WASHINGTON - The U.S. military is too white and too male at the top and needs to change recruiting and promotion policies and lift its ban on women in combat, an independent report for Congress said Monday.
Seventy-seven percent of senior officers in the active-duty military are white, while only 8 percent are black, 5 percent are Hispanic and 16 percent are women, the report by an independent panel said, quoting data from September 2008.
Two decades ago, when the military was at the height of its prestige during the first Gulf War, 7% (I believe) of the generals in the U.S. Army were black. The #1 and #3 generals in the Gulf War (Colin Powell and Calvin Waller) were black.
One barrier that keeps women from the highest ranks is their inability to serve in combat units. Promotion and job opportunities have favored those with battlefield leadership credentials.
The report ordered by Congress in 2009 calls for greater diversity in the military’s leadership so it will better reflect the racial, ethnic and gender mix in the armed forces and in American society.
Efforts over the years to develop a more equal opportunity military have increased the number of women and racial and ethnic minorities in the ranks of leadership. But, the report said, “despite undeniable successes … the armed forces have not yet succeeded in developing a continuing stream of leaders who are as diverse as the nation they serve.”
“This problem will only become more acute as the racial, ethnic and cultural makeup of the United States continues to change,” said the report from the Military Leadership Diversity Commission …
Indeed.
Having military brass that better mirrors the nation can inspire future recruits and help create trust among the general population, the commission said.
An interesting question that the press has strenuously not interested itself in is: Who has been dying in recent wars? You used to hear all the times that minorities are more likely to get killed in America’s wars, but now you never hear anything about the subject.
When I checked on the Iraq War in 2007, American whites, relative to their share of the young population, were getting killed in combat at 1.86 times the rate of nonwhites.
In Afghanistan through 2009, whites were dying at a rate 2.47 times their share of the population of 20-24 year olds.
I asked then:
How could this statistic be spun so it’s “appropriate” for the mainstream media? Here’s a feasible headline:
Minorities Discriminated Against at VA Cemeteries
Whites Get More Free Burials
The AP article continues:
Because they are technically attached to, but not assigned to, combat units, [women] don’t get credit for being in combat arms, something important for promotion to the most senior ranks.
Through 2006, U.S. women had suffered 2% of the fatalities in Iraq.
The most interesting part of the AP article is this exercise in reading between the lines:
Lyles said the commission consulted a panel of enlisted women on the issue. “I didn’t hear, `Rah, rah, we want to be in combat,’” Lyles said. “But I also didn’t hear, `We don’t want to be in combat.’
In other words, enlisted women don’t want to be in combat. The only women who do are the most promotion-crazed female officers, and the enlisted women aren’t excited about getting themselves killed to help get these officers promoted.
Decades too late, Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron has stated the obvious: multiculturalism has failed.
According to the BBC, '[a]ddressing a security conference in Germany, David Cameron argued the UK needed a stronger national identity . . .'
In a sane world, this would be reason to rejoice. We would expect tight border controls, as desired by nine tenths of the population; we would expect illegal immigrants rounded up and thrown out, as desired by three quarters of the population; and we would expect nationalism and, yes, Whiteness, emphasised and celebrated in media and education.
Unfortunately, however, we do not live in a sane world.
While Mr. Cameron 'signalled a tougher stance on groups promoting Islamist extremism', and while 'Mr Cameron suggested [that] there would be greater scrutiny of some Muslim groups that get public money', and that '[m]inisters should refuse to share platforms or engage with such groups', he also said 'Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism'.
So, the reason the multicultural experiment has failed is that there has not been enough muscular liberalism. I am sure Jared Taylor has some interesthing thoughts on Mr. Cameron's extraordinary conclusion.
Completely unselfconscious, Mr. Cameron continued:
Let’s properly judge these organisations: Do they believe in universal human rights … Do they believe in equality of all before the law? Do they believe in democracy…?
These are the sorts of questions we need to ask. Fail these tests and the presumption should be not to engage with organisations.
Am I the only one at a loss for words here?
How can Mr. Cameron not see how liberalism, universalism, and egalitarianism cannot eventually but result in a multicultural society? After all, a sincere belief in universal human rights and equality before the law make it impossible to exclude from a society the kind of immigrants who are incompatible with a strong national identity: it is impossible to deny them entry on the basis of their ethnic background; it is impossible to deny them access to employment; it is impossible to deny them access to citizenship; it is impossible to deny them access to public office; and it is therefore impossible in the long run to prevent them from changing their hosts’ indigenous culture and society until they are fractured by fundamental differences on the issues that are most important to each group’s most committed members.
A strong national identity is perforce traditionalist, particularist, and inegalitarian. It is dependent on localisation, specificity, and uniqueness, as this is, stabilised into a tradition over many generations, what differentiates the indigenous from the alien, then native from the foreigner. A strong national identity, therefore, implies that what is indigenous takes priority over what is alien. It is incompatible with multiculturalism or diversity.
The success of the liberal project was predicated from the beginning on the destruction of traditional forms—and by extension, in replacing what was local, specific, and unique, with global, vague, and generic abstractions.
In short, aggressive liberalism is aggressively hostile to a strong national identity.
What Mr. Cameron’s embarrassing statements, following Angela Merkel's analogous remarks last year, serve to highlight is how far removed “conservatism” in modern politics has become from traditionalism, and therefore how meaningless it has become. It used to be that conservatives were identified with tradition, as tradition is inherently conservative.
Mr. Cameron’s statements, therefore, also highlight why radical change of the present political paradigm is needed, and why it cannot be radical if it is not founded on traditional principles.
If you spend any time on Facebook, you may have seen someone you know post the following copy-and-paste status message, which seems to have been making the rounds at least since the Arizona immigration law went into effect:
Your car is Japanese. Your pizza is Italian. Your beer is German. Your wine is Spanish. Your democracy is Greek. Your coffee is Brazilian. Your tea is Chinese. Your watch is Swiss. Your fashion is French. Your shirt is Indian. Your shoes are Thai. Your radio is Korean. Your vodka is Russian--and then you complain that your neighbor is... ......an immigrant? Pull yourself together! Copy if you are against Racism!
Let's just address a few basic problems with this.
First of all, my car is a Toyota, but as you can see from the VIN, it was actually made right here in the USA. In fact, we make Toyotas here in Indiana. And that pizza we had last week? That was made from all US ingredients, too. I’m pretty sure at least the cheese was from Wisconsin. I think the tomatoes were from California, though I realise some don’t consider that part of the US anymore.
With that out of the way, let's talk about what Stanley Fish calls 'boutique multiculturalism'. I read his article on the topic back in my college days and it has remained a favourite of mine ever since. Fish is a Leftist of the highest order, but he's an intelligent Leftist, so I do rather enjoy what he writes, even when I don’t agree with all of it. If you can find it, read it; I highly recommend it.
Boutique multiculturalism, as Fish defines it, is a superficial fascination with the Other: ethnic food, weekend festivals, and high-profile flirtations with the Other. Boutique multiculturalism is exactly what all this global consumerism nonsense in the Facebook status message means. Purveyors of this superficial brand of multiculturalism appreciate, enjoy, sympathise with, and 'recognise the legitimacy' of cultures other than their own. But they always stop short of approving these radically different other cultures at the point where it would matter most to the strongly committed members of the other culture. We may, for example, say that Jews should be allowed to practice their religion in our countries, but we certainly don't approve of kosher animal slaughter or of women being forced to shave their heads and wear wigs. But hey, that dreidl game is really fun! At the point where the boutique multiculturalist finds another's cultural practices inhumane or irrational, he withdraws his respect and appreciation. For this person, multiculturalism is just a matter of lifestyle.
Fish then goes on to define strong multiculturalism. For the strong multiculturalist, the guiding principle is tolerance, but Fish points out the inherent dilemma faced by these people. For strong multiculturalists are really just less shallow versions of boutique multiculturalists. They face a dilemma when their esteemed tolerance requires them to tolerate cultures that are inherently and fundamentally intolerant . . . and most of the world’s cultures are intolerant. That’s how they’ve managed to survive thus far. The strong multiculturalist, who advocates diversity in principle and whose game is the politics of difference, cannot then advocate any particular cultural difference because allowing one such particular difference full participation in our socio-political world would mean that other cultural differences would be suppressed. He cannot speak out for cultural differences that may intrude on another culture's right to practice its own different traditions, customs, and beliefs. That wouldn't be fair. That would be intolerant. They can't favour one culture over another, as they are all equally valid ways of life. But his guiding principle of tolerance is, as you can see, quite useless. It’s a lose-lose situation for the multiculturalist.
Now, someone like this could possibly stay the course, supporting cultural differences no matter what, no matter if they impinge on another group's freedom to be different in a Western democratic society. But then that person is not really a multiculturalist. If he is willing to go to the wall over a particular culture, then he is a uniculturalist—which Fish argues we all are to some extent. And I agree—because the so-called multiculturalist’s strong support for one culture necessarily excludes his strong support for some other, or for all other cultures.
(Fish then goes on to discuss at great length what this means for liberals and why they are incapable of thinking about hate speech—which is interesting, but not entirely relevant to this discussion.)
What does boutique multiculturalism have to do with immigrants? If we enjoy tacos, does that mean we want to move to Mexico, or that we want Mexico's problems to come here? If we go to Irish Fest, does that really give us true knowledge of Irish culture and its values and traditions? Of course not.
Now, most people who advocate mass Third-World immigration, I find, do fit into Fish's descriptions of the boutique or strong multiculturalist. They rely on weak arguments to justify mass immigration from cultures radically different from our own, saying we should all just get along and isn't it wonderful that we have Mexican restaurants and Chinese restaurants and Indian restaurants. Or that we have no right to judge someone else's culture, that we must be tolerant of them all.
Historically, the multiculturalist experiment has failed everywhere. It leads to deep division and conflict. In the West, the problem will never be solved as long as we have an establishment that keeps pretending that we can all get along, and that differences in the multicultural society are merely superficial differences of lifestyle and opinion.
Multiculturalism is more than just food, festivals, music, and clothes. If that were all that it was, then we could probably all just get along. For example, I really love chocolate and my boyfriend doesn't; and he really loves the Grateful Dead, which I hate . . . but we've still managed to live together for six years in relative harmony and with pretty much no bickering. I even put up with that ugly sweater of his; he just doesn't get as many hugs when he wears it.
Having different cultures means having fundamental differences in values. A common “argument” (and I use that in the loosest sense of the term) is that “We’re all immigrants.” Well, that’s simply not true. Most of us aren’t immigrants. But for the sake of argument, I’ll assume the hypothetical proponent of this argument means we all came from immigrant families at some point. The difference between the immigrants that came here from Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries and those that come today from Third World countries is that our European ancestors shared a common culture. Yes, there are variations on European culture, as you move from one country to another, but Europe as a whole shares a common culture and a common history. We understand each other, we value the same things, we are alike in very fundamental ways. Our differences are largely superficial. European immigrants came to a country that was founded by other Europeans who established a government and way of life based on European Enlightenment principles—those of Locke, Mill, and other thinkers. European immigrants integrated relatively easily. And they wanted to integrate. They truly came for a better life, not an easier life. They knew it wouldn’t be easy. They knew many of them would die on the journey or during their first winter. But, disgusted and frustrated with the government policy in their homelands, they were willing to make these sacrifices.
