My mother came here in 1946 from Ireland. At some point, almost every one of her grandchildren called or visited her because they had an "interview an immigrant" project at school. One of her lines was "I don't feel like an immigrant, I feel like an American." (I realize this can be understandably, different for darker skinned people). Our working class upbringing here was pretty damn great, and Mom took every opportunity to brag about how great THIS country is/was.
We didn't obsess over our "Irishness" at all. Zero shamrocks or Irish flags in our home. The only tell-tale item was the image of the Sacred Heart that hung over our kitchen table, and hangs in my home today. At one time they were a staple in every Irish home (of the Republic).
People who come here willing to grind and work hard, generally become patriotic. I think this is still the case. Social programs and thought, that discourage "hard work" and "being on time" and such, are absolute poison.....obviously.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with paying homage to your ancestral homeland but public life should be reflective of the dominant culture and upheld by anyone who comes here. Again imo you should be respectful of your ancestors; your lineage didn’t start over once you arrived here.
It’s difficult to judge what actually happens in these type situations; here, the full story comes out later and can be very different from the original impression-but using your premise I have to ask...so what happens when the next one drives away, and the one after that?
Even if that is true, somebody knelt on his neck for over nine minutes, long after he stopped moving, guaranteeing his death. In this instance, someone accused someone else of a crime, and a third person decided to be judge, jury, and executioner. That is murder. No ifs, ands, or buts.
I’m sure that being jacked up is an inconvenient truth for too many especially as too want a nice, simple, tidy story of good and evil. Life is rarely this neat.
However, whatever kind of mind altering chemicals were floating in his brain, somebody representing law and order, whose responsibility is to protect and to serve even at the risk of his life, still knelt on his unthreatening throat for nine minutes and murdered him.
What part of this story is the more important one? The very real flaws of the deceased, or that he was murdered for no good or legal reason by an agent of the government who is supposed to works for us?
Not everything requires a knee jerk response. I wasn’t making a judgement on guilt or innocence only pointing out that many narratives are not what they first appear. It’s happened here quite a bit. My question to you is regardless of what the situation was do you think people should be able to drive away from the police? Officers in France go around shooting random people for minor traffic violations? Statistically how often does this happen? It’s not an instinct to defend the police it’s an instinct to question the claims that they are guilty on your say so.
Well said. This fellow needs to be forced to live in a banlieue abandoned by the police because it's too "hot" to go in. They have an impossible job to do, and when an officer rarely messes up, they will face justice just like this one will. "Oh I'm not excusing the violence," he'll say. Except that he is.
When a migrant slaughtered worshippers praying in a Nice church, when another migrant slashed babies in their strollers in Annecy, when (insert countless other attacks here), we got lots of candles and flowers and holding hands in the street. What we have now is an anti-France insurrection.
You could say the same thing about why people in impoverished places in the US riot: they're mainly hurting themselves in the long run. Though very poor people generally have limited time horizons, unable to do long term planning. The looters at least are looking for free stuff right now and to perdition with tomorrow.
Perhaps it is different in France, but in America, when a cop's siren and lights are on, you stop immediately at the side of the road. If you choose flight, you are fair game.
The shootings are just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath lies a whole panoply of abuses, and minorities are hardly alone in suffering from them. If you have a few beers with working class Americans it's not unusual to hear tales about "a**hole cops" they've dealt with.
But surely this is a both/and problem, not an either/or. Cops can be a**holes -- I have a friend who was beaten up by one recently and is suing the township police force as a result. But it's also true that resisting arrest, whether by fight or flight, is never a good idea. Too many of our "youths" don't seem to understand that.
He stopped, three or four surrounded him, pointed guns at his head. Police shouted "I'm going to shoot you in the head". He starts to drive away. They shot him. ""
But I am going to say this sounds a lot like the hands up don't shoot narrative that eventually was found to be false. I have lived long enough now to question this kinda of simple narrative
What do you think the young man said that required the attention of four cops who then drew their weapons?
Could there possibly be more to the story than what you have been lead to believe by the media, who frequently distort information around incidents like this to push certain narratives?
Dave, we'll probably never get the whole story. Some police do things they shouldn't do but they are honest and brave most of the time. It isn't an easy job, it doesn't pay all that well, and they are the blue line that keeps civilized people from the feral members of our society.
I've seen no indication of what the ostensible 'crime' was for which the young man was being detained and from which he fled. I believe we are missing a critical piece of this narrative - as I presume some act or activity preceded the French gendarmes' interest in this person? Or are we also now proposing that French cops are stopping young brown men in the streets for zero reasons? The cause needs to be known to properly judge this effect.
If it was a needless dumbass atrocity of a killing, it should be viewed as such, with the offenders punished. But the uprising is something else, entirely. Why the fury? Have the Arab French been France's equivalent of Southern nigras in the 50s? My impression is otherwise.
French people hate on Arabs and while the history is very different, they are indeed the equivalent of n*****. The worst insult you can say in French (I won't write it here-- it's quite obscene) involves something sexual and an Arab.
There's a psychological principle, fear of the stranger, which explains that. It's universal.
I was a child in the segregated South, and in the early 60s knew only one person, a not very bright 16 year old girl, who hated blacks, or maybe thought she was obliged to appear as if she did. White southerners who opposed civil rights did not hate blacks, they disdained them because they thought it was impossible that they could keep up with whites academically or occupationally.
There's a huge difference between that and hatred. Hatred is far from an infallible mark of contempt for the other. It may be a "tell" that the person is eaten up with envy for the other person, in fact.
Google "zebra murders california" and read about a shocking serial murder case which the Establishment media did its best to squelch information about.
Absolutely correct. That these things ALWAYS erupt before the full truth about the initiating event is known says something rather telling about not only the rioters, but our culture in general. Whether the media does it on purpose or not, it virtually begs us to jump the gun. The lies and half-truths of headlines are proof of this. The idea that cooler heads should prevail seems to be purposely undercut.
This is the point of the rioting....it's "Alinsky-esque".
Riot hard enough and next time you will be allowed to drive away, to pillage businesses, to punish working and middle class business owners for their hard work. All while the elites go unscathed.
How many such are shot in France versus over here?
It is pretty well established that the banlieues have their own "mayors" who enforce whatever "order" there is. I'd be very surprised if this wasn't ordered by such to teach the French a lesson.
You slightly ignore that the poor 17 year old "boy" already has a long criminal record. But, yes, let the migrants and their children burn down France because police mishandled a difficult situation.
There is now a large, and very well organized, Arab and African criminal underclass in France, they control major neighborhoods in many cities in France, and brazenly break the law and flout authority whenever it pleases them.
This isn't about one single incident, and the organized, violent response from immigrant communities reveals this to be a show of force, to show France who really controls the streets and who can unleash hell on the whole country when something happens that displeases them.
A chronic miscreant, driving without a license, who led police on a high-speed chase, and was stopped for a second time only after getting stuck in traffic—aren’t those the details, or did I get something wrong? The second stop was not a “traffic” stop. At that point, they were stopping a grossly negligent and reckless individual from threatening the law-abiding citizens on the road.
And how exactly do you "throw the book at someone" who flees and escapes? And if he had been driving recklessly and they had reason to believe he was about to drive recklessly again, shouldn't they have stopped him? And how to you stop someone who is fleeing? Glad you aren't a cop.
Apparently the "boy" had fifteen criminal counts against him in his short life. He had run from the cops before. He will not be missed but his corpse will serve a purpose.
What's happening this week is a warning to Europe. Postwar "human rights" bureaucracies and institutions were created for a different time and are now being used by the courts, NGOs and cynical politicians to destroy Europe. They must be changed if democracy in western Europe is to salvage any legitimacy.
Over 4,000 migrants from Africa have arrived in Italy in the last 48 hours. The alleged "far right" government that runs Italy after a landslide election last year during which it promised to block the arrival of illegal immigrants, seems powerless to fulfill its thumping electoral mandate. Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister, is currently facing felony charges of "kidnapping" for trying to prevent the landing of boats run by traffickers when he was Interior Minister.
The survival of democracy and of the EU depends on polticians being willing and able to address the grievances of their electorates. Most Europeans want Europe to remain European, but the elite class dismisses them on its utopian-nihilistic crusade to change the West forever.
You presume that the EU is democratic, in the sense that its officials even want or need to "address the grievances of their electorates." It appears to me that the EU was created specifically to thwart democratic processes not to enhance them.
