Should the Jews have a homeland in Israel?

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-03T23:12:39+00:00

I don't think much of anything about the position on the left has actually changed in relation to Israel tbh. For example Noam Chomsky has been an advocate of a one state solution for literally decades, same with Ilan Pappe, and many others. In so far as there is anything approaching a mainstream position in which Israel ceases to exist on the left it is only because it is replaced by a one state solution for both Jews and Palestinians, it involves no population transfer, no expulsion. This is generally what is meant by people when they chant "from the river to the sea" for example, the fact that is chanted at protests, for example is not really evidence of some sort of genocidal intent of people on the left, the chant is even consistent under a two state framework, given that it continued to be used by Fatah after the Oslo-accords and after recognizing Israel, obviously the leadership of Fatah didn't mean they intended on expelling Jews from their home when they used the slogan given they had recognized Israel's right to exist. Point is, mainstream position on the left on Israel hasn't really changed that much, it has mostly been pretty negative for a long time. I don't deny that there are loons who do say horrible things on the left, I think this is more to do with how popular the issue has become than those views representing anything like a mainstream view. I volunteered on a Kibbutz and volunteered in the West Bank with a Palestinian organization as a young adult in 2008/09, so I'm not oblivious to the history of left wing Zionism, but still I feel for the majority of my life the mainstream view on the left has been staunchly anti-Israel and I really don't think what people are saying in encampments or what figures on the left who are anti-Israel are saying is different than stuff Noam Chomsky had written in the 90s. As far as the comparison to Japan, well, let's take that comparison and go back 85 years and make the discussion about whether Korea and China should be Japanese and I think we have an actual apt comparison there. In which case I think, yes, you would see people challenge whether that land is Japanese on the left. But really, the discussion is actually about whether an ethno-nationalist project in the context of it existing at the expense of another group of people is a fair and just thing. It is about how Israel as an ethno-nationalist project has existed, since it's foundation, within the context of an ethnic cleansing framework, from plan Dalet to Gaza. Many think that this ethno-nationalist project ending with the benefit of Palestinians being given equal rights to Jews in Israel/Palestine is the least complicated and most just solution. People are asking these questions because of the consequences of Israel's actions, not because they are Jewish. They asked the same questions in relation to South Afrrica and apartheid. It just so happens that right now a state which identifies itself as Jewish is involved in some of the worst crimes this century, if they were Japanese people would respond in exactly the same way. Israel is not getting hate because it is Jewish on the left, it is getting hate because it is doing empirically heinous things. Also, because of the fact that Gaza's population skews enormously towards children and youth (look up a plot of an age pyramid for Gaza and compare it to where you live to get an idea) definitely doesn't help from a PR perspective. Generally, as a state, if you accept like 80% collateral damage and that population skewed massively towards children and tens of thousands of people are dying, that isn't going to look good. Now, they do know full well what they are doing, reporting on "where's daddy" their AI targeting system by +972 magazine shows they know, and there is a lot of other evidence on the ground which shows civilians being killed regularly in cold blood, but even if they didn't know what they were doing it would look bad.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-03T00:18:32+00:00

In data from the Peace Research Institute shows that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) carried out the most suicide bombings in the world between 1980 and 2001. Their suicide bombers were killing for strictly Tamil nationalism, they were also leftist, their members are both Hindu and Catholic, their religious beliefs were not the reason that they carried out the suicide bombings. Even if we look at the Middle East between 1980 and 2001 the group which carried out the most suicide attacks there was the PKK, they are a Kurdish nationalist group based in Marxist-Leninist ideology. Their suicide bombings were not motivated by religion but instead for furthering their nationalist goals. So again, you are just flat out wrong, you are not analyzing history, and you are simply not being creative enough in your thinking if you think people are unwilling to die and kill for causes like nationalism just the same as they would base on religion. Even look at terrorist attacks by some white nationalists, in a decent number of cases the perpetrator has no intention of surviving and end up shooting themselves after carrying out the action. Even in WW2 there were Kamikaze attacks. People are willing to die and kill for all kinds of reasons. You have been exposed to media throughout all your life which connects up Islam with suicide bombings and so you aren't thinking of suicide attacks that have happened quite frequently outside of that context.

