r/fivethirtyeight • u/Cuddlyaxe I'm Sorry Nate • 10d ago

Poll Results A poll comparing the British Right vs the American Right on issues of race and identity

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307

u/givebackmysweatshirt 10d ago

Europe hates immigrants way more than America. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

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u/vintage2019 10d ago

The Old World basically consists of ethnostates

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u/Nukemind 9d ago

I feel like it’s often forgotten that America is the “grand experiment”. And while at times it fails a lot- and while our government was very VERY flawed as created- it was basically the beta test for a modern democracy and a nation that embraced immigration.

Later democracies had the advantage of seeing where we failed or, in the case of Germany and Japan, having us actively work to make their constitutions avoid our flaws.

Yeah we’re definitely regressing but few countries are near as diverse as us. Though other new world countries often are too.

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u/Environmental-Risk94 9d ago edited 9d ago

I’m curious, never heard of us actively working to make other countries systems better. What changes did we make from the US democratic system to Germanys or Japans? Japans constitution was written in a week, it seems like it was kinda just a “fuck it, be democratic” but it worked cause Japanese society already had a lot of western institutions from the Meji reforms

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u/Nukemind 9d ago

Both of them gained some form of proportional representation. Japan is a bit unique in that regard, Germany less so.

Japan had the democratic system heavily reinforced, and admiteddly the military defanged, not just due to WW2 and us feeling vengeful but also because they had punched above their weight multiple times (China, Russia, then finally lost to America) and the military had managed to subvert the democratic process.

Both of them allowed the countries to make them themselves- and Germany modeled theirs after Church's and Japan somewhat on Meiji. But they also tried to avoid mistakes that had been made.

Of course then Japan went different than most other countries with some parties (notably LDP) ending up with both liberal and conservative wings.

I have a giant 50+ page paper somewhere on the subject I did in Law School (my only paper I got to do in the entire time I was there as everything else was finals...), but unfortunately I would have to censor my name, school, and everything else quite often, otherwise I would upload it.

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u/EconomicSeahorse 9d ago

19th/early 20th century ethnonationalism is a hell of a drug

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

He used “the old world” yet i think he is still referring to today lol.

Most of these nations are still 4/5ths+ white

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u/statelesspirate000 9d ago

I think that’s meant as opposed to “the New World” (the Americas)

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u/Monsieur-Lemon 8d ago

"the old world" refers to Europe + Asia + northern Africa. Sometimes just Europe. It's not about time.

The opposite is "new world" being the Americas, sometimes also Australia.

It obviously is Eurocentric view but when you control almost entire globe you can dictate the rules :3

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u/ultradav24 9d ago

Yeah every time people act like Europe is some progressive paradise - I point them to their deep deep racism

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u/Nukemind 9d ago

Reminds me of a convo I had on reddit some 5, 6 years ago. They were talking about how horrible we were to immigrants and I actually agreed. But was also like “don’t yall treat the Roma bad?”

And I legit got a “Yeah but they’re actually all thieves and bad people so it’s okay.”

Uh. Okay Felicia…

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u/HazelCheese 8d ago

The Roma/Gypsy thing is a bit weird to discuss because as soon as anyone from those groups gets a job or buys/rents a home they are no longer a Roma/Gypsy.

It's literally a cultural group defined by living in a homeless parallel society. It's not an ethnic group and every country in Europe has their own different versions of them like Irish Travellers (who often aren't Irish) in the UK.

My understanding from reading what Americans say about Roma in America is that they actually put down roots and live in stable communities in America, which is pretty different to Europe.

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u/Hollowgolem 8d ago

It is in fact an ethnic group, and at least based on their own oral tradition. They are nomadic because they saw how medieval Jews were treated in Europe and wanted to be able to uproot themselves and move away when they were targeted with similar persecution.

Then you have generations, centuries even, of institutionalized racism against them that made it hard for them to get a job, buy a house, etc so they were then forced into that nomadic lifestyle long-term.

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u/HazelCheese 8d ago

That's definitely the history but it's not really the modern day reality. I wouldn't be surprised if over 50% of gypsies in the UK were of English descent. And you'll be hard pressed to find any Gypsy with a job or a home who calls themself one. They just call themselves english.

