Podcasts about whiteshift populism

In 2022 Counterweight, the organization that Helen Pluckrose founded and that was absorbed into the Institute for Liberal Values had a virtual conference on Alternatives to Diversity and Inclusion. Starting in 2025, we will be rolling out one talk a month that was presented at the conference. We sit down with the original presenters throughout 2025 to see what has changed since 2022. With Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives seemingly on the chopping block, we are curious to hear what our original participants are witnessing and experiencing on the ground. Is DEI really dead or just in remission? Are there healthy alternatives to DEI that we should consider, or do we throw the baby out with the bathwater and wipe our hands clean? What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments.This month Jennifer Richmond interviews Brandy Shufutinsky.  In the update to her original talk on Liberal Approaches to Diversity and Inclusion, where she highlighted anti-black racism and antisemitism and the ties between the two, we explore what has changed since 2022, especially in light of the Oct 7 2023 massacre of Israeli citizens and the current conversations around Israel and Palestine. The “Global Intifada” is a strange marriage of Islamist and left-wing extremism, often called the red-green coalition. While it is often easy to spot extreme right-wing antisemitism, the red-green version of antisemitism is often unacknowledged. This does not result in the proliferation of diversity and inclusion but rather an erasure of history and the erosion of common values.Podcast Notes:A Woke Right Keeps the Pendulum Swinging, Dmitri Shufutinsky https://whiterosemagazine.com/a-woke-right-keeps-the-pendulum-swinging/Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Minorities, Eric Kaufmann https://www.amazon.com/Whiteshift-Populism-Immigration-Future-Majorities/dp/1468316974Vatican nativity scene showing baby Jesus on a keffiyeh removed after backlash https://www.timesofisrael.com/vatican-nativity-scene-showing-baby-jesus-on-a-keffiyeh-removed-after-backlash/

Professor Eric Kaufmann discuss the evolution and future of woke, noting its peak and potential resurgence. It was not in fact ended by the reelection of Donald Trump, he argues, and in this interview explains why. Kaufmann argues that woke-ism, characterised by the sacralisation of marginalised groups, has seen a decline in corporate and educational practices but remains strong among younger generations. Will there be new versions of BLM, MeToo, Antifa as a reaction to Trump's second term? Are we already seeing it in response to Elon Musk, with the targeting of Tesla?Eric and Winston explore the concept of national identity in the era of “diversity is our greatest strength”. What is the truth about ethnonationaolsm? Is former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak English? They also explore the impact of immigration on social cohesion, and national identity.He notes that cultural debates, such as those over free speech and diversity, are a secondary response to populism. And that populism is a response to mass migration, Islam, LGBT and feminist issues.Eric Peter Kaufmann is a Canadian professor of politics at the University of Buckingham. He is author of several books including: ‘The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America: The Decline of Dominant Ethnicity in the United States', ‘Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century', ‘Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities' and ‘The Third Awokening'-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------To see more exclusive content and interviews consider subscribing to my substack here: https://www.winstonmarshall.co.uk/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA:Substack: https://www.winstonmarshall.co.uk/X: https://twitter.com/mrwinmarshallInsta: https://www.instagram.com/winstonmarshallLinktree: https://linktr.ee/winstonmarshall----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Chapters0:00 The End of Wokeism and Its Implications5:41 The Persistence of Woke Ideas10:39 The Role of Social Media in Shaping Woke Ideas26:17 The Future of Wokeism and The Complexity of National Identity40:14 The Role of Ethnicity and Religion in National Identity59:58 The Impact of Immigration on National Identity1:00:18 The Challenges of Integration and Assimilation1:05:46 The Future of Wokeism and National Identity1:08:01 Populism and Wokeness1:10:33 Cultural Wars and Diversity1:12:08 Closing thoughts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's guest is Eric Kaufmann who is a Professor of Political Science at Birkbeck College at London University. The last time Eric was a guest on this podcast, in june 2021, we focused our discussion on his book Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities (Allen Lane 2018). It's about the demographic change of the Western world, about the reactions this gives rise to, about right-wing populism and its opposite, left-wing modernism. A great read, so go read it if you haven't already. And listen to the podcast we did then.Today we talk more about the threats to academic freedom, and what can be done about it. This is something Eric has been working on a lot lately (read here and here and listen here, for example), and he's been vocal in defense of the new Freedom of Speech Bill which the Tory government in Britain proposed recently. He argues that the right need to be more active in combating the left's institutional takeover, which are happening at basically all major institutions. Not only in academia, but in government agencies and private companies as well. It's not enough to take a step back. Conservatives need to use governmental power to protect individual freedoms from increasingly dogmatic institutions. It's a tough pill to swallow for many liberally minded conservatives whose ideas of the world were formed during the cold war. But the right needs to rethink how they use political tools. I have to say it was a delight to talk to Eric again, and the podcast could have been much longer. I will probably bug him enough to come back again in the future. If you enjoyed our talk give him a follow on Twitter and check him out at Sneps.net where all his public talks and writings are collected. (This is a rerun. The interview was originally posted in December 2022.)Prenumerera eller stötta Rak högerI takt med att fler blir betalande prenumeranter har Rak höger kunnat expandera med fler skribenter och mer innehåll. Vi får inget presstöd, vi tar inte emot pengar från någon intresseorganisation eller lobbygrupp. Det är endast tack vare er prenumeranter vi kan fortsätta vara självständiga röster i en konform samtid. Så stort tack för att ni är med, utan er hade det inget av detta varit möjligt.Den som vill stötta oss på andra sätt än genom en prenumeration får gärna göra det med Swish, Plusgiro, Bankgiro, Paypal eller Donorbox.Swishnummer: 123-027 60 89Plusgiro: 198 08 62-5Bankgiro: 5808-1837Utgivaren ansvarar inte för kommentarsfältet. (Myndigheten för press, radio och tv (MPRT) vill att jag skriver ovanstående för att visa att det inte är jag, utan den som kommenterar, som ansvarar för innehållet i det som skrivs i kommentarsfältet.) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.enrakhoger.se/subscribe

In this episode of Heterodox Out Loud, John Tomasi speaks with Eric Kaufmann. Eric is a Professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham. He is the author of several books, including Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth: Religion, Demography and Politics in the 21st Century and Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities. His research interests include political demography, nationalism, and ethnicity. Heterodox Out Loud  Heterodox Out Loud with John Tomasi is a biweekly podcast featuring conversations with people across the academy and beyond. Listen to insightful, thought-provoking episodes from the HxA community by adding our podcast to your lineup. Follow Eric Kaufmann on: Twitter: https://twitter.com/epkaufm/with_replies Website: https://www.sneps.net/ Follow Heterodox Academy on: Twitter: https://bit.ly/3Fax5Dy Facebook: https://bit.ly/3PMYxfw LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/48IYeuJ Instagram: https://bit.ly/46HKfUg Substack: https://bit.ly/48IhjNF Listen to the podcast on: Apple - https://apple.co/3PZzplD Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3S51uee Amazon: https://amzn.to/3ZXQnFL Google: https://bit.ly/46oaT4A i-Heart - https://bit.ly/3M69qYA Tune-In - https://bit.ly/3S5oBVR Pandora - https://bit.ly/46AaLze Linktree link: https://linktr.ee/heterodoxoutloud

We speak about his long-standing interest in the demographic crisis, the religious inheriting the earth, expressive individualism and egalitarianism as the acid preparing the fall of Anglo-America, being a liberal National Conservative, negative vs. positive liberty under NatCon, liberals voting for diversity but living in micro-ethnostates, and much more. Eric Kaufmann is a professor of politics at Birkbeck, University of London. His topics of research include nationalism and political and religious demography. He is also the author of Whiteshift - Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities, among many other fine books. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aksubversive/message

On this week's #SWYSI, Prof. Eric Kaufmann discusses the alarming and disturbing findings of his investigation into the left-wing political culture of young people in the UK. He has found that our children are being taught radical left ideas and theories as if they are truth, with little to no attempt to provide balance or counter-arguments to these ideas. There can be no surprise, therefore, that the youth of today hold far stronger left-wing views than previous generations, with little evidence that this will change as they grow older. Eric Kaufmann is a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange and Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. A political scientist, Kaufmann is the author of numerous books, examining the impact of ideological and population shifts on identity and politics. These include Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth (Profile 2010) and Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities (Penguin 2018). Click here to read his full report: https://policyexchange.org.uk/publica... ------------------ SUBSCRIBE: If you are enjoying the show, please subscribe to our channel on YouTube (click the Subscribe Button underneath the video and then Click on the Bell icon next to it to make sure you Receive All Notifications) AUDIO: If you prefer Audio you can subscribe on itunes or Soundcloud. Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-923838732 SUPPORT/DONATE / JOIN OUR MEMBERSHIP SCHEME The NCF Channel is still very new and to continue to produce quality programming we need your support. Your donations will help ensure the channel not only continues but can grow into a major online platform challenging the cultural orthodoxies dominant in our institutions, public life and media. You can join our membership scheme or donate in a variety of ways via our website: http://www.newcultureforum.org.uk It is set up to accept one time and monthly donations. JOIN US ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Web: http://www.newcultureforum.org.uk F: https://www.facebook.com/NCultureForum/ I: https://www.instagram.com/newculturef... Y: http://www.youtube.com/c/NewCultureForum T: http://www.twitter.com/NewCultureForum (@NewCultureForum)