The EU was designed from the outset as a system of soft totalitarianism, with a stated goal of erasing ethnic distinctions so as to supposedly prevent future conflict.
Part of the supposed prevention was to inundate the West with millions of unassimilable minorities, who would function as a fifth column, and help the authorities in alienating, and ultimately breaking down, the native population, making it ripe for total control.
What we see today is a direct result, and not an accident, of the EU project's stated aims.
I'd suggest the Pharaohs of Egypt as the call-back. As for Alexander he wasn't much of a dictator as he couldn't seem to stay put long enough while leaving assorted underlings, generally friends of his, in charge behind him, some of whom stole everything except the palace curtain rods while his back was turned. A military genius yes, but a pretty ineffective ruler.
Seeing policy differences not just as evidence that the Other Guy is wrong but rather the Other Guy is evil-- this is something we should happily leave to the Woke.
The American Uniparty is not deliberately evil, nor do most of them dream of new ways to hurt people. However, most of them, particularly the political leadership make great profit from the American wars and from the massive financial and political corruption; most of them love their families, are good to their friends, and nice to animals, but are part of a system
that rewards acceptance and participation in the corruption and the wars, injustices, increasing corruption, poverty, and strengthening corporate dystopia while punishing people who bring up fairness, justice, ethics, or morality for anyone not of their own class.
We can argue over creates and maintains a good society and of individual and community responsibilities, but really this is one of the consequences of at least fifty years of imposed neoliberal practices of (not liberalism and certainly not classical liberalism) economic, social, and political manipulation and ultimately destruction of Western Civilization and a good chunk of it elsewhere because it was profitable for the people the imposing. Leftism, liberalism, moderation, and conservatism, even extremism have no real meaning or reality to much of the modern neoliberal ruling elites except, perhaps, as a tool for co-option or destruction.
While most people have religious, philosophical, social, scientific, even nationalist leanings and beliefs, l find that when I truly look at much of the life and actions of the ruling class and their servants there is an emptiness in them. No, it not evilness, stupidity, or even a lack of knowledge, but a lack of wisdom and a lack of inquisitiveness and self awareness needed to find this lack. This is why the average Trotskyist, Baptist, bus driver, and probably the corner drug dealer are are more interesting; there’s something in them other than a worship of money or dreaming of some soulless dystopia where you will own nothing and be happy (with them in charge of us sheep.) and mindlessly obedient.
It seems to me the Europeans have forgotten how the mighty Roman Empire came to its bitter end...by hordes of brutish migrants, who had no respect for Rome's laws, mores, or cultures. It seems fitting that they burned Marseilles's library. What better way to spit in the face of a nation that to destroy its very words and thoughts?
Meloni is a terrible disappointment. She should put the migrant invaders on Italian destroyers and drop them off the nearest Libyan beach and dare Germany to invade Italy or kick Italy out of the European Union.
If you think that the Italian Government has the same power and leverage of the U.S. Government, you are deluded. Meloni must thread carefully and bide her time.
To do what you ask, Italy needs constitutional reforms.
In 2024, a new center-right majority is likely to form in the European Parliament. That would be the ideal time.
If Prime Minister Meloni would do as she promised, she would defy the European Union. The European Union isn't going to toss out Italy for not obeying all of its dictates. The European Union doesn't even have the guts to expel Hungary with a population of 10 million who have a Prime Minister that the European Union's castrated media have been taught to hate. The nations that make up the European Union disgust me. They are like the wife that allows herself to be slapped around by her husband and tells the authorities that everything is all-right. NATO is the cover of the European Union. I will be desperately disappointed if the next Republican president doesn't end our affiliation with such a degenerate institution and gets America out of NATO so that Europe can grow up.
Not true. I am Italian. The war is a real problem, you cannot dismiss it because you don't like Zelensky; same for diplomatic relationships: they are necessary and have to be built carefully.
The best way to end to war is through diplomacy but I don't see it anywhere. After countless visits to Kiev by Western leaders, all we have are endless photo ops and meaningless promises to support Ukraine "for as long as it takes." Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are dead and wounded.
Aa Steve Sailer notes with grim bemusement, the rioters have also managed to burn down the Angela Davis primary school in Bezons. (I had to Google that to make sure it wasn't some Babylon Bee-type joke.)
With Europeans below replacement birthrate at 1.53 births per woman, the European Union needs mass migration to stabilize the population and provide workers to pay into the welfare state. Europe is only replacing around 75% of its population through reproduction. On average, there are 1.3 million more deaths than births in the EU. In 30 years, the EU will have a population decline of 39 million people at the current rate. That is a 8% reduction in population. The reduction may not seem like much but it is devastating economically because 20 to 50 year olds are the prime spenders in an economy. Mass migration helps solve this this demographic problem. You will see more programs encourage youth around rhe world to live in Europe. Countries like Hungary have tried to implement family friendly measures and they have met with limited success. The LGBTQ and life of Julia lifestyles are to persausive to our youth today and championed in our media as the ideal lifestyles. As a result, we see plummeting birthrates. This will catch up with us all as economies crash.
All true but until people are made aware of the consequences that they themselves will be paying nothing will change it. Govt and media could possibly change the narrative with clever messaging? But imo transforming the culture by changing the population defeats the purpose.
They will have to go back to taking care of elderly parents, much as my grandparents did, and how all of Europe functioned prior to WWII.
We are only 2 generations separated from the kind of extended kinship networks that gave our ancestors lives so much meaning, and yet people act like we can't go back to it.
Will it be easy? No.
Can we all do it? We have to if we want to survive..
If you want people to have more kids burdening them with elder care is the last thing you should do. That's also a good way to ensure that younger people squirrel every extra penny away in savings for their own retirement and won't be too open to having the expense of children.
>>With Europeans below replacement birthrate at 1.53 births per woman, the European Union needs mass migration to stabilize the population and provide workers to pay into the welfare state.
Just mouthing Jacobin cuck talk from the likes of American Enterprise Institue/Club for Growth/Niskanen Center. None of what you say developed from your own reason, or, I daresay, your own experience. You're being chumped by these neo-whatevers.
I am no economist. The large senior population may not be working but they are spending their accumulated wealth. I think that is why the economies of the West- and especially America- are so resistant to recession.
Many older people can work longer, and we are starting to see that very trend. Though we do need age discrimination laws with real teeth in them. The current laws are less enforced than many old-fashioned blue laws still on the books.
"the European Union needs mass migration to stabilize the population"
if this is true, then why is there not a single European govt that would 1) state it plainly and put it up for a vote; and 2) abide by the results of that vote if "their side" (unlimited mass migration) lost.
the thing I think that needs to be understood is that 30 years after neoliberal claims about the benefits of mass immigration and after 30 years of saying nothing matters but "the economy" (our new god), people see that all these claimed benefits only and always accrue to a small sliver of people at the top of the pyramid.
also, there are more important things than money, such as family, culture, tradition, religion and social trust and cohesion, and immigration eats away at all these things.
if i told you your choice was taking a major pay cut but keeping your friends, family and community, or getting a pay raise but a large family from some corner of the world has to move into your house, which would you pick?
We have plummeting birthrates because it's hard for young people to get on the ladder of adulthood much before they hit 30, whether delayed by school, the army, or an inability to find gainful and reasonably secure employment beyond McJob type work. So at that point the number of childbearing years left for women is quite limited.
I would add that housing prices in metropolitan areas are often prohibitive. For instance, as a bachelor, I bought an old town home in Laurel MD for $64,000 in 1987. My monthly payment was $525. I got married in 1991 and sold the property for $86,000. Kids can't do that today. And delays marriage and the building of families.
If France is such a hellscape, why do people from the safe & monoethnic Eastern Europe keep moving to work and live there? Do these people have a desire to die in riots?
I like most of your articles, but this article is too one-dimensional. I am not going to call you out for reading Jean Raspail, but think of it like this. When making a tasty dish, you want to have the meat and potatoes first, and then it is alright to complete the dish by adding some Raspail-flavored spice. By contrast, if you just pour a dish full of Rapail spice, it isn't much of a dish.
The one-dimensional style is more frequent in your Europe articles than your America articles, because I feel you have an broad sense and rich intuition & "feel" for American society. When you write about America, the sense I get is that for you, America is not just culture wars, LGBTQ incidents and Floyd riots, but also a complex, multi-faceted place with an amazing richness of people and stories (& also a deeply felt personal history). I don't get that feeling as much when you write about Europe. Instead, the Europe articles are frequently overly polemical and one-dimensional.
