In his essay The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin (1963/1990) gave an impassioned description of racial tensions in the mid-twentieth century in the USA. No-one can doubt his sincerity as the grandson of a slave, a gay black man growing up in Harlem, witnessing segregation and the civil rights movement, and being deeply involved in his teens in the Pentecostal Church. His emotional and moral authority was evident in his 1965 Cambridge Union debate with William F. Buckley, for example. But one of the most perceptive and worrying points made by Baldwin is this. He saw close up the rise of the Nation of Islam and suggested that while the God of the Jews had gone north to become the white god of Christianity, the Allah of Islam was perceived as the black African God. This reflects the beliefs of Malcom X and others, that Islam is closer to blacks than Christianity is. This linkage of Islam with black pride and nationalism persists to some extent to the present and underpins tensions between Islam, Judaism and Christianity. One of the terrorist murderers of Lee Rigby in London in 2013, Michael Adebolawe, is feared within the UK prison system for his relentless dedication to converting inmates to radical Islam. This alliance between traditional Islam and separatist black Islam poses a particular threat to both the pacifist Christian and secular West. Few are yet talking seriously about a clash of civilisations between the forces of Afro-Islamism and the West however, despite the seminal predictions of Huntington (1997).
Not typically recognised as an intergroup problem, we should note the implicit conflict that exists between generations. The longer the lifespan becomes, the greater the potential grows for uneasy relations between generations, and this is magnified by immigration and multicultural factors. Increasingly children in Europe witness interethnic conflicts and become part of them (Sedmak et al., 2014). Consider too that the fantasy of in-group solidarity often breaks down. One cohort of Jewish immigrants does not necessarily welcome another, and there are stories of already assimilated British Jews distancing themselves from newcomers with thick German accents who would have drawn attention to them. Some ‘new Jews’ had to create their own synagogues because of this. Also, while political (left-wing) solidarity is sometimes assumed among Jews, it is known that some are right-wing, pro-Brexit, and anti-immigrant. According to Goodhart (2017) more than half of all ethnic minority citizens actually consider immigration levels to be too high, perhaps recognising instinctively the dangers of encouraging too much of a good thing.
It is also complicated by gender. Younger people are on average notably more left-wing in their political sympathies, but young male minorities may hold a key to understanding some extreme social conflict. First, consider that a great deal of immigration is male-skewed, for example Swedish records for 2015 show that 71% of asylum seekers from the Middle East and north Africa were males, and 90% of unaccompanied minors were male (Hudson, 2016). Levin (2005) cites research claiming that a higher rate of testosterone of between 3.3% to 19% is found in black males. Mazur (2016) examines the relationship between the ‘honour culture’ of under-educated young black males and testosterone levels, probing the chicken and egg problems of cause and effect. In other words, do testosterone levels rise in response to unfavourable socioeconomic conditions, or do the former contribute to higher crime and incarceration levels? ‘Hypersensitivity to insult’ is a big part of this phenomenon, and Garlikov (undated) suggests that perceived disrespect and disproportionate retaliation may lie at the heart of many of our problems. While much intergenerational conflict in the West has arguably been smoothed out, the confrontation between African-origin and Muslim-associated young males and Western lifestyles is critically problematic. High crime and unemployment among young black men and violent radicalisation among young Muslim males can be partly explained by the testosterone data and the disrespect argument. For Jolliffe and Haque (2017), however, the disproportionately high imprisonment rates and poor treatment of black and Muslim men can only really be accounted for by systemic prejudice and institutional failings, while the UK gender figures for imprisonment — 82,000 males to 4,000 females — seem to require no explanation at all.