Today’s immigrants to America are nothing like the European immigrants who came before. Today’s immigrants come from radically different cultural backgrounds. They have radically different ideas about notions we take for granted. For example, democracy, women’s rights, social responsibility, or freedom of religion, just to name a few. They have no common history with us, many of our most important ideas are as foreign to them as theirs are to us, and, instead of integrating, they form ethnic enclaves and isolate themselves from real Americans. These people do not come here for a better life and they are not willing to make sacrifices. They come because they have heard that there are a lot of free lunches being handed out over here. The majority of immigrants who come to this country, legally and illegally, are not skilled workers, but the dregs of their societies. They are not interested in what they can do for American society, but in what they can get out of it for themselves and their own people.
Now, let’s go back to that status message referenced above. Allegedly, my opposition to having immigrant neighbours makes me a racist. I can’t decide whether I should agree or disagree with the allegation. Am I a racist for believing that a culture can only be perpetuated by those who have a blood attachment to it and not by transplants who look, act, and think differently from me and my ancestors in fundamental ways? Am I racist because I want to keep my culture from being diluted or demolished by outsiders who have no interest in its continuance? Does wanting my own culture to carry on being the dominant culture in the country it created mean that I hate others and want to wipe them out?
The main problem with a multicultural ideology is that, at its core, it is completely hypocritical. It ignores the reality that many cultures are intolerant of others. For a people and their culture to survive, they must acknowledge that other groups may not like them—for any number of reasons—and desire their destruction or subjugation. They must actively take measures to neutralise threats to their way of life. And in some cases, they may take pre-emptive action and attempt to conquer a rival group first. (For more on why tribalist thinking has the advantage and wins in the long-term, see Lee Harris' book, The Suicide of Reason.) It’s impossible to convince every single person in the world that we can co-exist, and as long as any one group desires dominion over another, we must all guard against that threat in order to protect our own. Furthermore, to ask two radically different cultural groups to “put aside their differences” is an attack against what makes each culture unique, and therefore also unrealistic. Modern White Christians may be convinced to give up their Christmas celebrations in honour of tolerance, but no Muslim or Jew would even think of giving up their holy days just avoid offending members of another group.
This kind of “we-can-all-get-along” mentality is also inherently arrogant. To think we are so enlightened that we can accomplish what no one else in history has ever managed to do is ludicrous. Even more ludicrous is to assume that we can do it peacefully and democratically, that we are so eloquent and persuasive that we can convince others to give up their most deeply held beliefs for the sake of peace with groups they probably don’t even like. I think it could even be argued that such a belief is racist, as it is almost exclusively held by White liberals, who apparently think they know better than the coloured masses, whom they believe it to be their duty to “educate” into this “better” way of thinking. In that sense, they are no better than imperialists and colonialists, and they are certainly not in favour of true diversity.
And what if we did accomplish this utopian multicultural fantasy? What then? I think in order for that to happen, we would all have to turn into boutique multiculturalists, throwing off the ways of our ancestors, discarding any meaningful culture we might have left. We would all have to become the same, with no one holding on to any strong religious or cultural beliefs. And then we would not have a multicultural society but a unicultural society or, more accurately, a non-cultural society. If it didn’t offend anybody or exclude anybody, maybe we could still have Irish Fest. I hope so, because I like Irish Fest.
In a democracy, politicians cannot help promising more than is deliverable. Even if the system is rigged to perpetuate its founding ideological paradigm; even if on every election voters are asked to choose between nearly identical options—as a minimum any given politician seeking to keep his job or improve his personal and professional prospects needs to ensure that he is regarded by voters as the least bad of available options. The similarity within, and between, the parties and the individual politicians creates a highly competitive environment that provides every motivation for politicians to overcommit, stretching the truth, if not outright lying, before an election, and worrying about how to obfuscate broken promises once (back) in office.
Any attempts to reduce budget deficits will be driven by the sudden fear of economic consequences likely to lead to social unrest; after all, social unrest could develop into a revolution where they end up in exile, in prison, or worse. Because in a capitalist system the economy becomes all important, growth being an ends in itself; because disciplined restraint and aim-directed privation are anathema to a consumer culture; because elections run in four or five year cycles—avoiding pain and creating the illusion of a recovery within the electoral horizon takes priority over creating an economy that is stable in the long term; thus for 2011 the premium will remain on reflating bubbles, on quick fixes, using every imaginable subterfuge to levitate economic indicators for as long as the ruling party remains in power. The obvious and most election friendly method to achieve this is running deficits—or, expressed more honestly, money-printing, which enables incumbent politicians to spend immediately without raising taxes or cutting social programmes, while also deferring the consequences (taxes, inflation) until after the next election.
Although there has been some alarm at the high deficit levels, and although there is anger at the bank bailouts, the economic pain currently being experienced by the voter is still being attributed to the recession, a recurring economic phenomenon with varying and nebulous causes. Therefore, I suspect ruling politicians will suffer further loss of prestige (mainly through their failure to get the economy going fast enough), but they will be able to manage the decline for another year.
More and Higher Taxes
Citizens have become accustomed to huge levels of public debt in recent years. That there has not been a revolutionary uprising yet may owe partly to the successful maintenance of economic illusions, partly to Western economies still being able to live off past glories, partly to the unimaginable scale of public debt, and partly to the inability of the public to understand the personal consequence of these colossal numbers (to them, they are just numbers). Still, even if public debt itself has ceased to be contentious, its speed of growth, if seen as excessive, can still temporarily occasion problems for politicians. For the moment, this puts a limit (which is ever shifting) to the amount of money that can be printed—which means any shortfalls need to be made up with through taxes. Deficit reduction will continue to be used as an excuse to impose more and higher taxes. Because taxes are unpopular, however, the emphasis will be on concealing the actual increase of this burden by using indirect methods. In 1997 Tony Blair was elected in Britain after assuring the middle class that his party would not see their income burglarized by a fiscally hostile and irresponsible government; yet the tax burden grew heavier all the same via a plethora of indirect, invisible ‘stealth taxes’, which were regularly increased even while the income tax was kept steady or even moderately reduced.
If you think the tax burden is heavy now, in time it may be regarded as benign compared to what may eventually come. In 1932 the top rate of income tax in the United States was raised to 63% and steadily increased until reading 94% of all incomes above $200,000 in 1945. Worse, the top rate stayed around 90% until 1964. In the United Kingdom, personal income tax reached 98% of earnings above £20,000 (equivalent to £155,247, or $225,000 in 2010): 83% for normal income, and an additional 15% for income from dividends and investments. We are still a long way from that, but given a severe enough series of crises and panics, maybe a war, politicians could well find themselves willing, if not compelled by circumstances and / or the hard Left, to revisit this kind of fiscal obliteration.
More Inflation
Even if attenuated by increases in taxation, deficit spending (money printing), will remain an instrument of choice: on the one hand, taxes can only be raised up to a point before leading to revolt; on the other hand, deficit spending in the public sector is farther removed from people’s daily lives, because the consequences are only felt years later, can be further deferred with additional money printing, and are not generally attributed to money printing. All the same, when the supply of money grows faster than the supply of goods and services, the value of money decreases, and prices adjust upwards. Vast quantities of money have been printed since the onset of the present financial crisis in 2007; and the U.S. Federal Reserve, acting on its own, has printed much more than previously known or imagined—$3,300,000,000,000, equivalent to Germany’s GDP—in its efforts to bail out foreign banks in the United States. Much of that money remains parked in the bowels of the banking system. If and when it is finally released, we can expect sharp upward adjustments in the price of consumer goods and services. We may not necessarily revisit Weimar Germany or Zimbabwe, and if we approximate anything alike it might still take years to get there, but we will see ‘the cost of living’, relative to incomes, rise in 2011.
More Immigration
Any efforts to curb immigration in the West have proven merely cosmetic efforts to quell unrest among citizens nervous about the transformation of their country, something they never wanted, never needed, and never asked for. In the United Kingdom, Tony Blair’s Labour government orchestrated a top-level conspiracy to make the country more multicultural, secretly ramping up immigration. The present coalition government has promised to curb immigration, but their temporary cap on non-EU immigration was overturned after being challenged by a pro-immigration group and their concessions to businesses partially neutralise the promised curbs, if not effectively provide a loophole for more immigration.
More Liberalism
Since the liberalism remains the dominant ideological paradigm in the West, since liberalism is predicated on a belief in progress, and since a traditional mindset is an obstacle to progress, we can expect liberal intellectuals and campaigners to continue pushing the envelop in 2011. Once the battle to allow gays serve in the military is won, campaigners will move on to the battle: allowing the disabled join the gays. On and on it will go, not only in the military, but on all fronts, until all lines have been erased, except those that defend anything White, European, and traditional.
More Legislation
Holding the chanko stew of the multicultural society together requires more laws to maintain minimum standards and ensure its continued functioning, because what was once obvious to everyone, and what would previously occur to no one, is no longer obvious, does not occur to many, and is in fact part of one or more competing group’s culture and religious beliefs. A parallel process driving the need for more laws, also driven by immigration, are the increasingly crowded conditions in the cities and the close proximity of incompatible, hostile, and mutually exclusive tribes competing ever more fiercely for dwindling resources. This often takes the form of illicit economic activity or ethnic gangs that specialize in new forms of crime that exploit the welfare and insurance systems of Western societies. Examples are the insalubrious Ecuadoran immigrant gastronomic flea markets in Madrid’s public parks and the Asian staged crash insurance fraudsters that have proliferated in England over the past few years. Needless to say that the increased chaos and criminality are not limited to immigrants; but their presence acts as a catalyst for the progressive social dissolution that results in the need for increased legal regulation. More laws will be introduced in 2011 to cope with the increased chaos of the multicultural society, to suppress dissenting voices, and optimise tax revenues and collection.
More Surveillance
As more chaos demands more laws, more laws demand more surveillance, for the same reasons given above. So the newest technology will be used in the West more efficiently to monitor its citizens and ensure they remain compliant, fiscally and psychologically.
More Bureaucracies
More laws and more surveillance entail, necessarily, more bureaucracies for their successful implementation and administration. And with already so many bureaucracies, all expanding and running into one another with their competing and often contradictory remits and interests, even more bureaucracies may be needed to regulate the bureaucracies. But perhaps we have reached that level, and we will need bureaucracies to regulate the bureaucracies regulating the bureaucracies, plus bureaucracies to obscure what is going on and keep the citizens ignorant and disinformed. With the infinity of possibilities opened by deficit spending, there is virtually no limit to the layers of bureaucracy that can be built and nestled into one another to track all aspects of life, which takes us to…
Even More Deficits, and Even More and Higher Taxes
Yes, to pay for the continued growth of bureaucracies.
Even More Inflation
Need I explain?
