There are too many migrants coming to Europe, and far too many to its prosperous and overcrowded countries, too many of whom have low skill levels and incompatible cultural differences. Even with the best will in the world, this unplanned, fast-paced shuffling together of peoples is irresponsible experimental chemistry, the complexities of which few had foreseen. One slim hope of a solution might lie in a meeting of mature minds and relaxed identities. If we could gather together enough post-grievance blacks, ex-Muslims, apostate SJWs, and fair-minded whites, it might be possible to start constructing a strong and sane Britain whose economically prosperous and socially fair norms reassert themselves instead of being torn apart by ethnic and civil strife, and chronic resentments.
20
The Takeaway Message and Challenge
Britain was a white Christian nation into the 1950s. But just as the worst of Christianity — its superstitious and repressive aspects — were fading in the 1960s, the new social permissiveness of the 1960s and 1970s ushered in that cluster of feminism, gay rights, and pro-multiculturalism that coincided with new waves of immigration from the African diaspora, Asia and the Middle East and the EU. ‘Let it all hang out’ morphed into ‘let them all in’: in Asma’s (2013) terms, these are ‘neo-hippie views’. In the 2000s, Muslim immigration from Asia and the Middle East accelerated the visible transformation of the UK, and alongside it the rise of ISIS terrorism, the corresponding rise of the European far-right, the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’, the 2016 Brexit decision, and constant political agitation of anti-racist goaders had led to our current brew of ongoing cultural conflict and civil stress. Thrasher (2017a), for example, could continue to demand artificial pathways for the promotion of non-whites in the professions, guiltily embedded as we all are in ‘the ideology of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’. An academic could write not long before recent events, with embarrassing optimism, that a balanced view and way forward was possible (Ford, 2014). Meanwhile, even The Guardian appeared to concede that the Muslim population of Europe might (problematically) triple by 2050 (Sherwood, 2017b).
As I write this, news media are full of 70-year commemorative items about the partitioning of India and Pakistan in 1948. Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were torn apart and many were killed, and the legacy of Empire is blamed, as if perhaps some mechanism of karmic aftershock should rightfully trouble the British, most of whom, however, now have little real knowledge of those events or any responsibility for them. Some of those of Indian heritage are demanding that the British school history curriculum be changed to teach about this period, just as some of African heritage want to see more African-oriented history. Perhaps they are partly right, but these changes can probably only be effected by de-emphasising the traditional focus on kings and queens, on world wars, on Hitler, Stalin, Mao and other dictators. Listening to such discussions, one is reminded of James Joyce’s ‘History is a nightmare from which I am [we are] trying to awake’. But history has no agreed starting point — in apportioning blame for suffering, should we begin with Homo sapiens’s emergence in Africa 100,000 years ago, with Homo sapiens’s destruction of Neanderthals from 40,000 years ago, with the cradle of monotheism in the Middle East 3,500 years ago, with Arab Muslims’ enslavement of Africans in the 7th century CE, with human sacrifices in Mesoamerica up to about 1500, or where? Who is to decide?
The discussants of every ethnic, national and religious stripe sound like a family in pained dispute about its past, each with myriad traumatic memories to recount, and eager to blame the parents as well as engage in bitter sibling rivalry. Acute interethnic strife can resemble the terminal stage of a bad marriage: perhaps it would have been best if we had never got together, but it’s too late, and now we must somehow manage our divorce. If we wish, we can interpret migrational strife in loosely karmic terms. For example, we could blame explorers like Columbus for taking diseases like smallpox, typhus, cholera, anthrax, and syphilis to the new world; and transatlantic traders too for bringing unhealthy, addictive sugar, coffee, and tobacco back to the West. Like a day in court, neighbour disputes come to a head, everyone has suffered more than others, blame is cast, everyone wants attention and reparation. But there is no God, judge, group therapist or wise grandparent to adjudicate. And we must all get on with life in the present: ‘sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof’. No bolt of new insight is going to strike us either collectively or individually.
Provocative as it may be, we must consider that we face a war of worldviews. The problems of mass migration are but one component of a vast history and dynamic of underdog versus overdog, to employ a crude metaphor. Nietzsche’s master-slave morality is also apposite here. We are trapped in a vortex in which objective truth-seeking is pitted against tribal loyalties, emotional pull, and peer pressure. It is not only a war of us against them but an internal war. If jihad really does connote both external and internal struggle, then each of us faces our personal jihad. Each of us must weigh up our own beliefs against those of others, of our own interests against others’, and our own prejudices against counter-evidence. A feelgood factor attaches to the idea of some unified, utopian ideal that will bring us all together and save the world, but the irrefutable probability is that we will continue as we evolved — in conflict, or at least in competition with each other. We all seem wired to adhere to our pre-existing beliefs, almost regardless of contrary evidence (Haidt, 2013). At some deep neurological level, unless we align with Stoddard (1922) and a ‘eugenic conscience’ that wishes to move towards reinforcing white superiority, we are inextricably intertwined. Parasitism is a two-way street where capitalism needs workers and workers need leaders. Likewise, the Western world has exploited and intervened in the affairs of the ‘third world’ and its people resent but depend upon the Western world.