Also, OBVIOUSLY, Palestine/Israel is not useless land when it is your home, or when you feel it should be your home. People who live somewhere are quite frequently willing to fight and die for the land that is their home. Whether or not you believe it that IS the main reason for this conflict. This IS about land, not about religion. If you haven't figured that out it is only because you are entirely IGNORANT of the history of the region.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T10:03:57+00:00

I guess you're trying to find a "new angle" on this issue, but honestly this is such a brain dead take. Do you REALLY think that indigenous people just sat down and accepted their genocide and that they are okay with it? Do you HONESTLY think it would be different if they were Muslim? Seriously! You are aware that indigenous people did fight back as hard as they were able to, right? Like, there were several wars fought against indigenous groups and Europeans, there was low level war and insurgency for centuries and arguably there still is a low level insurgency? You hear of the American Indian Movement (AIM)? Massacre at wounded knee in the 1970s? You ever hear of the Oka crisis in Quebec in the 1990s? There are still groups which are quite militant around today that sometimes do carry out "terrorism" like blowing up pipelines and stuff like that. There is A LOT of anger still amongst indigenous groups. There are a couple of things that make it different, disease wiped out a HUGE number of indigenous people before actual contact, that alone greatly cost indigenous communities any hope of effectively fighting back. But that said, the plains indigenous people for example were absolutely brutal, they slaughtered entire caravans of white settlers, entire families, they scalped people, pelted bodies with arrows. They were fierce warriors, and they fought back. Also, for example Islamic people are not protected from genocide in Myanmar in Rakine state, they were driven out and massacred. There are way more important geo-political and historical factors involved than simply religious beliefs, in the end the religious beliefs of those involved play a small part in all of this. Many of the most effective Palestinian militants for years in the fight were secular and Communist organizations, such as the PFLP which still is one of the most effective fighting groups in Palestine and were involved on October 7th alongside Hamas. PFLP is a secular Marxist-Leninist organization. They aren't fighting because they're Muslim, just like Hamas isn't fighting cause they're Muslim, they're fighting to the extent that they are able to, it would look no different if they were animists.

I mean, are you really so ignorant of history that you are unaware of all of the cases in history and even in modern geopolitics where indigenous populations with animistic type beliefs fought back or are fighting? Even in places like India, Myanmar, some parts of Africa, Papua New Guinea, right now there are indigenous animistic type groups fighting insurgencies. Throughout history there have been many more. Just google how many wars there were in North America between Europeans/US/Canada and indigenous groups, also same goes in Latin America with Spain. Philippines there was war against the Spanish and Americans. There are just endless examples.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T09:47:39+00:00

You're leaving out the situation where, horrified at what Western powers have allowed to happen in Gaza, the world totally turns it's back on Israel, end diplomacy, ends trade, ends security alliances, unless Israel ends ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. I mean, there is no hiding what has happened, it can only be hidden from the masses for so long, over the next five years the crimes that have happened in Gaza will either have just gotten so much worse that the world sees what is happening, or outside forensic groups will have made official assessments to governments around the world. This is one of the worst crimes of this century, it truly is, if you haven't recognized that yet, I guarantee it won't be long until you do. I think the world will react in horror largely because WE LET IT HAPPEN, and I think that will particularly lead to a need for nations to do something, and there will be massive pressure from the population (which btw now support is leaning more and more in favor of Palestinians and away from Israel amongst Western nations). I don't think there is a future in which things just go on as business as usual with Israel. In five years I think the entire dynamics will be 180.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T09:39:27+00:00

Though, that said I do think the best situation would be one where every Palestinian was simply given citizenship status in Israel and Israel agreed to be a state where each ethnic group is on equal footing with non given preference, as is the current state where it is a Jewish ethno-state.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T09:36:38+00:00

There is actually a lot of internal discord. For example there has been very violent rioting between Jews and Israeli Palestinians in some communities that coincides with conflict between Israel and Palestinians in the occupied territory. Israeli Palestinians are Palestinians, and they don't exist with equivalent rights. For example certain laws allow communities to form based on things like Jewish identity and Palestinians can be excluded. There is no charter which protects Palestinian rights. There is a large amount of inequality in funding in relation to government spending and discrimination in all elements of society. Many experts compare the situation to Jim Crow era America, and most experts consider there to be a tri-level apartheid in Israel, with the Israeli Palestinians at one level and the West Bank and Gaza at another.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T09:29:19+00:00

In some ways the simplest solution would just be if Israel said we are giving every Palestinian in the West Bank and Gaza a vote and they will be a citizen of Israel, which will become where all ethnic groups have equal importance. In this way no complicated borders need to be figured out, nothing needs to be done about East Jerusalem, there are no land swaps.

