Quote (ofthevoid @ Mar 20 2022 11:55am)
I think another angle here that no one is really talking about is the weaponization of refugees. During the Syria civil war that was an extremely effective tactic by Russia to divide the EU as many countries were forced to take in ME refugees. What was the figure? Around 1million i believe? Do you remember the amount of pushback there was and how that shaped EU politics for years?
Well, we're less than a month into this and Europe has already absorbed over 3 million Ukrainian refugees. I read some articles that countries like Czech and Poland are already struggling to cater to this influx of people. The longer this goes on, as weeks turn into months, you're going to see way more pushback from locals as local resources are depleted. I read an article that something like 17% of all people in Krakow is a Ukrainian refugee.
https://notesfrompoland.com/2022/03/17/warsaws-population-has-risen-17-due-to-refugees-from-ukraine/Many of these people will eventually look to go to places like Germany, I'm sure. Not sure how this will turn out politically over a longer period of time but it's hard to see how Europe won't struggle with such an influx of people when many of these economies are already struggling due to massive inflationary price hikes.
Speaking of refugees, it's been really funny how thinly coded the racism has been. Lots of news anchors saying "they look like us, they're not from Syria". Like, barely hiding it.
Refugees may become a big issue for absorption, but the tolerance for refugees will be much higher for Ukrainians than it will be for Syrians because Ukrainians are considered white. Lots of reports as well of black Ukrainians being refused or hassled while they let white Ukrainians through.
I predict that even given equal socioeconomic status the resettled black Ukrainians will fare much worse than their white counterparts. I don't think that's a controversial opinion.