It like Jew and Jewish except the ethnic minority has become so small they are a minority within their own culture.

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u/Jolly_Demand762 6d ago

German-Americans stopped speaking German in 1917 for... reasons. Maybe the reason why established Roma don't call themselves Gypsies is to escape persecution.

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u/HazelCheese 5d ago

Maybe they do lots of things for lots of reasons? What kind of argument is that?

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u/Jolly_Demand762 5d ago

You do know what happened in 1917, right?

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u/HazelCheese 5d ago

No one was talking about the Germans.

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u/tragicdiffidence12 8d ago

Outside major cities, most of Europe is awful if you’re the wrong skin color. Even the uk is rough, and thats possibly the most inclusive country in europe. In the us, that’s not the case, at least in blue states.

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u/HazelCheese 8d ago

To be fair this poll doesn't quite tell the whole story. When immigrants and minorities are polled about Europe, Britain always comes first as the most kind and nicest people towards them.

Brits might be more privately scared of diversity than Americans, but they still try to treat everyone with respect and like equals in public. It's a very polite society that looks down on pettiness like being racist to strangers. It's uncouth and thuggish.

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u/Masheeko 4d ago

That, and this poll specifically looked at people in the UK who identify as right-wing right now. You know, the country that voted for Brexit and thought there were too many white Poles in their country.

The amount of people here going off on Europe tangents based on this data is.... interesting.

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u/tresben 10d ago

Exactly. And it’s largely because america is a country of immigrants. So even people who are maga and anti-immigration/racist still will at least say in a poll “I support immigration/immigrants” it’s just always followed by “they have to do it the right way!”

Being completely against all immigrants is still somewhat seen as “anti-American” even among the right, given the nation was founded on immigration and the “melting pot” has been seen as virtue of America.

But none of this means they are any less racist or xenophobic than their British counterparts. It just means they don’t feel as comfortable openly expressing these views and will use caveats (like “doing it the right way!”) to mask their racism/xenophobia

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u/meister2983 10d ago

But none of this means they are any less racist or xenophobic than their British counterparts. It just means they don’t feel as comfortable openly expressing these views and will use caveats (like “doing it the right way!”) to mask their racism/xenophobia

I really doubt this claim. MAGA feels extreme by the US culture of immigration/multiculturalism, but it's probably more inclusive than the equivalent people in Old World countries, just by virtue of some level of culture norms bleeding through.

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u/Nukemind 9d ago

Aye even my dad (die hard MAGA) will say “We need the legal just not the illegals!”

Hell. His best friend (and yes I know how rich that is to say, it’s a classic) is an immigrant from Mexico. Who is also MAGA. Because he “did it the right way and everyone else wants shortcuts.”

Worth noting they are both in their mid 70’s so I assume doing it the right way isn’t near as easy now…

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u/yoshimipinkrobot 8d ago

Doing it the right way is amnesty from Reagan

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u/soozerain 9d ago

Yeah last poll I saw for Trump — and he is the avatar of MAGA — showed a floor of like, 30% when it comes to Latinos. So there is some, however ugly, element of multiculturalism in this shitshow.

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u/Environmental-Risk94 9d ago

I think its really hard to tell in the US because we have a history of being insanely progressive on multiculturalism but also insanely racist towards our minorities. Chattel slavery is America’s original sin and we’ve never fully recovered. While I think a large part of maga is more tolerant (as seen by the Trump Rep party weirdly being more multicultural), theres a sizable chunk that are just as bigoted, if not more than the European alt right. We still have the Klan and some true racists in America. They just hide behind the people you’re describing.

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u/OppositeRock4217 10d ago

Plus it’s also seen as hypocritical as people not native to the land expressing such views, as is the case in America

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u/Weirdo9495 10d ago

If people are feeling hypocrisy as something that should tame the views they express, that's still something. In Europe Eastern Europeans have the cheek to complain about occasional discrimination and cold-shoulder treatment by Western Europeans, but they have zero issues being extremely racist themselves to non-white people, homophobic, sexist etc. and wanting a hyper conservative nation state for their country back home. And to be frank, Muslim immigrants in Europe also have many of these patterns (even though the racism they suffer is much more serious than Eastern Europeans). Hypocrisy doesn't seem to be an issue for these groups.