Today's guest is Eric Kaufmann who is a Professor of Political Science at Birkbeck College at London University. The last time Eric was a guest on this podcast, in june 2021, we focused our discussion on his book Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities (Allen Lane 2018). It's about the demographic change of the Western world, about the reactions this gives rise to, about right-wing populism and its opposite, left-wing modernism. A great read, so go read it if you haven't already. And listen to the podcast we did then.Today we talk more about the threats to academic freedom, and what can be done about it. This is something Eric has been working on a lot lately (read here and here and listen here, for example), and he's been vocal in defense of the new Freedom of Speech Bill which the Tory government in Britain proposed recently. Rak höger med Ivar Arpi is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.He argues that the right need to be more active in combating the left's institutional takeover, which are happening at basically all major institutions. Not only in academia, but in government agencies and private companies as well. It's not enough to take a step back. Conservatives need to use governmental power to protect individual freedoms from increasingly dogmatic institutions. It's a tough pill to swallow for many liberally minded conservatives whose ideas of the world were formed during the cold war. But the right needs to rethink how they use political tools. I have to say it was a delight to talk to Eric again, and the podcast could have been much longer. I will probably bug him enough to come back again in the future. If you enjoyed our talk give him a follow on Twitter and check him out at Sneps.net where all his public talks and writings are collected. Utgivaren ansvarar inte för kommentarsfältet. (Myndigheten för press, radio och tv (MPRT) vill att jag skriver ovanstående för att visa att det inte är jag, utan den som kommenterar, som ansvarar för innehållet i det som skrivs i kommentarsfältet.) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ivararpi.substack.com/subscribe

Eric Kaufmann is a Canadian Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. A specialist on cultural politics, religious and national identity, and demography, Kaufmann has authored, co-authored, and edited nine books, including The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America and Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities.

Prof Eric Kaufmann is a Canadian professor of politics at Birkbeck, University of London. He's the author of several books including Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities, and Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century. Today, we're speaking with Eric about his two reports for the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology: Born This Way? The Rise of LGBT as a Social and Political Identity Diverse and Divided: A Political Demography of American Elite Students Important links: Substack: https://ideassleepfuriously.substack.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Ideas_Sleep Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ideas_Sleep

Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, a CSPI research fellow, and the author of several books, including Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities. He returns to the podcast to discuss his new report for CPSI, Born This Way? The Rise of LGBT as a Social and Political Identity. He and Richard talk about the factors underlying recent increases in LGBT identification and same-sex sexual behavior, the connection between being very liberal, LGBT, and having mental health issues, and the influence of modernism on left-wing ideology and right-wing political movements. They conclude the conversation by discussing whether concerns about teaching sexuality and CRT in K-12 schools should take precedence over free speech issues on university campuses and debates over history and national identity. Eric Kaufmann, “Born This Way? The Rise of LGBT as a Social and Political Identity.” Tweet thread. Sign up for CSPI's Substack newsletter: https://cspi.substack.com. Follow CSPI on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CSPICenterOrg. Subscribe to our YouTube for video podcasts: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvs4ugq0xSvbvwArpFJG6gA. Learn more about CSPI: https://cspicenter.org.

The New Culture Forum's spring conference 2022 took place on St. George's Day. Many of our viewers & supporters have said that they are tired of always hearing what's wrong with Britain & The West without anyone actually proposing real solutions to our problems. Offering solutions is a key mission of the New Culture Forum, and many of our conference speakers provided exactly that. Prof. Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, the author of "Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities" and the editor of "Rethinking Ethnicity: Majority Groups and Dominant Minorities". A well-known voice and thinker on the "long march through the institutions", Prof. Kaufmann delivered a superb speech outlining the steps we would need to take to resist the advance of cultural socialism and take back control of our institutions. Speech: Resisting Cultural Socialism: How to March Back Through the Institutions ---------------- SUBSCRIBE: If you are enjoying the show, please subscribe to our channel on YouTube (click the Subscribe Button underneath the video and then Click on the Bell icon next to it to make sure you Receive All Notifications) AUDIO: If you prefer Audio you can subscribe on itunes or Soundcloud. Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-923838732 SUPPORT/DONATE / JOIN OUR MEMBERSHIP SCHEME The NCF Channel is still very new and to continue to produce quality programming we need your support. Your donations will help ensure the channel not only continues but can grow into a major online platform challenging the cultural orthodoxies dominant in our institutions, public life and media. You can join our membership scheme or donate in a variety of ways via our website: http://www.newcultureforum.org.uk It is set up to accept one time and monthly donations. JOIN US ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Web: http://www.newcultureforum.org.uk F: https://www.facebook.com/NCultureForum/ Y: http://www.youtube.com/c/NewCultureForum T: http://www.twitter.com/NewCultureForum (@NewCultureForum)

Subscribe now Give a gift subscription Share This week on Unsupervised Learning Razib talks with Eric Kaufmann, political scientist and demographer, and the author of The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? and Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities. During the course of their conversation, Razib and Eric focus on the thesis at the center of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, the prediction that due to the higher reproductive rates of religious groups compared to the secular population, the future is going to be more religious than the present. Eric's thesis is that aspects of religious belief, for example, the divine commandment in the Hebrew Bible to be “fruitful and multiply,” result in differential fertility on the individual level. On the group level, he notes that poorer societies are more religious, and these societies also are driving migration and demographic change in secular developed countries (for example, London is more church-going than the rest of England, due to large immigrant congregations). Before digging into the possibilities for future demographics, Razib gets Eric's opinions and views on the secularization evident across much of the world over the last few centuries. How does this align with the idea that the future will be religious, especially when worries about differential fertility have been mooted as far back as early 19th-century France? At the time, secular French intellectuals worried about the immigration and reproductive rates of highly religious Catholics from Poland and elsewhere. And yet today France is even more secular than it was 200 years ago. Much of the subsequent discussion revolves around the idea that social and cultural change is impacted by alternative forces acting in balance. Transcript Eric emphasizes that the core of his argument does not rely upon the idea of large prominent religious groups expanding through mass conversion. Rather, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? argues that fertility differences in the liberal secular societies are going to be impacted in the long-term by small strict endogamous groups, like ultra-Orthodox Jews in England and Israel, or Laestadian Lutherans in Finland. Eric makes the case that these fundamentalist groups benefit from the spread of secular liberalism, as they are more inoculated from the anti-natal currents in the broader populace, driving large differential fertility differences. Finally, they also touch on what is driving secularism in America, the demographic problems facing Mormons in America, and how secularism might play out differently in South and East Asian societies dominated by non-Abrahamic religions.  Subscribe now Give a gift subscription Share

Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=141443 * In 1924, mainline Protestant clergy were almost unanimous in their opposition to immigration restriction. However, their liberal activism was out of step with the views of their parishioners. * The Young Intellectuals [of Greenwich Village 1912-1917] were Anglo-American bohemian artists and writers rebelling against their own Protestant culture. Inspired by Nietzsche and Bergson's romantic individualism and modernism in art, they sought to overthrow what they perceived as a suffocating Puritan inheritance. The Young Intellectuals discovered the joys of Harlem's black jazz scene, experimented with drugs, exhibited modern art at Alfred Stieglitz's ‘291' studio or read poetry aloud in Mabel Dodge Luhan's salon. * [Randolph] Bourne, on the other hand, infused Kallen's structure with WASP self-loathing. As a rebel against his own group, Bourne combined the Liberal Progressives' desire to transcend ‘New Englandism' and Protestantism with Kallen's call for minority groups to maintain their ethnic boundaries. The end product was what I term asymmetrical multiculturalism , whereby minorities identify with their groups while Anglo-Protestants morph into cosmopolites. Thus Bourne at once congratulates the Jew ‘who sticks proudly to the faith of his fathers and boasts of that venerable culture of his', while encouraging his fellow Anglo-Saxons to: “Breathe a larger air … [for] in his [young Anglo-Saxon's] new enthusiasms for continental literature, for unplumbed Russian depths, for French clarity of thought, for Teuton philosophies of power, he feels himself a citizen of a larger world. He may be absurdly superficial, his outward-reaching wonder may ignore all the stiller and homelier virtues of his Anglo-Saxon home, but he has at least found the clue to that international mind which will be essential to all men and women of good-will if they are ever to save this Western world of ours from suicide.” Bourne, not Kallen, is the founding father of today's multiculturalist left because he combines rebellion against his own culture and Liberal Progressive cosmopolitanism with an endorsement – for minorities only – of Kallen's ethnic conservatism. In other words, ethnic minorities should preserve themselves while the majority should dissolve itself. * [Bourne split] the world into two moral planes, one for a ‘parental' majority who would be asked to shed their ethnicity and oppose their own culture, and the other for childlike minorities, who would be urged to embrace their heritage in the strongest terms. This crystallized a dualistic habit of mind, entrenched in the anti-WASP ethos of 1920s authors like Sinclair Lewis and H. L. Mencken and the bohemian ‘Lost Generation' of American intellectuals such as F. Scott Fitzgerald. All associated the Anglo-Protestant majority with Prohibition, deemed WASP culture to be of no value, and accused the ethnic majority of suppressing more interesting and expressive ethnic groups. The Lost Generation's anti-majority ethos pervaded the writing of 1950s ‘Beat Generation' left-modernist writers like Norman Mailer and Jack Kerouac – who contrasted lively black jazz or Mexican culture with the ‘square' puritanical whiteness of Middle America. As white ethnics assimilated, the despised majority shifted from WASPs to all whites. The multiculturalism of the 1960s fused the Liberal Progressive pluralist movement with the anti-white ethos of the Beat counterculture. * FDR told Catholic adviser Leo Crowley in January 1942, ‘Leo, you know this is a Protestant country, and the Catholics and Jews are here on sufferance.'