Even More Immigration
This will be necessary to expand the tax base and staff all the ever-growing bureaucracies.
In Sum…
More of the same for 2011. We have our work cut out for us.
One thing that always struck me about William Pierce’s broadcasts is that out of the two hundred or so that he recorded during the late 1990s, only one ever talked about the world he aspired to see following his revolution. One. Worse still, his utopian vision was not at all inspiring, being, for all practical purposes, a return to 1933. This, unfortunately, is not uncommon among those who, in some measure or another, share his ideas—even among those who are far less radical and apocalyptic, and think in terms of a ‘velvet revolution,’ or co-opting, or electioneering.
As I have written on previous occasions, if our camp is to catalyze a transvaluation of values, and eventually cause a purge of the top echelons of academic, media, and political power in the West, those whom we seek to inspire need to be given more than just a return to the past: they also need a vision that is forward-looking, indeed futuristic, even if ultimately founded on archaic principles. Otherwise, our camp will condemn itself to irrelevance, perpetuating the impression many ordinary people have that we are just aging nostalgics, who feel left out in the brave new world of progress and equality, and are reduced to waving an angry fist at modernity because we have no new ideas of our own. ‘Bankrupt’ is the term often used within the mainstream to describe our ideas and morality.
To get anywhere, one needs to know where one is going; and to get others to come along and make the hard journey to one’s paradise, one has to be able to at least describe what it looks like.
This is why I was interested in Guillaume Faye’s book, Archeofuturism, which Arktos Media published for the first time in English translation during the Summer of 2010. Along with Alain de Benoist, Faye is a leading exponent of the Nouvelle Droite, the European New Right. Faye, however, is more radical than de Benoist, who has accused him of extremism. And some say he is also more creative. Until recently, I only knew Faye by name and affiliation, having never taken the trouble to read him. Was it because of that photograph I have seen of him, grey-haired and scowling with bug-like mirror shades? Whatever the answer, I was pleasantly surprised when the present tome revealed that Faye’s outlook is very similar to my own. Indeed, it turns out that in Archeofuturism he articulates positions that I have articulated in some of own my articles. No wonder the book’s editor, John Morgan, was keen on my reviewing it.
Readers will easily infer at least one of the positions Faye and I share, as I have reproduced it in the second paragraph of this review. The difference is one of emphasis: I think archeofuturism is necessary to move forward; Faye thinks of it as the paradigm that must replace egalitarian modernity, come what may.
There is no question for him that the liberal project is doomed: although its proponents paint it as good and inevitable, egalitarian modernity is, in fact, a highly artificial condition, an unsustainable one, which will fall victim to the very processes it set in motion. Faye believes that we are currently facing a ‘convergence of catastrophes’. These include: the colonization of the North by Afro-Asian peoples from the South; an imminent economic and demographic crisis, caused by an aging population in the West, falling birthrates, and unfunded promises made by the democratic welfare state; chaos in the countries of the South, caused by absurd Western-sponsored development and development programs; a global economic crisis, much worse than the depression of the 1930s, led by the financial sector; ‘the surge of religious fundamentalist fanaticism, particularly in Islam;’ ‘the confrontation of North and South, on theological and ethnic grounds;’ unchecked environmental degradation; and the convergence of these catastrophes against a backdrop of nuclear proliferation, international mafias, and the reemergence of viral and microbial diseases, such as AIDS. For Faye, the way out is not through reform, because a system that is contrary to reality is beyond reform), but through collapse and revolution. As a catastrophic collapse is inevitable, revolutionary thought and action must today be post-catastrophic in outlook. He further suggests that inaction on our part will only open European civilization to conquest by Islam.
How does Faye visualize the post-catastrophic Earth? For him, the deprecation of modernity results in a two-tier world, in which most of humanity reverts to traditional or neo-Medieval societies (essentially pre-industrial reservations), while an elite minority—composed of Europeans and South East Asians—rebuilds advanced technological societies across Eurasia and parts of North America. These societies are to be, of course, archeofuturistic—hierarchical and rooted in ethnotribalism, fiercely protectionistic, yet also ones that fully exploit science and technology, even if ‘esoteric,’ non-humanistic versions of them, ‘decoupled from the rationalistic outlook.’ There is to be no global flow of capital, spreading wealth and technology everywhere: the world economy is to be inegalitarian, elitist, based on quality over quantity. There are also to be no nation states: the European Imperium is to comprise over a hundred regions, with their own languages, customs, and garb. The United States is to split in to ethnic regions (Dreamland for the Blacks), and is to stabilize for the most part according to an eighteenth-century agrarian model. The world, in sum, and in contradiction to liberal aspirations, is to become more ethnic and more differentiated, not less.
In other words, if Faye rejects modernity it is not because he a nostalgic who dreams of returning to a bygone golden age, like so many White racial nationalists today; but because he is an elitist who thinks the world must be rebuilt on entirely different foundations—foundations that are more in harmony with nature.
In order so that we may get a better sense of what he means, he concludes the book with a Science Fiction novelette, titled One Day in the Life of Dmitri Leonidovich Oblomov, and set in the year 2073. Interestingly, and to Faye’s credit, the latter does not really describe a utopia, where everyone sings and lives happily ever after; but rather showcases Faye’s imagining of what he considers will be the most likely consequence of an archeofuturist new world order. It has its own unique set of problems, as any reasonable person would expect. Yet for Faye dealing with problems is part of living, and the choice is therefore not between having or not having problems, but which set of problems is preferable to another. In any event, one can well imagine Faye’s archeofuturistic vision will make egalitarian liberals, and perhaps even some White Nationalists, shift uncomfortably in their seats.
Oblomov, however, is just a scenario. As I have previously mentioned, and as Faye states repeatedly, we must not forget about Islam. Faye stresses that it is here, among us, facing us, right now, and that no amount of appeasement or accommodating will cause it to become less of a threat. This is because, he argues, Islam is an inherently intolerant, aggressive, theocratic movement that will abide no religious pluralism. Faye believes that Islam, and for that matter the Afro-Asian immigrants colonizing our continent, must be expelled from Europe, as was done in the past. ‘Where there is a will, there is a way,’ he states. Naturally this presupposes either deposing the White ethnomasochists, the deluded cosmopolitans, the xenophiles, and the immigration fraudsters, or being ready to replace them once they fall by the weight of their own corruption and the catastrophic consequences of their own ideology.
How do we get there? The first step is understanding where we came from, where we are, and where we are going. Faye begins the book by evaluating the current with which he was formerly affiliated, the Nouvelle Droite, and outlining the factors and ideological errors that led to its loss of vitality and eventual eclipsing by the Front National. He then presents his vision, which includes corrections of some previously held positions. This is followed by a series of politically incorrect statements—fast sniper attacks against the contemporary West that aggregate into a global analysis of its present condition. An outline of Faye’s future world system follows, in incremental order. Finally, the reader is immersed in the finished result through an exercise in fiction.
That is the first step.
The next step, having read Faye’s text, understood it, reflected, discussed it, and reached individual conclusions, is elucidating how to put the theory into practice—a task that will require our most astute minds and political operators, not to mention funding, courage, and discipline.
I find Faye’s one of the most lucid analyses and statements of a metapolitical proposition I have yet encountered. It is both creative and logically structured. It is both analytical and refreshingly constructive. And it is both intelligent and unflinchingly radical. What is more, the text flows with urgent velocity, thanks to a skilled English translation, and is copiously supplemented with useful informative notes. What more can you ask?
The U.S. military's standing on the vanguard of social engineering might just be worse than I described in my last post. Here, for instance, is how the Navy chose to advertise its new "Sexual Health And Responsibility Program (SHARP)." (Hat tip: AmRen.)
One of the tropes of multiculturalism is mainstream politicians of all stripes telling us over and over again that we need immigration because immigrants bring much-needed skills. This argument often appears next to the assertion that the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom would collapse overnight without this much-needed influx of foreign labour, as there is -- we are frequently reminded -- a huge shortage of skills in this country. It appears that the millions of currently unemployed Britons, which include large numbers of university graduates, have grown so lazy that they would rather mooch off the state than be gainfully employed.
The following story, covered last April in the British press, seems to suggest that the imported foreign labour apparently so badly needed by the NHS does not always bring the best of skills.
A patient lost a testicle during an operation after the surgeon accidentally cut it off, the medical watchdog was told today.
Dr Sulieman Al Hourani was only supposed to cut out a cyst on the patient's right testis, but instead he 'mistakenly' removed the whole testicle, the General Medical Council (GMC) heard.
Dr Al Hourani, who worked as a locum surgeon at Fairfield General Hospital in Bury, Greater Manchester, is accused of misconduct over the error and faces further charges of injecting himself with a drug meant for a patient and stealing tablets.
The medic, who is now practising in Jordan, is not present or represented by lawyers at the Fitness to Practise Panel which is hearing his case at the GMC in Manchester.
The panel decided to proceed with the case in his absence as he had been notified of the hearing but chose not to 'engage' with the GMC or appoint lawyers to represent him.
Sarah Prichard, counsel for the GMC opening the hearing, said a man, known only as patient A, had gone into hospital for the cyst to be removed on September 5 2007.
He was the first patient of the day and his medical notes made it 'perfectly clear' the procedure was to be 'excision of right epididymal cyst'.
Ms Prichard added: 'The theatre staff will tell the panel that their impression of what happened was that Dr Al Hourani had mistakenly removed the testicle rather than the cyst and expressed him(self) rather quite surprised the testicle rather than that which the patient had consented for was removed.
'Staff had no discussion or issue raised by Dr Al Hourani in the procedure as to why he was changing from excision of a cyst to removal of a testicle.'
Ms Prichard said the mistake was made as one nurse helping the surgeon turned her back to get a stitch and when she turned around the testicle had been removed.
'Literally as the nurse turned away to get a transfixion stitch the incident occurred and the testicle removed.
'Such was the level of concern they immediately realised it could be a serious medical incident and took steps to complete the relevant documentation.'
A month later it is alleged the doctor, who qualified after studying at Jordan University of Science and Technology, stole two boxes of dihydrocodeine from a treatment room on a ward at the same hospital.
An investigation was launched and the doctor was dismissed by his employers, Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, who ran the hospital.
The panel was told of another incident involving Dr Al Hourani more than a year earlier, on Sunday August 27 2006.
He had consulted a colleague and was advised to inject a patient with 10 milligrams (mg) of midazolam, a powerful sedative drug.
Instead Dr Al Hourani, who was the only surgeon at the hospital that day to treat patients, gave the patient 8mg and injected himself with the other 2mg.
Hospital staff said the doctor appeared unsteady on his feet, bumped into boxes, held on to a wall and was 'weaving' down the corridor.
He was later found in the doctors' mess room, 'deeply asleep' and taken in a wheelchair to A&E.
An internal inquiry at the hospital was launched and during disciplinary hearings he confessed to self-injecting the drug, telling colleagues it was the 'worst thing he had done in his life' and he was ashamed of himself.
A year later while still at the hospital he removed patient A's testicle by mistake, the GMC was told.
The hearing, scheduled to last three weeks, was adjourned until tomorrow morning.