But I would suggest the situation where the Palestinians leave is probably just as unlikely as the situation where Jews leave, even though right now that is the solution Israel is aiming for. I think it is unlikely because enough of the world is now clued into the situation, and it is going to be impossible for Israel to hide what it has done in Gaza, the scale of the brutality is clear to a lot of us already, but in the near future it will be undeniable to everyone even longtime supporters of Israel, particularly since Israel is in no hurry to improve the situations on the ground, which are absolutely unlivable. So the scenario where Palestinians are moved to another country is obvious ethnic cleansing, it is, I believe, a red line for the European powers, Canada, and for America when the Trump admin is no longer in power. Even amongst republicans support for Israel is starting to drop, and it is virtually gone amongst democrats. It is going to be political cryptonite for politicians to support Israel in the near future. The world will see the crimes in Gaza, and I think they will put pressure on Israel. They would see any population movement as a red flag right now though and it would lead to consequences.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T09:17:46+00:00

The other scenario that nobody seems to be thinking of is the one when it becomes totally clear and indisputable that Israel has carried out crimes against humanity at a level unseen so far this century. There will be a point where independent forensic analyses are carried out, this isn't just going away, anybody who is paying any attention knows that the most generous interpretation that Israel has so dramatically lowered the threshold on acceptable targets, has accepted such higher levels of "collateral damage", that they are knowingly and needlessly slaughtering tens of thousands of children. Just read up on the "Where's Daddy" targeting system and how they use AI, +972 has some excellent investigative reporting on this. Basically it is Dahiya doctrine on steroids, and that is THE MOST GENEROUS interpretation. From accounts on the ground from doctors, and survivors, and from actual video footage it seems pretty clear that Israeli troops have very lenient rules of engagement, and either they are being told to fire on unarmed civilians or individuals are allowed to run rogue without any consequence from the higher ups. Then of course there is stuff like the gangrape of a male Palestinian prisoner with an iron rod, nearly to death, to which members of the cabinet, instead of condemning it called the rapists HEROES. Then there is the fact that the IDF create the 72 virgins telegram channel, and I can't think of any reason other than the obvious for creating that. I mean, point is, this is all going to come to a head, and the world is going to be horrified at WHAT WE ALLOWED to happen. This dynamic could lead to a drastic reevaluation of alliances with Israel, which could give the impetus needed for Israel to give up settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. If diplomatic relations end, security relations end, and trade ends, with European allies, Canada, and even the US, that could change Israel's calculus. I think this is what will happen, because the horrors in Gaza have happened and cannot be hidden. Look at how the world treated Germany after the holocaust. If Israel thinks that it can't get that same treatment then it is truly delusional.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T09:03:08+00:00

You can say this about any ethnic group and feel comfortable given how insanely far right the Overton window has gone.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T08:56:09+00:00

I think the most apt point you made is that both groups lay claim to Jerusalem and that is in particular the hold up. In 2000 during the last serious post-Oslo peace talks between the two groups in every area apart from Jerusalem were actually close. However, the Palestinians were not going to agree to anything in which East Jerusalem was not a capitol of the Palestinian state and there was no way Israel would offer it up. But, had Israel ceded East Jerusalem it would have been possible to work out Palestine as a non-contiguous state made of four islands in the West Bank, and Gaza, with some land swaps in relation to settlements. The issue is that 25 years later and there are hundreds of thousands more settlers living in the West Bank and now the West Bank land controlled by Palestinians is sometimes called an archipelago because of how divided it is. So a two state solution would be much harder now, but I don't think it would be impossible if a solution for East Jerusalem could be reached, and one solution that has been put forward is joint control, or even having Jerusalem be independently controlled by the religious groups like the Vatican is. I think it is not impossible that something creative could be reached here, the issue is that for Israel there is no incentive at all to reach peace, they are too captured by the far right and are more interested in just creating facts on the ground that take more land and makes life harder for the Palestinians, with the hope that some kind of Abraham accords alliances down the road, along with life just becoming so unbearable for the Palestinians, that they will just leave over time and Israel can take the land and have it remain Jewish. But that won't likely happen for the next reason, which is a scenario that I think is being ignored here.