00:00 I lost my temper during a Covid debate and later experienced a spiritual epiphany, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=141500 01:00 Modafinil Is The Official Drug Of The Rationalist Movement, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=137046 05:00 Dr. David Gorski on the latest viral COVID-19 disinformation, https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/08/31/only-six-percent-gambit-latest-viral-covid-19-disinformation/ 12:00 A brief history of social distancing shows it is Biblical, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=141576 16:00 Where Do Public Health Officials Get The Authority To Lock Us Down?, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=141566 18:00 Julius Ruechel: The Lies Exposed by the Numbers: Fear, Misdirection, & Institutional Deaths (An Investigative Report), https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=141564 22:00 Where Did The Social Distancing Strategy Come From?, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=141534 24:00 Average Covid Death Costs 16 Years Of Life, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=141514 40:00 Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=141443 Bud: Did you curse him out? Call him a moron? How bad did it get? I'm not upset Luke, I'm just disappointed. You need more Fred Luskin. The dark side of Crystal Lite. Consider 12-steps. It could be the apathy inducing darkside of Modaf -- a toxic cocktail of modafinil, tums and crystal lite can turn the most godly men into uncaring beasts. Background links: Modafinil: https://lukeford.net/blog/?cat=42917 Are US flu death figures more PR than science? https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=141529 Comparing COVID-19 Deaths to Flu Deaths Is like Comparing Apples to Oranges — The former are actual numbers; the latter are inflated statistical estimates, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=141527 What are the stages and symptoms of COVID-19?, https://www.drugs.com/medical-answers/covid-19-symptoms-progress-death-3536264/ US Jews More Likely to Support COVID-19 Vaccine Push Compared With Other Religious Groups, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=141509 Excess deaths during age of Covid, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm The changing temptations of science, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=140413 The Naked State: What the Breakdown of Normality Reveals, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=140282 Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSFVD7Xfhn7sJY8LAIQmH8Q/join https://odysee.com/@LukeFordLive, https://lbry.tv/@LukeFord, https://rumble.com/lukeford https://dlive.tv/lukefordlivestreams Listener Call In #: 1-310-997-4596 Superchat: https://entropystream.live/app/lukefordlive Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/lukeford/ Soundcloud MP3s: https://soundcloud.com/luke-ford-666431593 Code of Conduct: https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=125692 https://www.patreon.com/lukeford http://lukeford.net Email me: lukeisback@gmail.com or DM me on Twitter.com/lukeford Support the show | https://www.streamlabs.com/lukeford, https://patreon.com/lukeford, https://PayPal.Me/lukeisback Facebook: http://facebook.com/lukecford Feel free to clip my videos. It's nice when you link back to the original.

Dr. Eric Kaufmann discusses his book Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities.https://www.amazon.com/Whiteshift-Populism-Immigration-Future-Majorities/dp/1419741926/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=whiteshift&qid=1626368303&sr=8-1Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of Whiteshift: Immigration, Populism and the Future of White Majorities (Penguin, October 2018). He has also written Changing Places: mapping the white British response to ethnic change (Demos 2014), Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth: demography and politics in the twenty-first century (Profile 2010), The Orange Order: A Contemporary Northern Irish History , The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America: the decline of dominant ethnicity in the United States (Harvard 2004) and two other books. He may be found on twitter at @epkaufm and on the web at www.sneps.net. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Eric Kaufmann discusses his book Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities. https://www.amazon.com/Whiteshift-Populism-Immigration-Future-Majorities/dp/1419741926/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=whiteshift&qid=1626368303&sr=8-1 Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of Whiteshift: Immigration, Populism and the Future of White Majorities (Penguin, October 2018). He has also written Changing Places: mapping the white British response to ethnic change (Demos 2014), Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth: demography and politics in the twenty-first century (Profile 2010), The Orange Order: A Contemporary Northern Irish History , The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America: the decline of dominant ethnicity in the United States (Harvard 2004) and two other books. He may be found on twitter at @epkaufm and on the web at www.sneps.net.

I dagens podd pratar jag med Eric Kaufmann som är professor i statsvetenskap vid Birkbeck college vid London university. Han har skrivit flera böcker, varav “Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities” som kom 2018 är en av de mer intressanta böckerna som kommit på senare år. Den handlar om den demografiska förändringen av västvärlden, om reaktionerna detta föder, om högerpopulism och dess motsats vänstermodernism. Boken var även en av inspirationskällorna till en debatt jag initierade för två år sedan, och därför är jag särskilt glad att nu få chansen att prata med Eric. Nedan har jag sammanfattat den debatten och hur jag i dag ser på den. Det är demografin, dumbom! ”Jag sätter mig tillrätta på mitt förstaklassäte i X2000 klockan 21.57 och tänker att det borde finnas en fråga att ställa här. Om att det är på väg att skapas ett nytt Sverige, en landsbygd där de infödda svenskarna drar sig tillbaka till villorna och centrum blir en plats för de nya, att landsbygden, sedan länge ett långsamt slocknande och avfolkat ålderdomshem, nu också har blivit en flyktingförläggning, ett asylboende, ett nybyggarland, för vissa en återvändsgränd, för andra platsen där människor börjar om.”Så beskrev Jens Liljestrand den dramatiska demografiska förändring som Sverige genomgått och fortsätter att genomgå. Han hade varit ute på föredragsturné och bevittnade en förändrad landsbygd. Han ropade ”Jalla! Jalla!” till en taxichaufför som inte talade svenska, och gjorde reflektionen att det är han själv, Jens, som är gäst här, inte tvärtom. Denna text var hans sätt att fira nationaldagen 2019 eftersom den publicerades dagen innan.Några dagar senare beskrev jag samma förändring utifrån en rapport av Joakim Ruist med titeln ”Global migration – orsaker och konsekvenser” (SvD). Det demografiska perspektiv som Liljestrand tagit upp saknades helt. Han fokuserade på det ekonomiska, och menade att invandringen inte hade den stora påverkan många trodde. Gemene svensk, som alltid varit för en striktare migrationspolitik än etablissemanget, led alltså av ett slags informationsunderskott. Jag hävdade då att det var fel. “Det är demografin, inte ekonomin, som är huvudförklaringen till att allt fler väljare i Sverige och västvärlden röstar på partier som vill minska invandringen radikalt.” skrev jag.I samma veva myntade Kajsa Dovstad på GP:s ledarsida det bevingade uttrycket att få ett “Jimmie moment”, för att beskriva samma känsla av att inte känna sig hemma i sitt eget land. Reaktionerna lät inte vänta på sig. På Aftonbladets kultursida skrev Martin Aagård att jag var hudfärgsfixerad som ens beskrev förändringen runtom i Sverige. Per Svensson, som då var politisk redaktör på DN:s ledarsida, skrev att jag passerade en gräns. Att det jag skrev var oanständigt. I sociala medier var reaktioner grövre än så.Vad skrev då Per Svensson och Martin Aagård och mina andra kritiker om Jens Liljestrands betraktelse? Ingenting alls. Om man hyllar förändringen, och dessutom har med en passus där man kritiserar Sverigedemokraterna, då är man anständig. Om man däremot beskriver exakt samma förändring, men även att den leder till ökat invandringsmotstånd, då är man oanständig. Borde inte frågan vara om analysen stämmer i stället? I boken ”Exodus” (Penguin, 2013) beskrev Paul Collier vad som anses vara en ”anständig” reaktion hos Europas majoritetsbefolkningar på migrationen: ”Var inte rasist”, ”Ge plats” och ”Lär dig att lovprisa andra kulturer”. Detta är vänsterns och många liberalers attityd. Minoriteters identiteter är skyddsvärda, medan majoriteten ska trycka ned sin egen. Tror verkligen vänsterliberaler att majoritetsbefolkningar runtom i västvärlden inte kommer reagera på det faktum att de inom en överskådlig framtid kan bli minoriteter i sina egna länder?Texter som refereras i dagens avsnittEric Kaufmanns rapport om hur omfattningen av rasismen i USA överdrivs av medier: The Social Construction of Racism in the United States Eric Kaufmanns studie om akademisk frihet: Academic Freedom in Crisis: Punishment, Political Discrimination, and Self-CensorshipKontakthypotesen: Intergroup Contact and Negative Attitudes Towards Immigrants Among Youth in Sweden: Individual and Contextual FactorsUtgivaren ansvarar inte för kommentarsfältet. (Myndigheten för press, radio och tv (MPRT) vill att jag skriver ovanstående för att visa att det inte är jag, utan den som kommenterar, som ansvarar för innehållet i det som skrivs i kommentarsfältet.) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ivararpi.substack.com/subscribe