Now, it might be that this was a fluke, and that, appearances notwithstanding, Sulieman Al Hourani did indeed have the required credentials to be taken on as a locum surgeon. But in a society that has become obsessed with the existence of a seemingly pervasive, endemic, entrenched, and institutional racism; in a society where the government, either directly or via its taxpayer-funded "equality" enforcement bodies, exerts constant pressure not to discriminate on grounds of race or other grounds; in a society where large organisations, public and private, have formal "equality" policies, officers, and budgets; in such a society, the sight of a coloured foreign worker in a professional organisation, however interim his position, cannot but inevitably -- sooner or later -- raise the question in the citizen's mind of whether that worker is really qualified for the position he holds, or he has, in fact, benefited from some non-discrimination policy or attitude. It is a legitimate question, since we know that in the United States "anti-racist" / "non-discrimination" programmes have meant that for decades less-qualified job or university applicants have obtaiend positions within organisations and elite centres of learning at the expense of better-qualified applicants purely because of the colour of their skin. Also, fear of appearing racist, or, alterantively, a desire to prove lack of racism, has been known to cause Whites to make poor choices when faced with members of non-European ethnic groups. (An example of this currently resides in the White House in Washington D.C.)
Therefore it bears asking, after reading the news report shown above, whether the unfortunate "accident" that took place in the Fairfield General Hospital's operation theatre would have not been prevented by institutional racism.
Indeed, I wonder whether Patient A would have not preferred a policy of more quality and less equality when it came to the utilisation by the NHS of temporary surgeons with overseas qualifications. I wonder whether he has asked the management at the hospital how it was that this Dr. Al Hourani came to make it through the selection process. After all, candidates for locum positions are supposed to undergo more rigorous scrutiny than those applying for a full-time employment contract.
There was a time when I believed that living in a civilised, First World country gave one certain guarantees with regards to personal security and levels of competence in the public and private sector. Certainly, I would not have expected to enter an operation theatre expecting to have a cyst removed (in a safe and common operation that normally lasts 15 minutes) only to be partially castrated by a clueless drug-abusing butcher with a Jordanian diploma. The advent and progression of multiculturalism has disabused me of my earlier belief.
Be that as it may, if you are over 40, beware. It seems epididymial cysts are quite common among men in the over-40s age group.
So, finally, a Western politician publicly acknowledges the obvious -- what the majority of the long-suffering electorate, who never asked, never wanted, and was never given the opportunity to vote on the issue of multiculturalism, has known for decades.
Very well, then. But if multiculturalism has 'utterly failed', Who will now compensate German -- and for that matter, European -- citizens for the damage that was done to European societies while this ridiculous social experiment was pursued by a tiny clique of politicans, mediacrats, and Left-wing intellectuals? Who will now clean up the mess?
Of course, no one. After all the colossal sums of money wasted in promoting multiculturalism, subsidising its malfunctioning, and patching up the consequences of its malfunctioning; after all the grief caused by this nefarious policy; after all that, the legacy remains.
And it remains because Merkel, not too unlike Gordon Brown once did before her, now talks about 'integration' and having immigrants learn German. But wasn't integration, or assimilation, the approach that existed prior to multiculturalism? And was that not also found lacking? It's worth asking, because had either approach been successful, a change would not have been felt necessary.
A time there was when the awarding of a title of nobility in European countries was intended as formal recognition of the recipient's service to the crown, to the country, or to the state. Under the feudal system, the honour was given in exchange for military service and was hereditary; but in modern times it has been given, at least in theory, as a very special life-time award by the state to a tiny handful of individuals deemed by it to have led a singularly meritorious career. That is why the process has been termed 'ennoblement' -- the implication being that these individuals are somehow noble and worthy of such appellation. For this reason, concommittant with the very exclusive privileges they obtain, ennobled citizens have added responsibilities, especially with regards to standards of conduct.
When Tony Blair's Labour regime seized power in 1997, the nobility as a system had long been on the wane, the aristocracy having been progressively stripped of its legal powers through successive reforms. All the same, the majority of the House of Lords prior to 2000 was in the hands of a hereditary aristocracy, which were largely Conservative members. During the late 1990s, Blair undertook his long-threatened 'reform' of the House of Lords with gusto and in a partisan fashion, determined, above all, to increase Labour's representation in the chamber (according to him and his supporters, it needed to be more modern and 'democratic'). While at it, he also undertook to multiculturalise this old institution, as it was too uniformly White and male for his liking.
Two beneficiaries of Blair's policy were foreign-born Muslims: Manzila Pola Uddin (from Bangladesh) and Amir Bhatia (from East Africa), who became Baroness Uddin and Lord Bhatia respectively. They joined Indian-born Swraj Paul, since 1996 Lord Paul, and a wealthy long-standing supporter of the Labour Party and of the man who most diligently ruined the British economy in the decades since World War II, Gordon Brown.
Having been ennobled under such extraordinary circumstances, one would have thought that their Lordships and Ladyship would have gone the extra mile to prove their worth. After all, does not aristocracy mean 'rule by the best'?
Yet, how did they repay the British state for the honours it bestowed upon them?
By theft.
All three have been found guilty of misappropriating public funds through fraudulent expenses claims.
Needless to say that they are not the only ones in Parliament who have been found guilty of misconduct. The Parliamentary Expenses Scandal of 2009 provided a most unedifying spectacle, with many of these peers' 'blood-and-soil' British colleagues also caught with their arms elbow-deep in the cookie jar -- essentially pickpocketing me and all other taxpayers.
All the same, it is still especially galling when individuals who were not even born in the country and who have been awarded high honours instead of worthier citizens, behave in such corrupt and dishonourable fashion.
All now face suspension from the House of Lords and have been asked to return the £200,000 ($300,000) they stole. But in a just world, they would be stripped of their peerages altogether: these are not individuals deserving to be called 'noble'.
Five words, tiny sentence, huge question. Is angling a racist sport?
I urge you to think hard before you answer. Very hard. I want you to think about the number of black and Asian people you see on the bank, about how many ethnic minority stars appear in the fishing press, about the tackle shops, the fisheries, the matches, the shows. Think about wherever groups of anglers congregate. Think about the number of non-white faces you’re likely to see. Then answer the question.
Because even if angling isn’t overtly racist, then it’s a hobby that has failed to integrate what now amounts to a significant proportion of the UK population. And that’s not opinion. It’s indisputable, undeniable fact.
Fishing, whichever way you look at it, remains, overwhelmingly, the preserve of white, middle-aged, working class males.
It’s not alone, of course. The two other field sports to which it sits most closely -- shooting and, to a lesser degree, hunting -- have a similar demographic. Yes, the social class may change, but the skin colour doesn’t.
If you take part in a countryside pursuit, the odds are you’ll be white.
There are obvious, often quoted, answers here. Ethnic communities live in cities and rarely leave their urban environments. They are poor, too, and unable to either afford the time, or the equipment, that hobbies demand. But these, although legitimate factors, are far too simplistic in my opinion.
Angling, like the other outdoor pursuits already mentioned, doesn’t attract blacks or Asians because of fundamental cultural differences.
Think about it. How did you find your love of angling? The overwhelming answer surely is through fathers, grandfathers or other family relatives.
A significant portion may have friends to thank but there can’t be many who simply stumbled into it by chance. Without those influences to steer them in the sport’s direction, most within the ethnic community don’t grow up with opportunity or inclination to pick up a fishing rod.
As a consequence there remains a dearth of role models for these youngsters to aspire to. Unlike football, cricket, rugby, golf even, fishing has no black or Asian superstars ¬ and there isn’t a hope in hell in finding any in the foreseeable future.
The Environment Agency believe that of the 1.45m rod licences sold last year, one per cent was made up of people from the ethnic community. It continues to spend revenue -- raised via our contributions -- on schemes and initiatives to increase that number because, and I quote a source at the Agency, ‘we know that literally millions more people from all backgrounds are interested in going fishing but also that they find significant barriers in their way’.
It’s all part of the Agency’s ‘Angling 2015’, a scheme aimed at attracting 200,000 new people into fishing, a significant portion from the vast ethnic community. Already money, our rod licence money, remember, has been spent on pilot schemes with organisations ¬ and I’m not making this up - like the Minority Ethnic Women’s Network. This at a time when the EA can’t afford to bailiff the banks properly.
Look, it might be very worthy and politically correct to seek to throw money at well-meaning but ultimately doomed attempts to encourage blacks and Asians to go fishing, but it’s futile.
Fishing, to answer my own initial question, isn’t racist. But it is white, working class and an intrinsic part of Anglo Saxon culture that dates back centuries. The EA would be well advised to remember that the next time it decides to throw even more of our money away.
And I thought there were tons of Southern Blacks who liked to fish.
On 17 July, the Guardian newspaper published a 12 page graphic comic entitled “The Unwanted,” written by Joe Sacco, a Maltese citizen who presently lives in Oregon. “The Unwanted,” which can be read here, purports to describe the cultural, political and logistical problems being caused in Malta by large-scale illegal immigration from Africa.
Sacco’s parents were socialists, and emigrated to Australia in the 1960s to escape the influence of the Catholic church -- a hugely powerful institution in Malta, where abortion and divorce are still illegal. The parental antinomianism appears to have rubbed off on their son, because his views tend towards the conventionally leftwing, with other graphic offerings to his name about the travails of Bosnia and Gaza.
“The Unwanted” does make some effort to understand the concerns of the native Maltese. Nevertheless, the overall impression is one of finger-wagging at the smallest member state of the European Union, which it joined in 2004 at the instigation of the humorously-entitled Nationalist Party, led by Lawrence Gonzi, who has been Prime Minister since 2004 (he was narrowly re-elected in March 2008). Sacco’s comic is the least annoying in a long line of denunciatory Guardian features, all of which bear typically didactic titles like “Voyage to Compassion,” “Malta’s Mash of Civilizations,” and “Hysteria is no answer to the plight of refugees.”
The easily outraged denounce Malta regularly, for its Catholic mores, its Euroscepticism, its habit of slaughtering song birds (this offends me too), and worst of all its attitude towards the thousands of African migrants aiming for mainland Europe who end up landing on Malta, or being rescued by trawlers and taken to the archipelago. Here they stay for up to 18 months in legal limbo, killing time in overcrowded detention centres while lawyers, civil servants and politicians from Valletta to Brussels wrangle about their “right” to be there and who should take responsibility for them.
At around 122 square miles, Malta is one-fifth the size of Greater London and has a population of 409,000 (UN figures, although the real figure is probably nearer 413,000). The archipelago is rocky and barren, and the economy is heavily dependent on tourism and machinery exports.
The islands have been occupied by Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, the French and the British, and there are ruined temples which are over 8,000 years old. Although the Arabs were only present on the islands for around 200 years, the Maltese language is derived mostly from Arabic (although it is written in Latin script, the only Semitic language for which this is true), and their erstwhile occupation is also evident in the local food, music and the physiognomies of some of the local people.