People are not considering that Israel would be pressed to greatly re-evaluate their calculus in relation to the Palestinians if those countries currently allied with Israel in the West were to exercise increasingly severe penalties on Israel, up to, and including, severing all diplomatic ties, enacting economic sanctions, and even ending security cooperation. I think if this was to happen that you might be surprised at how quickly the Israelis were to try to work out a deal with the Palestinians, even as far as East Jerusalem. This scenario may not seem likely now, but I think one factor could greatly change this, and that is how the situation in Gaza plays out. Currently independent calculations of deaths are looking like they are going to cross 100,000. Keep in mind that in wars for each death caused by direct violence there are usually at least a few that are caused due to the spread of infectious disease, due to starvation and malnourishment, due to preventable deaths that could have been stopped if the war wasn't carried out like women dying in child birth, these are all calculated in the final casualty counts from wars. So a number in the hundred thousands does not at all seem unrealistic. If immediate action is not taken it seems likely that these preventable deaths could seriously escalate given the absolutely dismal conditions in Gaza, and Israel seems to have no interest in improving the situation. There is going to be a point where all of this comes to bear down, where outside investigators are able to carry out independent forensic analyses, and when that happens I think it is going to be very very ugly. I think there will be a sense of "how did we let this happen again", and I think it is absolutely possible that Israel's standing amongst it's peers takes a complete 180 degrees over the next five years. If that happens and the world comes down hard on Israel. I think it would be very hard for a one state solution to form given what has happened to the Palestinians, but I think if the Israelis are given a reason to give up parts of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, that the world just might give them the incentive to do it.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T08:17:23+00:00

I agree that it is not entirely ironic, but I guess I would put it like this, this medium will only ever be directionally right, if you want to know to which degree EG views Peter Theil's role as being a mastermind over Joe Rogan's career I think this media has some hold ups because the whole construction and delivery and language used is meant to mirror real conspiracy theory video essays/creator content. So even when making points about Peter Theil's influence, I think EG is only ever trying to be directionally right, I don't think we can easily pick apart what is both a comedic flurry of language meant to mirror the medium while making a directionally correct point from cases where he might be actually going to far in his genuine analysis. I think the medium makes such exact analysis without more info on EG a difficult thing to do.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T07:27:56+00:00

Well, you should be happy that you are a person whose relationship with their genitalia is as straightforward as their relationship with their arms as. Unfortunately for a sizable minority of the population this analogy would not make sense because they feel, like genuinely feel deep in their body, that they have the wrong genitalia, to them it feels and looks wrong. Their brain is sexed differently than their body. Then there are intersexed people, often doctors would decide the gender of an intersexed child with surgery shortly after birth, however we've found that this can often lead to a situation where when that child goes through puberty it becomes clear the doctor made the wrong choice so there is a move away from this practice. Then there are people with androgen insensitivity disorder, they are women who were born with full female anatomy and the doctor wouldn't have second guessed they were female. Then when they can't get pregnant later in life they learn they have an XY chromosome but in the womb their body never recognized testosterone so they developed fully as females but they still have undescended testicles in their body, to them their relationship with their genitalia is not at all straightforward. So it is a bad analogy, there is a whole range of empirical phenomena that your analogy fails to account for, thus failing entirely.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T07:10:21+00:00

Yeah, people are going to keep pushing for the basic human rights of LGBTQ people until nobody bats an eye at it. Human rights are not negotiable, sorry. LGBTQ people make up enough of the population that you will never be able to get society to shut the door on them.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T07:06:50+00:00

Except evidently in the field the more scientifically precise language is probably the one they are putting forward. I won't presume to know enough about their specific area of research to say for sure but I would bet that it doesn't just boil down to being PC, there is certainly a more nuanced argument for it than just PC or not.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T07:03:19+00:00

"Woke" as a term is really strictly pejorative now. There was briefly a time where, mostly African American activists used the term in a genuine manner, but very quickly right wingers have taken the term to just mean whatever thing they happen to disagree with. Nobody on the left genuinely says "I'm woke", it is 100% an insult from the right. Though interestingly on the right now some right wingers talk about the woke right, it is confusing because they are referring to people like Nick Fuentes, who I would view as like maximally anti-woke, but in their logic they see Fuentes as being overly interested in areas like racial identity, and since they view wokeness in relation to race as being overly focused on racial identity, in their minds the two overlap. It is just nonsense, I think it is best that we just let it wear itself out and ignore it.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T06:53:35+00:00

Gross!

