Big thing is that conservative out of state migration seems to primarily be the factor in South Florida. In Central and North Florida the primary factor seems to be persuasion.
We are moving to Florida soon. We are attracted by:
1) lower cost of living due to home building
2) no state income tax
3) universal school vouchers
The last is clearly right coded and only far right states have implemented them.
I have a many kids, and after 2020 I just can’t send them to public schools. We have toured schools in Florida that we plan to send the kids too. The vouchers make it possible.
The teachers union owns the democrats and the gop is the only way to control our kids education.
I am going to come to the same final conclusion as you do Nick but I do strongly take issue with some of the points you make. One is I think Jason and Francesco are somewhat incorrect to state Miami is the economic and cultural capital of South and Central America. I would argue instead especially the further South and East you go, Miami since the end of the Cold War and the fall of Franco shares this role with Spain(particularly Madrid and Barcelona). Madrid is not that much further from Buenos Aires and Rio than Miami(and Madrid is about the same distance from those places as NYC is). Brazil and Argentina are also two time zones ahead of the US East coast so only 3 hours behind London and Lisbon. Now I don't doubt there are many on the Latin American far right that deeply resent the integration of post Franco Spain into the European mainstream(and it's becoming a socialist hellhole in there minds) and the huge increase in European and Spanish led foreign investment and political/cultural influence into the continent but numbers don't lie. Javier Milei has been quite open in his wish to see less European influence in South America and more US influence but I think this is something outside of his or anyone's control.
I also want to point out while European influnce in South America greatly expanded after the 1980s it has always been there. Even a country like Britain which a typical American would assume to have little connection to Spanish speaking South America in fact has had deep deep historical ties to places like Argentina despite going to war over the Falklands. When Augusto Pinochet needed medical treatment outside of Chile in the late 1990s he quite controversially went to London instead of the US. Many lighter skinned South Americans have European citizenship through ancestry and even if they don't South American immigrants to Europe are considered highly desirable compared to the alternatives of bringing in people from the Middle East and North Africa. As an aside(and I am doing this to piss off the anti prostitution activists in Jackson Heights) search for High Class Escort Agency London or Madrid or Zurich and count the numerous lingerie "models" from Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia working in Western Europe.
So where I do agree with your general consensus is the American left needs to realize there is increasing self selection among people leaving Latin America for other environs. The type of Latin American who actually supports universal healthcare as exists in Spain will probably just move to Spain not the US. In turn those who do come from South America to the US are increasingly self selecting into the more radical reactionary far right elements of Latin American society. It's not that all Latin Americans oppose a social safety net but those who do aren't really coming to the US anymore.
You bring up Franco, and one important point is that the reactionaries that were part of Franco's Nationalist civil war coalition (if not so much the Falangists proper) were one of the most anti-working-class forces the modern Western world has ever seen: they saw their own white working class in much the same light that racists saw the "inferior" people that they despised.
As Franco's press officer Gonzalo de Aguirez Munro put it:
"Sewers caused all our troubles. The masses in this country are not like your Americans, nor even like the British. They are slave stock. They are good for nothing but slaves and only when they are used as slaves are they happy. But we made the mistake of giving them modern housing in the cities where we have our factories. We put sewers in these cities, sewers which extend right down to the workers’ quarters. Not content with the work of God, we thus interfere with His Will. The result is that the slave stock increases. Had we no sewers in Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao, all these Red leaders would have died in infancy instead of exciting the rabble and causing good Spanish blood to flow. When the war is over, we should destroy the sewers.. The perfect birth control for Spain is the birth control God intended for us. Sewers should reserved for those who deserve them, not the slave stock."
I'm not convinced though by your later hypothesis that Spain has siphoned off a significant number of Latin American immigrants: for most of the period since 2008 Spain has not been an attractive destination for immigrants due to very high unemployment (especially among young people, which most migrants tend to be). This high unemployment was due to Spain's traditional industries mostly being outcompeted by China in the '00s, as well as to a gigantic real estate bubble.
And in addition, the strong links between the Cono Sur countries and the UK in the early 20th century were largely because the economies of the former countries were then heavily based on beef exports to the UK. These declined after WWII as the Battle of the Atlantic had brought home the dangers of extreme dependence on imported food: the UK modernized its agriculture to become more like a normal European country, as David Edgerton described in his "The Rise and Fall of the British Nation".
Interesting article. Only thing I’d add is the rightward lean of the states not so insignificant Jewish community recently and it’s more recent conservative Jewish influx. Substacks own Karol Markowicz is one of the latter and has written about it and her exile from NY extensively.
The part about Gillum criticizing DeSantis at the debate confuses me. People say they want Democrats to be fighters but, when one actually does solid fighting in a debate, they're suddenly a bully being mean to the poor Republican. At times I think the problem is that people see being Democratic AS a problem, so any attempt to do something good runs headfirst into that social media-induced bitterness.
Another interesting question for you Nick? Do you think most of these recent immigrants from South America think Britain was in the right during the Falklands War or was Argentina in the right?