Recall the murder of the Dutch film director Theo van Gogh in 2004 for example, when 26-year-old Mohammed Bouyeri cut his throat, stabbed and shot him to death in Amsterdam. Van Gogh’s last poignant words were ‘Mercy, mercy! We can talk about it, can’t we?’ Unfortunately, Bouyeri’s disproportionate reaction to van Gogh’s (and Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s) anti-Islamic film Submission did not allow for any talking about it. A vast mismatch exists between rational old Westerners who believe we can talk about things, and angry young male members of some minorities who kill when they feel disrespected. But such one-off incidents may yet pale in significance if the many Islamist splinter groups unify under Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza, who has both ‘Jews and Crusaders’ in his sights (Soufan, 2017). Perhaps we can agree that ethnic conflicts include large-scale regional wars (Jesse & Williams, 2010), chronic group hatreds, occasional neighbourhood flare-ups, and intergroup tensions waiting to erupt.
10
The Impact on Indigenous Whites
Traditional indigenous whites have been impacted by the PC anti-racist witch-hunt in some superficial ways. The most obvious is language use. Without a second thought, many would once have innocently said, for example, ‘That darkie’s not such a bad bloke’. Some people still do, but only among themselves, and it’s a class thing. But very few any longer refer to wogs, coons or junglebunnies. Some (mostly working-class men) may refer to Sikhs or Muslims as towelheads or Mozzies. But nigger is now verboten, like Paki. Tacit lines are drawn between what is merely bad taste, or unfashionable, and what is deemed hurtful, racist, and hate speech. A period of fanatical purging in the UK saw the traditional golliwog banned, the term ‘Paki shop’ frowned upon and the Black and White Minstrel Show (1958–78) terminated. These were not great losses. Ongoing, and more irritating, is the ripple impact of Islamist terrorism that is felt by everyone going through airport security, having to remove shoes, jackets and belts, filling trays with laptops and phones, being frisked, and having to endure such an undignified ritual. More serious for whites in certain areas (usually poorer whites who do not live in leafy leftist places) is the impact on employment, housing, schools, and local amenities caused by significant immigration.
It is often misunderstood why people like me object to mass immigration and multiculturalism. Nasty bigoted motives are inevitably attributed to us. But if you are an older white Brit (or for that matter American, French, Swedish, or whatever) you would have seen your country transformed over the past few decades in ways that you may well dislike and worry about (Coulter, 2016; Scruton, 2017). When I was young, very few visibly different people lived in the UK. Now, if I visit parts of London or Birmingham, say, I am shocked to see how much they have changed. This is not only about skin colour but halal shops, mosques, beggars, terrorist incidents, burkas, the threat of crime, and sometimes whole areas of cities in which I now feel uncomfortable, slightly unsafe or unwelcome. I realise that some have political objections to the concept of ‘my country’. When I hear people saying on television that ‘Britain is a multicultural country’ as if no objection is permitted, I am shocked. This is partly because I am old and have seen great changes. But it is also a reaction to social change that I judge is not for the best. I do not wish to see the UK transformed into a third-world, or Islamic, or majority non-white country. I fully realise that change happens and that in the long run perhaps Britain will become mainly a non-white, brown-eyed, and perhaps Islamic nation. But my feeling is that it would be a great shame and is not yet inevitable.
Immigrants usually miss their homeland and often keep mementos of it, dress in the same clothes, build mosques, or even retain a whole way of life. But something is lost. Likewise, many indigenous old whites lament the passing of the country they knew and loved (Abbott, 2013). An American parallel that may appear far-fetched is that of the demise of the Crow Nation at the turn of the 19th century (Lear, 2008). Chief Plenty
Coups narrated the loss of the traditional way of life, and one particularly poignant observation is captured here: ‘When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground’. How could the Crow carry on living when their culture had collapsed? Yet they did. Something similar could be said of large parts of Britain’s coal-mining industry, when whole communities were devastated in the 1980s, or of Detroit’s loss of its automobile manufacturing in the second half of the 20th century. Angry fight-backs give a sense of purpose for a while but acceptance of irreversible change is very tough on the psyche. It would appear that both ‘sides’ in the UK’s contemporary or imminent sociocultural melt-down experience sadness as well as anger.