Given that Europe is still by far one of the most successful regions and civilizations of the world, I am guessing they don't have much of a desire to "throw away their civilizations".
I am sorry, but the theory that strict monoethnic states are somehow more successful does not hold up to evidence. Belarus and North Korea are monoethnic, being close to 100% Slavic and East Asian respectively. Would you like to move there? Do you think of Belarus as a leader in terms of cultural, moral, intellectual or economic terms? If not, you might want to think why not, and why instead, the premier countries of the world embrace immigration. It is because regardless of what you think, immigration has both bad and good aspects.
Which times would that be? During their colonial years, the average standard of living for a person in England/France was much lower than it is now. Same for economic productivity.
"the theory that strict monoethnic states are somehow more successful does not hold up to evidence." LOL
as exhibit A for rebuttal I'd like to point to....uhhh the entire history of Western Civilization. How "diverse" were Renaissance Italy, Victorian Britain, Colonial America or France from say 1500-2000? And why have the Scandinavian countries had the best life outcomes since maybe WW2?
I think you know that the west being a "leader in terms of cultural, moral, intellectual or economic terms" as opposed to Belarus, has everything to do with the past and nothing to do with the present, don't you?
Belarus and North Korea are undesirable not because of their mono-ethnicity, but because they have been under the thumb of alien ideological and political powers for generations. Belarus is nominally free now, but Lukashenko is an old Soviet holdover, essentially, an atavism, although not as much of one as the North Korean regime.
These two regimes are not good evidence for your point. Hungary and Poland, although not as economically advanced as Germany or France, are doing a lot better than they had been doing under communism and are recovering nicely from the damage wrought by Soviet hegemony. Their ethnic consciousness can be seen as supporting their social cohesion; indeed, Rod has been detailing the various ways that the Orban government has successfully appealed to Hungarians' sense of nationhood in order to blunt the woke imperialism of the EU.
Yes, thus affirming that France is a supremely well-functioning state and civilization, which can produce more economic output than Eastern Europe. This is because monoethnicity is not actually the be-all-end-all talisman of success you seem to think it is. Belarus and North Korea are monoethnic, and it doesn't do them much good.
Not to mention, we know from America that cities that do badly, also tend to be the ones with very high crime rates (like Baltimore or Detroit). If France really was close to a failed state, which is what Rod is implying (although he does not explicitly say it), its economy would be in the gutter. Instead, by world standards, it is still prosperous. Suggesting that the troubles are not exactly that bad, by world standards.
When I was a lot younger rightwingers routinely answered the Left's criticism of the US by asking a similar question: If we're so bad why do so many people want to move here? And that's a very valid question to ask today although now it's the Right running down the US.
They are not running down the US. They are running down the Leftists who have captured so many institutions, with the results being inevitable and obvious. Leftists, btw, who hate this nation, its history and its values. How do we know? They say so. And further add anyone who does not agree with them is some kind of istaphobe.
Sorry. A country that names a primary school after Angela Davis is not a "supremely well-functioning state and civilization." The second, civilization, is true as it were platonically. The first not at all.
He thinks that France and England, because they are running on fumes, still having relatively productive economies, means that everything is okey dokey.
60 years ago, Detroit was one of the greatest industrial cities on Earth.
Sure. The people of Chad and Mauretania live better now than they did a century ago. Napoleon never used a flush toilet. Emmanuel Macron uses the flush toilet often. Napoleon never met Elton John.
Macron had his picture taken with Elton John. But Napoleon was the greater man, I think you'll agree.
The West in general has continued to experience economic growth since the 1960s and 70s, based largely on the foundations laid between 1945 and 1980. That France and California are still relatively prosperous compared to either one in 1963 does not necessarily imply that all of their residents of recent immigrant origin have contributed meaningfully to that prosperity. Without Stanford's nurturing of Silicon Valley's culture in the 1960s and 70s, Steve Jobs would quite possibly not have appeared to revolutionize computing and the economic growth that followed from the information revolution. That had little to do with immigration from Central America or Mexico.
France's well-functioning state and its economic output are hardly the result of under- and unemployed North Africans living desperate lives in the suburbs of Paris and Marseilles. France is well-functioning (to date) because it has had a world-class educational system and an established industrial economy (with a citizenry trained to operate it) for about two hundred years, during most of which time it was indeed a mono-ethnic state (unless you wish to quibble about Brittany, the Basque region, or Corsica).
Some observations. These are Frenchmen who originated from France's extensive colonial empire (later called overseas provinces). Eastern Europe doesn't have a history of overseas colonialization although the Austria Hungarian Empire encompassed many different peoples.
Nowadays most Moslem nations are relatively peaceful and don't have this degree of lawlessness that we're seeing in France. Is it because Moslem nations adhere to some of the principles of Sharia law?
I have a friend who on his FB page accused me (and Rod by extension) of being fascist-adjacent because we expressed disappointment that Macron beat Le Pen in 2017. I wonder what he's thinking now. If I were more of a pr*ck than I actually am, I'd ask him.
I'm sending total pr*ck good thoughts your way, brother. I'm not even a pr*ck, but think of my hoped for influence on you as fans think of a ballplayer.
Well, that was a cheerful beginning to my morning. But as John of the West noted above, the French seem to always hate their government, which is why rioting is their national sport.
Notwithstanding that the riots are shocking, you really need some historical context here. Former colonial subjects are not an invading army in France; they've lived there legally and mostly peaceably for many decades. You don't have to read very deeply to discover that, in spite of France's invitation to former colonials to emigrate there starting in the post-WWII period (in which thousands of North Africans, Vietnamese, and other colonials fought in the Free French Army -- i.e. fought for the liberation of a country that exploited them in many ways), French government and society has failed miserably to assimilate them. To blame this entirely on the migrants is not only sensationalist, but also ahistorical. This is not a Camp of the Saints scenario.
If only the French government and society didn't refuse to "assimilate" the Muslims like they were apparently willing to "assimilate" the Asians, South Americans, Eastern Europeans and Christian Africans. If only. Clearly it's their fault and now they must pay the price inshallah....
But in the US it's very hard not to assimilate over multiple generations. The only group I can think of who have been in the US for over a century and are not all the way assimilated would be the Amish, who even have their own Low German dialect still though they do speak English too. OK, maybe some of the more extreme Orthodox Jews too.
But American society, whatever its many flaws, is foundationally accepting of immigration. Despite the many fights over it we are still a mongrel nation and have been for centuries.
France also received a great many guest workers from southern Europe after the war. Plenty of the French people I meet of my own generation (old millenial) have a parent or grandparent from Spain, Portugal or Italy. Yet those people (the ones who stayed in France, at least) did assimilate. You don't see many of them getting shot by cops and burning down libraries, for some reason.
It is such a scenario if you put the emphasis where it belongs, i.e. on a decadent, nihilistic elite, rather than on the immigrants, which was Rod's whole point.
Beginning with the fall of Dien Bien Phi and up until the fall of Saigon in 1975, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese relocated to France, successfully it appears. What's different with the Algerians and Moroccans who did the same? I've been to France and noticed many well-adjusted Vietnamese in Paris. Perhaps many were Catholic and found the transition relatively smooth. I've noticed the same in California. My Vietnamese neighbors & co-workers over the years have all been hardworking and industrious; their kids rarely getting into trouble. And just the other day I relished a Vietnamese sandwich -- roasted pork, pickled carrots, cilantro, cucumber, mint, jalapeño -- all wrapped in a fresh (French) baguette.
I don't know how much time you've spent in France, but there is no possibility of assimilation for anyone!
I have friends from NYC who've lived there for decades and they are still NOT francais.
Sometimes there are binaries with no gray zones: you are either French or not French, for better or worse.
The whole notion that Europeans were going to "assimilate" millions of Arabs and Africans into their cultures and societies was always a dishonest sales pitch used to trick the home populations, but the plutocrat class has always wanted open borders and the politicians and journalists they control have either lied or engaged in heavy moral blackmail to do their masters' bidding.
The story of liberal universalism is still believable until something like this happens. Importing a hostile 5th column turns into civil war after a certain threshold, it’s unavoidable.
