A fourth view, or rather dimension, is that of capitalist globalisation, the economic juggernaut whose profit motive is served by transnational markets, which as well as delivering much that is good, often disregard national identities, citizens’ real needs, and provoke cultural conflicts. A strange sort of collusion occurs between this global trend that creates winners and collateral losers, and leftists who dislike powerful capitalism but espouse extensive freedom of movement. Leftists appear naïvely to support the idea of a ‘global citizen worldview’ (Goodhart, 2013) without seeing its many contradictions and downsides. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, is usually ranked the richest man in the world, and is the philanthropist behind the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which drives projects in the third world to enhance education and health and to reduce poverty. The Gates Foundation website boldly proclaims: ‘All lives have equal value’. Those five words are packed with unacknowledged complexity, paradox, untruth, and pathos.
The UNESCO (1978) official declaration on race and prejudice states in Article 1.4: ‘All the peoples of the world possess equal faculties for attaining the highest level in intellectual, technical, social, economic, cultural and political development’. Article 1.5 goes on to state: ‘The differences between the achievements of the different peoples are entirely attributable to geographical, historical, political, economic, social and cultural factors. Such differences can in no case serve as a pretext for any rank-ordered classifications of nations or people’. Article 2.1 states that there is no scientific basis for the inferiority or superiority of any race or ethnic group. Article 9.4 asserts that ‘all states should consequently endeavor to contribute to the restructuring of the international economy on a more equitable basis’. With origins in post-war anti-Nazi strategies, this document is entirely understandable as a piece of diplomatic wishful thinking, but its scientific and economic prescriptions seek flatly to deny the legitimacy of any research, theory or policy at odds with its well-meaning egalitarian fiat. That we do not all possess equal faculties as individuals (and arguably, in some cases, as groups) for attaining the highest levels should be obvious, and I discuss exceptions in this book. That all nations should be held accountable for restructuring their economy in line with this egalitarian ideology is also obviously a socialist prescription that must be open to challenge.
One of the aims of this book is to suggest that honest views need not be a taboo to be avoided, or intimidating for others. Another is to show that some of the areas in which nuance exists yet is frequently denied by black-and-white thinking. And preference is an indication that it should be permissible for all of us candidly to state ‘this is the kind of world I would prefer to live in’ (had I the choice); but this is not the same as forcing our views on others.
As in Banks (2017) and in fairly common usage, I sometimes use here the unsatisfactory abbreviations PC (political correctness), CM (Cultural Marxism), SJW (social justice warrior) and BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic). In spite of objections that PC, CM and SJW are expressions of bigotry, or empty or inaccurate terms, they are a useful shorthand and stand as mild tit-for-tat barbs against the loaded terms xenophobia, racism, bigotry, neo-Nazism, etc. To clarify, my mental image of an SJW is not someone who feigns political outrage or indulges in virtue signalling. It is someone who is fiercely wedded to a leftist defence of well-known, perceived or self-described oppressed minorities, who dogmatically proclaims this cause at all opportunities, hunts down his or her enemies online or elsewhere (for example, on campus if a student, in news media if a journalist), liberally sprays the same array of abuse around — bigot, fascist, racist, troll, etc. — and wherever possible shames, humiliates and annihilates these with a sadistic glee that is just short of actual physical harm, all the while feeling virtuous and acting as if defending someone else’s identity and worth (Young, 2016). SJWs are probably a small minority of aggrieved and often disingenuous activists far outnumbered by those ordinary ‘oppressed’ people they claim to represent who for the most part quietly get on with their lives. Although they cannot really be designated a fifth column because they are not hidden, SJWs unwittingly undermine mainstream society, its prosperity and its benefits more than they realise.