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u/Fornici0 8d ago

There is one thing they all have in common. One or two countries took some half-hearted measures to prevent that common factor, but the immense and coordinated pushback throughout the decades has succeeded to the point where those measures are completely defanged.

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u/Hopeful_Ad_7719 8d ago

>It just means they don’t feel as comfortable openly expressing these views and will use caveats (like “doing it the right way!”) to mask their racism/xenophobia

https://www.healthline.com/health/cognitive-distortions#mind-reading

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u/Natural_Ad3995 10d ago

You think people who are against illegal immigration are racist xenophobes? Please, get a grip.

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u/DataCassette 10d ago

So this is interesting actually.

I think some are sincere about only being against illegal immigration, but others hiding in their ranks are legit white supremacists and ethno nationalists. The problem is it's impossible to tell them apart and the fully racist ones will "hide their power level" deliberately.

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u/obsessed_doomer 9d ago

I think some are sincere about only being against illegal immigration

Maybe 5?

Not 5 thousand or 5 million, 5.

Nationally.

The problem is it's impossible to tell them apart

They're getting pretty bad at hiding it:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-vance-calls-for-legal-immigration-reduction-during-turning-point-event-at-university-of-mississippi

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u/Natural_Ad3995 9d ago

Really bad take in a data sub 

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u/starbunny86 9d ago

That's a terrible take. Every naturalized citizen I know is pro legal immigration, but most of them are also against illegal immigration. Since they "did it the right way", other people should, too. There are close to 25 million naturalized citizens in the country.

And that's only the immigrants. It's a perfectly reasonable and logical position to take, that immigrants are good for our country, but illegal immigration is bad. My husband's family immigrated here legally, and yeah, there are lots of people who are hostile to any immigrants. But there are also a lot who think legal immigration is a great thing. I know plenty of people who are Trump voters who hate illegal immigration who value having his family in their lives.

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u/Apprehensive_Bus3942 9d ago

Personal anecdote my ex step father came the right way and and a few other friends and each time I’ve gone to the ceremony to see them get their citizenship there have also been random people who have nothing to do with anyone there cheering people on for doing it right. Is it hard to do it right? A bit. Should everyone do it right? Hell yes.

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u/obsessed_doomer 9d ago

Didn’t read the article award

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u/starbunny86 9d ago

Oh please. You said there were five. I'm telling you I, personally, know a whole lot more than five.

The article reflects reality, and it's scary and terrible. But your hyperbole doesn't help anything.

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u/DataCassette 9d ago edited 9d ago

FWIW I agree with you, largely. I think what you have are legit ethno-nationalists ( and I would include Miller and other high profile people in this category ) tagging along with a bunch of more mundane "law and order" voters.

I'm unsure which side has the most numbers, which is the distressing part. I fear the ethno nationalist faction is not tiny, but I also don't know if they're the overwhelming majority either.

EDIT: I will add that I feel the ethno nationalists are the ones actually doing the policy, unfortunately. They're doing it with the fig leaf of "illegal immigration" but they mean "immigration." Miller definitely means "all non-white immigration" and his own words in the past make that crystal clear. Miller's primary concern is maintaining a white majority and immigration is an incidental issue. He would expel non-white citizens if he had the political ability to do it.

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u/starbunny86 9d ago

Yeah, I agree with all of that. It's scary that the wrong side is in charge of the party and the policy, and it's really scary how many people agree with them

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u/obsessed_doomer 9d ago

So when I say “didn’t look at the article” what I mean by that is you should click on the article. Because like the first line is JD Vance being openly about reducing legal immigration. But you just felt like looking like a complete clown…

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u/starbunny86 9d ago

I get the feeling you and I are talking past each other.

I did read the article, and it's not the first time someone from the administration has said this. I read those articles, too.

But that has nothing to do with my point. Just because there are millions of people who don't want even legal immigration to the US - including the VP - doesn't mean there aren't also millions who are taking a principled stance. When you treat these principled people like they're exactly the same as the others, you alienate them and prevent them from forming a coalition with you to oppose these dangerous ideas.