Eric is a professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London and most recently wrote the book Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities, which I reviewed. Be sure to check out Eric’s recent report for the Manhattan Institute on the social construction of racism in the United States. Get full access to The Weekly Dish at andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

------------------Support the channel------------ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuy PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao ------------------Follow me on--------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDissenterYT This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/ Dr. Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. He is principally interested in cultural politics: ethnicity, national identity and religion. He's the author of Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities. In this episode, we focus on Whiteshift. First, Dr. Kaufmann tells us about the main thesis of the book. We discuss the relationship between ethnicity and culture, and the relationship between ethnic identity and politics. We go through some of the factors behind the rise of the populist right, including the migration crisis, Muslim terrorism, and the 2008 economic crisis. We talk about different strategies to deal with immigrants. We speculate a bit about the possible future of the European Union. We ask if it is possible to have countries without borders, and if multiculturalism works. We end with a teaser to our possible second conversation, and talk about the relationship between religion and demography. -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: KARIN LIETZCKE, ANN BLANCHETTE, PER HELGE LARSEN, LAU GUERREIRO, JERRY MULLER, HANS FREDRIK SUNDE, BERNARDO SEIXAS, HERBERT GINTIS, RUTGER VOS, RICARDO VLADIMIRO, BO WINEGARD, CRAIG HEALY, OLAF ALEX, PHILIP KURIAN, JONATHAN VISSER, ANJAN KATTA, JAKOB KLINKBY, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, JOHN CONNORS, PAULINA BARREN, FILIP FORS CONNOLLY, DAN DEMETRIOU, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ARTHUR KOH, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, MAX BEILBY, COLIN HOLBROOK, SUSAN PINKER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, PABLO SANTURBANO, SIMON COLUMBUS, PHIL KAVANAGH, JORGE ESPINHA, CORY CLARK, MARK BLYTH, ROBERTO INGUANZO, MIKKEL STORMYR, ERIC NEURMANN, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, BERNARD HUGUENEY, ALEXANDER DANNBAUER, OMARI HICKSON, PHYLICIA STEVENS, FERGAL CUSSEN, YEVHEN BODRENKO, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, DON ROSS, JOÃO ALVES DA SILVA, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, OZLEM BULUT, NATHAN NGUYEN, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, J.W., JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, IDAN SOLON, ROMAIN ROCH, DMITRY GRIGORYEV, TOM ROTH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, ADANER USMANI, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, MIRAN B, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, AND MAX BEILBY! A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, IAN GILLIGAN, SERGIU CODREANU, LUIS CAYETANO, TOM VANEGDOM, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, VEGA GIDEY, AND NIRUBAN BALACHANDRAN! AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MICHAL RUSIECKI, ROSEY, JAMES PRATT, AND MATTHEW LAVENDER!