1
Words, Terms and Meanings
We face a minefield of ambiguous terms, misunderstandings and unexamined language here. The subject is filled with inexact and contentious use of the words race, racism, culture, xenophobia, migrant, foreigner, refugee, multiculturalism, bigotry, othering, equality, diversity, human rights, Islamism, supremacism, developing world, invasion, and so on. Problematic overlaps exist between ethnicity, religion, nationalism, language. Who authors which rhetoric is always an important question. Which terms persist and which do not is also interesting. Super-diversity quite accurately sums up the extreme multicultural make-up of London, for example, but the term has not really caught on (Vertovec, 2007). Similarly, academic coinages like ‘hypermigration’ and ‘fluid demos’ capture some of the churn and search for solutions to the multicultural problem, but the general public is rather unlikely to use them (Biale, 2017). Multivocalism has been proposed as a supplement to multiculturalism but still excludes certain voices. Afrophobia like Negrophobia has been in use for some years but is not yet popular. The term Islamofascism, while descriptively accurate enough, has not matched Islamophobia for traction.
Political correctness since about the 1970s has created great anxieties about how we express ourselves, with sanctions against supposedly improper use of words. Slang, derogatory terms for groups of people are out — you could lose your job for using them. Anything that might be considered blasphemous by Muslims is becoming taboo. We more or less know the rules. But the rules change, and sensitivities demand our detailed attention. In the UK you once could not say ‘coloured’ when you meant non-white, but now the American ‘people of color’ (PoC) seems OK. You used to have to say Afro-Caribbean insisted of West Indian but now you have to say African-Caribbean. The term ‘Negro’ began to be replaced by ‘black’ in the USA in the 1960s. The term Black is sometimes used to denote black and Asian in the UK but has fallen out of favour, except among some political activists. There is similar confusion about the term BAME or BME, and when black, Asian and other ethnicities are included within it. If it were representative of actual ethnic minority proportions it might be ABEM (Asian, black, and ethnic minorities) or it might include a ‘P’ for the large Polish population of Britain. It’s no longer permissible to say ‘mulatto’ or ‘half-caste’ but you’re not sure if you should say ‘mixed race’, ‘of mixed ancestry’, ‘biracial’ or ‘dual heritage’. There is no such category as an illegal immigrant (and absolutely not ‘alien’) but only irregular or undocumented migrants. You cannot refer to race (which exists only in the minds of racists) but ethnic group, ethnicity, community or cultural identity is OK. It is not clear when you should use racialism, racism, or xenophobia.
You do not always know when to say Muslim, Islamic, or Islamist, or indeed moderate or radical Muslim. You are not sure when to use the name Islamic State (or so-called Islamic State) ISIS, or ISIL, or IS, or Daesh. You are not certain whether it is OK to say Allah, or God. But to be fair, it isn’t always clear when to say Britain, Great Britain or UK (or, God forbid, England); or migrant, immigrant, asylum seeker or refugee; or Asian, Pakistani, or Pakistani-heritage. You have learnt to pussyfoot around the terms scrounger, homeless, chav, underclass and working class but it is probably OK to refer to some people as privileged, as snobs, posh, or stuck-up. You may offend someone, or show yourself up as somehow uncool if you use the wrong words. Social codes about what is rude, racist, or even dangerous, vary but most of us have at least some inkling of context-appropriateness. But often we cannot predict when another person is going to be snowflake-sensitive or thick-skinned. In any case, most of us are probably aware that anxious mental checking is now part of our way of life. At the same time, we are aware that there is no univ
ersal ‘we’ or relaxed assumptions about who holds which values. Are ‘we’ the West, the English-speaking world, First World, Christendom, occidentalism, the Caucasian world, or what? Speech codes, interactional uncertainties and discomforts have increased significantly with decades of immigration and multiculturalism.
In this Tower of Babel we have built for ourselves, it has become difficult to know what to call oneself or one’s ethnic familiars. I have quite freely used the phrases ‘white Britons’ and ‘indigenous whites’ in this book, yet I know that some will object. Terms like Anglo-Saxon culture, WASP, traditional British values, the white majority, and so on, are often pounced upon by eager SJWs as examples of thoughtless, insensitive, privileged racist bigotry. I use the terms ‘the West’ and Westerners but find these too broad, and it is interesting that Christendom has fallen out of favour. To those who would shoot you down, you are a stupid Little Englander, an isolationist, Brexiteer (or even ‘Brextard’), nationalist, populist, a ridiculous Alf Garnett character, lacking in metropolitan sophistication. Perhaps the swelling population of immigrants, a certain amount of white flight, and the vociferousness of those who spurn traditional British identity, makes it less and less possible to speak confidently of a ‘white majority’. But we might pause to question the assumption that working class Brexit voters are necessarily stupid and racist — they may just be wiser (Brienza & Grossman, 2017). Anyway, in order to avoid a ridiculously tongue-tied political correctness, one must use some convenient designation.
