Quartz: Is China really the most welcoming country for refugees?

What explains the people of China’s remarkable magnanimity? It could be that the Chinese people—or more precisely, the survey respondents, who came from 18 big cities around China—have somehow moved way ahead of their government in the willingness to welcome refugees. (With a few exceptions, the last time the Chinese government accepted largest numbers of refugees was during the Vietnamese refugee crisis in the late 1970s, according to the UN High Commission on Refugees.) [...]

However, there also could be a more mundane reason too: a glitchy translation. The first two questions on the Chinese phone-administered questionnaire specifically mention refugees fleeing “war or persecution.” The third doesn’t; it merely asks what degree of accommodation the respondent would be willing to offer refugees.

In addition, only in the first question—one about whether refugees should be able to flee to other countries to escape conflict and persecution—does the questioner imply anything about refugees fleeing specifically to other countries

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The Guardian: Yes, bigotry remains. But overall, the EU has helped Poland become less racist

Unfortunately, Poland’s current government is working hard to reverse this progress. Law and Justice, the rightwing populist party that came to power last year, seems bent on resuscitating the most xenophobic of instincts in Poland. Desperate to win last October’s parliamentary elections, the party resorted to rhetoric reminiscent of the Nazi era.

Their leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, said migrants from the Middle East could trigger “epidemics” in Europe as they likely carried “various parasites and protozoa, which don’t affect their organisms, but which would be dangerous here”. The deputy prime minister, Jarosław Gowin, said Poland shouldn’t accept any Muslim migrants ,“to prevent Polish babies being blown up”. [...]

Violence against foreigners, especially those taken for Arabs, is on the rise. “We now receive reports of racial violence occurring almost every week, people being beaten up just because of their skin colour,” said Adam Bodnar, Poland’s ombudsman, in March. “This reveals the damage caused by the parliamentary campaign. In my opinion that was the decisive moment,” he added.

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Politico: How the Bathroom Wars Shaped America

For generations, Americans have imparted bathrooms with their deepest anxieties about changing social norms and practices. From the Industrial Revolution to Jim Crow to women’s lib to today, restrooms have been a proxy for political fights on almost every major issue in American life — race, class, gender, crime, sexuality, you name it. Much like our current foray, past bathroom brawls drew the involvement of the marquee figures of those eras — President Jimmy Carter, Governor Ronald Reagan, President Lyndon Johnson, and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Phyllis Schlafly, among many others. [...]

While the homophobic “lavender scare” had subsided by the 1970s, conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly drew on both its legacy and on the white backlash to the civil rights movement to mount a brilliant attack on the Equal Rights Amendment. A proposed constitutional amendment guaranteeing sex equality under the law, the ERA had been passed by Congress in 1972 and sent to the states for ratification. By 1974, 33 states had passed the ERA, just five short of the number needed for full ratification. Though the odds of stopping the amendment looked poor, Schlafly quickly organized a national movement to block the ERA’s adoption.

Schlafly’s main objection to the amendment concerned its second clause, which she worried would give the federal government unrestricted power. She quickly realized that this technocratic argument inspired little passion among her foot soldiers. Instead, they wanted her to focus on how the amendment would change their lives and their families. Schlafly contended that if passed, the ERA would destroy the traditional family — and thus society itself — by eradicating sexual difference

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Bloomberg: Populism Is Holding Poland Back

That’s incorrect. Relative to potential, Poland is underperforming. It’s recovering from a severe slump and has a lot of ground to make up. Wages are one-third of the EU average, and its eastern provinces, plagued with high unemployment, are some of the poorest in the union. To converge with the rest of the union, Poland should be growing faster.

This requires far-reaching structural reform. Too many Poles have short-term work or temporary contracts. Too many jobs are in low-wage, low-skill industries. Public spending should be aiming to modernize the economy and promote long-term growth through greater efficiency in energy, mining and agriculture.

Instead, the government is busy awarding hand-outs, such as a new child benefit, and making expensive promises, including a plan to lower the retirement age. Sales of telecoms licenses and new taxes will help fund the spending this year, but it’s unclear where the money will come from after that, or how the government will meet its 3 percent target for the budget deficit.

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FiveThirtyEight: What Can Europe’s Far Right Tell Us About Trump’s Rise?

The DPP is one of the most regionally powerful far-right parties in the European Union, but its success — and that of other such parties — cannot be attributed to economics alone. “It’s not just about jobs,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of political science and international relations at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. “People are feeling their values, national culture and identity are under threat from rapid demographic change.” Not every far-right party is equally successful, but they are widespread and include the Lega Nord in Italy, the Swiss People’s Party, the neo-Nazi People’s Party — Our Slovakia, the English Defence League and the Alternative for Germany. [...]

Even though Trump’s ideology is conservative on many issues, his positions on trade protection and U.S. intervention in overseas conflicts can overlap with the left-populist positions of a candidate like Bernie Sanders. German political strategist Simon Vaut notes that far-right parties in Europe don’t fit with the American sense of the political right favoring free and globalized markets. “Most of the European far-right parties are National Socialist. France’s National Front, for example, has an anti-immigration platform but is also anti-free-market and wants a paternalistic welfare state,” he said in an email. He sees Trump as akin in style to former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a self-congratulatory billionaire media tycoon who survived several scandals only to be convicted of tax fraud in 2013.

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