Friends Stab You in the Front
The same boring drama has been playing out on the political stage for decades: the progressive, liberal left already gets everything it wants, yet it demands more; the useless “conservative” “right” either puts up no resistance, or gleefully sides with the liberals. Another episode of this drama could be seen recently in the United States and in Italy.
United States
With both the Republican and Democrat parties having held their conventions, the US presidential election circus is now well and truly in town. A wise strategy for Donald Trump would have been to say and do absolutely nothing while the Democrats and their nominee, the mellifluous Kamala Harris, put their liberal extremism on full display. Instead, Donald Trump took advantage of two occasions to open his mouth and ram his foot into it. No one puts his foot in his mouth like Donald Trump. No one. You can check the records. Many people are saying this.
On August 16, Trump had some comments for the media. Speaking about his immigration policy, Trump said:
We’re gonna close the border, and we’re gonna get the crooked ones out, the bad ones out, and we’re gonna let a lot of people come in, because we need more people, especially with AI coming and all of the different things, and the farmers need [immigrants], everybody needs [immigrants].
Not one word of that rambling run-on makes any sense. Almost every other utterance contradicted the one before it. Trump’s going to “close the border” but “let a lot of people come in”. He says in the US, a country with a population of over 330 million, “we need more people” because “AI is coming”. The advent of AI means that “farmers need” more people. Of course, of course.
Trump’s statement was bizarre, incoherent, and illogical. To say in the same breath that a country needs “a lot” more people “especially with AI coming” is definitionally incomprehensible. Trump isn’t stupid, so why did he say this? Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock isn’t stupid either, and this is what he had to say about the relationship between AI and population size:
I could argue, in the developed countries, the big winners are countries that have shrinking populations. Now that’s something that most people never talked about. You know, we always used to think that shrinking population is a cause for negative growth. But in my conversations with the leadership of these large, developed countries that have xenophobic immigration policies—they don’t allow anybody to come in—shrinking demographics…these countries will rapidly develop robotics and AI and technology and if the promise of all that transforms productivity, which most of us think it will, we’ll be able to elevate the standard of living of a country, the standard of living as individuals, even in countries with shrinking populations. And so the paradigm of population growth is going to be changing, and the social problems that one will have in substituting humans for machines, is going to be far easier in those countries that have declining populations.
Fink made those declarations at the World Economic Forum this past winter. There is much to ponder in them. First of all, where are these developed countries with declining populations? There are very few. Most of the world’s countries, particularly Western first world countries, have seen non-stop population growth thanks to mass immigration. The only population decreasing in these countries is that of the natives. Secondly, which are these “xenophobic” countries that “don’t allow anyone in”? Perhaps he was playing his part in the boring drama. Perhaps here we have our liberal progressive who already has everything he has ever wanted, and is well-positioned to make sure he will continue to get what he wants in the future, complaining that those stodgy Europeans are still making a fuss about taking in migrants and refugees. Maybe the “xenophobic” first world countries he was alluding to are Denmark, Hungary, Poland. Or maybe he was referring to Japan and South Korea. Whichever countries they are, it would be good to know…just in case one needs to flee to one of them someday.
Then we get to the substance of what Fink said. Essentially, the BlackRock head honcho stated the totally obvious: with the ascendance of robotics and AI, millions of humans are going to lose their jobs to this technology, and a big population will become more of a problem than a boon. Anyone with but two functioning brain cells has known this for ages. The importing of millions of random third worlders has never been more unnecessary. Another question worth pondering is why Fink deemed it appropriate to make these comments now, after decades overseeing and investing in the experiment of mass immigration. What does he know about the coming future that we don’t?
Whatever his motives for saying them, the contrast between his words and Trump’s couldn’t be starker. Trump blithered like someone who has no idea what AI is and what it’s going to do to our economies, our job markets, and our very lives. Fink spoke like someone who at least has a grasp on this. Trump absurdly used AI to justify letting “a lot of people come in”. Fink used AI to assuage fears of population decline and its affect on productivity.
But Trump wasn’t finished making absurd remarks. Three days after his first foot-in-mouth feat, he went to Michigan where he showed off his unmatched ability yet again:
We are gonna close down the border, day one. Just so you understand, I am not a radical. At all. I’m just a common sense person that was successful in what I did because of the same thing: we are going to let people—and we want people—to come into our country. A lot of people. We need them. We need them for jobs. We need them for everything. We want people to come in, but they have to come in through a process. They have to come in legally. And we can let a lot of them come in.
On that last repetition of letting “a lot of them come in”, the crowd Trump was addressing began to applaud.
Replace me harder, daddy! Replace me faster! But the safe-word is “legally.” OK?