The faith in universalism is here to blame because:
- It sees a failure to integrate outsiders as a failing of the host nation
- It breeds resentment in the new arrivals through oppression narratives
- It can’t accept that some populations are simply different - in constitution and predilections, and no social programs can change that
The people at the top sincerely believe in universalism because it’s a soothing replacement for Christianity, it distinguishes them from the racist plebs and more importantly, they get to avoid the real life consequences of this belief.
They’re surrounded by +2SD people from all over the world, in “good neighborhoods” with “good schools.”
The reality is that the future belongs to nations that simply will not permit this. Restoring and keeping order, with the chips of liberal universalism falling where they may, will be necessary.
See Jewish philosopher Berel Lang's great essay "Genocide and Kant's Enlightenment," in which he demonstrates that one outcome of liberal universalism is the necessary dehumanization of opponents. This would seem to tie in with Girard's work on mimetic violence and scapegoating. Liberalism seems to understand this, but in an upside-down manner: Instead of "We must not dehumanize people even when we oppose them," it's "We must not oppose these people lest we dehumanize them." This mentality applies to all "victims" (except those who are deemed persecutors, of course).
This sounds fascinating, thank you for sharing the essay name. That's been the trend across multiple spheres of social life. The ultimate enabling, which is a deep form of patronizing paternalism that destroys the psyche of both participants.
Not sure if that essay's online, Tara, but it's in his book Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide. It's a long essay, but it's one of the best examples I've ever read of the whole notion that ideas have consequences, partly due to the fact that Lang takes the time to explain his reasoning and answer possible objections as he goes along.
Liberalism has its problems, but much of what is being attributed to it is really modern Neoliberalism. The same ideology used by Margaret Thatcher to state that there is not such thing as community. I see the same in American libertarianism. Neoliberal propagandists have a gift for alteration ideas that appear unchanged, but strengthen communal dissolution and strengthen the wealthy’s control over a society. A good example is how the theory of intersectionality, original developed by Combahee River Collective to show that everyone has separate multiple identities that interconnect them in multiple ways to everyone else’s multiple identities, but was was altered to that everyone has different separate identities that separates them from other people with their separate identities.
A slight twist that changes an idea as tool for understanding and connection to a tool of misunderstanding and separation. A similar process happened with the idea of critical thinking and constructive as originally developed by the Frankfurt School (as well as the later critical race theory) to find or manufacture connections that destroys understanding. Admittedly, I don’t think that it is all a deliberate effort as people are quite capable of misunderstanding anything. Just look at much of modern literary criticism, but I also think that some of it was very deliberate.
But both Girard and Lang wrote about this well before the term neo-liberalism meant what it does today. Girard was calling out what was then known as political correctness, while Lang was critiquing a specific aspect of general Enlightenment liberalism, namely its universalism.
It looks like the French Empire has decided to bite the French nation in their collective posterior once again just as the British Empire has done with grooming gangs and Britain's occasional riot. What to do? Have the police and army attack the rioters with truncheons and bayonets and arrest as many as rioters as possible. What to do in the long run? Repatriation to Africa with pensions and other payments. Payments to the African countries, from Algeria to Senegal to Mali, to take their people back.
I disagree with our host about Camp of the Saints. Although the novel is turgid and occasionally tedious, it is brilliant in exposing the self-hatred of white leftists. It has been twenty years since I read it but I don't remember it being particularly racist. Growing up in Prince George's County MD inured me to leftist insult words like "racist." PG County is one of the largest "white flight" counties in America. I guess that would make about half of the Maryland Republican Party as "racist."
"Camp of the Saints" is as badly dated as a polyester leisure suit, besides being morally fetid. A more up-to-date (and not morally problematic) work to cite in these matters would be "Submission". (I owe this insight to a poster elsewhere on the Internet)
I disagree with you regarding "Camp of the Saints" but I heartily recommend "Submission" if you have not yet read it. Houellebecq is much more subtle and has a far easier writing style than Raspail.
When the Floyd riots erupted in 2020 someone sent around a comment by Anthony Esolen in which he recommended a reading of Scheler's 'Ressentiment' as a help in explanation. Time for a reread, methinks.
This is also not happening in Canada, which has a huge immigration influx and relatively low ethnic tension. Why?
Canada has a very selective process for admission - picking the wealthy and well-educated, and geography is in its favour: bounded by a friendly yet fairly well-controlled border to the south, by oceans to the east and west, and patrolling polar bears to the north. It is also not a republic, born of revolution; but a constitutional monarchy that offers symbolic balance and counterweight to the vagaries of party politics.
Multiculturalism and integration have been remarkably successful here.
There are problems looming nonetheless. Particularly the housing crisis. There are more people coming in than there are homes for them. Proposed solutions sometimes involve building on our surprisingly limited amount of arable land and on natural habitat. Also, property owners like their wealth, and this is a demotivator for bringing down our absurd housing costs. Real estate is primarily an investment, not a place to live.
The opioid crisis, homelessness, and random mental illness related violence are very much present. There are multiple causes, but the housing crisis certainly contributes.
This kind of largely non-violent displacement and disenfranchisement is a Canadian pattern, going back to when European immigration displaced Indigenous peoples.
Canadian immigration policy can be subtly exploitive of newcomers, from its high tuition for international students to the placement of newcomers in crummy jobs. Many find Canada too expensive, and return home. I sometimes wonder about the brain and money drain from their countries of origin.
That would be lovely. Biking through burning automobiles and smashed window glass.
My mother came here in 1946 from Ireland. At some point, almost every one of her grandchildren called or visited her because they had an "interview an immigrant" project at school. One of her lines was "I don't feel like an immigrant, I feel like an American." (I realize this can be understandably, different for darker skinned people). Our working class upbringing here was pretty damn great, and Mom took every opportunity to brag about how great THIS country is/was.
We didn't obsess over our "Irishness" at all. Zero shamrocks or Irish flags in our home. The only tell-tale item was the image of the Sacred Heart that hung over our kitchen table, and hangs in my home today. At one time they were a staple in every Irish home (of the Republic).
People who come here willing to grind and work hard, generally become patriotic. I think this is still the case. Social programs and thought, that discourage "hard work" and "being on time" and such, are absolute poison.....obviously.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with paying homage to your ancestral homeland but public life should be reflective of the dominant culture and upheld by anyone who comes here. Again imo you should be respectful of your ancestors; your lineage didn’t start over once you arrived here.
Sure, I get it. It’s good to remember though that if it weren’t for them, none of us would be here.
Well said and excellent point!
It’s difficult to judge what actually happens in these type situations; here, the full story comes out later and can be very different from the original impression-but using your premise I have to ask...so what happens when the next one drives away, and the one after that?
Even if that is true, somebody knelt on his neck for over nine minutes, long after he stopped moving, guaranteeing his death. In this instance, someone accused someone else of a crime, and a third person decided to be judge, jury, and executioner. That is murder. No ifs, ands, or buts.
I’m sure that being jacked up is an inconvenient truth for too many especially as too want a nice, simple, tidy story of good and evil. Life is rarely this neat.
However, whatever kind of mind altering chemicals were floating in his brain, somebody representing law and order, whose responsibility is to protect and to serve even at the risk of his life, still knelt on his unthreatening throat for nine minutes and murdered him.
What part of this story is the more important one? The very real flaws of the deceased, or that he was murdered for no good or legal reason by an agent of the government who is supposed to works for us?
Not everything requires a knee jerk response. I wasn’t making a judgement on guilt or innocence only pointing out that many narratives are not what they first appear. It’s happened here quite a bit. My question to you is regardless of what the situation was do you think people should be able to drive away from the police? Officers in France go around shooting random people for minor traffic violations? Statistically how often does this happen? It’s not an instinct to defend the police it’s an instinct to question the claims that they are guilty on your say so.
Well said. This fellow needs to be forced to live in a banlieue abandoned by the police because it's too "hot" to go in. They have an impossible job to do, and when an officer rarely messes up, they will face justice just like this one will. "Oh I'm not excusing the violence," he'll say. Except that he is.
When a migrant slaughtered worshippers praying in a Nice church, when another migrant slashed babies in their strollers in Annecy, when (insert countless other attacks here), we got lots of candles and flowers and holding hands in the street. What we have now is an anti-France insurrection.
You could say the same thing about why people in impoverished places in the US riot: they're mainly hurting themselves in the long run. Though very poor people generally have limited time horizons, unable to do long term planning. The looters at least are looking for free stuff right now and to perdition with tomorrow.
And when a priest has his throat cut while saying Mass Francis prays for the slasher.
Praying for those who do you harm is a properly Christian thing to do.
