The Magic Triangle of Migration Policy
Migration policy is in a bind. Migration advocates are using the interaction between democracy and the rule of law to turn their policy preference into the individual rights of migrants.
German original published on Feb. 10, 2024
Since Correctiv published the alleged secret meeting in Potsdam, the right-wing opposition has faced unprecedented repression.1 This won’t simply fade away. The supposed scandal surrounding Martin Sellner’s speech is, in fact, entirely secondary.
What we are witnessing is a learning process of the system through trial and error. For years, various civil society actors have launched attacks against the right, sometimes in one way, sometimes in another. The points of attack and methods that prove successful are adopted by other actors, discussed by regime journalists, and analyzed by academic experts on right-wing extremism. This way, the system as a whole learns, not just individual people within it. It is a learning process driven by societal forces.
A major step in the system’s learning process was the discovery, made a few years ago, that the right can be attacked through the contrast between an ethnic concept of nationhood and the legal concept of citizenry, the latter being the sum of all passport holders of a given state. The system realized that by emphasizing that the ethnic group, which the right considers the true political community, no longer aligns with the set of citizens. The right can thus be portrayed as in conflict with the legal order, since this suggests it proposes at least two different degrees of belonging to the political in group, thereby violating the equality of all citizens regardless of their ethnicity. The system thus pits the ethnic concept of nationhood against the civil and residency rights of naturalized migrants, which the system itself has granted them.
What we are dealing with here is an ancient technique of dominion used by elites in multi-ethnic states. They position themselves as the guarantors of all rights granted to ethnic groups and their individual members. The message is clear: “You may be dissatisfied with us, and perhaps we’re not the best rulers, but your rights stem from us. If we are no longer in power, there will be no one left to enforce them. Your choice is us or fundamental legal uncertainty. Us or chaos.” This technique has persisted for millennia because it works. Whoever manages to become the sole barrier between a country’s inhabitants and the collapse of the legal order rallies behind himself all those with anything to lose.
The stigmatization of the term “remigration,” which has now begun, is the next major stage in the learning process through which the system identifies the positions best suited for defending its own power.
Why does focusing on the ethnic concept of the nation and remigration work, while other accusations like “Nazi” or “conspiracy theorist” never went beyond mere defamation? Because the sociologically driven learning process of the system is, in its own way, approaching the fundamental dilemma of all politics in the face of mass migration.
I call it: The Magic Triangle of Migration Policy.
The term is inspired by the “magic square” known from economic policy, which consists of four core goals: price stability, full employment, economic growth, and trade balance. It is called “magic” because achieving all four simultaneously would require magic. There are inherent conflicts. Measures that advance one goal often harm another, so only some can be pursued at once.
The same problem exists in the magic triangle of migration policy. Its three goals are:
Democracy. The state should be democratically governed. Here, I don’t mean the definition of democracy popular among professional and volunteer defenders of “our Democracy”, which equates to “democracy is when my side is in power.” Quite the opposite. The essential feature of democracy for the magic triangle is that different political factions can alternately come to power. This means no policy can succeed if it relies on never allowing opponents to gain power.
Preservation of the Nation. This includes, long before its physical preservation, the maintenance of its political self-determination. Both, however, require strict limits on external immigration. They are particularly incompatible with significant groups of foreigners as equal members of the political community. Otherwise, the nation-state risks fragmenting into a multi-ethnic state, and democracy risks deteriorating into ethnic-based clientelism.
Rule of Law for Immigrants. The state should not keep anyone on its territory in a perpetual state of legal uncertainty. This applies especially to those who have, in whatever way, acquired citizenship. This goal demands that these rights not be subject to renegotiation with every change in political power.
In every country confronted with mass immigration, the population demands that all three goals be achieved. Some may argue that preserving the nation is no longer desired by a majority. Yet, polls have consistently opposed further immigration for decades. The will to preserve the nation is strong enough among voters that no senior official of an otherwise globalist elite would openly advocate for its destruction. You’ll never hear such a thing from Olaf Scholz, nor even from Robert Habeck. On the contrary, they too speak fondly of “our Germany.” How the current system navigates the magic triangle is a topic we’ll return to.