In this episode we discuss Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities by Eric Kaufmann. Next time we will discuss True Names by Vernor Vinge. Some highlights from Whiteshift: Many people desire roots, value tradition and wish to maintain continuity with ancestors who have occupied a historic territory. This means we're more likely to experience what I term Whiteshift, a process by which white majorities absorb an admixture of different peoples through intermarriage, but remain oriented around existing myths of descent, symbols and traditions No one who has honestly analysed survey data on individuals – the gold standard for public opinion research – can deny that white majority concern over immigration is the main cause of the rise of the populist right in the West. This is primarily explained by concern over identity, not economic threat. We are entering a period of cultural instability in the West attendant on our passage between two relatively stable equilibria. The first is based on white ethnic homogeneity, the second on what the prescient centrist writer Michael Lind calls ‘beige' ethnicity, i.e. a racially mixed majority group. In the middle lies a turbulent multicultural interregnum. We in the West are becoming less like homogeneous Iceland and more like homogeneous mixed-race Turkmenistan. But to get there we'll be passing through a phase where we'll move closer to multicultural Guyana or Mauritius. The challenge is to enable conservative whites to see a future for themselves in Whiteshift – the mixture of many non-whites into the white group through voluntary assimilation. Anyone who wants to explain what's happening in the West needs to answer two simple questions. First, why are right-wing populists doing better than left-wing ones? Second, why did the migration crisis boost populist-right numbers sharply while the economic crisis had no overall effect? If we stick to data, the answer is crystal clear. Demography and culture, not economic and political developments, hold the key to understanding the populist moment. Because Western nations were generally formed by a dominant white ethnic group, whose myths and symbols – such as the proper name ‘Norway' – became the nation's, the two concepts overlap in the minds of many. White majorities possess an ‘ethnic' module, an extra string to their national identity which minorities lack. Ethnic majorities thereby express their ethnic identity as nationalism. I contend that today's white majorities are likely to successfully absorb minority populations while their core myths and boundary symbols endure. This will involve a change in the physical appearance of the median Westerner, hence Whiteshift, though linguistic and religious markers are less likely to be affected. Getting from where we are now, where most Westerners share the racial and religious features of their ethnic archetype, to the situation in a century or two, when most will be what we now term ‘mixed-race', is vital to understanding our present condition. In our more peaceful, post-ideological, demographically turbulent world, migration-led ethnic change is altering the basis of politics from class to ethnicity. On one side is a conservative coalition of whites who are attached to their heritage joined by minorities who value the white tradition; on the other side a progressive alliance of minorities who identify with their ethnic identity combined with whites who are agnostic or hostile towards theirs. Among whites, ethno-demographic change polarizes people between ‘tribal' ethnics who value their particularity and ‘religious' post-ethnics who prioritize universalist creeds such as John McWhorter's ‘religion of anti-racism'. Whites can fight ethnic change by voting for right-wing populists or committing terrorist acts. They may repress anxieties in the name of ‘politically correct' anti-racism, but cracks in this moral edifice are appearing. Many opt to flee by avoiding diverse neighbourhoods, schools and social networks. And other whites may choose to join the newcomers, first in friendship, subsequently in marriage. Intermarriage promises to erode the rising diversity which underlies our current malaise. Religion evolved to permit cooperation in larger units.31 Our predisposition towards religion, morality and reputation – all of which can transcend the tribe – reflects our adaptation to larger social units. Be that as it may, humans have lived in large groups only in the very recent past, so it is reasonable to assume tribalism is a more powerful aspect of our evolutionary psychology than our willingness to abide by a moral code. Today what we increasingly see in the West is a battle between the ‘tribal' populist right and the ‘religious' anti-racist left. Much of this book is concerned with the clash between a rising white tribalism and an ideology I term ‘left-modernism'. A sociologist member of the ‘New York Intellectuals' group of writers and literary critics, Daniel Bell, used the term modernism to describe the spirit of anti-traditionalism which emerged in Western high culture between 1880 and 1930. With the murderous excesses of communism and fascism, many Western intellectuals embraced a fusion of modernist anti-traditionalism and cultural egalitarianism, distinguishing the new ideology from both socialism and traditional liberalism. Cosmopolitanism was its guiding ethos. Unlike socialism or fascism, this left-wing modernism meshed nicely with capitalism and globalization. The left-modernist sensibility spread from a small elite to a much wider section of middle-class society in the 1960s with the rise of television and growth of universities, taking over as the dominant sensibility of the high culture. As it gained ground, it turned moralistic and imperialistic, seeking not merely to persuade but to institutionalize itself in law and policy, altering the basis of liberalism from tolerating to mandating diversity. This is a subtle but critical shift. Meanwhile the economic egalitarianism of socialism gave way to a trinity of sacred values around race, gender and sexual orientation. Immigration restriction became a plank of the Progressive movement which advocated improved working conditions, women's suffrage and social reform. This combination of left-wing economics and ethno-nationalism confounds modern notions of left and right but Progressive vs. free market liberal was how the world was divided in the late nineteenth century. A prominent plank in the Progressive platform was temperance, realized in the Volstead Act of 1920 prohibiting the sale of alcohol. The Prohibition vote pitted immigrant-origin Catholics and upper-class urban WASPs such as the anti-Prohibition leader and New York socialite Pauline Morton Sabin on the ‘wet' side against ‘dry' working-class, rural and religious Protestants. For Joseph Gusfield, Prohibition was principally a symbolic crusade targeted at urban Catholic immigrants who congregated in saloons and their ‘smart set' upper-class allies. This was a Protestant assertion of identity in an increasingly urban nation in which Catholics and Jews formed around a fifth of the population. Those of WASP background had declined to half the total from two thirds in the 1820s. What's interesting is that Anglo representatives did not make their case in ethno-communal terms, nor did they invoke the country's historic ethnic composition. Rather they couched their ethnic motives as state interests. Instead of coming clean about their lament over cultural loss, they felt obliged to fabricate economic and security rationales for restriction. Much the same is true today in the penchant for talking about immigrants putting pressure on services, taking jobs, increasing crime, undermining the welfare state or increasing the risk of terrorism. In my view it would be far healthier to permit the airing of ethno-cultural concerns rather than suppressing these, which leads to often spurious claims about immigrants. Likewise, immigrants' normal desires to defend their interests are decried as ‘identity politics'. [Randolph] Bourne, on the other hand, infused Kallen's structure with WASP self-loathing. As a rebel against his own group, Bourne combined the Liberal Progressives' desire to transcend ‘New Englandism' and Protestantism with Kallen's call for minority groups to maintain their ethnic boundaries. The end product was what I term asymmetrical multiculturalism, whereby minorities identify with their groups while Anglo-Protestants morph into cosmopolites. Thus Bourne at once congratulates the Jew ‘who sticks proudly to the faith of his fathers and boasts of that venerable culture of his', while encouraging his fellow Anglo-Saxons to: Breathe a larger air … [for] in his [young Anglo-Saxon's] new enthusiasms for continental literature, for unplumbed Russian depths, for French clarity of thought, for Teuton philosophies of power, he feels himself a citizen of a larger world. He may be absurdly superficial, his outward-reaching wonder may ignore all the stiller and homelier virtues of his Anglo-Saxon home, but he has at least found the clue to that international mind which will be essential to all men and women of good-will if they are ever to save this Western world of ours from suicide. [1916] Bourne, not Kallen, is the founding father of today's multiculturalist left because he combines rebellion against his own culture and Liberal Progressive cosmopolitanism with an endorsement – for minorities only – of Kallen's ethnic conservatism. In other words, ethnic minorities should preserve themselves while the majority should dissolve itself. Cosmopolitanism must manage the contradiction between its ethos of transcending ethnicity and its need for cultural diversity, which requires ethnic attachment. Bourne resolved this by splitting the world into two moral planes, one for a ‘parental' majority who would be asked to shed their ethnicity and oppose their own culture, and the other for childlike minorities, who would be urged to embrace their heritage in the strongest terms. This crystallized a dualistic habit of mind, entrenched in the anti-WASP ethos of 1920s authors like Sinclair Lewis and H. L. Mencken and the bohemian ‘Lost Generation' of American intellectuals such as F. Scott Fitzgerald. All associated the Anglo-Protestant majority with Prohibition, deemed WASP culture to be of no value, and accused the ethnic majority of suppressing more interesting and expressive ethnic groups. The Lost Generation's anti-majority ethos pervaded the writing of 1950s ‘Beat Generation' left-modernist writers like Norman Mailer and Jack Kerouac – who contrasted lively black jazz or Mexican culture with the ‘square' puritanical whiteness of Middle America. As white ethnics assimilated, the despised majority shifted from WASPs to all whites. The multiculturalism of the 1960s fused the Liberal Progressive pluralist movement with the anti-white ethos of the Beat counterculture. The situation by 1924 was a far cry from the pre-1890 dispensation, when a liberal-assimilationist Anglo-Americanism spanned both universalist and ethno-nationalist shades of opinion. Prior to 1890, most Anglo-Protestant thinkers held the view that their ethnic group could assimilate all comers. During moments of euphoria, they talked up the country as a universal cosmopolitan civilization; in their reflective moods, they remarked on its Anglo-Saxon Protestant character. By 1910, this Emersonian ‘double-consciousness' was gone, each side of its contradiction a separate and consistent ideology. Most WASP intellectuals were, like New England patrician Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, ethno-nationalists who backed restriction, or, like Bourne and Dewey, cosmopolitans calling for diversity and open borders. Few ethno-nationalists favoured open immigration. No pluralists endorsed restriction. Herein lie the roots of our contemporary polarized condition. Critical race theorists contend that white ethnics only ‘became white' when they became useful to the WASP majority. Even Bill Clinton, a southern Protestant whose Irish heritage is undocumented, latched on to the idea that his Irish forebears ‘became' white. Irish Catholics in the north, some claim, were important allies of southern whites in the struggle against Yankee republicanism, so southerners embraced the Irish.60 I'm less convinced. The Irish, Jews and Italians may not have been part of a narrower WASP ‘us', but they were perceived as racially white, thus part of a pan-ethnic ‘us'. This entitled them to opportunities not available to African- or Asian Americans. Post-1960s intermarriage led to an extension of American majority ethnic boundaries from WASP to white but the foundations for expansion were already in place. From the 1960s on, the religious marker of dominant ethnicity came to be redefined from Protestant to ‘Judaeo-Christian'. This chapter underscores several aspects of American ethnic history that are relevant today. First, that the US, like most European nations, has had an ethnic majority since Independence. Second, that the Anglo-Protestant majority underwent a Whiteshift in the mid-twentieth century which permitted it to absorb Catholics and Jews, members of groups once viewed as outsiders. Finally, certain ethnic groups – notably Anglo-Protestants and African-Americans – have become symbolically intertwined with American nationhood. Two thirds of Americans are not members of these groups, yet many recognize them as ethno-traditional: part of what makes the nation distinct. On the right, an ethno-traditional nationalism focused on protecting the white Anglo heritage is emerging as an important force in American politics. Culture is not ethnicity and the two have too often been conflated. Even if white culture remains the default mode, ethno-cultural decline may proceed apace. There are two separate ethno-cultural dynamics, white ethnic decline and the attenuation of the white tradition in American national identity. Only whites will be concerned with the former, but conservative-minded minorities may be attached to white ethno-traditions of nationhood. That is, they will wish to slow changes to the America ‘they know'. Where conservatives seek to preserve the status quo, which might be multiracial, authoritarians always prefer less diversity and dissent. Conservatives are not the same as authoritarians. For instance, authoritarians dislike inequality – a form of economic diversity – thus may find themselves on the left Electoral maps based on aggregate county results matched to census data offered the first snapshot of the social drivers of Trump, and it was apparent that education, not income, best predicted Trump success. Still, at first glance, maps reinforce stereotypes like the urban–rural divide. As with Brexit, income is correlated with education, but there are many wealthy people – think successful plumber – with few qualifications. Similarly, many resemble struggling artists, possessing degrees but little money. When you control for education, income has no effect on whether a white person voted for, or supports, Trump. Being less well-off produces an effect on Trump voting only when authoritarian and conservative values are held constant – and even then has a much smaller impact than values. Education is the best census indicator because it reflects people's subjective worldview, not just their material circumstances. Researchers find that teenagers with more open and exploratory psychological orientations self-select into university. This, much more than what people learn at university, makes them more liberal. Median education level offers a window onto the cultural values of a voting district, which is why it correlates best with Trump's vote share. In American exit polls, Trump won whites without college degrees 67–28, compared to 49–45 for whites with degrees. The changing racial demographics of America could permit the Democrats to consistently win first the presidential, then congressional, elections. Alternatively, the Republican establishment may be able to install a pro-immigration primary candidate. But is this a solution? With no federal outlet for white identity concerns or ethno-traditional nationalism, and with a return to policies of multiculturalism and high immigration which are viewed as a threat to these identities, it's possible the culturally conservative section of the US population could start viewing the government as an enemy. This is an old trope in