That’s whataboutism.

There are many factors for the housing crisis.

That doesn’t mean that you can only solve one of the factors.

Well. In that case we have to either move on to argue why I believe that a stateless society is bad and you believe it is good. Or just call it here and agree to disagree. Whatever you prefer. Since I don’t think I can change your mind (on the basis of past experience about this topic, not something personal about you) or that you can change mine about that topic.

EDIT:

Or you could provide a different definition for “xenophobia”. But I don’t think I’ll agree to any other definition.

No I wouldn’t. Just like arguing a murder is not illegal grafitti, doesn’t make you pro-murder. Arguing that a specific genocide is not xenophobia does not make me pro-genocide. I absolutely hate what Israel is doing to the Palestinians and I believe that someone should assassinate Netanyahu and all of his pro-genocide people on power of the Israeli government. Or imprison them for life.

But you can miss my point all you want.

This specific technicality is important for your point though.

I’m gonna explain my reasoning so you can choose whatever you want have a conversation about.

Your claim was that putting citizens above non-citizens is xenophobic.

My point is that putting citizens above non-citizens is a natural consequence of a state. And furthermore, that it is a good thing.

Xenophobia is widely regarded to be a bad thing and that we should avoid it.

If both of our statements are true. The natural conclusion is that we should have a stateless society. I don’t think that a stateless society is a good thing. Therefore I’m trying to find a flaw in the argument. I think that the flaw is that you are wrong. So I have to have a conversation with you about why I think you are wrong.

If you are wrong, it must mean one of these statements are wrong:

• Putting citizens above non-citizens is xenophobic.
• Putting citizens above non-citizens is a natural consequence of the state.
• Xenophobia is widely regarded to be a bad thing and we should avoid it.

Since 2/3 statements are made by me, of course I think they are true. So I’m going to argue about why the first one is wrong.

The only way to proof your statement to be wrong is by first defining what xenophobia is. Which you might call a technicality, but I don’t think it’s possible to have a conversation if we don’t first agree what the meaning of the words we use is.

After defining what xenophobia is, we have to figure out if the “equation” is true: “putting citizens above non-citizens” = “xenophobia”.

The results of an action being done for a reason being discriminatory does not make the reason invalid.

Almost any policy is discriminatory.

Taxing the rich more is discriminatory against the rich. Helping women out is discriminatory against the men. Ending segregation is discriminatory against people that don’t want be near people different to them. The list is endless.

I assume you agree with all 3 of those policies. Yet they are discriminatory. Those 3 policies are done because of very valid reasons.

There are very few policies that I’d say are not desceiminatory. Like universal basic income or universal healthcare. And even then, by your definition of discriminatory, those would be discriminatory. Since they would still discriminate against non-citizens.

There is no world where a person born in X country that has never left X country to receive income from a UBI policy of Y country. Unless X and Y countries have some sort of deal where that happens.

Putting citizens over non-citizens is called being a government.

Xenophobia is the irrational fear of foreign. And fear in this context usually shows up in the form of hate.

Putting citizens first does not mean hating the rest. Being a citizen of a country means that your government should represent you and your interests. It’s only natural that it develops into benefits for citizens.

Xenophobia on a person level is when you see a person that you think is not part of your same origin, do you cross the street, or attack him or whatever. Of course this is not even close to being an exhaustive list.

Xenophobia on a country level is when you punish foreigners irrationally. Not letting foreigners into your country because you have a housing crisis is not irrational, it is a valid reason.

I find it hard to find examples of country-level xenophobia. Even if the act itself may seem xenophobic, the government may want to gain popular support of their xenophobic population, which would be a reason and thus non-xenophonic.

Of course, not being xenophobic does not mean it is good. For example Israel genociding Palestinians is horrible. But their reason is that having a neighbor that claims the same land as you do is problematic, and they figured if they just kill everyone the world will forget in 100-200 years (or less) while the land will be theirs for longer than that with no revels, since they genocided them. Of course, having a reason does not mean that it’s not many other bad things (in this case, genocidal, which is worse than xenophobic).