Immigrants pose a threat. They threaten our economies and our security. Hordes of incoming Africans, Arabs, Asians, and such look to replace us, the native population. The faces on the streets are every colour except white.
Where once there were churches, now there are mosques. Is it any wonder that crime and drug-related incidents are up? They flood in on small boats and across porous borders to strip away our civilisation and safety. It won’t be long before their candidates win elections and make them our masters.
These imagined, exaggerated, and distilled musings aim to encapsulate the Western worry about immigration. ‘They’ are coming, ‘they’ will take our jobs and replace us.
Such rhetoric and narratives increasingly find prominence in today’s Western media, especially in channels and spaces aligned with right-wing and populist movements, of which there are a growing number.
It resonates and is amplified across social media. In its later stages, it can manifest as protest and violence.
As elections approach, immigration is usually one of the top two or three issues voters raise. Often, it is their principal concern. When a political party or candidate champions restrictions on immigration, it is no surprise that they do well at the ballot box.
Donald Trump’s ‘build a wall’ promise to Make America Great Again is a prime example.
True, Western societies do need to have a mature conversation about immigration, not least for a nation’s policies around resource allocation. But too often, these are neither mature nor conversations but increasingly shrill shouts online.
Playing with fire
At its worst, the fear-mongering of populists at the expense of immigrants amounts to incitement to violence. In several Western countries, people have been murdered by those who fear that “non-natives” will “replace” the white majority.
What makes immigration so toxic is the ease with which a society’s ills can be blamed on arrivals and incomers.
Blame can be employed in multiple economic, social, cultural, and demographic areas. Unemployed? Blame the immigrants. Crime? Ditto.
Such simplistic and misleading arguments ignore the reality of modern societies, characterised by the fluctuating middle ground between stability and prosperity at one end and crisis and collapse at the other.
Vote-winning alarmism pays no heed to the nature of a society straining to maintain its equilibrium and avert future crises.
Recent statements by senior politicians in Britain's ruling Conservative Party would seem a case in point.
One said (without a shred of evidence) that Islamists "had control" of London's mayor, who is Muslim. The complainant was suspended.
Others, including two recent candidates for the Party leadership, railed against "Islamist extremists", apparently perturbed by the UK's large pro-Palestine marches. Even the British prime minister referred to "mob rule".