‘It doesn’t feel like my country any more,’ is a lament you can hear among many older whites. White flight attests to whites moving from the areas in which they grew up, not necessarily out of racism, but because they feel uncomfortable living in what have become predominantly non-white places. Other motives for moving include seeking better schools, or escaping scruffy, noisy or violent neighbourhoods. The more this happens, the more the non-white areas grow in size or density as black, Asian or other ethnic enclaves. Some white parents now find their children face classes that are primarily non-white, where English is not the first language spoken by other children, thus generating difficulties and delays. Indeed, one source has it that 300 languages are being spoken in British schools (Espinoza, 2015b) and another has a more modest 100 languages for the London area (Evening Standard, 30 January, 2013). The concerns of Ray Honeyford from the 1980s have not gone away. Schools in some areas have bent over to accommodate non-white and non-Christian pupils by recognising religious holidays, altering exam dates for these, changing the curriculum (e.g. incorporating Black History Month) and generally adapting what they offer and how they present it. In some cases, it appears that the performance of poor white working class children has declined as a consequence (Paton, 2014).
Nationalism and populism are terms used by leftists to shame white Britons who espouse a patriotic allegiance to or simply have pride in their country, in this case referring to England or Britain. Anyone who sympathises with the political party UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) is considered by leftists to be a stupid bigot. This CM leftist movement has grown so self-confident that it can freely condemn any British identity. One example was a British-themed souvenir and gift shop in affluent Muswell Hill, London. Selling tacky paraphernalia associated with the Union Jack, toy models of the Queen, red telephone boxes and so on, the Really British shop owner received threats from local liberals of boycotts and negative epithets of being the ‘Brexit shop’ and undermining London’s international character (Bullen, 2016). The Brexit result was considered so axiomatically wrong to most leftists, that some parts of the NHS and universities offered free counselling to any staff or students feeling traumatised by it (Stevens, 2016), while ‘guilty fascist Brexiters’ were being ostracised by many of the same people (Anonymous academic, 2017; Stocker, 2017).
Among many liberal professionals such as social workers, probation officers, teachers, lecturers, therapists, and nurses, it has been quite normal to be required to participate in consciousness-raising anti-discriminatory workshops. Some trade unions promote such training, and specific modules can be found in some universities (e.g. Warwick) on racism and xenophobia. In these, white employees and students are exposed to PC views on the oppression of BAME communities. One aspect of such training is typically a focus on whiteness, on getting participants to understand their white privilege (Andrews, 2016). Whiteness is said to be invisible to those of us in the white majority in the UK. Not only do we take our advantages for granted on an everyday basis and correspondingly fail to notice our microaggressions against our BAME fellow citizens, but we are typically blind to history, particularly to slavery and colonialism. We must learn to be horrified and ashamed by, and disown concepts of, the white man’s burden and manifest destiny. According to Olson (2004) the very institution of American democracy is white racist and in need of deconstruction. We must receive extensive corrective education accordingly. We must understand deeply that beneath our collective responsibility for racism as the powerful dominant group, we are merely equal to all other ethnic groups. We must never dwell on white majority identity in positive terms (Kaufmann, 2004) and we must entertain the view that Englishness was always a myth, a ‘Saxonist doctrine of racial singularity and exclusivity’ (Young, 2007). As the American writer Braun (1990) puts it: ‘If you wanted an example of genuine black entrepreneurial accomplishment you couldn’t do better than this anti-racism scam with its extraordinary manipulation of that inexhaustible resource — white guilt!’
In contexts like these, there is absolutely no way you would raise questions about differences in IQ, criminal behaviour, fatherless families, oppressive religiosity, and so on. While the SJW trainers regard their work as vital deconditioning, people like me see it as totalitarian brainwashing and anti-critical thinking (Lasch-Quinn, 2002). Painter (2011) claims to tell the story of the historical invention of whiteness. Kendall’s (2013) tract on whiteness and white privilege advocates doing ‘intentional personal work’. This resembles nothing so much as a Christian evangelical manual leading the white reader though a confession of sins, to working through white guilt, to revelations about the true nature of reality, and cultivating ‘cultural humility’. Of course, you can dwell on your undeserved good luck in being born white, just as you can thank your lucky stars you we born in the 20th century and not in the Middle Ages, in the USA and not in Niger or South Sudan, able-bodied instead of disabled. But some blacks are probably better off than you (if you are white), and some do not want your guilt, your mea culpa whiteness games or your reparations. I have not noticed African Americans apologising to Africans, for instance, for their privilege.