The architectural ambience, however, is baroque, while it is one of the most strongly Christian countries in the world. It was the home between 1530 and 1798 of the crusading Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem, whose emblem is the eight-pointed Maltese Cross (the emblem actually derives from the Italian town of Salerno, because the founders of the Hospital of St John came from there). The Order, which had been expelled by the Muslims first from Jerusalem and then Rhodes, was given the island by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V of Spain, who demanded in return a nominal fee of a single falcon (this pleasing vignette is referred to in the classic Humphrey Bogart film, The Maltese Falcon). The Knights have been described as the “first embryonic council of Europe.” Some idea of the reality of this may be gauged by examining the 28 Grand Masters of the Order of St John between 1530 and 1798 (when the Order was suppressed by Napoleon). Twelve were French, eight Aragonese, four Italian, three Portuguese and one German. (The Order is now based in London, with its headquarters in a medieval gatehouse in fashionable Clerkenwell.) The militant order which was once tasked with defending holy sites is now reduced to providing first aid at football matches -- a useful but inglorious task, perhaps emblematic of mainstream Christianity.
In 1565, under the command of Jean de la Vallette (in whose honor the elegant city of Valletta is named), approximately 9,000 defenders legendarily resisted an Ottoman invasion force of around 48,000 (firing an estimated 135,000 cannonballs) for more than four months. This was a military turning point, and built up momentum for the momentous victory at Lepanto just six years afterwards.
Malta endured an equally terrible siege when Axis forces trying to cut Britain’s Suez lifeline besieged the island effectively from June 1940 until April 1942. For the islanders’ heroism during that period, the country was presented with the George Cross by King George VI, and this is still emblazoned on the state flag, even though Malta became independent in 1964.
So notwithstanding its Arabic trace elements, Malta is deeply rooted in the European mainstream -- and all the more conscious of its cultural identity because of its historical vulnerability and vicissitudes. It is this awareness, no doubt, which led a majority of electors to take the difficult decision to join the EU. Like the inhabitants of many other small European countries, they probably see membership as guaranteeing future security.
With such resonant traditions to draw upon, it is ironic that there is no serious political resistance to the immigration wave, although this is probably because it is a relatively recent phenomenon.
In 2003, 502 African migrants arrived on the islands. In 2005, it was 1,800 -- in 2006 1,780 -- in 2007, 1,800 -- and around 1,700 in both 2008 and 2009. So far this year, there has been a 3.3 percent decrease in the numbers, probably reflecting would-be migrants’ consciousness that even Europe is not immune to recession. Others have died trying to make the crossing; Malta was much criticized when 53 migrants drowned in Maltese waters in May 2007, and again when 80 or so drowned in August 2008.
The total numbers of immigrants are small, amounting to only around 3 percent of the total population, but in such a tiny and relatively poor country the impact is enormous. As a 2008 report from the Maltese think-tank Today Public Policy Institute (TPPI) expresses it,
Relative to population size, this equates to around 1.72 million immigrants arriving in France or the UK, 2.35 million in Germany, 1.6 million in Italy and about 1.15 million in Spain…on a per capita basis Malta has thus experienced one of the largest -- if not the largest -- influx of undocumented immigrants among EU countries over recent years.
“The Unwanted” spends much energy denouncing Norman Lowell, who has a party called, ambitiously or fancifully, depending on your perspective, Imperium Europa. He is presently serving a two year suspended sentence for inciting racial hatred and insulting the president. Lowell is denounced as a “far rightist,” and, to be fair, Lowell features lightning-flash logos and admiring references to Mein Kampf scattered in amongst such un-Hitlerian policy commitments as freedom of expression and gay rights. Lowell has stood several times in national and European elections, but third parties in Malta always score derisory votes.
A more down-to-earth party, National Action (Azzjoni Nazzjonali) was founded in 2007 by a businessman and former Nationalist Party MP named Josie Muscat, but after failing to win any seats in 2008 despite a strong anti-immigration platform, in April 2010 the party voted to transform itself into
an organisation that promotes and disseminates conservative values.
Since then, there has been silence, and now there does not appear to be even a website for AN, so perhaps nothing more will come of this.
The TPPI report complains:
The emergence of overtly xenophobic movements and parties has been a complete novelty in Malta’s political landscape. Moreover, and somewhat more worrying, there has been a rise in attacks against organizations and individuals working to protect the rights of immigrants, or against people denouncing racism… A recent study on xenophobic attitudes among the Maltese population has also revealed some disturbing results.
According to a survey conducted in 2005, 95% of respondents had no objections to having a European neighbour, while an almost equally high number were unwilling to live next to Arabs (93%), Africans (90%) or Jews (89%). Moreover, more than 75% of respondents said they would not give shelter to refugees.
The TPPI notes with some sympathy the difficulties faced by Maltese fishermen, who often come across migrants miles from land, drifting in unseaworthy boats. The fishermen
“usually avoid coming too close to a boat carrying 20 to 30 migrants, as they fear being overpowered. Moreover, if they alert the authorities, these can take several hours to arrive on the spot, meaning that the fishermen’s day of work is lost without compensation … as Maltese fishermen themselves readily admit, in most cases when they come across irregular migrants at sea, they simply “put the engine on full thrust.”
The report complains plaintively of the lack of Libyan cooperation, as if Muammar Gaddafi were a rational man. Yet Libya does have a strategic interest in halting the flow, because it is a major transit point, and it too has a large (almost one million) and much-resented illegal immigrant population from black Africa. (On a recent visit to Italy, the colourful Colonel disconcerted journalists by declaring that most “asylum-seekers” from Africa were fraudulent.)
More to the point, the TPPI bemoans the EU’s border agency Frontex’s unwillingness or inability to augment the miniscule Maltese defence forces. At present, there are three Maltese patrol boats, two German helicopters and a launch to patrol a sea-area the size of Great Britain. Even Italy will not send assistance, although many of the Africans who land on Malta end up in Italy, and although the nearby Italian island of Lampedusa (best known as the hereditary fiefdom of Giovanni Tomasi de Lampedusa, author of The Leopard) is likewise a magnet for illegal immigration. However, the Italian Navy already has a major job patrolling Italy’s Adriatic coast, which is also targeted by people-traffickers. With the present budgetary constraints, and the all-party dogma that mass immigration is intrinsically good and its opponents intrinsically evil, in the short term the chances of Frontex being beefed up look slim.
So the report concludes by recommending the cheaper strategy that is always resorted to by today’s politicians, to make the natives feel guilty for wishing to preserve the country they love:
Efforts should be made… to implement a sustained information exercise in the media…Such a campaign needs to air regularly.
What this amounts to is that the Maltese are to be lectured for wishing to remain Maltese -- and they will be expected to pay for their sensitivity lessons. Not only this, but they will also be hectored, because along with largesse from Brussels come rafts of bland-sounding but draconian laws about race relations, religious discrimination, equality, and human rights designed to undermine all assumptions and usher in an unwanted, untested and un-European “Europe.” The effects of these laws -- like the laws on abortion and divorce -- are yet to be visited upon the unwitting islanders, who may find this insidious enemy harder to resist than Ottoman or German soldiers.
The battle-scarred walls of Valletta still stand strong and beautiful in the sun, but all the postern gates have been thrown open.
When the Labour Party lost the May 2010 election, I did not exactly share their sadness. This was not because I saw the incoming government as representing fundamental change; rather, this was because the Labour government of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had already proven so fantastically destructive that it was difficult to imagine anything topping five more years of Labour inferno.
The electoral repulsion of Gordon Brown triggered a leadership contest within this wretched party, an event about which Derek Turner has already written very amusingly for Taki’s Magazine. Absent evidence of complete disarray, crisis, depression, despair, tiffs, quarrels, clashes, faction, division, schism, disunity, schizophrenia, paranoia, catatonia, paralysis, and radical soul-searching, a Labour leadership election is a potent soporific. Who wants to listen to a freak show of fossilized Marxists pontificating about fairness and equality? Life is too short.
But when the electorate holds back from crushing them into oblivion, when the government ends up being a coalition of Liberals and Conservatives, the prospect of a Labour comeback cannot be dismissed: their next leader might well end up being our future Prime Minister.
What, then, is Labour offering its supporters? At one end of the spectrum stands the current favourite, David Miliband, the former Foreign Secretary. He is followed by a succession of yawns. At the other end is the outsider candidate, Diane Abbott, the MP for the London borough of Hackney North and Stoke Newington.
David Miliband is the son of Ralph Miliband. The elder Miliband, born in Belgium, immigrated to Britain in 1940 to escape the Nazis, and went on to become, during the 1960s and 1970s, “one of Britain’s most celebrated intellectual disciples of Karl Marx.” He was an iconic figure of the Labour Left, “who famously frowned on the concept of ‘private property,’” and “whose writings influenced two generations of Socialist leaders.” Based in the highly fashionable London district of Primrose Hill, “once a popular haunt with radical intellectuals,” which “hosted a strong community of Jewish émigrés,” David is the classic Champagne socialist, a species that sees no contradiction between applying a Robin Hood ethos with other people’s money and indulging a personal lifestyle of Oriental opulence: the 22 April 2007 article in the Daily Mail, "How David Miliband Avoided Inheritance Tax on Marxist Father’s £1.5million House," provides an educational overview of the Milibands’ attitude to property and taxes. (Hint: they are not entirely harmonious with what they prescribe for you and me.)
Also (arguably) educational were claims made in the Russian newspaper Tvoi Den in 2007, when David Miliband, then Foreign Secretary, angered Putin’s government through his handling of the Alexander Litvinenko affair.
The newspaper said that in the Twenties the Foreign Secretary's grandfather, Samuel, then Shimon, Miliband, a native of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, had fought under the command of Trotsky ‘eliminating’ white Russians opposed to Communism.
Miliband’s tenure as Foreign Secretary was indeed stellar. Among the various examples of his genius as Britain's top diplomat, we must include his relationship with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who came to afford Miliband the full benefit of his industrial-strength candor: it was reported by the British press on one occasion that during a telephone conversation between the two men, Lavrov asked Miliband, “Who the fuck are you to lecture me?” Miliband experienced a lengthy tirade, it seems, complete with a generous sprinking of four-letter words, in response to comments about Russia’s operations in Georgia. Miliband’s visit to Russia a year later was similarly a resounding diplomatic success.
Thus, we have some indications as to how Britain’s prestige in the world would be elevated under a possible David Miliband premiership later in the decade.
Yet, before we can relax, we need to take a look at the "outsider" contestant: Diane Abbott, the main topic of this article. With bookies assessing her chances of victory at 50/1, an Abbott premiership might seem a distant possibility. But if you dismiss her out of hand you have already forgotten that at one point in the not too distant past there was one Barack Obama, who appeared out of nowhere and transitioned from non-entity to world leader in a matter of months. Not unlike Ms. Abbott, he added colour to an otherwise dreadfully vanilla selection of candidates, and was said to represent fundamental change -– a profound and historical transformation of the political landscape. Ms. Abbott has sustained some criticism in the media, where she has earned accolades such as “the stupidest woman in Britain,” but it is particularly auspicious for the Black MP that her entering the leadership contest afforded immense relief to the lilly-white consciences of her fellow party members: these worthy servants of the people, you see, were very uncomfortable with the (until-then) uniformly fair complexion and monotonous maleness of the contestants. (Hint: this might have resulted in accusations of racism and sexism, and therefore of hypocrisy and Champagne socialism.)