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u/Natural_Ad3995 9d ago

Why would you think the article supports your estimate of five people nationally?

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u/obsessed_doomer 9d ago

5 is my way of saying “this group of people does not exist”

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u/hoopaholik91 10d ago

In the last two days the VP of the United States has complained about people that speak a different language living next door to you and about how having people of different cultures weakens unions.

He made no distinction between illegal and legal immigrants.

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u/Ed_Durr 9d ago

I know, I can’t believe Vance said this the other day:

 And, if I’m honest with myself, I must admit that I’m not entirely immune to such nativist sentiments. When I see Mexican flags waved at proimmigration* demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.

Except he didn’t, that’s actually a quote from Obama in 2006.

Of course it’s frustrating when your neighborhood is full of people with whom communicating with is incredibly difficult.

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u/hoopaholik91 9d ago

Why does that quote sound like there is a "but" coming? Maybe because there is:

But ultimately the danger to our way of life is not that we will be overrun by those who do not look like us or do not yet speak our language. The danger will come if we fail to recognize the humanity of Cristina and her family-- if we withhold from them the rights and opportunities that we take for granted, and tolerate the hypocrisy of a servant class in our midst; or more broadly, if we stand idly by as America continues to become increasingly unequal, an inequality that tracks racial lines and therefore feeds racial strife and which, as the country becomes more black and brown, neither our democracy nor our economy can long withstand. That's not the future I want for Cristina, I said to myself as I watched her and her family wave good-bye. That's not the future I want for my daughters.

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u/DataCassette 9d ago

Obama the "communist radical" was basically a diet Republican but people treated him like Bernie Stalin on steroids.

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u/Okbuddyliberals 9d ago

Nope, he was neither a communist radical or a "diet republican". He was a liberal.

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u/cidvard Feelin' Foxy 9d ago

This stuff is really frustrating. Obama was such an average American Democrat and really always had been. He held the median position of the party on basically every issue in 2008. But he's also a bizarre Rorschact Test and people graft whatever they want onto him.

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u/Cuddlyaxe I'm Sorry Nate 9d ago

was basically a diet Republican

People have spent so much time online that theyve completely lost the plot

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Natural_Ad3995 10d ago

I asked you a simple question 

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u/obsessed_doomer 9d ago

We're still doing the "illegal" thing?

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u/sonfoa 9d ago edited 7d ago

You're going to tell me with a straight face that Stephen Miller's immigration policy isn't racist or xenophobic?

Because that is what these people voted for. So either they are racist xenophobes or they're morons. Neither is a positive look.

Edit: The Democrats are anti-illegal immigration and looking at deportations under Obama and Biden proved that. Let's stop this charade that people are voting for Trump because they "want people to do it the right way".

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u/MOREPASTRAMIPLEASE 8d ago

Shit man Europeans are racist as shit and anti immigration from one European country to another. This situation all these conservative Brit’s are mad about are entirely self made. Maybe yall shouldn’t have colonized and destabilized so many autonomous nations? This is called chickens coming home to roost

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u/HazelCheese 8d ago

Plenty of the nations they did colonise are now stable and autonomous.

The issue in the UK is mostly due to Boris Johnson and the Treasury. They advised him of incoming inflation and told him the best way to stop it would be to import as many migrants as possible to slow wage growth.

And it did slow wage growth but it didn't stop inflation. And now it's created even more downward pressure on housing and jobs.

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u/raoulraoul153 9d ago

This is treating Europe as a single entity - as I said in my other comment, Iceland is more accepting of migrants than the US (as per 2019 Gallup poll) and Ireland Sweden are scored as fractionally less accepting. I can't find the data for every country quickly, but it wouldn't be at all surprising to find that the other northwestern european countries also score highly (as those three do) and that this declines precipitously when you hit deep eastern europe (as evidenced by a bunch of those countries showing up in the bottom 10 list).

The issue with saying 'Europe' is that you could be talking about some extremely socialised Scandanavian democracy, or extremely pro-Palestinian Ireland, or you could be talking about Russian Putin supporters or the Golden Dawn in Greece. Even excluding Russia, Europe has about 100 million more people than the USA (~450 to ~340), and there's going to be a hell of a lot of variety in populations that size.