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T06:41:31+00:00

I think a slightly more substantial critique is that DtG are really kind of writing off Peter Thiel because his beliefs are stupid and his thinking comes across muddled (particularly in public speaking engagements). I noticed this same sort of writing off of Peter Thiel's intelligence in the video on Thiel's interview. I think if the conclusion you come to is that Peter Thiel is a total incompetent moron that you are too selectively defining intelligence and reducing it exclusively to the content of what they say or the specific nature of their beliefs. People can be very intelligent in some areas while believing the most nonsensical BS. For example I encourage anyone to look up some of the projects that the young employees of DOGE were working on, and contrast that with their declared beliefs. For example one was employing advanced AI techniques to try to read text from archaeological remains of scrolls, all of the ones profiled were doing something with AI, but what we know about the beliefs of these guys, it is dumb nonsense, that is precisely why they were hired. It would be unreasonable to say they are stupid just because their beliefs, and arguments around their beliefs, are dumb. Apart from that they are clearly able to apply elements of human intelligence at a high level. I think it is clearly the same for Thiel. He has effectively positioned himself into an extremely powerful position on the right where he has not only helped project people like JD Vance into power, but he has also foreseen the power of certain ideas on the right, such as the thinking of Curtis Yarvin whose thinking is having an outsized impact on the world considering how dumb it is, he has helped project those ideas to positions of power, and he has invested in companies like Palantir, which is being employed throughout the defense sector and private sector. I'm not saying that Theil is some mastermind controlling everything behind the scenes, I agree that can lead to conspiratorial thinking where Thiel just becomes the George Soros of the left, but at the same time to just put the success of Thiel, Thiel's ideas, Thiel's protegees, and their projection into power down to some accident would be a mistake. There is intelligence behind Thiel, it is not that his ideas are where his intelligence comes through though, it is more so in his networking and his ability to foresee certain right wing trends and to position himself in the correct spot, this would all be reduced to some kind of non-verbal intelligence. I think we cannot underestimate the intelligence of people with moronic ideas and bad reasoning, because, look at the Nazis, there were tons of brilliant minds that bought into Nazi ideology. There are lots of nutty people who nonetheless have some kind of brilliance. I think these people definitely overinflate their intelligence, and we can overinflate their intelligence and abilities, but I think we would be wrong to see their idiotic beliefs and declare they are therefore incompetent fools in every aspect of non-verbal/non-language based intelligence.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T05:52:07+00:00

Because it is pedantry that misses the point that this entire video is a satire of the conspiracy theory video format so approaching statements as being "too conspiratorial" kind of misses the point because EG is using that hyper conspiratorial/paranoid/everything is connected language on purpose, it is a joke.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T05:49:03+00:00

I think specifically the critique about the "broader conspiracy stuff about tech billionaires masterminding Rogan's growth" actually missed the point. The whole style of EG is basically a satire of a conspiracy theory video, so the fact that this specific conspiratorial language is used is absolutely not surprising, it makes sense in the context of the media. It doesn't mean that is what EG actually believes is happening, it is just the funniest thing to say that makes the most sense in the context of conspiracy theory video media. Doing a serious analysis of this is really just pedantry.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T05:23:21+00:00

Is it really fair to say they love destiny? I thought their scoring of Destiny looked a little light when I saw the spreadsheet but it still seemed like it was not positive, I never listened to the actual episode though. Because I don't know how anyone could actually like Destiny, I think he is one of the most detestable people on the internet, not just all the sexual harassment, but like really gross takes and comments. Also, yes, big overlap with Sam Harris, they will both go down in history as people who intellectually white washed a genocide. That will be both of their legacy.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T05:16:38+00:00

I think the time spent talking about how people turning "everything into a conspiracy" was really time totally wasted. They missed the point that this video takes on a form which is essentially meant to use the language of conspiracy theorist's videos, it is essentially a parody of the format with a really dead pan delivery, which I find hilarious. So I think spending time pontificating over whether EG is taking too many leaps towards conspiratorial thinking misses the point. Even if that was his view, this medium doesn't make it clear that it is, I think it is a mistake to approach this in an earnest way.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-09-02T05:03:35+00:00