We humans are quite distinct from our nearest species relatives but also fairly clearly different from each other. We have evolved to be necessarily exquisitely aware of tiny differences and we easily recognise faces, voices, and the differences between familiars and strangers. In itself, this evolutionary gift does not mean that we must be hostile to some and biased towards others but it is a foundation that we cannot ignore. Already, however, some readers may disagree with this introduction. They may say that their young children do not display stranger-anxiety behaviour, that they themselves feel no such discriminatory impulses, and that these are all social constructs (but see Williams & Steele, 2017). Or they may say as did the British MP Jo Cox that ‘we are far more united than the things that divide us’. I doubt this to be true but have to accept that some such beliefs and claims exist. ‘We are all equal,’ runs one refrain which underpins much feminism, anti-racism and gay rights rhetoric. Are we all equal? What is equality? Clearly, I have a position on all this, yet where did it come from, and what are my motives for propagating my views? The same questions apply to you.
Jo Cox was head girl at her grammar school, a Cambridge and LSE graduate, who worked for Oxfam; she was a lifelong Labour member, MP and rising political star, a passionate believer in multiculturalism and the European Union, 41 years old, married with two children. On the 16 June 2016 on a street in Birstall, West Yorkshire, she was stabbed and shot by Thomas Mair, 52, an unemployed Scot, a mentally ill neo-Nazi loner with no prospects, who shouted ‘Britain first’ as he killed her in a premeditated, awful attack by shooting and stabbing. How much did they have in common? She symbolises love and hope, while he symbolises pure hatred and xenophobia. Both white and British, they appear to have little else in common besides belonging to the same species, speaking English, and holding strong political views. In what way were they equal? Did he have the same life chances as her and just stupidly threw them away? Or was (is) he simply evil? Did he choose hate while she chose love; or was he gripped by madness-turned-violence while she was gripped by naïve-idealism-made-political-mission? Is it even fair to make such comparisons? Well, the pro-EU view of ‘ever closer union’ and that of Brexit-style British sovereignty are inevitably compared: you are either a warm-hearted and rational universalist or a mean-spirted and stupid nationalist. Or, in reverse, you are either a naïve, sentimental, open borders useful idiot or a rational, patriotic realist. Jo Cox’s terrible murder was seized on by the political left to show that terrorism was as much of (if not more than) a problem among white ‘right-wing extremists’ as among ‘Islamists’. But perhaps a subtler exploration is necessary.
Leftists, egalitarian progressives, want to believe, and have everyone else believe, that we are all equal. But not only that, they want it to be universally accepted that beneath our different skin colours and cultures we are all essentially the same, we are all just slightly differently shaded African migrants separated only accidentally and superficially by history and geography. There is no ‘human nature’ as such, there is only a kind of panhuman nature which is essentially geared towards loving co-operation and equality, although this should not imply any fixed essence. Ah, but we are also diverse, and diversity is a wonderful thing that we should nurture and celebrate. But this diversity should be horizontal, since any vertical, hierarchical diversity fuelling illusions of inferiority and superiority is an iniquitous, inegalitarian thing that should be stamped out. Somehow, in this flat landscape of equality there are religions whose adherents believe are better than others, social justice ideology is better than a right-wing worldview, and everyone is to be respected equally except dissenters. It is only one kind of authorised diversity we are permitting and celebrating; we do not entertain the reality of any ideological diversity. If you could only see these things correctly, we would all get along harmoniously. When we have overcome all environmental, cultural, historical and nasty obstacles to the realisation of these truths, you will see that we are right and we will all flourish together. All humans are equal but morally superior socialist humans are more equal than others. If we have not already censored alternative views out of existence when the equality-in-diversity revolution comes, you will see for yourselves that destructive arguments like Winegard et al. (2017) can be ignored.