Again, none of Trump’s statement made any sense. It’s not “common sense” to let a lot of people come into your country. America does not “need” immigrants—presumably ones from Latin America—for “jobs” and for “everything”. And letting in “a lot of people” as long as they come in “through a process” makes “closing down the border” a complete irrelevance, not to mention a false promise. And we haven’t even addressed the fact that Donald Trump had previously expressed his favour of that classic “legal immigration” trope: stapling green cards to immigrants’ diplomas.
Where or from whom is Trump getting these ideas? It seems like he is a full-throated (when his foot is removed) supporter of Matthew Yglesias’ goal of filling America with one billion people. Or maybe he’s had more conversations with Elon Musk than just the one that was broadcast on X. Musk has frequently expressed his concern at declining birth rates and suggested that countries need vast amounts of people. Maybe Musk has convinced Trump of this too? Or perhaps when Trump says “we’re gonna let a lot of people come in”, he means that America is going to insistently recruit high IQ, highly skilled workers from Europe and East Asia to propel America’s technology and engineering sectors. All of these explanations are rotten on the inside, however. They are the farthest thing from “America First”. Whether the “lot of people coming in” are dusty Dominicans, hungry Haitians, or nerdy Norwegians, the American is being passed over for someone else.
Italy
Meanwhile, in Italy.
The leftist forces in the transalpine country have long been trying to change Italy’s citizenship laws from a ius sanguinis policy to a policy more resembling the ius solis of the United States or France, wherein being born anywhere in those respective countries’ territory automatically makes one a citizen. Now it appears that Italy’s so-called right has decided to stop putting up any resistance to the left on this matter of utmost importance, and instead join the left.
It all started after Italy’s female volleyball team won the gold medal at the Paris Olympics. On this golden team is a black African woman named Paola Egonu. As ever, her presence on the team, especially a successful team, was utilised by liberal progressives as a justification for infinite immigration from the African continent. Along with that typical posturing, the liberal progressives also add the demand that the Africans already in Italy be given an easier path to citizenship so that even more of them can be eligible to play for Italy’s national sports teams. This too is a rather old and boring drama that has been playing out for years and years.
Former general and recently elected member of the European Parliament, Roberto Vannacci, isn’t so impressed with Egonu’s volleyball skills. On more than one instance, Vannacci has swum against the current and publicly refused to agree that a Nigerian woman is an Italian just because she obtained Italian citizenship. His stance was, of course, met with finger-wagging opprobrium from the liberal political establishment and the media.
Among those aghast at Vannacci’s defiance was Antonio Tajani, Italy’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and leader of Forza Italia, the conservative centre-right party once headed by Silvio Berlusconi. He chivalrously proclaimed himself Egonu’s white knight by posting on social media: “Courage Paola. You are our pride.” He also added, “My commitment against any form of discrimination is maximum.”
At first glance to an uneducated eye, Tajani might seem like an Italian surname. It is not. It is an Arabic surname found mostly in Morocco. So we have on the stage a man who is, in part, ethnically non-Italian and non-European, who leads a conservative centre-right party, and who talks just like a hectoring liberal leftist schoolmarm. And this man was not finished delivering his lines. In an interview with Il Messaggero, Mr. Morocco said that Italy should put children born to immigrants on a fast track to citizenship, especially if they are enrolled in Italian schools. This idea is known as ius scholae and is another goal of Italian leftists, immigration extremists, and diversity zealots who want to subvert Italy’s default “by blood” citizenship standard.
Tajani then went on to say that Italy needs more African students. “I think the numbers of African students studying in Italy should be increased,” he said at a conference of Catholic businessmen in Rimini. Why? No reason. Just ’cause!
Well, that’s not entirely fair. Tajani did give this reason: “The strength of our country and its economic potential comes from the ability to integrate people who come from the outside. Great openness, without discussions of ethnicity or race is what makes a nation competitive.”
One can imagine Tajani saying those meaningless words in a voice like that of the robots which Larry Fink knows are going to replace us.
The Financial Times reports that:
Forza Italia lawmakers have said they seek to start legislative work next month on early naturalisation of children educated in Italy. The bill will aim to improve their rights and protections before they come of age.
Reminder, this is a conservative party on the political right. They are doing the left’s work for them.
Adding to the disgusting smell surrounding all this garbage from Forza Italia is the fact that Italy already leads the entire European Union in citizenships granted to foreigners. Yet it is never enough. Like a relentless termagant wife, the immigration extremists and diversity zealots nag and nag until they get what they want, and then they demand even more. It’s never enough. And like a husband who’s had his coglioni snipped away (possibly at the Democrat National Convention), the Italian “conservative” is all too eager to placate his bitching wife.
One might be tempted to say, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?” but a different saying is worth noting: “A friend stabs you in the front.” (Oscar Wilde, by the way).
The conservative establishment, whether in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Canada, or many other Western countries, repeatedly stabs us in the back. If friends stab you in the front, what does that make conservatives?