American history and could pose a security problem. It is also how violent ethnic conflict sometimes ignites. For instance, the British-Protestant majority in Northern Ireland, where parties run on ethnic lines, meant Irish Catholics lost every election in the province between 1922 and the abolition of the Northern Ireland provincial government in 1972. This lack of political representation produced alienation which helped foment the civil war in 1969. What happens if rural and red-state America is permanently frozen out of power when it considers itself the repository of authentic Americanism? [EUROPE:] Liberals fought against the ‘normalization' of the far right, but with rising populist-right totals and coalition arithmetic pulling towards partnership it was only a question of time before the consensus gave way. The anti-racist norm against voting for the far right began to erode and centrist parties started adopting their policies. Elite obstruction may actually have contributed to an angrier anti-elite mood, recruiting yet more voters to the far-right banner. The anti-racist taboo against them has weakened but remains: more voters express strong anti-immigration views than are willing to vote far right.4 Yet, as I explain in chapter 9, the higher the populist right's vote share, the more the taboo erodes. This eases their path to a higher total when conditions permit, setting in motion a self-fulfilling spiral. Economic rationales frequently disguise underlying psychological drivers. For instance, in small opt-in samples on Prolific Academic, one group of white Republican voters scored the problem of ‘unchecked urban sprawl' a 51 out of 100, but another group of white Republicans who saw the question as ‘unchecked urban sprawl caused by immigration' scored it 74/100 (italics added for emphasis). Likewise, among a sample of white British Brexit voters, the problem of ‘pressure on council housing' scored a 47/100 but ‘immigrants putting pressure on council housing' was rated 68/100. In both cases, it logically cannot be the case that the immigration-driven portion of the problem of urban sprawl or pressure on council housing is more important than the problem itself. Thus what's driving opposition to immigration must be something prior to these material concerns. Likewise, the large-sample, representative British Election Study shows that concerns over the cultural and economic effects of immigration are tightly correlated. This suggests opposition to immigration comes first (Jonathan Haidt's unconscious ‘elephant' moves us to act) and various rationalizations like pressure on public services follow (Haidt's conscious ‘rider' telling us a story about why we acted as we did).17 But rationales matter. If a morally acceptable rationale is not there, this inhibits a party's ability to articulate its underlying anti-immigration grievances. This is why restrictionists tend to don the cloak of economic rationalization. The idea that the country has a traditional ethnic composition which people are attached to – what I term ethno-traditional nationalism – and which should not change too quickly, is viewed as beyond the limits of acceptable debate. This is a pity, because the ‘legitimate' arguments stigmatize minorities and are often racist in a way the ‘illegitimate' arguments about wanting to slow cultural loss are not. Only when the latter is taken to the extreme of wanting to bar certain groups or repatriate immigrants do they become racist. Rising diversity polarizes people by psychological outlook and reorients party platforms. As countries ethnically change, green parties move to capture cosmopolitan liberals and the populist right targets conservatives and authoritarians.88 While attitude liberalization did throw up cultural debates over religion, gay marriage and traditional values, these are on their way to becoming marginal in Europe as liberal attitudes attain mass acceptance. The legalization of drugs and the question of how best to address crime are live social issues, but neither promises the same radical transformation of society as ethnic change. Therefore it is ethno-demographic shifts which are rotating European societies away from a dominant left–right economic orientation to a globalist–nationalist cultural axis. The West is becoming less like homogeneous South Korea, where foreign policy and economic divisions dominate, and more like South Africa, where ethnicity is the main political division.89 When a regalizing order fails to make a charge of deviance stick, the norm begins to unwind, leading to a period of intense cultural contestation. Competing groups police norm boundaries and marginalize deviants who are seen to have violated their community's sacred values. I maintain we are currently in such a period, in which hegemonic liberal norms known as ‘political correctness' are being challenged by both populists and centrists, some of whom are trying to install new social norms, notably those defining Muslims and cosmopolitans as deviant. Fascism and socialism lost out after the Second World War, but what of the victor, liberalism? The Allies' victory did enlarge and protect the scope of negative liberty. But alongside this success a positive liberalism was smuggled in which advocated individuality and cosmopolitanism over community. Most, myself included, value individual autonomy, but one has to recognize that not all share this aim. Someone who prefers to wear a veil or dedicate their lives to religion is making a communitarian choice which negative liberalism respects but positive liberalism (whether of the modernist left or burqa-banning right) does not. Expressive individualism advocates that we channel our authentic inner nature, or what H. G. Wells or Henri Bergson termed our life force, unconstrained by tradition or reason. Aesthetically, it tended towards what the influential American sociologist Daniel Bell terms modernism, rejecting Christian or national traditions while spurning established techniques and motifs.22 Not only were traditions overturned but esteem was accorded to those whose innovations shocked sensibilities and subverted historic narratives and symbols the most. Clearly something happened between the nation-evoking historical and landscape painting of a Delacroix or Constable in the early nineteenth century and Marcel Duchamp's urinal of 1917. This ‘something' was the rise, after 1880, of what Bell terms modernism and Anthony Giddens calls de-traditionalization. For Bell, modernism is the antinomian rejection of all cultural authority. For Giddens, the shift is from a past- to a future-orientation and involves a decline in existential security.23 For Bell, modernism replaces contemplation of external reality and tradition with sensation and immediacy.26 The desire to seek out new and different experiences elevates novelty and diversity into cardinal virtues of the new positive liberalism. To favour tradition over the new, homogeneity over diversity, is to be reactionary. Left-modernism continually throws up new movements such as Surrealism or Postmodernism in its quest for novelty and difference. The shock of the new is accompanied by a cosmopolitan pastiche of borrowings from non-Western cultures, as with the Primitivism of Paul Gauguin. Yet there is a tension between the expressive-individualist and egalitarian strands of left-modernism. Gauguin, for example, who considered himself a cosmopolite defending Tahitian sexual freedom against the buttoned-down West, stands accused by the New Left of cultural appropriation, colonialism, orientalism and patriarchy. The social penetration of left-modernist ideas would take a great leap forward only in the 1960s as television and university education soared. In America, the share of 18- to 24-year-olds in College increased from 15 per cent in 1950 to a third in 1970. Given the large postwar ‘baby-boom' generation, this translated into a phenomenal expansion of universities. The growth of television was even more dramatic: from 9 per cent penetration in American homes in 1950 to 93 per cent by 1965.41 The New York, Hollywood and campus-based nodes in this network allowed liberal sensibilities to spread from a small coterie of aficionados to a wider public. Rising affluence may also have played a part in creating a social atmosphere more conducive to liberalism. All told, these ingredients facilitated a marked liberal shift across a wide range of attitudes measured in social surveys from the mid-1960s: gender roles, racial equality, sexual mores and religion – with the effects most apparent in the postwar Baby Boom generation.42 Since so much of the debate around the boundaries of the permissible revolves around racism, we need a rigorous – rather than political – definition of the concept. It's very important to specify clearly, using analytic political theory and precise terminology, why certain utterances or actions are racist. Only in this manner can we defend a racist taboo. I define racism as (a) antipathy to racial or pan-ethnic outgroups, defined as communities of birth; (b) the quest for race purity; or (c) racial discrimination which results in a violation of citizens' right to equal treatment before the law. The problem is that left-modernism has established racial inequality as an outrage rather than one dimension – and not generally the most important – of the problem of inequality. If racial inequality is one facet of inequality, it should be considered alongside other aspects such as income, health, weight or age. To focus the lion's share of attention on race and gender disparities entrenches ‘inequality privilege', wherein those who suffer from low-visibility disadvantages are treated less fairly than those who fit totemic left-modernist categories. A white male who is short, disabled, poor and unattractive will understandably resent the fact his disadvantage is downplayed while he is pilloried for his privilege. In effect, the 2010s represent a renewed period of left-modernist innovation, incubated by near-universal left–liberal hegemony among non-STEM faculty and administrators. Most academics are moderate liberals rather than radical leftists, but in the absence of conservative or libertarian voices willing to stand against left-modernist excess, liberal saturation reduced resistance to the japes of extremist students and professors. Social media and progressive online news acted as a vector, carrying the new left-modernist awakening off-campus much more effectively than was true during the first wave of political correctness of the late 1980s and 1990s. Angela Nagle finds that leftist radicalism emerged first, attracting a far-right response. One of the first to trace the emergence of this polarizing dynamic, she shows how, in left-modernist online chat groups, those who stake outlandish claims about white male oppression win moral and social plaudits. These in turn are lampooned by the alt-right, who leverage left-modernist excesses to legitimate blatant racism and sexism. This begins a cycle of polarizing rhetorical confrontation. Alt-right message boards adopt a playful countercultural style, emphasizing their rebellion against a stifling, puritanical-left establishment.11 Whereas bohemians like the Young Intellectuals of the 1910s and 1920s lauded African-American jazz and immigrant conviviality as a riposte to an uptight Prohibitionist Anglo-Protestant culture, the alt-right champions white maleness as a liberation from the strictures of the puritanical left. Hamid argues that being attached to an ethnic group and looking out for its interests is qualitatively different from hating or fearing outgroups. This is a distinction social psychologists recognize, between love for one's group and hatred of the other. As Marilyn Brewer writes in one of the most highly cited articles on prejudice: The prevailing approach to the study of ethnocentrism, ingroup bias, and prejudice presumes that ingroup love and outgroup hate are reciprocally related. Findings from both cross-cultural research and laboratory experiments support the alternative view that ingroup identification is independent of negative attitudes toward outgroups.54 If politics in the West is ever to return to normal rather than becoming even more polarized, white interests will need to be discussed. I realize this is very controversial for left-modernists. Yet not only is white group self-interest legitimate, but I maintain that in an era of unprecedented white demographic decline it is absolutely vital for it to have a democratic outlet. Marginalizing race puritanism is important, but muzzling relaxed versions of white identity sublimates it in a host of negative ways. For example, when whites are concerned about their decline but can't express it, they may mask their concern as worry about the nation-state. It's more politically correct to worry about Islam's challenge to liberalism and East European ‘cheap labour' in Britain than it is to say you are attached to being a white Brit and fear cultural loss. This means left-modernism has placed us in a situation where expressing racism is more acceptable than articulating racial self-interest. David Willetts, Minister of Education in David Cameron's Conservative government: The basis on which you can extract large sums of money in tax and pay it out in benefits is that most people think the recipients are people like themselves, facing difficulties which they themselves could face. If values become more diverse, if lifestyles become more differentiated, then it becomes more difficult to sustain the legitimacy of a universal risk-pooling welfare state. People ask, ‘Why should I pay for them when they are doing things I wouldn't do?' This is America versus Sweden. You can have a Swedish welfare state provided that you are a homogeneous society with intensely shared values. In the US you have a very diverse, individualistic society where people feel fewer obligations to fellow citizens. Progressives want diversity but they thereby undermine part of the moral consensus on which a large welfare state rests.62 trying to reconstruct our racial categories from above through politics may be as difficult as trying to get people to unlearn the primary colours. This doesn't mean categories can't evolve, but it suggests the process is complex, evolutionary and bottom-up. As the median racial type changes, the boundaries of whiteness may expand because people judge categories based on the average type they encounter. Hispanics, like the Italians before them, may become part of the ethnic majority in the not-too-distant future. Many white Americans currently view those with Spanish surnames or Hispanic features as outsiders. A majority of Hispanics see themselves as white, but only 6 per cent of Hispanics who identify as white say they are accepted as such by American society. Even among those with just one Latino grandparent, 58 per cent identify as Hispanic.43 Yet this may change with increased intermarriage, cultural assimilation and the arrival of more culturally distant groups. Already, lighter-skinned Hispanics are more likely to vote Republican or live in the same neighbourhoods as whites.44 As group lines are blurred by intermarriage, ethnic boundaries may shift: Ramirez may be considered an Anglo-American on a par with De Niro. Hispanic surnames are unlikely to be ‘counter-entropic' barriers to assimilation. This assimilation process is a major reason why the centre-left writer John Judis revised his thesis that America's changing demographics will automatically produce Democratic victories in the future.45 When the criteria for defining who is in or out of the majority change, whole chunks of the population who are not of mixed origin – like the fully Irish John F. Kennedy – suddenly become part of the ethnic majority. The analogy would be if fully Hispanic or Asian Americans came to be viewed as white. I deem this unlikely, given the proximity to Mexico and the established nature of the racial categories noted by Richard Dawkins. What seems more likely is that the high rate of intermarriage between Latinos and whites, as well as the rising share of native English-speakers, Protestants or seculars among them, may expand the boundaries of whiteness to include those of mixed parentage. That is, those with some European background who are culturally assimilated and have Anglo first names – but who have Spanish surnames or a Hispanic appearance – may be accepted as white.