Perhaps it is different in France, but in America, when a cop's siren and lights are on, you stop immediately at the side of the road. If you choose flight, you are fair game.
The shootings are just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath lies a whole panoply of abuses, and minorities are hardly alone in suffering from them. If you have a few beers with working class Americans it's not unusual to hear tales about "a**hole cops" they've dealt with.
But surely this is a both/and problem, not an either/or. Cops can be a**holes -- I have a friend who was beaten up by one recently and is suing the township police force as a result. But it's also true that resisting arrest, whether by fight or flight, is never a good idea. Too many of our "youths" don't seem to understand that.
I am not saying that this did not happen "
James
27 min ago
He stopped, three or four surrounded him, pointed guns at his head. Police shouted "I'm going to shoot you in the head". He starts to drive away. They shot him. ""
But I am going to say this sounds a lot like the hands up don't shoot narrative that eventually was found to be false. I have lived long enough now to question this kinda of simple narrative
Maybe he was an aspiring rap artist.
You can't "uphold civilization" without controlled violence. Certainly not with aliens. Can't be done.
Some folks, like James, have a hard time processing that reality.
Did you see the confrontation?
What do you think the young man said that required the attention of four cops who then drew their weapons?
Could there possibly be more to the story than what you have been lead to believe by the media, who frequently distort information around incidents like this to push certain narratives?
Dave, we'll probably never get the whole story. Some police do things they shouldn't do but they are honest and brave most of the time. It isn't an easy job, it doesn't pay all that well, and they are the blue line that keeps civilized people from the feral members of our society.
I don’t see where you’ve answered any of my earlier questions. We are assuming no such thing.
I've seen no indication of what the ostensible 'crime' was for which the young man was being detained and from which he fled. I believe we are missing a critical piece of this narrative - as I presume some act or activity preceded the French gendarmes' interest in this person? Or are we also now proposing that French cops are stopping young brown men in the streets for zero reasons? The cause needs to be known to properly judge this effect.
If it was a needless dumbass atrocity of a killing, it should be viewed as such, with the offenders punished. But the uprising is something else, entirely. Why the fury? Have the Arab French been France's equivalent of Southern nigras in the 50s? My impression is otherwise.
French people hate on Arabs and while the history is very different, they are indeed the equivalent of n*****. The worst insult you can say in French (I won't write it here-- it's quite obscene) involves something sexual and an Arab.
There's a psychological principle, fear of the stranger, which explains that. It's universal.
I was a child in the segregated South, and in the early 60s knew only one person, a not very bright 16 year old girl, who hated blacks, or maybe thought she was obliged to appear as if she did. White southerners who opposed civil rights did not hate blacks, they disdained them because they thought it was impossible that they could keep up with whites academically or occupationally.
There's a huge difference between that and hatred. Hatred is far from an infallible mark of contempt for the other. It may be a "tell" that the person is eaten up with envy for the other person, in fact.
The whites of Wichita, Kansas didn't riot when the black Carr brothers raped and murdered five white young adults.
Google "zebra murders california" and read about a shocking serial murder case which the Establishment media did its best to squelch information about.
Resisting arrest is not a civil right.
It's not "the instinct": it's the judgment after immense devastations.
Absolutely correct. That these things ALWAYS erupt before the full truth about the initiating event is known says something rather telling about not only the rioters, but our culture in general. Whether the media does it on purpose or not, it virtually begs us to jump the gun. The lies and half-truths of headlines are proof of this. The idea that cooler heads should prevail seems to be purposely undercut.
Oh yes the media does it on purpose.
Stop making sense.
This is the point of the rioting....it's "Alinsky-esque".
Riot hard enough and next time you will be allowed to drive away, to pillage businesses, to punish working and middle class business owners for their hard work. All while the elites go unscathed.
Well said!
"...one more poor kid from the sticks is shot..."
How many such are shot in France versus over here?
It is pretty well established that the banlieues have their own "mayors" who enforce whatever "order" there is. I'd be very surprised if this wasn't ordered by such to teach the French a lesson.
You slightly ignore that the poor 17 year old "boy" already has a long criminal record. But, yes, let the migrants and their children burn down France because police mishandled a difficult situation.
People like James are as much a part of the problem as the rioters and criminals, for whom they always have a ready excuse.
Didn't Elvis- the King- sing a song over fifty years ago about a 17 year old boy who went wrong. "In the Ghetto."
There is now a large, and very well organized, Arab and African criminal underclass in France, they control major neighborhoods in many cities in France, and brazenly break the law and flout authority whenever it pleases them.
This isn't about one single incident, and the organized, violent response from immigrant communities reveals this to be a show of force, to show France who really controls the streets and who can unleash hell on the whole country when something happens that displeases them.
A chronic miscreant, driving without a license, who led police on a high-speed chase, and was stopped for a second time only after getting stuck in traffic—aren’t those the details, or did I get something wrong? The second stop was not a “traffic” stop. At that point, they were stopping a grossly negligent and reckless individual from threatening the law-abiding citizens on the road.
OK, so the guy deserved to have the book thrown at him. But shot dead?
Hands up, Jon. And if you don't raise your arms, you are fair game. What firearm do you have in your pocket?
It’s always easy being the armchair quarterback...
And how exactly do you "throw the book at someone" who flees and escapes? And if he had been driving recklessly and they had reason to believe he was about to drive recklessly again, shouldn't they have stopped him? And how to you stop someone who is fleeing? Glad you aren't a cop.
Was he in a stolen car? If not could they not trace him through his license plate?
1) How does a 17-year-old kid get a yellow Mercedes?
2) What was in the car?
3) What was the kid's rap sheet?
4) What did the kid say to the cops?
5) Was the kid armed?
Riots are not the correct answer to a crime committed by one policeman.
If you think so, you are the one bringing the chaos.
Apparently the "boy" had fifteen criminal counts against him in his short life. He had run from the cops before. He will not be missed but his corpse will serve a purpose.
What's happening this week is a warning to Europe. Postwar "human rights" bureaucracies and institutions were created for a different time and are now being used by the courts, NGOs and cynical politicians to destroy Europe. They must be changed if democracy in western Europe is to salvage any legitimacy.
Over 4,000 migrants from Africa have arrived in Italy in the last 48 hours. The alleged "far right" government that runs Italy after a landslide election last year during which it promised to block the arrival of illegal immigrants, seems powerless to fulfill its thumping electoral mandate. Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister, is currently facing felony charges of "kidnapping" for trying to prevent the landing of boats run by traffickers when he was Interior Minister.
The survival of democracy and of the EU depends on polticians being willing and able to address the grievances of their electorates. Most Europeans want Europe to remain European, but the elite class dismisses them on its utopian-nihilistic crusade to change the West forever.
You presume that the EU is democratic, in the sense that its officials even want or need to "address the grievances of their electorates." It appears to me that the EU was created specifically to thwart democratic processes not to enhance them.
Exactly this.
The EU was designed from the outset as a system of soft totalitarianism, with a stated goal of erasing ethnic distinctions so as to supposedly prevent future conflict.
Part of the supposed prevention was to inundate the West with millions of unassimilable minorities, who would function as a fifth column, and help the authorities in alienating, and ultimately breaking down, the native population, making it ripe for total control.
What we see today is a direct result, and not an accident, of the EU project's stated aims.
Problem, reaction, solution.
My question is always: what kind of a person wants total control over a disaffected mass of people? Really. Who is that person?
Every wannabe tit-pot dictator in history going back to Alexander.
I'd suggest the Pharaohs of Egypt as the call-back. As for Alexander he wasn't much of a dictator as he couldn't seem to stay put long enough while leaving assorted underlings, generally friends of his, in charge behind him, some of whom stole everything except the palace curtain rods while his back was turned. A military genius yes, but a pretty ineffective ruler.
An evil person. Angela Merkel. Pope Francis. PM Rutte. Macron. Baby Trudeau. Most of the American Democratic Party. The Bush family.
Seeing policy differences not just as evidence that the Other Guy is wrong but rather the Other Guy is evil-- this is something we should happily leave to the Woke.
The American Uniparty is not deliberately evil, nor do most of them dream of new ways to hurt people. However, most of them, particularly the political leadership make great profit from the American wars and from the massive financial and political corruption; most of them love their families, are good to their friends, and nice to animals, but are part of a system
that rewards acceptance and participation in the corruption and the wars, injustices, increasing corruption, poverty, and strengthening corporate dystopia while punishing people who bring up fairness, justice, ethics, or morality for anyone not of their own class.