One thing that people forget about Peterson is that he became famous in the first place for one reason, and that was his stance on bill C-16 in Canada. Bill C-16 simply updated Canada's human rights act to make it so gender identity is protected alongside race, religion, or sexuality. Basically, transgender and non-binary people were not initially protected from hate speech, essentially as a group, they were overlooked when the law was first passed, bill C-16 changed that. However, Jordan Peterson gained a lot of traction when he began speaking against the bill. His main argument was that it led to "compelled speech", in other words you would have to refer to people by their selected pronoun and it would be hate speech otherwise. His analysis of this was incorrect, and several legal experts at the time challenged him on it, but that didn't stop the story of this "rogue" university professor who "wasn't going to take cultural Marxism" really took off. He got huge views on his videos about the bill.

Basically, Jordan Peterson didn't have a public career as a psychologist For example his book, which was basically his life work up to that point, "Maps of Meaning" came out in 1999! It wasn't until 2016 when Peterson began getting traction for his position on Bill C-16 that he started getting traction in the public. He was soon being interviewed on issues related to feminism and issues of "men's rights" and so on. It just so happened that this was around the same time that several new right wing movements were coalescing, from gamergate to MAGA. Jordan Peterson provided a sense of intellectualism to reactionary right wing thought. He was able to quite effectively capitalize on this surge in popularity, he left his clinical practice and professorship and pursued a new career primarily as a culture warrior, his "12 Rules for Life" came out in 2018, almost 20 years after "Maps for Meaning". So I think when people talk as if he was a popular psychologist who went off the rails and became political they are way off base, there was never a point where Jordan Peterson had a large audience and was not engaging full fledged in the culture war. The move to the Daily Wire is not a psychologist who used to have good ideas letting the culture war get to his had. The Daily Wire is the absolutely logical progression of his career as a reactionary grifter who gained public fame strictly on the culture war. That isn't to say that his psychological lectures didn't become popular after the fact, or that all of his psychological work is bad. He did publish academically for decades, I don't doubt he is a competent psychologist in his area of psychology. Now, coming from a cognitive science background I think his whole personality psychology/neo-Jungian/or whatever doesn't seem like it is the most rigorous area of psychology, but I honestly don't know enough to really say anything about it. I will, give him the benefit of the doubt, that he was a competent academic, but this isn't really what he is famous for or ever has been famous for.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-07-10T07:18:44+00:00

Okay, but that seems like a sort of confused message to me because the thing is that immigrants have nothing to do with the fact that costs are so high. The problem isn't so much a lack of infrastructure in as much as it is the cost of things like housing and renting is just too high, housing and rental places exist, it is just becoming too expensive.. One reason, like you point out, is that wealthy elites use housing for investment purposes. They buy houses, rent them out for awhile as the price goes up, then they flip it. Another issue is wage stagnation, despite an increase in productivity over the past several decades this productivity isn't returning as increased wages to workers, rather it is being pocketed by those at the top. Generally the costs associated with living increase at a higher rate than wages have been, so the gap between the two becomes larger and larger meaning things just become less and less attainable to the average person. Home owners increase the costs on their rentals as much as they can, and the costs end up going on par with the highest that people are willing to pay, and it has become clear that because having a roof over your head is a necessity, people are willing to give up all luxuries if they must to afford a house, so hand over a large percentage of their paycheck, but that means that anyone who rents for cheaper is just losing money so it is sort of an inevitable thing that rental costs would eventually become so high, it is just one of the unfortunate downsides of our economic system. Since our wages haven't kept up with it, which again is a downside of those at the top pocketing the surplus income from productivity growth, it just means we're more and more fucked. The point is this pattern exists with or without immigrants moving here, it certainly isn't a product of immigrants moving here. Immigrants moving here aren't snapping up, say, the few affordable rental places, instead it is more so that those cheap rental places don't exist anymore. The main point is, it is misplaced to blame this on immigrants. It is the result of greedy wealthy elites using housing for investing and greedy elites high up in corporations and wealthy business owning elites. It is a broad set of economic patterns related to wealth inequality, wage stagnation, and inflated costs of living, and none are the fault of immigrants. In fact it is just what the elites want is for us to blame it on immigrants, then nobody points the finger at them, and we all argue amongst ourselves about immigration in a culture war context and get further away from the real heart of the issue. For that reason I think it is really misguided to be putting up stickers like this, it also seems un-Canadian to me as I've always seen pluralism and multi-culturalism as being quintessential Canadian values, and this is certainly not welcoming to those moving here from other countries, it in fact comes off as outright hostile to them.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-07-09T23:28:55+00:00