In today's episode of the Global Wire Conversation, Ralph is talking to Professor Eric Kaufmann. Dr. Kaufmann is an expert Orangeism in Northern Ireland, nationalism, political demography and religious demography. In the course of the 2020 US presidential election, his writings provided some of the best explanations for the so-called “Shy Trump Vote,” making him an indispensable voice in the debate of electoral trends in the United States. He has also written extensively on the connection of religion and demographic trends in his book, “Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century” and more recently has turned towards the question how Western societies are coping with migration from non-Western societies in his meticulously researched “Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities.” In addition to being a data and facts driven researcher, Dr. Kaufmann also participated in the public debate and publishes regularly on topics from free speech rights to cancel culture on college campuses and the concept of “wokeness.” Make sure to follow his work and commentary on Twitter at https://twitter.com/epkaufm In our conversation we cover why some pollsters missed the “shy Trump vote,” the role of religion in demographic trends, and whether Western societies have lower fertility rates due to cultural or economic reasons. We also discuss Cancel&Campus culture, the impact of political correctness on voting behavior and self-censorship as well as the future of migration and integration in Europe and the US. Towards the end we also turn to the question what could be done differently in educational institutions and the public discourse to make attempts at the integration of minorities more successful. As always, you can find this conversation on your favorite podcast platform as well – just click https://linktr.ee/global_wire and select your podcast provider. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the1020/support