We can argue over creates and maintains a good society and of individual and community responsibilities, but really this is one of the consequences of at least fifty years of imposed neoliberal practices of (not liberalism and certainly not classical liberalism) economic, social, and political manipulation and ultimately destruction of Western Civilization and a good chunk of it elsewhere because it was profitable for the people the imposing. Leftism, liberalism, moderation, and conservatism, even extremism have no real meaning or reality to much of the modern neoliberal ruling elites except, perhaps, as a tool for co-option or destruction.
While most people have religious, philosophical, social, scientific, even nationalist leanings and beliefs, l find that when I truly look at much of the life and actions of the ruling class and their servants there is an emptiness in them. No, it not evilness, stupidity, or even a lack of knowledge, but a lack of wisdom and a lack of inquisitiveness and self awareness needed to find this lack. This is why the average Trotskyist, Baptist, bus driver, and probably the corner drug dealer are are more interesting; there’s something in them other than a worship of money or dreaming of some soulless dystopia where you will own nothing and be happy (with them in charge of us sheep.) and mindlessly obedient.
The controllers don't care about affection, they care about keeping their interests protected.
Yes, Mr. Villanueva. The European Union is not democratic. It is a New Left institution that has incorporated the woke Left.
The European Union is a bureaucratic dictatorship and not a democracy.
It seems to me the Europeans have forgotten how the mighty Roman Empire came to its bitter end...by hordes of brutish migrants, who had no respect for Rome's laws, mores, or cultures. It seems fitting that they burned Marseilles's library. What better way to spit in the face of a nation that to destroy its very words and thoughts?
Meloni is more interested in visiting Kiev and paying homage to Zelensky than the mandate she was elected to fulfill or at least try.
I pray this isn’t true.
It's not.
Meloni is a terrible disappointment. She should put the migrant invaders on Italian destroyers and drop them off the nearest Libyan beach and dare Germany to invade Italy or kick Italy out of the European Union.
Wow, very realistic....
Actually not. It'll never happen. Italy is obedient to Germany. Meloni may as well be a head of cabbage.
If you think that the Italian Government has the same power and leverage of the U.S. Government, you are deluded. Meloni must thread carefully and bide her time.
To do what you ask, Italy needs constitutional reforms.
In 2024, a new center-right majority is likely to form in the European Parliament. That would be the ideal time.
If Prime Minister Meloni would do as she promised, she would defy the European Union. The European Union isn't going to toss out Italy for not obeying all of its dictates. The European Union doesn't even have the guts to expel Hungary with a population of 10 million who have a Prime Minister that the European Union's castrated media have been taught to hate. The nations that make up the European Union disgust me. They are like the wife that allows herself to be slapped around by her husband and tells the authorities that everything is all-right. NATO is the cover of the European Union. I will be desperately disappointed if the next Republican president doesn't end our affiliation with such a degenerate institution and gets America out of NATO so that Europe can grow up.
Not true. I am Italian. The war is a real problem, you cannot dismiss it because you don't like Zelensky; same for diplomatic relationships: they are necessary and have to be built carefully.
The best way to end to war is through diplomacy but I don't see it anywhere. After countless visits to Kiev by Western leaders, all we have are endless photo ops and meaningless promises to support Ukraine "for as long as it takes." Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are dead and wounded.
Actually I'm surprised she's as successful as she has been.
Aa Steve Sailer notes with grim bemusement, the rioters have also managed to burn down the Angela Davis primary school in Bezons. (I had to Google that to make sure it wasn't some Babylon Bee-type joke.)
I don't usually support arson but in this care the burning down of the Angela Davis school was wise. Can they burn her alive, too? Just kidding.
Haha--perfect cosmic irony!
Those rioters are completely de-civilized. School naming is the business of still civilized elites, misguided as they might be.
With Europeans below replacement birthrate at 1.53 births per woman, the European Union needs mass migration to stabilize the population and provide workers to pay into the welfare state. Europe is only replacing around 75% of its population through reproduction. On average, there are 1.3 million more deaths than births in the EU. In 30 years, the EU will have a population decline of 39 million people at the current rate. That is a 8% reduction in population. The reduction may not seem like much but it is devastating economically because 20 to 50 year olds are the prime spenders in an economy. Mass migration helps solve this this demographic problem. You will see more programs encourage youth around rhe world to live in Europe. Countries like Hungary have tried to implement family friendly measures and they have met with limited success. The LGBTQ and life of Julia lifestyles are to persausive to our youth today and championed in our media as the ideal lifestyles. As a result, we see plummeting birthrates. This will catch up with us all as economies crash.
https://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/data/europe-developed-countries/birth-death-infant-mortality/
All true but until people are made aware of the consequences that they themselves will be paying nothing will change it. Govt and media could possibly change the narrative with clever messaging? But imo transforming the culture by changing the population defeats the purpose.
It's actually not true in the sense that Europe will collapse if couples don't have at least two kids each.
Every European society can survive and flourish with smaller populations.
Yes however, they will likely need to give up some semblance of the social safety net.
You are correct.
They will have to go back to taking care of elderly parents, much as my grandparents did, and how all of Europe functioned prior to WWII.
We are only 2 generations separated from the kind of extended kinship networks that gave our ancestors lives so much meaning, and yet people act like we can't go back to it.
Will it be easy? No.
Can we all do it? We have to if we want to survive..
If you want people to have more kids burdening them with elder care is the last thing you should do. That's also a good way to ensure that younger people squirrel every extra penny away in savings for their own retirement and won't be too open to having the expense of children.
I have kids and have taken care of multiple elderly relatives until time of death.
Don't tell me it can't be done.
shhh don't mention that there are more important things than money, you may have your bank account frozen :)
>>With Europeans below replacement birthrate at 1.53 births per woman, the European Union needs mass migration to stabilize the population and provide workers to pay into the welfare state.
There is no reasoning with a Jacobin cuck.
He's just mindlessly parroting globalist propaganda.
Every European society can survive and flourish with smaller populations.
How so?
The stock market is predicated on sales growth and not decline.
You will have a large senior population who won't work and won't spend. Who is going to take care of them?
A smaller youth demographic will have to pay enormous taxes to support the elderly.
>>The stock market is predicated on sales growth and not decline.
Because that is what it's all about, this American Jacobin empire, to worship and sustain this twisted, demented Eye of Horus, the S&P 500.
This is the law of nature. Organizations like organisms either grow or wither away.
Just mouthing Jacobin cuck talk from the likes of American Enterprise Institue/Club for Growth/Niskanen Center. None of what you say developed from your own reason, or, I daresay, your own experience. You're being chumped by these neo-whatevers.
This is not the law of nature. What are you talking about? It is the law of cancer, literally.
Populations mature, peak, and then die back until the next growing season.
I am no economist. The large senior population may not be working but they are spending their accumulated wealth. I think that is why the economies of the West- and especially America- are so resistant to recession.
Many older people can work longer, and we are starting to see that very trend. Though we do need age discrimination laws with real teeth in them. The current laws are less enforced than many old-fashioned blue laws still on the books.
"the European Union needs mass migration to stabilize the population"
if this is true, then why is there not a single European govt that would 1) state it plainly and put it up for a vote; and 2) abide by the results of that vote if "their side" (unlimited mass migration) lost.
the thing I think that needs to be understood is that 30 years after neoliberal claims about the benefits of mass immigration and after 30 years of saying nothing matters but "the economy" (our new god), people see that all these claimed benefits only and always accrue to a small sliver of people at the top of the pyramid.
also, there are more important things than money, such as family, culture, tradition, religion and social trust and cohesion, and immigration eats away at all these things.
if i told you your choice was taking a major pay cut but keeping your friends, family and community, or getting a pay raise but a large family from some corner of the world has to move into your house, which would you pick?
We have plummeting birthrates because it's hard for young people to get on the ladder of adulthood much before they hit 30, whether delayed by school, the army, or an inability to find gainful and reasonably secure employment beyond McJob type work. So at that point the number of childbearing years left for women is quite limited.
I would add that housing prices in metropolitan areas are often prohibitive. For instance, as a bachelor, I bought an old town home in Laurel MD for $64,000 in 1987. My monthly payment was $525. I got married in 1991 and sold the property for $86,000. Kids can't do that today. And delays marriage and the building of families.
