 people. Think about that, our violent crime rate is lower than the US's racially-motivated violent crime rate (note that this is a crime rate, not total gross number obviously, in case you argue this is just because our population is smaller). I can't think of any clearer illustration of the state of ethnic tensions in the US than its high rate of racially-motivated violent crime. If you're a minority, would you rather members of the racial majority not be friends with you, or beat you up? Which would regard as a worse threat to inter-ethnic relations?

But you're right, if I want to argue ethnically homogeous countries have fewer inter-ethnic tensions than diverse ones like the US, it'll probably be better to bring up China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, countries where one race makes up 90% of the population and with larger populations more comparable to the US, I'll agree with you there.

[Purgatio]

Ah yes, the 'interaction promotes tolerance' thesis that has come under increasing challenge from within sociology itself. See Putnam's 'hunkering down' thesis which found a short-term inverse correlation between community trust/social cohesion and racial/ethnic diversity (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x)

That would be where the promoting interaction comes in. To “bring them out of their shell”, so to speak.

By definition, a more diverse community will have more inter-ethnic interaction than a less diverse one (logically, since if there is a higher proportion of non-whites in your community the chance of you interacting with a non-white person in your life obviously increases), so the fact that there's an inverse relationship between racial diversity and social cohesion and community trust suggests that interaction doesn't resolve ethnic tensions, contrary to your claim.

[Ifreann]

So what's your solution? How do you intend to end that alarmism and fear without addressing the underlying cause of the fear within the white majority in the US (the fear being that they will become a minority in future)? Unlike whatever you propose, I'm proposing a solution that actually addresses the root and foundational cause of the problem.

You aren’t really addressing the problem, you’re putting it off. Tribalism will always occur even within ethnicly homogenous states, it just won’t be between different ethnicities. Then you’ll have to come up with a solution to deal with that particular issue.
Class/income is a good example.
I’m no sociologist but I’d instead promote interactivity between the two “tribes” to build common values that they can relate to. Give them something to rally around together.

I have heard tell of an experiment whereby researchers introduced their subjects to the concept of "visual type", and showed them a series of images to determine whether they were Type H or Type Y. Of course, "visual type" isn't a real thing, the researchers made it up and assigned the type randomly beforehand. After performing this fake test they moved the subjects to a waiting room where they all had folders that very obviously indicated their visual type, and after some time left waiting there, easily able to see who is the same as them and who is different, they were taken away individually and asked some questions about their visual type and the other visual type. The subjects tended to think more positively about their own group and more negatively about the other group.

People were discriminating based on a completely fake and randomly assigned category that they only learned about ten minutes previously.

And what's even more interesting is that the subjects all had assigned seats in the waiting room, so researchers were able to segregate or integrate the room based on visual type. The segregated waiting room tended to develop more bias than the integrated waiting room. Sitting beside someone who is different from you, different in a completely fake and randomly assigned way, lessens your tendency to think badly of people who are different from you. So I think it's fair to say that we certainly can socially engineer racism away.

[Alvecia]

That would be where the promoting interaction comes in. To “bring them out of their shell”, so to speak.

By definition, a more diverse community will have more inter-ethnic interaction than a less diverse one (logically, since if there is a higher proportion of non-whites in your community the chance of you interacting with a non-white person in your life obviously increases), so the fact that there's an inverse relationship between racial diversity and social cohesion and community trust suggests that interaction doesn't resolve ethnic tensions, contrary to your claim.

The very article you posted disproves this, no? That ethnic communities have a tendency to “hunker down”.