[taoufix]

In the last week, Macron/France :

- call[s] to 'cut off' social media during riots sparks backlash in France (france24.com)

- passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone, spy on people [2]

- blames Video games [3]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36615378

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36616037

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36630151

[rayiner]

Macron has to do something to divert blame from France’s importation of a underclass from its former colonies.

I don’t see how Europe isn’t totally screwed. Their tight-knit social democracies are not compatible with immigration. But without immigration they don’t have enough workers.

[johnnyworker]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Nahel_Merzouk

A cop shot an unarmed teenager in the face point blank. So he wouldn't get away. What kind of "social contract", or whatever one would call it, is that? I mean, being invisible and rightless, but allowed to work and get a tiny fraction of the value your work represents, until someone just murders you and then makes it out you were such a danger to them?

I don't know about other Germans, but if I was treated that way, I would burn things down, too. At the least. Show me that you have no problems killing me, and that you wouldn't miss a beat, and I would not just roll over and live out my life making you richer and even bolder in that insolence.

The thing is, we aren't treated that way (neither are Swedes or whoever you might have in mind) and most of us leave the whole "don't wait until it's you" mostly to a poem by Niemöller, where it doesn't make any demands of us.

[pjc50]

> Their tight-knit social democracies are not compatible with immigration. But without immigration they don’t have enough workers.

People keep saying both of these things, and it's not clear that either of them is true? I mean, the whole "race riot because a cop murdered a nonwhite person" phenomenon is also pretty American, and it's not exactly a tight-knit social democracy?

The racism is definitely a problem, but you have to remember that quite a lot of the younger generation of nonwhite people are French; i.e. born in France holders of French nationality, considered to be "French" by the French census, educated in French schools, and occasionally shot at by French gendarmes.

If France did not want to be full of Algerians it should not have tried to make Algeria French, at the cost of a huge number of lives, but there is no time machine for that.

[onetimeusename]

I don't think needing workers is why immigrants were brought to Europe. That seems like an excuse government gives but it's contradictory that immigrants from other cultures were brought in by the government to work but then also have higher unemployment and use more welfare, citation in here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_France I guess the government could have just got it badly wrong. In theory, worker shortages would lead to higher wages and government efforts to stabilize birth rates like what Japan is trying to do.

I think the actual reason is something like a vast western empire promoting diversity as a good thing for your country. The 2015 immigrant surge into Europe was not because EU countries needed workers. Similarly, countries that have tried to block immigration like Poland and Hungary are accused of being far right fascists and uncooperative and NGOs from the US come after you. The general belief seems to be that too many white people is a bad thing and backwards.

[alienicecream]

They could promote policies to increase child birth among the native population and to foster a culture, including religious values, that support that. The justification that they need to import foreigners to support the elderly is nonsensical on it's face. If wealth is the cause of low child birth, what's going to happen when these immigrants achieve the same level of wealth as the native population in the next generation? The logical conclusion is that they are not importing these people to address the economic issue, but for ulterior motives, like diluting the native stock to diminish an ancestral identity that buttresses nationalism.

[volfied]

They don’t have enough workers they can exploit

[constantcrying]

>But without immigration they don’t have enough workers.

Youth unemployment in France is at 17%.

[dekken_]

> But without immigration they don’t have enough workers.

I think this is hard to prove. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.

[ekianjo]

You dont need more workers when you have mass unemployment

[throwaway6734]

I don't understand how most of Europe hasn't been more hair-on-fire emergency over the past decade about this.

[mjhay]

Stay classy, HN.

[cm2187]

I don't think they don't have enough workers. European countries mostly de-industrialised and have very little use for an uneducated workforce. But they would decline demographically at a similar rate than China or Japan without mass immigration.

[adventured]

> But without immigration they don’t have enough workers.

They have lived beyond their means for a long time. The solution is they have to either boost productivity generally with a mostly stagnated population, have fewer people at present levels equivalent of output, or accept a lower quality of life.

You can see the fact that they're living beyond their means even in supposedly well-off countries like Denmark / Norway / Finland / Sweden / Netherlands, where the household debt to income figures have been shockingly high for 10-15 years now. They're the most indebted people in world history, pretending it's sustainable (maybe for Norway, thanks to their extreme per capita pollution output via fossil fuels).

https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-debt.htm

The Baltics and some parts of Eastern Europe, are the best positioned going forward.

[selimthegrim]

So how is Bangladesh doing with those Biharis and Rohingyas?

[roenxi]

Although true, it is the "tight-knit" there that is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Europe had a couple of options to merge socialism and migrations:

- US style, incorporate the migrants into the fabric of society by forming detectable enclaves that, nevertheless, don't riot in the streets.

- Focus on cheap energy over environmentalism, allowing everyone to enjoy rising standards of living.

- Migration that cynically but effectively focuses only on skilled migration, forming an over-class of highly skilled and motivated migrants to support the socialist underclass.

The issue here is they seem to be trying to bring in a new underclass, then stomp them repeatedly with COVID policies and living-standard squeezes (look at the cost of energy people, this is a crisis for someone!), then throw the police at them. A bold gambit with questionable prospects.

[ndlan]

It's going to be very dirty, but it can be solved. I still hold some faith.

[wazoox]

And they love patronizing everyone about human rights and democracy, while in practice taking model on Russia and China. The very definition of hypocrisy.

[pjc50]

July 7: we blame video games for these people smashing up Paris

July 14: we celebrate the time our ancestors smashed up Paris so hard they briefly turned France into a democracy

[oh_sigh]

How exactly are they going to remotely activate it if, say, Google/Apple don't put a backdoor in just for France(which I'm pretty sure they won't).

Is that bill just saying the police can hack your phone with a warrant?

[ren_engineer]

In 2016 Macron said he didn't want to be a "normal" president and made references to being like Jupiter, the guy has always been a power hungry psycho with an inflated ego

[dehrmann]

The US government used covid as an excuse to soft-censor misinformation from social media.