One source of disagreement is whether white Britons are more bigoted or more tolerant. In one study, while 72% in Hungary had negative views of Muslims, as did 69% of Italians, and 66% of Poles; Britons had only a 28% level of negativity (Lipka, 2017). Along with others, I believe British tolerance has been a real characteristic that has led paradoxically to the downfall of the UK. British politeness has meant that some behaviours that were disliked or found suspicious went undiscussed. Sheer levels of immigration and the impact these had on housing, schools, and other social services, were not openly resented. A great deal of this was due to the politically correct lobby quashing all such discussion as racist. A habit has grown among many whites to succumb to guilt and self-defeating tolerance, and by some accounts the very topic of race is commonly avoided by whites over the age of ten (News Staff, 2008). Some of this is relatively trivial, like putting up with noise or the inability of foreigners or newcomers to queue in the traditional British way, or the ignorance some display of the conventions and laws of driving, such as proper use of motorway lanes. The fear of appearing racist is now believed to be a major cause of sexual abuse of underage girls by Pakistani-origin men in Rotherham, Oxford, Rochdale and elsewhere going unreported (McLaughlin, 2016). This is much more serious and concerning. It is of course even more worrying in Germany and Sweden that the incidence of sexual assault and abuse is so hushed up (Arpi, 2016).
While the PC brigade has been highly active and vociferous, unhappy whites have been passive, ill-informed, or poorly represented by some of the more inarticulate elements of the far-right. Metaphors like sleepwalking feel appropriate to this situation, capturing the sense that we have not woken up to the threat that our society is being wiped out, that we ourselves or our genetic future are being replaced by an alien culture (Bawer, 2006). Years of hypnotic Cultural Marxism have lulled the white British into being ashamed of being British. Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum and London’s Museum of Immigration promote a white-guilt and immigrant-romanticised view. A combination of tolerance, lazy laissez-faire attitude, fear of causing offence or being called racist (and jobs and reputations being destroy
ed), and doubts about what is really happening, has fuelled paralysis. Some now call this cultural self-hatred ethnomasochism. The term oikophobia, too, has been coined for hatred of one’s homeland, and West (2013) suggests that liberal values are the new cool, a middle-class requirement for signalling superior social status that separates the sophisticated SJWs from the dumb racists. We have bought into the story that we are the beneficiaries of slave traders and colonialists denying our white privilege. There is no such thing as British values, we are constantly told. We are made fun of, stereotyped as ‘little Englanders’ for apparently loving warm beer, cricket, and being nostalgic about a bygone mythical age. Rather, we must be completely open to vibrant new cultures and reject our stale, monocultural, racist heritage. Well, no. We can be proud of Western civilisation, of British achievements. We can preserve our culture in the same way other cultures wish to preserve and promote theirs.
Crime is something to be faced urgently in the context of demographic change. Incidents of terrorist mass murder in our midst are the most glaring and shocking examples. As Cutler (2017) reminds us, in the American context, immigration fraud, involving forged documents and other wilful deceptions, are frequently the basis for further evasions, scams, crimes, and terrorist actions. Pakistani grooming gangs in the UK and sexual assaults in Cologne, Sweden and elsewhere are also well-known examples of immigrant crimes. Immigration brings not only raised crime levels but different kinds of crime. We have not previously had to police on a large-scale female genital mutilation, acid attacks, knife crime, false imprisonment, and the growing menace of trafficking and slavery. A rise in acid-throwing attacks in north east London led the MP for East Ham, Stephen Timms, to describe parts of London as no-go areas (Gillibrand, 2017). Use of acid to scar, deform and blind people in retaliatory actions originated mainly in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India but has spread to the West. Timms, incidentally, was seriously injured in 2010 by a female Muslim constituent when she stabbed him twice to avenge the war in Iraq. Luckily he escaped the fate of Jo Cox.
Excessive Immigration Page 14