Born of Jamaican parents in 1953, Diane Abbott earned her place in the history books by happening to be Black and female in 1987, when she was elected Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom. Since then she has remained popular with her constituents, who have re-elected her with comfortable majorities on every election. Her borough is ethnically diverse (25% Black, 41% non-White in 2006) and one of the most economically deprived in the country, occupying the bottom 5% nationwide. Jo Dillon of the Independent on Sunday has described her as “an icon of the Left”.
Her various campaigns, outlined on her website, cover wide range of issues. A common denominator in not a few of them, however, is a strong identification, combined with an acute preoccupation, with the interests and concerns of her racial brethren: both foreign and British-born Blacks (also known here as “West Indians,” or “Afro-Caribbeans”). Witness, for example, Ms. Abbott’s motive for opposing the changes in Air Passenger Duty introduced by the last Labour government:
Government proposals within the Bill are to charge passengers higher Air Passenger Duty the further the distance they fly out of the UK. But rather than being based on the exact destination the passenger is flying to, the Duty will be based on the capital city of the country the passenger is flying to. This means that flying to the Caribbean will always incur a higher Air Passenger Duty than flying to the USA, even though many places in the USA are further away from London than the Caribbean is.
Or her reasons for being active in the civil liberties campaign:
When I first came to Parliament in 1987 I spoke out against Stop and Search laws which infringed on the civil liberties of young Black men. [...]
I am concerned that anti-terror laws brought in since the September 11th attacks will have the same detrimental effect on relations between the police and Muslim communities.
Or her thoughts on the current approach to the fight against crime:
[G]un crime is not just about tough sentencing. Sadly 80 per cent of gun crime in London is 'black on black,' often involving boys in their teens. As a black woman and the mother of a teenage son this is frightening and wholly unacceptable. A fundamental and persistent problem is the continuing educational underachievement of black boys in particular.
I have campaigned for many years on educational issues. In particular I have researched, organised and spoken out on the way in which the education system fails children of African and Afro-Caribbean descent. In the mid-nineties I began organising events in Hackney under the title “Hackney Schools and the Black Child”. [...]
Most recently I held debates in the House of Commons on the disproportionately high rate of school exclusions of Black boys and the lack of diversity in London teaching workforce.
Or her objections to, and actions against, the proposed reforms to legal aid:
They are aimed at value for money, but in reality mean that many smaller firms will be run out of business by factory-like law firms that can afford to take on legal aid cases for less money. Black and ethnic minority-run firms are more likely to be new or small firms, and are more likely to be dependent on legal aid work and therefore are hugely threatened by the reforms. Whilst I welcome the Government's wish to get value for money in legal aid spending, it is clear that among other flaws the legal aid reform will decimate black and minority ethnic solicitors.
Many black and ethnic minority legal firms were set up as a reaction to the institutional racism that prevented ethnic minority lawyers from progressing in their careers. [...]
In May I tabled a number of written questions to the Ministry of Justice to try and gage what could be done to halt the reforms. Following this I held a Westminster Hall debate arguing that the reforms were indirectly discriminatory against black and ethnic minority solicitors, firms and clients.
Or her issues with the national DNA database, created by Labour, and currently holding 4.5 million profiles:
In 2007, Lady Scotland confirmed that three-quarters of the young black male population would soon be on the DNA database...They had generally been arrested because they fit the physical description of a suspect -- the suspect being described as a young black man.
My, if Ms. Abbott is as sturdy a bulwark for the race-specific interests and concerns of her White constituents -- 59% in her borough -- as she is for those of her Afro-Caribbean voters, I would imagine that they feel no need at all for a party like the BNP. (Well, if they do, the Left-wing Institute for Public Policy Research has an ingenious solution: more immigration.)
Ms. Abbott’s preoccupation with negritude is, like Obama’s, fully integrated with far Left credentials. After Labour came to power in 1997, a secret conspiracy was hatched at the highest levels of government to make Britain more multicultural. This led to previous legal immigration averages to quintuple, reaching figures in excess of a quarter of a million people per year. Most of these came from impoverished, Third World countries. And among them were 1 million Muslims, who added themselves to the 1.5 million accumulated over the previous centuries. According to a questionnaire published in The Guardian newspaper, however, Ms. Abbott disagrees strongly with the statement “[i]mmigration levels are too high” (in the United Kingdom). This is perhaps not entirely surprising, as the former Labour Home Secretary, David Blunket (who is White), said in 2003 that there was “no obvious limit” to the number of immigrants that could settle in the United Kingdom.
Indeed, being a citizen of the world, Ms. Abbott’s generosity extends well beyond this green and pleasant land. The last Labour government transformed the British economy, tripling the national debt, septupling government borrowing, and turning the Conservative’s 3.3 percent economic expansion of 1997 into a 5.0 percent economic contraction in 2009. It also managed to give away 60% of the nation’s gold reserves at $275 an ounce. Eventually, with Britain facing a downgrade in its credit rating, harsh spending cuts and tax rises had to be implemented, including an increase in Value Added Tax (VAT), which is hoped will bring in an extra £13,000 million a year. Ms. Abbott is pleased, however, because the foreign aid budget, which in the 2008/2009 year spent £5,500 million helping the poor in Africa and South Asia, has been increased to £7,800 million for the 2010/2011 year. In fact, even though half of Britons want less money spent on foreign aid and more spent relieving domestic poverty and improving our under-funded public services, she strongly disagreed with the idea that Britain spends too much money on foreign aid. Ms. Abbott must have failed to notice that the VAT increase -- which disproportionately affects the poor, since it increases prices on nearly all goods and services -- could have been cut to less than half by suspending foreign aid.
And as no far Left politician is complete without punitive tax proposals, Abbott has bold plans of her own. On 16 July the BBC reported
As well as introducing a financial transaction tax and increasing the coalition's bank levy, she said she would create a new “wealth tax."
“I am working on the details of it but it would be a wealth tax directed at assets rather than income,” she said.
In other words, if your house is too large, Abbott will ask you please to move out, sell it, and hand a big chunk of your money to the government. And if you are one of those doomsday eccentrics who hoard gold in case of a currency crisis, she will want you to share your stash with the government. So, if you are intelligent and industrious, if you have prospered in life, Diane Abbott has her eye on you.
Of course, none of this represents an electoral barrier to a committed Marxist supporter: they love these political positions, irrespective of race, age, gender, disability, or sexual orientation -- and they know how to guilt ordinary people into supporting them, or at least not criticizing them.
There remain, however, a few minor problem areas that would need to go into the memory hole before Diane Abbott is ready to storm into 10 Downing Street.
Firstly, there is the matter of her refusing to pay her own evening taxi fares. Ordinary folk traveling to and from work are expected by their employers to pay for their own transport. But Diane Abbott expects the long-suffering taxpayers to fund hers to the tune of £1,100 per year, even though she already claims £142,000 annually in expenses, and is paid the largest allowable income supplement for living in London.
Secondly, there is the matter of her thinking that “blonde, blue-eyed Finnish girls” are unsuitable for working as nurses in the National Health Service, because they “may have never met a Black person before.” Fortunately, however, on this occasion Marc Wadsworth, executive member of the Anti-Racist Alliance, came to the rescue by pointing out that that year’s Miss Finland was Black, of part Nigerian descent. And, all the same, Ms. Abbott still commanded support from fellow Black MPs: Bernie Grant, MP for a neighbouring constituency, said “She is quite right… Scandinavian people don’t know black people -- they probably don’t know how to take their temperature.”
Then there is the matter of her parallel career as a BBC pundit. Instigated by a complaint from a fellow MP, the Committee for Standards and Privileges found in 2004 that Ms. Abbott had failed to declare her earnings (£17,300) from her appearances in the BBC programme This Week in the Register of Members Interests, as per the provisions of the Code of Conduct for Members and paragraph 54 (c) of the Guide to the Rules. Ms. Abbott, who accepted full responsibility, was required to apologize to the House of Commons. Fortunately, however, Ms. Abbott emerged unscathed from the 2009 expenses scandal, where MPs of all stripes were found to have been dipping into the public purse to the tune of many thousands of pounds to fund their lifestyles. Here she has an advantage over her fellow contestant, David Miliband, who was found to have illegitimately claimed £30,000 over five years in repairs, decorations, and furnishings for his private residence (he apologized went found out, but did not return any of the taxpayers' money).
And then there is the question of whether Ms. Abbott will, like Obama, succeed in ushering in a new era of post-racial politics. Statements like the one below, recorded in the Daily Mail, suggest it may be too soon yet to get our hopes up:
I never encountered any overt racism at school, though I do occasionally wonder whether the attempts made to dissuade me from applying for Oxbridge were linked to my colour.
And, finally, there is the matter of her snubbing public education for her son, in favour of a £10,000-per-year selective private school (Note: Marxists are supposedly against private education and selecting students for ability). The matter generated considerable media attention in 2003, not least because our far Left politician had previously savaged Tony Blair and Harriet Harman for also sparing their children from the public school system. It seems she instructed her former husband to keep quiet about her choice, aware that it was “indefensible” and “intellectually incoherent.” Worse still, her explanation (“West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children”) renewed accusations of racism, which for some implied that White mothers loved their children less than Black mothers. Indeed, many found it rather puzzling that Ms. Abbott could take this view yet dread the thought of her child being schooled alongside others raised by West Indian mums, just like her.
We will have to see how this exciting contest unfolds. Will the best man win? Will subterranean racism influence the decision? Is Britain ready to transform its political landscape? For the time being, Ms. Abbott thinks she has fair chance, despite the odds:
I'm not comparing myself to Barack Obama because he’s a once in a life-time figure but two years ago no-one could have imagined a black man as US President. If that was possible in the US, I think people can change their ideas in Britain as well.
Under the title "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege," Senator James Webb (D., Va.) says what no mainstream Republican politician would ever dare to say:
Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers. The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.
I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America's economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship. Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.
In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived...
Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years.
Contrary to assumptions in the law, white America is hardly a monolith. And the journey of white American cultures is so diverse (yes) that one strains to find the logic that could lump them together for the purpose of public policy./The clearest example of today's misguided policies comes from examining the history of the American South.
The old South was a three-tiered society, with blacks and hard-put whites both dominated by white elites who manipulated racial tensions in order to retain power. At the height of slavery, in 1860, less than 5% of whites in the South owned slaves. The eminent black historian John Hope Franklin wrote that 'fully three-fourths of the white people in the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery...'
In 1938...[o]f the South's 1.8 million sharecroppers, 1.2 million were white (a mirror of the population, which was 71% white)...
