In former Yugoslavia? No,not the underlying driving force IMO. Though the usual negatives associated with having been at the bottom of the heap and everyone's whipping boys for centuries.

Bear in mind,hundreds of years of blind prejudice and manipulation towards blaming all ills on "the other".

Also,bear in mind this is a region where hostility to people of the same race and largely culture has occurred too ie from "Bosnian Croats" towards "Bosnian Muslims".It is based on some very dodgy historical and ongoing prejudices,not all of which can be explained by religion or race. Same applies re Serbs and Croats (very similar ethnicity,though different religion) and Serbs and Kosovans (many "Albanian" muslims).But all very much based on prejudice towards "the other".

Very much based on hundreds of years of having demonised collectively other "groups" as "the enemy within" and/or "the other" and/or "out to get us".

The reason perhaps anti-semitism doesn't feature as much now (though you still hear anti semitic prejudices quite a lot)is that hardly any Jews are left after 1941-45.Differentiating feature of Croatia in that period was that they annihilated most of their Jewish population under their own fascist government,as opposed to the Nazis.Put lots of Serbs and Roma into concentration type camps too, many killed.Tito had some pretty nasty massacre actions against "reactionary elements" in the payback after 1945.The Nazis are thought to have murdered half a million or more Roma.

These things can end up happening where demnonisation of "the other" gets really out of control and acting on such prejudice becomes seen as a legitimate part of daily life for all "right thinking" people

Edited by legaleagle (04 Jun 2015 11.46pm)

The History of the UK is generally about thousands of people moving here, usually without asking. Neither the Angles or the Saxons were native to the UK, nor were the Normans, Romans or Celts.

Even the Royal Families of England and the UK have often been born abroad and of a very different nationality than the people they ruled.

During early periods of Norman rule, you had Normans, Norman Franks, Saxons, Angles, Danish, Jute, Dane, Cymri and celtic peoples making up the population of England in significant numbers or positions of authority.

Europe has always been a melting pot of cultures. There never has been a dominant culture not really (Culture tends to exist in flux of different internal cultural ideas, in conflict. The idea of a national shared culture is really a myth, rather there are a number of shared and disputed ideas about national culture).

Oh not that old chestnut again.
I had this argument on the BBS a couple of years (before the loony left/mod conspiracy banned me)

All previous migrations were at most in the low thousands and usually far less.

There has never been such a huge change in the make up of the population as there has been in the last decade. To compare it to anything that has happened in the past is a huge misrepresentation. The Normans replaced the hierarchy the Romans came in relatively small numbers mostly went home. The Vikings were small in number and almost genetically indistinguishable from the Normans, Jutes, Angles or the Saxons.

Ha ha ha. I just had a look at that bumped thread on the BBS from 2 years ago and that gun toting prat Blind Eagle is still slagging me off today. He wont let me post on there but he thinks its OK to insult me when I can't respond. What a sad man he is.

This site is so much more mature and obviously run by people who deserve their mod status.
Edited by TheJudge (05 Jun 2015 11.46am)

Edited by TheJudge (05 Jun 2015 11.59am)

I'm not so sure I'd buy that, the impact on the culture of the arrival of the Romans, Angles, Saxons, Normans etc was far more dramatic than that of Eastern European working migrants, who generally only stay a few years.

What is significant is that those migration all utterly redefined the nation and the identity of the people in a way that modern migration doesn't (we even refer to ourselves as Anglo-Saxon which suggests that if there was only a few of them, they put it around a lot).

Of course the population of England in those days itself was quite small as well (and of course the Romans would have been few, but they would have brought with them peoples from all over the empire as well).

The migrations of the Saxons and Angles was largely to due to the expansion of the Franks. They came in sufficient numbers to take over whole kingdoms and settlements.

I wouldn't write them off as just a few chaps (Some Vikings brought their families on raids with them).

Now 55,000 Romanians might be more than there was ever Romans, but they also aren't really going to be taking command of the country either.

It's all those things associated with the British working class that ironically the lefties frown upon, such as dogs, fish and chips, getting drunk and fighting.