If France is such a hellscape, why do people from the safe & monoethnic Eastern Europe keep moving to work and live there? Do these people have a desire to die in riots?
I like most of your articles, but this article is too one-dimensional. I am not going to call you out for reading Jean Raspail, but think of it like this. When making a tasty dish, you want to have the meat and potatoes first, and then it is alright to complete the dish by adding some Raspail-flavored spice. By contrast, if you just pour a dish full of Rapail spice, it isn't much of a dish.
The one-dimensional style is more frequent in your Europe articles than your America articles, because I feel you have an broad sense and rich intuition & "feel" for American society. When you write about America, the sense I get is that for you, America is not just culture wars, LGBTQ incidents and Floyd riots, but also a complex, multi-faceted place with an amazing richness of people and stories (& also a deeply felt personal history). I don't get that feeling as much when you write about Europe. Instead, the Europe articles are frequently overly polemical and one-dimensional.
Given that Europe is still by far one of the most successful regions and civilizations of the world, I am guessing they don't have much of a desire to "throw away their civilizations".
I am sorry, but the theory that strict monoethnic states are somehow more successful does not hold up to evidence. Belarus and North Korea are monoethnic, being close to 100% Slavic and East Asian respectively. Would you like to move there? Do you think of Belarus as a leader in terms of cultural, moral, intellectual or economic terms? If not, you might want to think why not, and why instead, the premier countries of the world embrace immigration. It is because regardless of what you think, immigration has both bad and good aspects.
No reason to be sassy, pal
England and France were their most successful, and productive, when they were essentially monoethnic.
Now, not so much.
History does not look kindly on multicultural empires. They always seem to end up collapsing rather quickly.
Which times would that be? During their colonial years, the average standard of living for a person in England/France was much lower than it is now. Same for economic productivity.
ok let's ignore centuries of cultural, creative, scientific and engineering accomplishments because not everyone had a healthy checking account.
for the love of god, there are more important things in life than money!
"the theory that strict monoethnic states are somehow more successful does not hold up to evidence." LOL
as exhibit A for rebuttal I'd like to point to....uhhh the entire history of Western Civilization. How "diverse" were Renaissance Italy, Victorian Britain, Colonial America or France from say 1500-2000? And why have the Scandinavian countries had the best life outcomes since maybe WW2?
Also, Belarus and N Korea are just nutpicking...
So, you got your credit card, didn't ya?
I think you know that the west being a "leader in terms of cultural, moral, intellectual or economic terms" as opposed to Belarus, has everything to do with the past and nothing to do with the present, don't you?
BTW, no emojis here. Poor Wastelander.
(To everyone else, yeah, inside joke.)
Belarus and North Korea are undesirable not because of their mono-ethnicity, but because they have been under the thumb of alien ideological and political powers for generations. Belarus is nominally free now, but Lukashenko is an old Soviet holdover, essentially, an atavism, although not as much of one as the North Korean regime.
These two regimes are not good evidence for your point. Hungary and Poland, although not as economically advanced as Germany or France, are doing a lot better than they had been doing under communism and are recovering nicely from the damage wrought by Soviet hegemony. Their ethnic consciousness can be seen as supporting their social cohesion; indeed, Rod has been detailing the various ways that the Orban government has successfully appealed to Hungarians' sense of nationhood in order to blunt the woke imperialism of the EU.
"If France is such a hellscape, why do people from the safe & monoethnic Eastern Europe keep moving to work and live there?"
To make money. Good grief.
Yes, thus affirming that France is a supremely well-functioning state and civilization, which can produce more economic output than Eastern Europe. This is because monoethnicity is not actually the be-all-end-all talisman of success you seem to think it is. Belarus and North Korea are monoethnic, and it doesn't do them much good.
Not to mention, we know from America that cities that do badly, also tend to be the ones with very high crime rates (like Baltimore or Detroit). If France really was close to a failed state, which is what Rod is implying (although he does not explicitly say it), its economy would be in the gutter. Instead, by world standards, it is still prosperous. Suggesting that the troubles are not exactly that bad, by world standards.
When I was a lot younger rightwingers routinely answered the Left's criticism of the US by asking a similar question: If we're so bad why do so many people want to move here? And that's a very valid question to ask today although now it's the Right running down the US.
"now it's the Right running down the US."
uhh i think people "running down the US" can be found in large numbers on both sides of the aisle.
sometimes being a reflexive contrarian makes you say stupid things.
I was about to agree with your first sentence, but your second is nothing but a snotty insult.
im sorry, jon, i can't seem to help it.
you have to admit that your role here is at least in part similar to a wrestling heel, you are trying to get under our skin and goad.
im certainly not the only one who's noticed.
They are not running down the US. They are running down the Leftists who have captured so many institutions, with the results being inevitable and obvious. Leftists, btw, who hate this nation, its history and its values. How do we know? They say so. And further add anyone who does not agree with them is some kind of istaphobe.
Sorry. A country that names a primary school after Angela Davis is not a "supremely well-functioning state and civilization." The second, civilization, is true as it were platonically. The first not at all.
He thinks that France and England, because they are running on fumes, still having relatively productive economies, means that everything is okey dokey.
60 years ago, Detroit was one of the greatest industrial cities on Earth.
Now look at it.
France and England are following suit.
Again, the standard of living and the economic productivity of France and England are higher now than during their colonial years.
Is the sum total of the quality of a human life or a human society its economic productivity? Username checks out.
Sure. The people of Chad and Mauretania live better now than they did a century ago. Napoleon never used a flush toilet. Emmanuel Macron uses the flush toilet often. Napoleon never met Elton John.
Macron had his picture taken with Elton John. But Napoleon was the greater man, I think you'll agree.
The West in general has continued to experience economic growth since the 1960s and 70s, based largely on the foundations laid between 1945 and 1980. That France and California are still relatively prosperous compared to either one in 1963 does not necessarily imply that all of their residents of recent immigrant origin have contributed meaningfully to that prosperity. Without Stanford's nurturing of Silicon Valley's culture in the 1960s and 70s, Steve Jobs would quite possibly not have appeared to revolutionize computing and the economic growth that followed from the information revolution. That had little to do with immigration from Central America or Mexico.
France's well-functioning state and its economic output are hardly the result of under- and unemployed North Africans living desperate lives in the suburbs of Paris and Marseilles. France is well-functioning (to date) because it has had a world-class educational system and an established industrial economy (with a citizenry trained to operate it) for about two hundred years, during most of which time it was indeed a mono-ethnic state (unless you wish to quibble about Brittany, the Basque region, or Corsica).
>>To make money. Good grief.
And for a lot of them, that money is made by sponging off the welfare system.
Some observations. These are Frenchmen who originated from France's extensive colonial empire (later called overseas provinces). Eastern Europe doesn't have a history of overseas colonialization although the Austria Hungarian Empire encompassed many different peoples.
Nowadays most Moslem nations are relatively peaceful and don't have this degree of lawlessness that we're seeing in France. Is it because Moslem nations adhere to some of the principles of Sharia law?
Soumission.
The yellow vest riots seem to have slipped from memory, but it seems like no one is really ever very happy with the French government.
I have a friend who on his FB page accused me (and Rod by extension) of being fascist-adjacent because we expressed disappointment that Macron beat Le Pen in 2017. I wonder what he's thinking now. If I were more of a pr*ck than I actually am, I'd ask him.
I'm sending total pr*ck good thoughts your way, brother. I'm not even a pr*ck, but think of my hoped for influence on you as fans think of a ballplayer.
Well, that was a cheerful beginning to my morning. But as John of the West noted above, the French seem to always hate their government, which is why rioting is their national sport.
Certainly has been since 1789, mostly not carried out by black/brown immigrants.
Yep. France has an old history of political violence, going back at least as far as the 14th century Jacquerie.
Notwithstanding that the riots are shocking, you really need some historical context here. Former colonial subjects are not an invading army in France; they've lived there legally and mostly peaceably for many decades. You don't have to read very deeply to discover that, in spite of France's invitation to former colonials to emigrate there starting in the post-WWII period (in which thousands of North Africans, Vietnamese, and other colonials fought in the Free French Army -- i.e. fought for the liberation of a country that exploited them in many ways), French government and society has failed miserably to assimilate them. To blame this entirely on the migrants is not only sensationalist, but also ahistorical. This is not a Camp of the Saints scenario.