Generations of such deficiencies do not disappear overnight, and they affect the momentum of a culture. In 1974, a National Opinion Research Center (NORC) study of white ethnic groups showed that white Baptists nationwide averaged only 10.7 years of education, a level almost identical to blacks' average of 10.6 years, and well below that of most other white groups. A recent NORC Social Survey of white adults born after World War II showed that in the years 1980-2000, only 18.4% of white Baptists and 21.8% of Irish Protestants—the principal ethnic group that settled the South—had obtained college degrees, compared to a national average of 30.1%, a Jewish average of 73.3%, and an average among those of Chinese and Indian descent of 61.9%.
Policy makers ignored such disparities within America's white cultures when, in advancing minority diversity programs, they treated whites as a fungible monolith. Also lost on these policy makers were the differences in economic and educational attainment among nonwhite cultures. Thus nonwhite groups received special consideration in a wide variety of areas including business startups, academic admissions, job promotions and lucrative government contracts.
Where should we go from here? Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end.
Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white...
Wow.
Ordinarily, I wouldn't quote so much while commenting so little - but, hey? what could I possibly add?
Needless to say, the PC brigades are out to get him.
Warsaw has witnessed all variations of heroism and infamy through its seven centuries of existence. Yet it can now mark a new milestone, since the Polish capital just played official host to the 2010 EuroPride Parade, an annual ritual in celebration of homosexual practices, along with ever so desperately-needed “tolerance” and “equal rights”. Next year’s event will take place in Rome, as if to drive home just who runs the show in the EternalCity. Poles who suffered for their nation and faith in the fight against Communism should by now be having second thoughts on the regime established after its fall.
What may seem just another nauseating spectacle well-rehearsed throughout the West is nonetheless significant in its political and strategic context. The parade is the Polish state’s coming-out party as a constituent nation of the Brave New World. Only two weeks prior, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had visited Poland to affirm the strong alliance ties between Washington and Warsaw and praise the country “as a model of democratic and free market transformation”. And indeed it is, as showcased by Europride 2010- though it’s in sore need of more abortions and immigrants from wildly incompatible cultures like those of Pakistan or Morocco. Poland is still in the earlier stages of social chaos, insolvency and spiritual collapse that the liberal order brings, but the State Department, Brussels and supporting NGOs like Freedom House and the Open Society Institute have ready-made solutions to speed the journey to Progress.
The postmodern assault on traditional culture and Christianity that Poland and other Washington-allied East European nations are beginning to experience is already far advanced on the rest of the Continent, where secular hedonism and pop-democracy are more deeply entrenched. The European Union itself is but a grotesque parody of Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire. While EU governing elites and the complacent masses they rule carry ultimate responsibility for apostasy and decline, it is necessary that we recognize another driving force at work: U.S. power.
By its role in the NATO alliance and its network of bases, the United States has for 65 years shaped European strategic and political discourse and retained its dominant position. There is a shared, institutionalized worldview at work fostered by successive generations of transatlantic elites, from politicians and corporate leaders to policy experts and military officers. This may seem a rather obvious point, but it is crucial to acknowledge the ideological aspect of U.S. hegemony -- perpetuation of the liberalism and materialism that so define the “free world”.
In the chill of the Cold War, the Italian thinker Julius Evola correctly found democratic capitalism as base and spiritually empty as its Bolshevik rival for world power:
The attack on quality and the individual is conducted not by methods of open violence, as under a Marxist dictatorship, but almost spontaneously, through the creation of a society that knows no higher values than wealth, consumption, profit, and the unstoppable growth of production, which is in essence but the ideal, hypertrophied and brought to absurdity, of contemporary Europe.
With Marxism discredited at the end of the bipolar era, only one messianic ideology was left standing. In the two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, America has gloried in the triumph of the liberal revolution and ceaselessly proselytized its globalization. Perhaps the most important target of this effort has been the former Soviet space. To eliminate Moscow as a rival and gain Central Asia’s energy resources would bring Washington to a level of dominion over the world never yet achieved. In working toward this goal, the U.S. has made ample use of information campaigns, “color revolutions” and the deployment of military assets along Russia’s periphery. Democratic universalism and hegemony in Eurasia are mutually reinforcing ends in U.S. policy.
The comprehensive military presence the United States enjoys in Europe provides it not only unquestioned leadership in the “Euro-Atlantic Community”, but also a platform for expansion into Eurasia’s heartland and the prosecution of wars in the Middle East. The foreign-policy analyst Doug Bandow wonders aloud why the Army’s V Corps remains stationed in Heidelberg rather than stateside:
About 52,000 American troops are in Germany. Obviously the most populous and prosperous country at the center of Europe doesn't need defending. The likelihood of Russian troops marching on Berlin and clambering up the Bundestag building is somewhat akin to that of the Martians landing and conducting a modern War of the Worlds.
The only other reason to have forces in Germany is because that country is closer to other places where Washington wants to send U. S. personnel -- but shouldn't. German bases once devoted to preventing a Red Army conquest are now handling casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan. However, if the U. S. wasn't promiscuously warring on other nations, it wouldn't need a German way-station in Europe.
More explicitly, U.S. forces are still in Germany because Europe is a central pillar of U.S. Empire. Strategists at the NSC, Pentagon and State also consider the Continent itself worth securing. Even Washington’s interventions in the Middle East and Central Asia are in significant measure aimed at controlling the energy resources and pipelines that power Europe’s economies. This is precisely the point of the Foggy Bottom-sponsored Nabucco project- to neutralize Europe’s natural gas relationship with Russia and replace it with dependence on a U.S.-protected corridor from the Muslim world. This same conduit, planned for sending NATO troops east and energy west, also brings an annual 85 tons of Afghan heroin into Europe by way of several U.S. allies. As the drug’s top market with 20% of world share, the nations of the Continent have suffered around 10,000 heroin-related deaths every year over the past decade.
No study of Europe’s subjection to transatlantic elites would be complete without mentioning the use of Muslims to further divide and demoralize its peoples. For the past 30 years, beginning with covert U.S. support to the Afghan mujahideen, Washington has courted Islamic power as a vehicle of influence in Eurasia, and Europe is no exception in this regard. Through the course the 1990s NATO bombarded Serbs and introduced peacekeeping troops into the Balkans to create Muslim states Bosnia and Kosovo on the carcass of Tito’s Yugoslavia. In the case of Kosovo, occupied by U.S. forces in 1999 and declared “sovereign” in February 2008, an Albanian-heavy province of Orthodox Serbia was excised and granted independence based on the will of the U.S.-EU policy establishment. The late Congressman Tom Lantos spelt out the rationale behind this move:
Just a reminder to the predominantly Muslim-led governments in this world that here is yet another example that the United States leads the way for the creation of a predominantly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe. This should be noted by both responsible leaders of Islamic governments, such as Indonesia, and also for jihadists of all color and hue. The United States' principles are universal, and, in this instance, the United States stands foursquare for the creation of an overwhelmingly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe.
Kosovo might not be the last such case, given rising Muslim demographics due to unhindered immigration to the West. In the thrall of liberal universalism and a drive to global empire (the two goals coincide quite nicely), Washington has already shown it will wage war to form Muslim sovereignties within historical Christendom. The State Department even fields its own special representative to Muslim communities with a focus on “integration, democracy and Islam” in Europe. The Continent’s elites certainly need no instruction on inviting and subsidizing masses of Muslim migrants. At the same time, the U.S. is adeptly exploiting the situation and scouting out the future fault lines of European societies.
U.S. diplomacy also celebrates Turkey, with a foothold in Thrace and its two million countrymen in Germany, as an up-and-coming European nation. Washington has long advocated Turkey’s entry into the EU, with all its attendant consequences for native European populations. This policy did not change with the Islamist AK Party’s ascent. Increasingly neo-Ottoman Ankara is looked upon as a strategic partner in places from its former suzerainties in the Balkan Peninsula to the Middle East and Caucasus region, not least because of its position astride both actual and potential energy transit routes. Faced with waxing Turkish power and assertive and growing populations of Muslim migrants, Europeans may yet react and begin to reclaim their lands and heritage. But they must know that in their resistance, it is entirely likely they will receive not U.S. support, but hostility to their cause and possibly armed intervention on behalf of Muslim belligerents.
The decadence on display in Europe reveals not only its multiple symptoms, but an array of tools used to enslave a people. All of this is overwhelming to behold at first: the mediocre farce of the democratic polity, the pervasive doctrines of multiculturalism, the fantasy of total autonomy coupled with welfare-state socialism, and everywhere transgression in the sacred name of desire. The tribes of Europa are told to forget their past, reject their faith and ethnic identity, and their very place in the Cosmos. “Place no hope in the future,” they are commanded, “for your replacements have arrived.” The grand liberation our masters have enacted is only a means of control that leads to the death of individuals and cultures. The only option for survival is spiritual resistance.
It would be inadequate to ascribe the ruin of Europe solely to U.S. policies, for in modern universalism we are witnessing a truly transatlantic phenomenon. Given power realities, however, Washington continues to proclaim itself guardian of Europe while acting as the guarantor of its destruction.
Thinkers of the Right often tend towards pessimism because, as Carl Schmitt noted, "all genuine political theories presuppose man to be evil." Consequently, many on our side see a future where our civilization continues to devolve into something resembling a multicultural, feminist, pornographic, New Age rendition of totalitarianism, to be followed by complete dispossession generated by demographic overrun. While prevailing trends may at present lend themselves to such a conclusion, there is every reason to believe this state of affairs will eventually be reversed in our favor.
Recall that the repentant Communist Whittaker Chambers told the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948: "I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side. . .but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism." Such was the perspective of many on the Right during the decades of the Cold War. But there were others, ranging from Lawrence Dennis to George Kennan to Ludwig von Mises, who begged to differ and regarded Communism as an aberration and deformation that would eventually meet its end. History proved these optimists to be correct, and forty years later it was Communism that was dead. It is likely forty years from now that the paradigm of military Keynesianism, welfare-capitalism, and what some have characterized as "Cultural Marxism" (though my preferred term for this phenomenon is "totalitarian humanism") that rules the present day West will likewise be deceased or in severe retreat.
Contemporary cultural, demographic, and generational trends in the United States indicate that the liberal coalition that emerged victorious with the election of Barack Obama in 2008 will continue to be dominant in the decades ahead. I have written about the reasons for that elsewhere. Yet this coalition will prove to be an unstable one over the long haul. The simple fact is that present day liberal ideology and liberalism's core constituent groups contain within themselves certain contradictions that will eventually prove to be fatal. There is simply no way that an agglomeration of affluent liberal whites, underclass blacks and Hispanics, affirmative action-babies, feminists, gay militants, transsexuals, Third World immigrants, atheists, Muslims, hipster youth, traditional blue collar workers, state-connected labor unions, Jewish plutocrats, environmentalists, and the left-wing of the traditional WASP elite, with each of these attempting to get their pieces of the pie distributed by the managerial-therapeutic-multicultural-welfare state, can be politically durable on an indefinite basis. The only thing that unites this coalition is hostility to traditional Western culture and a desire for more freebies courtesy of the state. While this coalition will indeed continue to become more powerful and its values more deeply entrenched in institutions in the short term, over the long term it will self-cannibalize and collapse due to its own internal contradictions and fractious nature.