In our highly fragmented world, there is a very slim chance for each of us of overcoming all tribalism and conflict, not by taking sides or reinforcing stubborn loyalties but by transcending. Jesus’s costly refusal to appease Jews or Romans, the Muslim Sufi mystics seeking the ‘unitive state’ (Nicholson, 1989), moderate whites and blacks doing their individual best to live well, may just join the post-revenge character Derek Vinyard in the film American History X when he says, ‘Hate is baggage. Life’s too short to be pissed off all the time’. I would add as unhatefully as possible the view that dogmatic religion and ideology are baggage and that only informed, fair-minded deep pragmatism can guide us (Greene, 2015). On the other hand, if two is company but three is a crowd, is it really pragmatic not to heed Calhoun’s (1962) warnings about overcrowding, and not to address the disproportionality of the new mixed multitudes? It may be useful to think of ourselves at this historical juncture as moderately liberal and moderately nationalistic instead of doctrinaire leftist, borderless, fragmented internationalist ‘citizens of nowhere’.
Naïve, xenophilic, anti-borders egalitarians feel emotionally compelled to promote infinite immigration without accountability or planning. Indeed, the Refugee Convention signed by the UK in 1954 forbids any limitation on the right to asylum. SJWs feel compelled to wage war against white, able-bodied, heterosexual men unless they join the CM chorus. Those of us in this white male category may laugh or try to ignore this assault but ultimately we are negatively affected by it and forced into battle. As Stoddard (1922) has said, the ‘under man’ and his defenders are always pulled towards romantic, primitive visions of the future. Those of us compelled to think independently (and not hide behind the left’s one-sided, politically weighted ‘evidence-based critical thinking’) also need the courage to resist the emotional blackmail of the left (e.g. people will drown in the Mediterranean, the 1930s will return, if you are not part of the progressive solution you are a fascist, etc.). We have to think ahead and to plan. How can potentially disastrous immigrant proportions be halted? What happens if they cannot be? How can we resist the pull of phoney guilt in order to defend and construct a sane and rational future? Part of rationality is t
o acknowledge our mortality and limits, and the modesty of what can be done. In your small, personal corner of the universe, what can you do to harmonise acting decently with thinking and speaking truthfully? At this moment of history and in the European and British context, what are the small steps you can take to preserve what is good amid the contemporary wave of entropic hysteria? It is a daunting challenge to look at the division of loyalties and mass alienation caused by multiculturalism and the metastatic demography of our times and at the same time learn to become better citizens with the scalpel of truth.
In another, non-polarised mood altogether, one can see with compassion that all innocent parties concerned (genuine refugees, second and subsequent generations of immigrants, bewildered native Brits) are in an ‘impossible situation’. Neither haphazardly arranged pockets of ethnic groupings nor enforced assimilation will work in the long-term, and passive acceptance of extensive cultural changes on the part of indigenous whites is an unlikely scenario. But what might be the beginning of a small-scale, fragile way forward is this — that some of us who are neither on the hateful racist nor hateful anti-racist or anti-Western side of this national quarrel, nor in some woolly centre, grow weary of the impasse. We can see that both nationalistic feelings and migration for a better life are natural phenomena. We may not like the ‘Other’s’ values and demands, but a sufficient degree of empathy helps us to compromise. A sort of fellowship of suffering and recognition of the absurdities of the human predicament might nudge a few of us closer to a live-and-let-live attitude. Some of us on both sides of this immigration impasse may come to shrug off our resentments. We may see that some immigrants themselves miss their homelands acutely but cannot return there (Judah, 2016; Ritivoi, 2002). This is a theme taken up too by the late England-based German writer W. G. Sebald in his melancholy book Emigrants, whose mainly Jewish characters suffer from homesickness of suicidal proportions.
But personal attitude and moral position is still different from practical population planning. Fewer children, tighter immigration control, secular society, stable population may have to become part of the agreed locus of compromise. I doubt whether the urbane optimism of Goodhart (2014) or the saving re-embrace of a cultural Christianity (Murray, 2017) is going to pan out among the majority. We may not be able to put exact figures on optimal immigration or net migration but we know that manageable cultural pluralism is very different from the dangerously excessive, out-of-control proportions and social fragmentation facing us now. It is surely too late, too dismissive and not credible for us to be told that our objections to mass immigration are hateful, in bad taste, and that everything will just turn out for the best.
But perhaps an experiment in choice — a fantasy wish list — would best summarise our predicament. Momentarily suspending your objections to such an exercise, imagine you are an invincible dictator of today’s Britain and you have to choose and implement one of the following courses of policy and action, however impractical these may appear to be:
Do nothing in relation to immigration that is not already being done. In effect this probably means adhering to a policy of weak border control, increasing population levels, ethnic fragmentation and continuing civil strife.
Initiate a policy of very firm border controls, harsh deportations, endorsement of voluntary repatriations to Africa and elsewhere, and all that is necessary to return the demographic profile of Britain to a 1950s norm of overwhelming whiteness.