On the podcast this week, Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers: The Media After Trump by Andrey Mir. Next time: Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities by Eric Kaufmann and Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in the Dank Woolly Wilds of the "Real America" by Kevin D. Williamson. Some highlights from Postjournalism: The greatest harm caused by media is polarization, and the biggest issue is that polarization has become systemically embedded into both social media and the mass media. Polarization is not merely a side effect but has morphed into a condition of their business. Engagement, much needed for the platforms' business, appeared to be tied to polarization. The news media business used to be funded predominantly by advertising, but advertising fled to the internet. The entire news media industry was forced to switch to another source of funding – reader revenue. People almost always already know the news before they come to news websites because they invariably start their daily media routine with newsfeeds on social media. Increasingly, therefore, if and when people turn to the news media, it is not to find news, but rather to validate already known news. The membership payers do not pay to get news for themselves (they already know the news), they pay for news to be delivered to others. The membership is payment from below but driven by motives from above. They require newsrooms to operate with values, not news. This slowly forces journalism to mutate into crowdsourced propaganda – postjournalism. The media are incentivized to amplify and dramatize issues whose coverage is most likely to be paid for Covering polarizing issues for better soliciting of support, the media are incentivised to seek and reproduce polarization for the next rounds of soliciting. They change the picture of the world and they change their audiences, agitating them into more polarization, for profit. The media relying on ad revenue makes the world look pleasant. The media relying on reader revenue makes the world look grim. The decline in the media business caused by the internet has not distorted the picture of the world in the media; it has distorted the habitual distortion. The media system based on ad revenue manufactured consent. The media system based on soliciting the audience's support manufactures anger. The ad-driven media produced happy customers. The reader-driven media produces angry citizens. The former served consumerism. The latter serves polarization. The least obvious and yet most shocking aspect of the discussion about the death of newspapers is the fact that we are discussing the fate of journalism, not just papers. This is neither a cyclical crisis nor a matter of transition; this is the end of an era. Because of the Trump bump, the New Yorker, the Atlantic[21] and the Washington Post[22] doubled or tripled their subscriptions in the first year of Trump's presidency. Due to media conditions shaped in the mid-2010s, news organizations were forced to choose a side. The evolution of the media as an instrument of commercial and political communication created the conditions that led to the formation of modern society, both in its economic and political dimensions. Journalism is inherently designed to sell news downward, to the end user – a reader. However, as it is an intrinsic part of a whole social context, journalism inevitably switches to selling agendas upwards, with some news traded downwards as a side business. This gives us two ultimate ‘ideal' models of the media business. Journalism is either paid from below by those who want to read news or paid from above by those who want others to read news. These two opposing models, in different mixes, have been employed by journalism throughout it 500-year-long history. There was always someone from above who came and forced or seduced the media to sell the audience upwards, not news downwards; first political patrons, then political parties, then advertisers. Journalism has simply lost the publishing monopoly. It has become clear that it is not the quality of content, nor the social function, but the technological monopoly over content communication that was at the core of the media's existence. The cost of the telegraph limited not only the number of messages that could be sent but also the size of messages, as the charge for messages was based on the number of characters. This forced correspondents' writing to become concise and substantive, and the telegraphic style of journalism emerged. When a conveyed message is literally charged by the letter, nobody will subsidize someone's opinions. Only naked and solid facts were therefore telegraphed. The cost of messages made facts more valuable than opinions, simply by the design of the medium. By the end of the 19th century, the cost of the telegraph had decreased, which made it widely affordable. Newspapers became saturated with international news. The demand for guidance in this news kaleidoscope appeared. Opinions and expertise started being valued above mere facts in the media diet. In this new cycle of the evolution, opinion journalism re-established command. Similar cycles happen each time a new mass medium appears and then ages. It happened again to radio, TV, and the internet. News production is much more expensive than the production of opinions and expertise. According to assumed standards of journalism, news is disseminated because of its significance. But, in fact, news becomes significant because of its dissemination. Note: What happens to Wikipedia? The problem is that a factoid is good; too good for the audience to want truth instead. The truth is not as good as a factoid is. Therefore, factoids are good for profit. Being an industrial capitalist enterprise, the media produce a reality that is supposed to be relevant but also has to be marketable. Even non-profit media do this, as they must compete for the public's attention. Thus, the supply of reality in the media is impacted by the necessity to meet the demand. The use-value of a factoid is defined by the relations of demand/supply, not by compliance to reality. In their swirling chicken-or-egg tango, readers want to read what they want, and the media define and supply it. Factoids are the news that is wanted. Journalism is the mastery of factoids. The political biases might define what kind of induced reality will be induced, but the very inevitability of reality induction is not ideological. It rests on the commercial need to manufacture a saleable picture of the world. Ideological preconceptions simply accompany the marketing strategy in a chosen or allocated market niche comprised of liberal or conservative audiences. The media define their audience and then manufacture what their audience wants and buys. Interestingly a factoid dovetails rather well with the concept of simulation and Baudrillard's simulacrum. By minimizing the size of media consumption from the media issue down to the article, the internet detached content from media brands. The media was thereby deprived of the opportunity to maintain their ownership over content. When content travels in parcels that are smaller than a physically wrapped and salable piece of media (book, magazine, newspaper), it becomes harder or impossible to commodify it under a media brand. News bits' shepherding on social media, whether by humans (by the Viral Editor) or by algorithms, is making journalism obsolete. The transition from the parceled to the streamed mode of producing content had a dramatic impact on the quality of journalism. This change in the technology of production caused newsrooms to switch from fixed deadlines to rolling ones, which, in reality, are no deadlines at all, but rather a constant pressure to supply as much content as fast as possible. The fact of the matter is that value in the media market is now extracted not from content but from the audience's time/attention. So, content is used as bait to attract attention. No business can sell bait to fish. The only party who pays for bait in this relationship is the fisherman – those who supply content. But when advertising disappear, journalism's true nature comes into focus: it is a public good, something society requires but that market cannot provide in sufficient quality and quantity. Like other public goods, if society wants it, it will require public policy and public spending. Membership is a sort of crowdsourced philanthropy propaganda and also a sort of slactivism, as members outsource their activism (support to a cause) through small donations. The news-validation service is an important step of the media towards the membership model, as it makes people regard the media as a source of evaluation, not news. The prevalence of opinion journalism over journalism of fact (due to the redundancy of news) makes the attitude towards events (not the news about events) the main use-value in news production and consumption. People want to see already-known news to be covered from the right angle; they also want others to see the news covered from the right angle. If the winners take all, then it remains for the losers to only rely on patrons or foundation funding of a limited scale. Crowdfunding potential simply does not have the capacity to support all. Because public opinion is impacted by so many distorting factors but is “supposed to be the prime mover in democracies”, the common interests “can be managed only by a specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality” (Lippmann, 1929 [1922], p. 253). This class, the class of administrators and politicians – the decision-making elites – needs to both receive adequate information about social reality and spread useful information to the public. This task can be accomplished by a special cohort of educated and independent experts who know “how to create and operate public opinion” (Ibid., 255) and can advise the leadership competently and unbiasedly. However, these different threats must reflect a binary split value system, where the opposites play the role of mobilizing enemies for each other. For a donscription-driven media system, the Cold War ceased to be an external mobilizing factor. The fear of enemy has to come inside the national media system for the better soliciting of readers' contribution on each side of the spectrum: the Cold War must become a Cold Civil War. After Trump, the reader-driven media based on soliciting subscription as donation will need to find an equivalent binary threat to preserve the mobilizing power of the political cause they undertake to promote. Postjournalism is journalism that sells the audience to the public by soliciting donations in the form of subscription. Classical journalism pretended to be objective; it strived to depict the world-as-it-is. Postjournalism is openly normative; it imposes the world-as-it-should-be. Similar to propaganda, postjournalism openly promotes an ideological view. What distinguishes it from propaganda, however, is that postjournalism mixes open ideological intentions with a hidden business imperative required for the media to survive. Postjournalism is not the product of a choice but is the consequence of the change in the media business model. Real propaganda involves the proliferation of ideas and values. However, postjournalism cannot even do that. Those whom it is supposed to reach and convert are already trapped in the same agenda bubble. The only “others” for the agenda bubble, made of the donating audience and their media, are the inhabitants of the opposite agenda bubble on the other side of the political spectrum. Paradoxically, postjournalism supplies not so much content but, rather, the reason for the foes' existence and their motives, which justify their outrage and mobilization. However, there is also no expected agenda impact on opponents. The opponents do not consume ‘opposing' content as information. They regard it as a source of energy to feed their anger. Polarization is the essential environmental condition and the only outcome of postjournalism (besides the earnings of the media that practice postjournalism). Because of its self-containment and the need for energy input, postjournalism exists in a binary form in which the strength of the one side depends on the strength of the other. Their confrontation strengthens their audience-capturing power and maintains their business. Polarization means that journalists and the media need to take a stance. The professional standards of seeking truth, objectivity and impartiality are among the first to fall under the risk of being weakened or denied. The next are going the standards of independence, accuracy, transparency, diligence in newsgathering, accountability and harm limitation. The democrat's dilemma, Gunitsky suggested, is something similar but opposite: by forbidding information potentially harmful to democracy, democracy is thereby harmed; by allowing it, democracy allows antidemocratic ideas to spread. The polarization of stances requires the commonality of topics, in which the stances have to be polarized. Hence topics and discourses that do not support polarization will not circulate for long or will be completely ignored. All the energy potential of the media industry will focus on the topics that fit polarization. Discourse concentration is a technical prerequisite of media polarization which can also have a set of cultural and even psychological consequences. Apart from the reduction in coverage and the deterioration of public service, the media's obsession with topics most suited to polarization leads to an emotional surge. When everybody runs one and the same story, every ensuing account has to be louder than the last in order to be heard. New and more radical arguments and statements need to be made. Discourse concentration contributes to hysteria, a devoted companion of polarization. Journalism wants its picture to match the world. Postjournalism wants the world to match its picture. Post-truth is truth in the digital environment, where the physical risks of ‘wrong' interactions do not exist. If the physical reality is made of objects, the digital reality is made of subjects – of others. The sensorial feedback of wrongdoing, the pain of hitting against objects, has turned into the pain of hitting against subjects, against others. People are training to resettle into the digitally induced environment, where the spatial dimension is replaced by the temporal dimension. Instead of physical risks, social risks become absolutized. Digital is pure social. In the digital world, death is ostracism and cancellation. Cancel culture is apologetics and the practicing of a tribe's death penalty, similar to execution by stoning, where legitimacy is maintained by the collectivity of others. The numbers matter. This new regulator of wrongdoing is replacing the old criteria of truth: instead of the complying with the laws of the physical Universe, one now needs to comply with the values of the social Multiverse – or the part of it to which a person wants or needs to belong. Paradoxically, the social media environment has built-in settings that encourage socializing through rage. This is something normally unacceptable and strategically disadvantageous in offline social communication. Offline, rage would result, among other things, in physical consequences that correct behavior through the sensorium. But on social media, particularly those with a short form of literacy, like Twitter, rage is not risky and can be beneficial. Print, with its delayed reactions to linear thought, started the Age of Reason; social media with their instant service of accelerated self-actualization has turned the Age of Reason into the Age of Rage. The new medium, newspapers, unleashed a new environmental force that enabled the public sphere and capitalism. Capitalism would not have been possible without the exchange of information about markets' and industries' prospects and risks. The same is true for the public sphere – it would not have appeared without the emancipated and enhanced exchange of ideas. Democracy, capitalism and journalism are substantially important to each other. They are, respectively, political, economic and communication dimensions of the same historical process. Electronic media, as McLuhan noted, retribalized society and therefore diminished the significance and influence of literacy. This shift is not only about the ability to read and quantity of reading. The way people learn the news impacts the way social coherence is shaped – through ideas or through emotions. Reading of news, however sensational it might be, just because of its linear and semantic representation of the world, appeals to cognitive perception, whilst the delivery of information via radio, TV and now the digital media seeks to simulate the natural, sensory perception of the surroundings. Digital media do not represent reality, as writing and print used to do; they put the user into the induced reality, shaping along the way a new kind of sensorium – the digital sensorium (Miroshnichenko, 2016). Is it possible to rearrange the economic and behavioral rewards for media use in such a manner that they incentivize people's engagement based if not on consensus, then at the very least on tolerance instead of polarization? This is a million-dollar question, literally; though, considering the capitalization of Google and Facebook, it is more like a billion-dollar question. Perhaps one of the potentially more fruitful searches for depolarization could be in the field of reinforcing the middle (not even the center, as the center opposes the opposites and therefore has a polarizing potential itself). If one side of the spectrum thinks the past represents nothing but shame and the other side thinks the past represents nothing but glory, the only way to mitigate polarization is not to bring those sides together but to empower the voice of the middle. It is the middle who thinks, for example, that the past is much more complex than shame or glory, both of which are, actually, political tools of the present but not conditions of the past.

Eric Kaufmann is a Canadian professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is a specialist on Orangeism in Northern Ireland, nationalism, political demography and demography of the religious/irreligious. Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities is Kaufmann's expanise yet fine-tuned analysis of the current and possible responses of white majority populations in the West to the age of ethnic transformation, and the inevitable changes this will bring to its cultural composition and identity.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eric Kaufmann, a politics professor at Birkbeck College and the author of Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities, and Ben Cobley, author of The Tribe: The Liberal-Left and the System of Diversity, talks to associate editor Toby Young. Kaufmann recently wrote a piece for Quillette about white privilege, arguing that non-whites discriminate in favour of whites as well as whites, so declining white populations won't necessarily end white privilege, and Ben Cobley's book was recently reviewed in Quillette by Helen Dale in which she praised him for explaining "how a frankly bonkers set of beliefs has stolen the Labour Party" and for showing "the danger of viewing people as members of fixed identity groups."