But why is there a conflict between these goals? I argue that only two of the three can ever be achieved simultaneously. The reason is this: If democracy exists, pro-immigration forces can win elections and come to power or at least manage to push pro-immigration policies through the complex negotiations of democracy. If immigrants, especially naturalized ones, are then granted the protection of the rule of law, the consequences of such policies cannot be undone even after a subsequent democratic transfer of power. This creates a dynamic where only immigration advocates can change the status quo in their favor, while opponents can, at best, try to maintain the existing status quo for as long as they hold democratic power.
Thus, it is possible to have democracy and the protection of the rule of law for immigrants, this is the state we are in now. A democratic nation-state is also conceivable, where anti-immigration forces, after election victories, revoke rights granted to immigrants by previous governments, creating legal uncertainty that drastically curbs immigration. In a similar way, for example, the Greens in Germany destroyed nuclear power. Decades before the last reactor was shut down, they undermined legal certainty for operators, exposing them to non-economic political risks. Finally, a scenario is imaginable where both the nation is preserved and immigrants are granted the protection of the rule of law, but democracy is absent. This would be a stabilization dictatorship, where an authoritarian ruler codifies and guarantees a specific status quo.
For those who think the latter is unrealistic: I think otherwise. Such stabilizing authoritarianism may well be the only equilibrium a society that fails to manage the immigration crisis can achieve. Whether the dictatorship comes from the left or the right will, in the long term, be secondary. Both will converge due to the practical constraints of the situation.
Since all three goals are demanded in a society undergoing mass immigration, but only two can be achieved at best, public debate on immigration becomes a game where everyone can corner everyone else by demanding the impossible.
The current system seeks to delegitimize its right-wing opposition by pointing out that their goals can only be achieved by disenfranchising immigrants. At the same time, it must address the accusation that its own policies lead to the dissolution of the nation. It does so in the only way possible: through a rhetorical tactic known in as “motte and bailey”.
In early medieval castles, the “motte” was the fortified keep, often wooden, while the “bailey” was the less defensible courtyard protected only by a palisade. In any serious attack, the bailey was abandoned, and defenders retreated to the motte.
The motte-and-bailey tactic works as follows: One holds not one position but two. The first, the bailey, is the position one wants to advance but is difficult to defend in an argument. The second, the motte, is related but far easier to justify. It doesn’t encompass everything one wants but serves as a fallback position in debates.
In the immigration debate, the globalists’ bailey is the demand to dissolve the nation and transform the nation-state into an international settlement and economic zone, abandoning one of the magic triangle’s three goals, thus an achievable aim.
The motte is the appeal to the other two goals: democracy and immigrants’ rights under the rule of law. They claim to only want to preserve these. This leads to a peculiar doublethink, where one simultaneously knows and doesn’t know that all three goals cannot be achieved at once. From the motte, they accuse opponents of pursuing a goal, preserving the nation, that conflicts with democracy and immigrants’ rights under the rule of law. At the same time, they deny that their own goal, a democracy guaranteeing the rule of law for immigrants, endangers the nation, dismissing the “great replacement” as a conspiracy theory.
The system as a whole, not just individual representatives, employs this motte-and-bailey tactic by speaking through different persons. An Olaf Scholz or Robert Habeck will not demand the abolition of the German nation. A left-wing journalist, academic, or artist, however, might do so very well, as do lower-ranking members of left-wing parties, especially their youth organizations, and members of various pro-immigration NGOs.
While the system’s top representatives deny any intent to destroy the nation from the motte and derive legitimacy from defending democracy and the rule of law, less prominent figures directly attack the nation from the bailey. This not only weakens the public’s commitment to preserving the nation on a metapolitical level. More importantly, since the bailey includes not just metapolitical actors like the press, education, and arts but also less visible political players, these can push further immigration measures, especially the granting of additional rights to immigrants,. through democratic negotiations. Thus, the “great replacement” is cemented step by step without the head of government needing to call for the destruction of the nation.
This works because no Scholz or Habeck would ever distance himself from the more radical actors in the bailey, nor does anyone in the system demand they do so.
Through this systemic learning process, a set of behavioral patterns has emerged that, despite the magic triangle’s dilemma, enables the system to maintain its power, positions, and privileges while advancing its long-term goals.
While navigating the magic triangle itself, the system can simultaneously trap its political enemies in their own contradictions and deligitimize them this way.
Correctiv is a left leaning NGO in Germany that made public a conference in Postsdam about remigration in late 2023. They alleged, that this had been a secret conference to deport German citizens on racial grounds.