I have chosen to use the term immigration in the title of this book but the real topic is far bigger and messier than this or any other title can encompass. In the view of Reeves (2009), ‘immigration’ is used as code for race, and helps us avoid being labelled racist. We do have an immigration problem but it is compounded by considerations of who decides on matters of population levels, border controls, entitlement to entry and citizenship, whose reporting is accurate and honest, and so on. British, European Union, and other supranational organisations are involved. The problem is compounded by formal political differences, cultural and religious factors, the demands of voters and subcultures, and unpredictable events. It is complicated by the vagaries of political will and pressure groups, by the interests of international business, inter-ethnic partners and families, and by various forms of organised crime, illegal entry and employment. At the level of groups and individuals, policies, views and feelings are a prolific mix of subjective, assertive and passive-aggressive. The players involved range from conviction and pragmatic politicians through self-interested lobbyists, liberal academics, left- and right-wing media propaganda agents, community representatives, covert activist groups and ‘lone wolf’ keyboard warriors and terrorists. All have their agendas, means of expression and usually emotionally toned jargon, and most sincerely believe themselves or pretend to be correct in their perceptions. I am of course no exception.
2
Xenophobia and Xenophilia
People who appear not to immediately warm to or approve of strangers or foreigners are labelled xenophobes, racists or bigots by those who do approve of them, who love them or wish to promote their cause. None of this is simple and this discussion requires some patience (Taras, 2012). Xenophobia means literally an irrational, clinical fear of strangers but it is used by anti-racists to mean a wilful, culpable hatred of foreigners or immigrants. Xenophilia means a love of foreigners. Depending on who is doing the insulting, you can be considered respectively either a ‘fascist, racist, white supremacist bigot’, or a ‘nigger lover’ (insert asterisks, red flags and klaxons here). But insults aside, what is rarely examined are the parameters and roots of this alleged fear/hatred and love/approval. Is the
xenophobe someone who knows deep down that all other humans regardless of apparent or superficial differences are the same or equal but perversely decides to dislike, dehumanise, demonise and persecute those of another group? Do all of us to some extent shy away from strangers, some to an extreme extent, but the more kindly or rational among us override such ignoble instincts? Just what divides xenophobes from xenophiles? The emphatic anti-racist seems to find the xenophobe disgusting, irrational, and beyond understanding and debate. The explicit xenophile or egalitarian is often (not always) young, left-wing, metropolitan, and likely to read The Guardian. More often than not the xenophobe/racist is a white person considered privileged and more powerful than those who he looks down on or does not wish to live with, or would prefer to limit immigration with regard to; and he probably reads the Daily Mail. These anyway are the stereotypes.
Now, it is true that some whites think themselves superior to, and hate and feel, or are physically violent towards, blacks; and that some blacks hate whites similarly (Greenfield, 2015). But the classical anti-racist asserts that only whites can be considered truly racist because whites hold the trump card of established historical power and privilege. At another level, some xenophiles prefer people who are unlike themselves, who are perceived as exotic. There is some evidence that (some) women are more xenophilic than men, on the whole, more inclined to be fascinated by the dark stranger, to be exogamous, and sometimes to desire brown babies. A young man originally from Grenada but living in London tells Judah (2016) ‘bitches they always get wet for violence’. This misogynistic belief presumably includes white as well as black young women, and chimes with anecdotes about girls preferring untamed bad boys to boring, conventional men. This gender difference in reverse may relate to evolutionary male instincts to be alert to intruders who may be violent, who may trespass on their territory, have sex with their women and disturb their gene pool (McDonald et al., 2011). To some extent, exogamy — marrying or reproducing outside of one’s group — is healthy and necessary in order to reduce risks of ‘in-breeding’. So, we should bear in mind that evolution and gender play an often unrecognised part in this discussion. Vital, too, is to recognise that beneath calls for rationality, there are usually visceral reactions that almost nobody escapes (Haidt, 2013; Kubota et al., 2012; Marsh et al., 2010). How many of us begin life as totally xenophilic or xenophobic and consciously, laboriously reason our way into a fresh position on these issues? It is just as likely, I think, that the xenophile or passionate egalitarian has an unrecognised emotional investment in his position as has the horrible, seething racist.
Excessive Immigration Page 2