American partisan cycles tend to run for thirty-five to forty years and then decline. For example, from the time of the assuming of the presidency by William McKinley until the end of the administration of Herbert Hoover, the Republicans were the dominant party in U.S. politics (with the horrid exception of Woodrow Wilson). From the election of FDR in 1932 until the end of the 1960s the Democrats were the prevailing party. From 1968 until Obama, the Republicans were once again dominant. It likely that the Democrats will continue to be the preeminent party until the middle of the century begins to approach and then be eclipsed by a new political coalition. The great wild card in all of this is that the time the present partisan cycle will be winding down will be precisely the same time the demographic transformation from a majority white nation to a collection of minorities is expected to occur. Those readers who will still be alive during those years should expect some interesting times. As political correctness becomes more deeply rooted in Western institutions, it will have fewer qualms about showing its fangs. That will be its undoing. Pablo Picasso said: "I went to Communism as one goes to a spring of fresh water." To this, Arthur Koestler replied: "I went to Communism as one goes to a spring of fresh water, and I left Communism as one clambers out of a poisoned river strewn with the wreckage of flooded cities and the corpses of the drowned." As political correctness tightens its grip and demographic overrun becomes ever more imminent, I predict many a former liberal will undergo an 11th hour awakening and come to their senses. Expect a resurrection of the ghost of Pim Fortuyn when that happens.
Communism failed because at a primary level it attempted to deny the realities of human nature. As the late, great avant-garde composer, blues/rock/jazz guitarist and iconoclast Frank Zappa once remarked, "Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff." Likewise, multiculturalism will not work out in the long run because human beings are by nature tribal creatures. Feminism will implode because males and females have different biological destinies and therefore different social destinies. Egalitarianism and universalism will not survive because differentiation and otherness are endemic parts of what it means to be human. Russia and the nations of Eastern Europe survived Soviet Marxism. China survived Maoism. Western Europe and the Anglo-sphere will survive Cultural Marxism.
[The ninth in a series on inclusiveness. Read parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, and IX.]
Western societies treat liberal ideals of freedom, equality, diversity, tolerance, and inclusiveness as uniquely authoritative. Those ideals increasingly trump all other considerations and silence all criticism.
As a practical matter, they mean rule by experts, bureaucrats, and commercial interests that promise to give everyone what he wants, as much and as equally as possible. Other authorities aren't rational and neutral enough.
Under such circumstances, the function of representative institutions becomes legitimating decisions already reached in other ways. Traditional less formal institutions such as family and religion become strictly private in significance. The point of multiculturalism and similar tendencies is to keep them so by destroying the public relevance of every particular tradition.
No sane, educated, and well-intentioned person sees a problem with such tendencies. Let each do what he wants, subject to the equal right of others, and let those who know best decide the specifics of public measures, subject to popular approval. What could be more rational and right? Anything else would be ignorant and oppressive.
Or so it seems. Nonetheless, perfect solutions arouse suspicion, especially since politics have evidently reached a dead end. In economics, international relations, and domestic policy, no one knows what to do. Why are we in such a fix, if our understanding of basic principles is so advanced?
In fact, our problems go to the heart of public life and thought. Under such circumstances, we need to question positions that are now beyond discussion in respectable discourse. Hence the need for an alternative right.
Perfect solutions tyrannize, and life is too complex for experts to manage. That remains true even when we are promised a system of liberation based on expert knowledge. More and more, it seems that among us:
Freedom means comprehensive control of human relations so we don't oppress each other.
Equality means rule by irresponsible and unrepresentative elites. Otherwise there's no one to keep us equal.
Inclusiveness means distinctions can't be allowed to matter, so they have to be destroyed or neutered.
Democracy means everyone has to be powerless. Otherwise, some would be more powerful than others and that wouldn't be democratic.
Giving people what they want means destroying the goods they care about most, since those goods can't be equal, optional, and externally manageable.
Reason means submission of the mind and will to expert pronouncements that always turn out to promote the power and authority of experts and bureaucrats.
Diversity means that people attached to nonliberal principles must be demonized as bigots and fundamentalists.
It's evident something has gone wrong. But what?
The present situation reflects contradictions hidden in modern ideals. It thus has an essential intellectual component.
The problems have to do with the most basic issues: how we acquire knowledge, and how we choose our goals. Liberal modernity tries to be clear, rational, and progressive. With that in mind it tries to simplify things so they can be understood and put right.
That means it insists on making men and things manageable. As time goes by it finds more and more that needs reform, and becomes more and more demanding and intrusive. The result is that it goes to extremes and becomes tyrannical and destructive.
In particular, liberals insist on treating knowledge as strictly public and goods as strictly private. The alternative would be obscurantism and oppression--government based on claims of private knowledge that override individual preferences.
Knowledge, then, is public and scientific, while goods are personal and subjective. If you want to know what's true, you ask the experts, who determine the answer by objective critical standards. As to questions of value, however, each of us defines his goods, chooses his goals, and pursues his purposes as freely as possible and however he wishes.
Such principles seem the quintessence of reason, but they have consequences that are much less reasonable. In particular, they tell us we have wants, and can't satisfy them on our own, because our own knowledge isn't reliable. As a result, somebody else has to arrange matters for us. It's for our own benefit.
They also tell us that wants conflict, since they are individual and arbitrary, and we can't resolve the conflicts for ourselves, since we just want what we want and there's nothing to tell us what should give way to what. The conclusion is that someone else has to decide things for us. Experts have to cut our wants down to size and make sure we only want things that fit the smooth functioning of the system.
The result is that we live in perpetual tutelage. What was intended as freedom and equality becomes an odd sort of servitude. Kindergarten becomes the model for the whole of social life.
To avoid such a result, politics must be based on recognitions that are more realistic and less mindlessly simple:
Not everything can be reduced to a clear rational system, and not all impulses are equally good.
Goods and goals are partly social, since what's on offer and what it's worth depends partly on other people.
Knowledge is partly local, individual, and inarticulate, since not everything can be made explicit, noted down, and incorporated into expertise.
For that reason, much of our knowledge comes from experience and the resulting growth of habits that work.
More generally, our society learns through tradition, and as social beings we learn through participation in the traditions of our society.
The effect of such recognitions is fundamental rejection of liberal modernity. Since expert knowledge, social engineering, and subjective wants aren't enough for social life, expertise, utility, and equal freedom can't be the highest standards.
We need a different social ideal. Instead of an equal, free, efficient, and rational society, we need to aim at a society that functions normally in the way societies normally function. Such a society would feature legitimate tradition and particularity as ordering principles, along with the boundaries, exclusions, and authoritative attachments needed for them to function.
Such things are basic to every actual society but they are entirely inconsistent with equal freedom and utilitarian rationality as ultimate standards. The point of rejecting contemporary inclusivist liberalism, then, is to re-establish the intellectual preconditions of a society that works and makes sense.
To get started we need to go to the basics and:
Claim the right to define the problems. The point of politics is not getting rid of inequalities, it's facilitating a life worth living. If you can't talk about what makes life worth living, you can't talk about politics.
Reclaim history. It's not the story of human emancipation culminating in an ever more comprehensive system of global human rights. It's the story of attempts to deal with problems and attain goods. As such, it has its victories and defeats, very few of which are unequivocal or irreversible.
Reclaim the concept of the normal. People may question what it includes, but we can't get along without it, and tradition is the normal way to establish what it is.
Claim the high ground. We have little hope of achieving anything enduring unless we connect our views to grand principle and the common good. Men of good will should recognize the need for a normally functioning society. Why not insist on the point and keep it front and center?
Once those things are done there is still a huge amount to argue about. It's clear that general antidiscrimination laws are bad, but those laws are part of something much larger. What do we do about that, and how do we fight it? For that matter, what do we do about technology? Religion? The idiocy of youth? The obstinacy of age? Current corruptions? Foreign threats? Actually-existing diversity? And should we aim at reform, revolution, or secession?
There's a lot that needs doing. The basic point, though, is that the situation is hopeless until we lay claim to reason, history, and the public good. Battle cries, denunciations, and good strong blows may be fun and even useful, but they are subordinate. Opposing inclusiveness isn't bigotry, it's support for what is normal and human. Our first need is to make fruitful discussion possible, among ourselves, with others, and in response to objections. And it is that goal that an alternative right must emphasize if it is to define itself and achieve anything that matters.
There is a certain logic of degeneration at work when a civilization loses its bearings. The Olympic Games are a case in point. Once a religious festival of the ancient Hellenes, the Olympics were first revived during the convulsions of the French Revolution.
Along with a number of other spurious fabricated holidays, the Directory in Paris held L'Olympiade de la Republique from 1796 to 1798. In place of classical paganism, the games were animated by the new humanist faith, with athletes competing to honor the gods of liberty and reason.
The Olympics would then be permanently established a century later, this time their rationale being the rather Victorian concerns of good hygiene and international brotherhood. Since that time the events evolved from a propaganda battleground among the militant antitheist ideologies of the 20th century into the vapid, overblown commercial extravaganza we know today.
While the Olympics held sacred import for the Greeks of the classical era, they have been recast through modernity as a pseudo-festival, a celebration of ultimately nothing. In his work In Tune with the World, the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper saw that man's rejection of God leads to a frenzy of meaninglessness in a vain attempt to escape the terror of death.
For the mad dash to meaninglessness, contemporary Britain wins the gold. In the run-up to hosting the 2012 Olympics, London has just raised the curtain on its mascots for the summer games. While they're supposed to "chime" with children, these creatures are more likely to induce a fresh round of psychological disorders in the rising generation. Forget clowns; let's all welcome the new stars of kids' most fevered nightmares.
Aside from these concerns, the new representatives of the games neatly encapsulate the U.K.'s transformation into an alien, postmodern dystopia. It's particularly noteworthy how these entities came into being- by committee. "Wenlock" and "Mandeville" (named after the respective founding-places of the British Olympics and Paralympics) are the product of 40 focus groups over the span of 18 months, a fact that presupposes additional layers of administrators and experts guiding the entire unholy enterprise. Any individual creativity or artistic inspiration was thus quashed by the processes of the managerial regime.
The mascots' creators have also ensured that the characters are liberated from even the slightest connection to English history and culture. There they stand in a schoolyard in front of a rainbow mural, each a strange metallic cylinder with the all-seeing eye of a giant squid. Perhaps they're meant to symbolize Britain's ubiquitous surveillance cameras; that would at least make matters more comprehensible. Ever-vigilant Wenlock and Mandeville monitor London's multicultural chaos, represented here by the ensemble of children who might as well have been flown in from multiple points around the globe.
There are affairs more pressing than criticizing London's choice for its 2012 Olympics mascot. After all, one can find evidence for British social disintegration in its crime explosion, the breakdown of the family, mass immigration by invitation and numerous other symptoms of advanced decadence. Then again, the two silver aliens are fitting symbols of secular, egalitarian Cool Britannia's institution of formlessness. Modern society's worship of man ultimately leads to the reign of absurdity.