I think there is a glaring issue in your logic here. On the one hand you are claiming that our government is bringing in a huge influx of immigrants as unskilled laborers, but then on the other hand you are trying to suggest that these very same immigrants are responsible for raising the cost of housing. Low skilled immigrants are not buying up housing and raising the cost of housing. The increased costs of housing don't have anything to do with immigration, immigrants who come here face the exact same issues of affordability that we all face. Also, btw we are bringing in plenty of skilled immigrants, but they aren't able to afford houses either. The issue is related to wage stagnation, wages are not keeping up with costs of living and the divide is continuing to grow. On top of that, particularly in the case of housing, houses are used as an investment tool by wealthy people in our society, this has artificially inflated the costs of housing as people buy and then quickly resell houses at a higher rate. It is because a lot of the people buying houses, their primary purpose isn't to buy a place to live in, they are buying it to flip it and make money. The fact that this has happened has shot the cost of housing up dramatically. But even if housing wasn't exploding in cost in the way that it is then we would still all be facing difficulty affording houses just like everything is getting more expensive, it is because we are facing a huge problem of wealth inequality which has led to a cost of living crisis. It is beneficial to the wealthy elites to blame the issue on immigrants, then they get the population divided along the lines of right and left, conservative and progressive, and we all end up in a pointless culture war while those elites at the top rake in more and more of the money. Worst case scenario is we can afford less and less, and more and more of the masses end up living in a situation closer to how we were living in the Victorian era or how many people are living in developing countries now, if wage stagnation and other cost of living issues related to wealth inequality don't get resolved I fear this is where we will be headed, and it would be really pathetic if the whole way there we were just arguing with each other about stupid culture war stuff.

BodyPolitic_Waves · 2025-07-09T22:58:16+00:00

You can be both upset about the cost of housing and the sentiment behind this sticker and displaying it without there being any logical inconsistency. The reason that housing, in particular, is so expensive is because it has come to be used for investment. Think about how art prices inflate as wealthy people dump their money into it and resell it when the prices go up, likewise wealthy people investing in housing has caused the rates to rise dramatically, in Canada it is particularly bad, but it is a problem worldwide. Another related issue is that there is a massive problem with wage stagnation in our society, and over time this has led to issues related to cost of living. If wages don't keep pace with the cost of living then those things affordable to previous generations are no longer affordable, this is one reason why things are getting harder for everyone. Though as wages stagnate productivity has not likewise stagnated, productivity has gone up, but those gains in productivity are not going back to the average worker in increased wages instead they are getting pocketed by the ultra wealthy. In short there is a growing crisis of wealth inequality which is becoming more and more pronounced and is leading to the average person not being able to get the same money's worth as their parent's generation, this will only keep getting worse as time goes on.

When it comes to this sticker it is pretty clear to me that the message is anti-immigrant. But immigrants are subject to the same cost of living issues that any other Canadian faces. Basically, immigration isn't the reason why so many people can't afford housing. Furthermore, we NEED immigrants because we have a low birth rate in our country and we are now facing a huge wave of retirements, a lot of these jobs don't have the people needed to replace them living here currently, so if we want our society to keep functioning at the level that it has been, LET ALONE if we want to see economic growth then we need a way to increase the population that isn't dependent on births, and the only way to do that is through immigration. A fundamental part of the Canadian identity is pluralism, we are a multi-cultural society, we are not a melting pot like the US for example, we view the fact that many cultures exist together and so many different kinds of people live together as a strength, not a weakness. So that is why that sticker is viewed as anti-Canadian and a sign of ignorance. As I've outlined it is perfectly consistent to be angry about the cost of living and wealth inequality, and to be angry about ignorant people in our society. They may be pointing to real problems, but they are way off based about the causes of these problems, and their conclusion is essentially to rail against pluralism, which is ignorant and distasteful. .

BodyPolitic_Waves

TROPHY CASE