Encourage increasing levels of visibly different (BAME) citizens in recognition of past injustices, pay reparations to black Britons, and change employment and education norms to reflect the new higher status of all BAME citizens.
Freeze immigration and asylum at current levels and as far as possible prevent any further immigration, fully accepting the current multicultural make-up of the country but drawing the line there for the foreseeable future.
Devise a plan based on demographic and economic data that arrives at quotas for high-skilled specialised and essential workers in all areas, and recruit necessary workers on time-limited contracts on a colour-blind basis from anywhere in the world.
Reverse the Brexit decision, introduce harsh policies of criminalisation of all speech and publications that are negative towards ethnic minorities and open or relaxed borders, and commence a programme of large-scale house-building, infrastructure expansion, affirmative action and increased welfare provision.
Introduce a radical programme of gradual population reduction towards a calculated carrying capacity of around 30 million, achieving this through discouragement of large families and over-extended lifespans, and rewards for ecologically virtuous lifestyles.
Encourage a fully multicultural transformation of Britain so that it ceases to exist as its former entity and transitions towards a positively Brazilian-style mosaic nation and advanced corner of an ethnically scrambled, borderless new world.
Of course, most of these are unrealistic, some perhaps even absurd or offensive, and some may be seen as fascistic ethnic cleansing. My own biases may show in the phrasing. But this exercise does begin to expose to us our own preferences, prejudices, and faulty logic. I have not included the choice of a theocratic state, nor of genocidal actions; and a truly omnipotent dictator could choose these, or indeed partition Britain into a multicultural south, say, and a white (or black) north. I suspect most of us will lean towards some of the choices above (Number 4 would approximate to mine), while wanting to exclude some clauses and add others. We are divided not only by ethnicities and cultures but by fierce political attachments; by thick propaganda and counterpropaganda; and cohorts of ethnic groups and cultures are also divided among themselves. This exercise is merely intended to begin to clarify matters for our own individual satisfaction. There is, of course, no such dictator or prospect of one, and the most likely political response in the near future is governmental muddle and semi-paralysis, with a public divided on these issues. In the meantime, default position Number 1 is the reality, wherein governmental inertia could meet SJWs’ choice of Number 6 or 8.
References and Relevant Reading
Abbott, D. (2013) Dark Albion: A Requiem for the English. Ramsgate: Sparrow Books.
Abraham, M-R. (2017) Dark is beautiful: the battle to end the world’s obsession with lighter skin. The Guardian, 4 September.
Abtan, B. (2015) Why do young people turn to ISIS or right-wing extremism? The Independent, 18 December.
Adams, S. (2017) Crackdown on health tourist women who fly to the UK to give birth ‘on the NHS’. Mail Online, 17 December.
Adams, R. & Bengtsson, H. (2017) Oxford accused of ‘social apartheid’ as colleges admit no black students. The Guardian, 20 October.
Adams, M. & Bracey, J. H. (Eds) (1999) Strangers and Neighbors: Relations Between Blacks and Jews in the United States. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
Adamson, G. (2017) The Trojan Horse: A Leftist Critique of Multiculturalism in the West. Kindle.
Adorno, T. W. Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J. & Sanford, R. N. (1951/1980) The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Norton.
Akbar, A. (2017) Diversity in publishing — still hideously middle-class and white? The Guardian, 9 December.
Akerstedt, I. (2017) Muslim immigrants want ban on jokes about Islam. Daily Express, 13 August.
Alexander, C. & Arday, J. (Eds) (2015) Aiming Higher: Equality and Diversity in Higher Education. London: Runnymede Trust.
Ali, A. H. (2015) Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now. New York: Harper.
Alibhai-Brown, Y. (2018) No bigots, I won’t just shut up and be grateful. The New European, 18 January.
Allport, G. (1954) The Nature of Prejudice. New York: Basic Books.
American Anthropological Association (1947) Statement on human rights. American Anthropologist, 49 (4), 539–543.
American Renaissance (undated) Anti-white rap lyrics. https://www.amren.com/archives/reports/rap-lyrics/.
Anderson, B.
(2013) Us and Them? The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Control. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Anderson, C. (2017) White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. New York: Bloomsbury.
Anderson, K. J. (2009) Benign Bigotry: The Psychology of Subtle Prejudice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Anderson, S. (2017) Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart. London: Picador.
Andrews, K. (2017) The west’s wealth is built on slavery. Reparations should be paid. The Guardian, 28 August.
Andrews, K. (2016) The psychosis of whiteness: the celluloid hallucinations of Amazing Grace and Belle. Journal of Black Studies, DOI: 10.1177/0021934716638802vvv.
Anonymous Academic (2017) I voted for Brexit — why do academic colleagues treat me like a pariah? The Guardian, 15 September.
APA (2017) Stress in America: The State of Our Nation. http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2017/state-nation.pdf.
APA (1996) The APA 1996 Intelligence Task Force Report. American Psychological Association. http://intelltheory.com/apa96.shtml.
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