Big thing is that conservative out of state migration seems to primarily be the factor in South Florida. In Central and North Florida the primary factor seems to be persuasion.
We are moving to Florida soon. We are attracted by:
1) lower cost of living due to home building
2) no state income tax
3) universal school vouchers
The last is clearly right coded and only far right states have implemented them.
I have a many kids, and after 2020 I just can’t send them to public schools. We have toured schools in Florida that we plan to send the kids too. The vouchers make it possible.
The teachers union owns the democrats and the gop is the only way to control our kids education.
I am going to come to the same final conclusion as you do Nick but I do strongly take issue with some of the points you make. One is I think Jason and Francesco are somewhat incorrect to state Miami is the economic and cultural capital of South and Central America. I would argue instead especially the further South and East you go, Miami since the end of the Cold War and the fall of Franco shares this role with Spain(particularly Madrid and Barcelona). Madrid is not that much further from Buenos Aires and Rio than Miami(and Madrid is about the same distance from those places as NYC is). Brazil and Argentina are also two time zones ahead of the US East coast so only 3 hours behind London and Lisbon. Now I don't doubt there are many on the Latin American far right that deeply resent the integration of post Franco Spain into the European mainstream(and it's becoming a socialist hellhole in there minds) and the huge increase in European and Spanish led foreign investment and political/cultural influence into the continent but numbers don't lie. Javier Milei has been quite open in his wish to see less European influence in South America and more US influence but I think this is something outside of his or anyone's control.
I also want to point out while European influnce in South America greatly expanded after the 1980s it has always been there. Even a country like Britain which a typical American would assume to have little connection to Spanish speaking South America in fact has had deep deep historical ties to places like Argentina despite going to war over the Falklands. When Augusto Pinochet needed medical treatment outside of Chile in the late 1990s he quite controversially went to London instead of the US. Many lighter skinned South Americans have European citizenship through ancestry and even if they don't South American immigrants to Europe are considered highly desirable compared to the alternatives of bringing in people from the Middle East and North Africa. As an aside(and I am doing this to piss off the anti prostitution activists in Jackson Heights) search for High Class Escort Agency London or Madrid or Zurich and count the numerous lingerie "models" from Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia working in Western Europe.
So where I do agree with your general consensus is the American left needs to realize there is increasing self selection among people leaving Latin America for other environs. The type of Latin American who actually supports universal healthcare as exists in Spain will probably just move to Spain not the US. In turn those who do come from South America to the US are increasingly self selecting into the more radical reactionary far right elements of Latin American society. It's not that all Latin Americans oppose a social safety net but those who do aren't really coming to the US anymore.
You bring up Franco, and one important point is that the reactionaries that were part of Franco's Nationalist civil war coalition (if not so much the Falangists proper) were one of the most anti-working-class forces the modern Western world has ever seen: they saw their own white working class in much the same light that racists saw the "inferior" people that they despised.
As Franco's press officer Gonzalo de Aguirez Munro put it:
"Sewers caused all our troubles. The masses in this country are not like your Americans, nor even like the British. They are slave stock. They are good for nothing but slaves and only when they are used as slaves are they happy. But we made the mistake of giving them modern housing in the cities where we have our factories. We put sewers in these cities, sewers which extend right down to the workers’ quarters. Not content with the work of God, we thus interfere with His Will. The result is that the slave stock increases. Had we no sewers in Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao, all these Red leaders would have died in infancy instead of exciting the rabble and causing good Spanish blood to flow. When the war is over, we should destroy the sewers.. The perfect birth control for Spain is the birth control God intended for us. Sewers should reserved for those who deserve them, not the slave stock."
I'm not convinced though by your later hypothesis that Spain has siphoned off a significant number of Latin American immigrants: for most of the period since 2008 Spain has not been an attractive destination for immigrants due to very high unemployment (especially among young people, which most migrants tend to be). This high unemployment was due to Spain's traditional industries mostly being outcompeted by China in the '00s, as well as to a gigantic real estate bubble.
And in addition, the strong links between the Cono Sur countries and the UK in the early 20th century were largely because the economies of the former countries were then heavily based on beef exports to the UK. These declined after WWII as the Battle of the Atlantic had brought home the dangers of extreme dependence on imported food: the UK modernized its agriculture to become more like a normal European country, as David Edgerton described in his "The Rise and Fall of the British Nation".
Interesting article. Only thing I’d add is the rightward lean of the states not so insignificant Jewish community recently and it’s more recent conservative Jewish influx. Substacks own Karol Markowicz is one of the latter and has written about it and her exile from NY extensively.
The part about Gillum criticizing DeSantis at the debate confuses me. People say they want Democrats to be fighters but, when one actually does solid fighting in a debate, they're suddenly a bully being mean to the poor Republican. At times I think the problem is that people see being Democratic AS a problem, so any attempt to do something good runs headfirst into that social media-induced bitterness.
The people who say they want Democrats to be fighters are not swing voters.
Another interesting question for you Nick? Do you think most of these recent immigrants from South America think Britain was in the right during the Falklands War or was Argentina in the right?
Probably, yeah, if they think about it at all.