If only the French government and society didn't refuse to "assimilate" the Muslims like they were apparently willing to "assimilate" the Asians, South Americans, Eastern Europeans and Christian Africans. If only. Clearly it's their fault and now they must pay the price inshallah....
Some people refuse or can't be made to assimilate. We have that problem in America, too.
But in the US it's very hard not to assimilate over multiple generations. The only group I can think of who have been in the US for over a century and are not all the way assimilated would be the Amish, who even have their own Low German dialect still though they do speak English too. OK, maybe some of the more extreme Orthodox Jews too.
But American society, whatever its many flaws, is foundationally accepting of immigration. Despite the many fights over it we are still a mongrel nation and have been for centuries.
If only the magic dirt were a little more magical...
France also received a great many guest workers from southern Europe after the war. Plenty of the French people I meet of my own generation (old millenial) have a parent or grandparent from Spain, Portugal or Italy. Yet those people (the ones who stayed in France, at least) did assimilate. You don't see many of them getting shot by cops and burning down libraries, for some reason.
Well said!
It is such a scenario if you put the emphasis where it belongs, i.e. on a decadent, nihilistic elite, rather than on the immigrants, which was Rod's whole point.
>>French government and society has failed miserably to assimilate them.
No, the migrants have failed miserably to assimilate to France, French values and mores.
These poor migrants are always passive victims, aren't they. They have no agency, no control over their destiny...........
........
......but you are right, because large numbers of Muslims CANNOT/WILL NOT be assimilated. It's futile to try.
Beginning with the fall of Dien Bien Phi and up until the fall of Saigon in 1975, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese relocated to France, successfully it appears. What's different with the Algerians and Moroccans who did the same? I've been to France and noticed many well-adjusted Vietnamese in Paris. Perhaps many were Catholic and found the transition relatively smooth. I've noticed the same in California. My Vietnamese neighbors & co-workers over the years have all been hardworking and industrious; their kids rarely getting into trouble. And just the other day I relished a Vietnamese sandwich -- roasted pork, pickled carrots, cilantro, cucumber, mint, jalapeño -- all wrapped in a fresh (French) baguette.
Bahn-mi
I don't know how much time you've spent in France, but there is no possibility of assimilation for anyone!
I have friends from NYC who've lived there for decades and they are still NOT francais.
Sometimes there are binaries with no gray zones: you are either French or not French, for better or worse.
The whole notion that Europeans were going to "assimilate" millions of Arabs and Africans into their cultures and societies was always a dishonest sales pitch used to trick the home populations, but the plutocrat class has always wanted open borders and the politicians and journalists they control have either lied or engaged in heavy moral blackmail to do their masters' bidding.
Good comment on Twitter from Alex Kaschuta:
The story of liberal universalism is still believable until something like this happens. Importing a hostile 5th column turns into civil war after a certain threshold, it’s unavoidable.
The faith in universalism is here to blame because:
- It sees a failure to integrate outsiders as a failing of the host nation
- It breeds resentment in the new arrivals through oppression narratives
- It can’t accept that some populations are simply different - in constitution and predilections, and no social programs can change that
The people at the top sincerely believe in universalism because it’s a soothing replacement for Christianity, it distinguishes them from the racist plebs and more importantly, they get to avoid the real life consequences of this belief.
They’re surrounded by +2SD people from all over the world, in “good neighborhoods” with “good schools.”
The reality is that the future belongs to nations that simply will not permit this. Restoring and keeping order, with the chips of liberal universalism falling where they may, will be necessary.
https://twitter.com/kaschuta/status/1675073205889908736?s=46&t=2B0XfsiVZRu8gjN8Ehb8FA
See Jewish philosopher Berel Lang's great essay "Genocide and Kant's Enlightenment," in which he demonstrates that one outcome of liberal universalism is the necessary dehumanization of opponents. This would seem to tie in with Girard's work on mimetic violence and scapegoating. Liberalism seems to understand this, but in an upside-down manner: Instead of "We must not dehumanize people even when we oppose them," it's "We must not oppose these people lest we dehumanize them." This mentality applies to all "victims" (except those who are deemed persecutors, of course).
This sounds fascinating, thank you for sharing the essay name. That's been the trend across multiple spheres of social life. The ultimate enabling, which is a deep form of patronizing paternalism that destroys the psyche of both participants.
Not sure if that essay's online, Tara, but it's in his book Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide. It's a long essay, but it's one of the best examples I've ever read of the whole notion that ideas have consequences, partly due to the fact that Lang takes the time to explain his reasoning and answer possible objections as he goes along.
Liberalism has its problems, but much of what is being attributed to it is really modern Neoliberalism. The same ideology used by Margaret Thatcher to state that there is not such thing as community. I see the same in American libertarianism. Neoliberal propagandists have a gift for alteration ideas that appear unchanged, but strengthen communal dissolution and strengthen the wealthy’s control over a society. A good example is how the theory of intersectionality, original developed by Combahee River Collective to show that everyone has separate multiple identities that interconnect them in multiple ways to everyone else’s multiple identities, but was was altered to that everyone has different separate identities that separates them from other people with their separate identities.
A slight twist that changes an idea as tool for understanding and connection to a tool of misunderstanding and separation. A similar process happened with the idea of critical thinking and constructive as originally developed by the Frankfurt School (as well as the later critical race theory) to find or manufacture connections that destroys understanding. Admittedly, I don’t think that it is all a deliberate effort as people are quite capable of misunderstanding anything. Just look at much of modern literary criticism, but I also think that some of it was very deliberate.
But both Girard and Lang wrote about this well before the term neo-liberalism meant what it does today. Girard was calling out what was then known as political correctness, while Lang was critiquing a specific aspect of general Enlightenment liberalism, namely its universalism.
It looks like the French Empire has decided to bite the French nation in their collective posterior once again just as the British Empire has done with grooming gangs and Britain's occasional riot. What to do? Have the police and army attack the rioters with truncheons and bayonets and arrest as many as rioters as possible. What to do in the long run? Repatriation to Africa with pensions and other payments. Payments to the African countries, from Algeria to Senegal to Mali, to take their people back.
I disagree with our host about Camp of the Saints. Although the novel is turgid and occasionally tedious, it is brilliant in exposing the self-hatred of white leftists. It has been twenty years since I read it but I don't remember it being particularly racist. Growing up in Prince George's County MD inured me to leftist insult words like "racist." PG County is one of the largest "white flight" counties in America. I guess that would make about half of the Maryland Republican Party as "racist."
"Camp of the Saints" is as badly dated as a polyester leisure suit, besides being morally fetid. A more up-to-date (and not morally problematic) work to cite in these matters would be "Submission". (I owe this insight to a poster elsewhere on the Internet)
I disagree with you regarding "Camp of the Saints" but I heartily recommend "Submission" if you have not yet read it. Houellebecq is much more subtle and has a far easier writing style than Raspail.
When the Floyd riots erupted in 2020 someone sent around a comment by Anthony Esolen in which he recommended a reading of Scheler's 'Ressentiment' as a help in explanation. Time for a reread, methinks.
What? You mean the rioters are black and brown? I was assured by all the mainstream headlines that they were merely "youths."
This is also not happening in Canada, which has a huge immigration influx and relatively low ethnic tension. Why?
Canada has a very selective process for admission - picking the wealthy and well-educated, and geography is in its favour: bounded by a friendly yet fairly well-controlled border to the south, by oceans to the east and west, and patrolling polar bears to the north. It is also not a republic, born of revolution; but a constitutional monarchy that offers symbolic balance and counterweight to the vagaries of party politics.
Multiculturalism and integration have been remarkably successful here.
There are problems looming nonetheless. Particularly the housing crisis. There are more people coming in than there are homes for them. Proposed solutions sometimes involve building on our surprisingly limited amount of arable land and on natural habitat. Also, property owners like their wealth, and this is a demotivator for bringing down our absurd housing costs. Real estate is primarily an investment, not a place to live.
The opioid crisis, homelessness, and random mental illness related violence are very much present. There are multiple causes, but the housing crisis certainly contributes.
This kind of largely non-violent displacement and disenfranchisement is a Canadian pattern, going back to when European immigration displaced Indigenous peoples.
Canadian immigration policy can be subtly exploitive of newcomers, from its high tuition for international students to the placement of newcomers in crummy jobs. Many find Canada too expensive, and return home. I sometimes wonder about the brain and money drain from their countries of origin.
Isn't Vancouver half-Chinese? It is not exactly a Canadian city anymore.