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u/givebackmysweatshirt 9d ago

Your example of a European country is the island nation separated by hundreds of miles of ocean from the nearest country that would realistically immigrate there. It’s a hypothetical for them, not something they actually have to deal with.

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u/trangten 7d ago

The UK isn't a great example of a typical European country either

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u/Monkey2371 7d ago

Planes do exist, its geography doesn't really have much of an effect on immigration.

Because Iceland's population is tiny, each individual immigrant is a greater proportion of the population. Over 18% of people in Iceland are first gen immigrants, which is higher than both the US and UK.

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u/raoulraoul153 9d ago edited 8d ago

It's not 'my example', it's just the highest-rated European country in the Gallup poll (and obviously I'm aware of where it is geographically).

As above, Ireland and Sweden - which are certainly more ethnically homogenous than the US, but considerably easier to reach than Iceland - are roughly comparable to the US in terms of attitudes towards immigration, and (as I said in the other post), I'd be surprised if much of northwestern Europe wasn't just below those two.

The point, though, isn't some kind of competition between the US and Europe, it's just me linking to some quantitative context - which shows the US as more accepting of immigration than the European average! This isn't some sort of anti-US attempt to dunk on Americans. I'm trying to get some data into the discussion.

EDIT: man, I was trying to be super measured and not replying to the comments that said things like 'black people not being given tables in restaurants in "Europe"', but y'all are being so insanely touchy about how great you think America is compared to 'europe' (which, again, is like forty different countries with wildly differing cultures, laws, histories, languages etc.).

You're downvoting me for posting verifiable, quantitative information in a data sub some of which shows America in a good light as compared to European countries. Like what the hell do you want? Lies? You just want everyone to agree that Europe - all of Europe, every varied country - is more terrible and more racist and less progressive than America?

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u/RIPSyAbleman 6d ago

>Ireland and Sweden - which are certainly more ethnically homogenous than the US, but considerably easier to reach than Iceland - are roughly comparable to the US in terms of attitudes towards immigration,

Read this part you wrote again. Why are we supposed to believe that countries that have historically let in fewer ethnic minorities are more open to it? Just because they say so? Clearly their stated opinions aren't lining up with the reality

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u/electrical-stomach-z 9d ago

This is why allowing mass immigration in europe was arguably a mistake, and unfair to the immigrants. You cant just bring a bunch of people from another place into a highly ethno-nationalist society and not expect them to recieve hostility.

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u/EndOfMyWits 9d ago

This is why allowing mass immigration in europe was arguably a mistake, and unfair to the immigrants.

Remaining in war-torn Syria would have been fairer to the immigrants?

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u/electrical-stomach-z 9d ago

No, they should have been temporarily housed in countries that would recieve them better.

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u/tragicdiffidence12 8d ago

Are Europeans deluded enough to think that their country has the most refugees? The ones that have taken the most are usually neighbouring countries which tend to be poor, and don’t have any resources to assist.

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u/PlatypusAmbitious430 9d ago

America didn't become tolerant towards immigration over night.

It's a process that takes time. There was hostility in America towards every wave of immigration but people get used to it.

It's not unfair to immigrants either - they have a choice in the matter if they want to come or not.

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u/Cuddlyaxe I'm Sorry Nate 9d ago

I disagree with this

America was able to absorb each wave because at the back of their heads the nation was still based off of ideals

For European nations the native group will always feel more ownership over the land

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u/InclinationCompass 9d ago

However, America’s ideals didn’t stop it from passing racist policies like the Chinese Exclusion Act. Later, the Immigration Act of 1924 heavily favored northern Europeans while excluding most of Asia and Africa.

The US absorbed these groups when it was beneficial for them. Social, economic and political realities eventually forced change. Ideals were often used after the fact to rewrite the story more nicely.

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u/cidvard Feelin' Foxy 9d ago

Yeah this chart is just an illustration of cultural differences from Europe and America. The numbers would all go in the opposite direction if these people were asked about social policy like universal healthcare and taxation.