December 2000
American Renaissance magazine | |
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Vol. 11 No.12 | December 2000 |
CONTENTS |
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Race is a Myth?
The Galton Report
Immigration and the Election
The Mind of the White Man
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers
COVER STORY |
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Race is a Myth?
The left distorts science for political purposes.
Racial egalitarianism has failed to produce the “fair and just” society promised by social engineers. At the same time, there has been a marked reawakening of racial and ethnic identity in the post-Cold War world. In response, the left has adopted a new strategy: Deny the very existence of race! This is why we so frequently hear that “race is a social construct, with no biological validity” and that “science proves we are all the same.” Ironically, it is in connection with progress in understanding the human genome — progress in the very field that will definitively prove the biological reality of race — that we most often hear that race is nothing more than “superficial” surface characteristics.
Against this view, there are first of all the obvious physical differences between human population groups that everyone recognizes. There is also genetic evidence that can be used independently of traditional methods to classify different human populations into racial groups that are virtually identical to those based on the allegedly “superficial” traits studied by traditional physical anthropology. As Professor Glayde Whitney has written in these pages:
These data are therefore a virtually irrefutable demonstration of the reality of race — a purely statistical analysis of allele frequencies [genetic differences from one group to another] gives results that are essentially identical to the racial groupings established by traditional anthropology.
An honest evaluation of the data confirms the reality of race. But let us look at the arguments on the other side.
“We are 99.9 percent (or some other number) genetically identical; so there can be no race differences and no races.”
Although it is true that human populations share roughly 99.9 percent of their genes, it is also true that humans share over 98 percent of their genes with chimpanzees, and a very high amount with animals like mice and dogs. Many of these genes produce basic body structures all mammals have in common; differences between organisms are caused by very small genetic differences.
Men and women are 99.998 percent identical but no one suggests that men and women are identical.
Current evidence suggests that all the sex differences between men and women are the result of just one genetic difference — one gene (the Testes Determining Factor) out of an estimated 50,000-100,000! This would mean men and women are 99.998 to 99.999 percent genetically identical, yet no one suggests that sex is a mere “social construct.” In like manner, the genetic differences between humans and chimpanzees, which no one denies, can be described as 12 to 20 times the genetic differences between racial groups.
Tiny genetic differences can have huge phenotypic consequences because genes are ordered in a hierarchical fashion. Some genes are “master genes,” and control the expression of a number of other genes, each of which may further control several other genes. Also, the expression of each gene is controlled by regions called “promoters” and “enhancers,” usually located in front of the functional part of the gene. A small change in the promoter region of gene “X” can alter its expression. X may control genes A, B, C, D, E, F. Gene A in turn may control its own set of genes. Even if all of the genes other than “X” are identical between two groups, the one difference in “X” would be sufficient to produce large group differences.
It is not the quantity of genetic difference that is important, but the nature of the differences: which genes are different, in what ways they differ, and the consequences of these differences. Breeds of dogs are analogous to human races. It is likely that different breeds are as close genetically as different races of humans, but there is no doubt that these subtle variations result in significant differences in appearance, intelligence, and behavior.
It is also worth considering that a butterfly and the caterpillar from which it developed are 100 percent genetically identical! The genes do not change; the enormous differences between caterpillar and butterfly result from the activation of different genes at different times. This should give some pause to those who think a 0.1 percent difference in tens of thousands of human genes “makes no difference.”
“There is more genetic variation within human groups than between groups; therefore, group differences are invalid.”
This is another very popular argument that, although true, does not at all mean that race is of no significance. The flaw in this argument is the same as in the “99.9 percent argument,” in that it stresses quantity — genetic “bean counting” — rather than the importance of genetic differences and their consequences. Indeed, there is more genetic variation within groups than between groups, but if this variation does not influence the expression of important genes, it is not of much consequence. There is considerable genetic variation between siblings and between parents and children, but this does not alter the fact that they are more closely related to each other than to strangers.
Once again Prof. Whitney has demonstrated the absurdity of the “variation” argument. He points out that one could take the total genetic diversity contained within the population of Belfast and a troop of macaque monkeys and give it an index of 100 percent. Surprising as it may seem, more than half of that diversity will be found both in the population of Belfast and in the monkey troop. There is great genetic diversity even between two individuals who are very similar to each other. This does not, of course, mean that Irishmen are more like macaques than they are like their neighbors, though this is precisely the way the there-are-no-races advocates use the argument when they apply it to humans.
Prof. Whitney explains that just as in the case of the genetic differences between men and women, “the meaningful question about racial differences is not the percentage of total diversity, but rather how the diversity is distributed among the races, what traits it influences, and how it is patterned.” Small genetic differences can translate into important physical and behavioral differences.
“Population variation is continuous and human traits vary across a spectrum, so discrete racial entities do not exist.”
This is a scientific way of saying that since hybrids (racially or ethnically mixed populations) exist, no single race exists. This is an amazingly popular argument, even though it is easily refuted. No one has ever thought the existence of hybrid populations of animals means these animals cannot be classified into distinct groups. This is self-evident. Your dog may be a mix of German Shepherd and Great Dane, but this does not mean there are no German Shepherds or Great Danes. The existence of dog hybrids means only that different breeds of dog can mate and produce offspring. Dogs and wolves — separate species — can mate and produce offspring but it is still easy to tell a dog from a wolf.
There are certainly places in which there has been much human mixing and where there are racial gradients — Central Asia, Latin America, North Africa. The existence of hybrid populations in these areas in no way disproves the existence of other populations that are genetically more differentiated — in Europe, the Far East, and sub-Saharan Africa.
This “continuous variation” argument is so illogical it is a wonder anyone takes it seriously. The existence of mixtures does not invalidate the existence of the original components of mixtures. The fact that red and yellow can be mixed to produce orange hardly means that red and yellow are illusions or do not exist. Although racial gradation is far from being a perfect and continuous gradient, even those variations in nature that do lie along such a gradient can be classified into distinct groups. The continuous variation of light frequencies in the rainbow, for example, are easily grouped into the distinct colors that virtually all people recognize.
“All human populations are mongrels, there is no such thing as a pure race; thus, there is no such thing as race.”
This argument is related to the previous one, except that it says we are all hybrids, so there is no such thing as race. First, no scientists talk about “pure” races. What does racial “purity” mean, anyway? It is true that certain populations are more genetically differentiated and distinct than are other more hybridized groups. If we consider Englishmen, Central Asians, and Koreans, we can make the relative statement that Koreans and Englishmen are more genetically (and phenotypically) distinct and differentiated than Central Asians, who are in some respects intermediate between East Asians and Europeans.
This does not imply that either Koreans or Englishmen are “pure,” which would presumably mean they can all trace their ancestries to a single population at a certain time. The English, for example, are a predominantly Nordic population made up of Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Normans/Vikings, Romans, and possibly early Mediterraneans. Many European groups are similarly composed of multiple related strains; if having an ancestry of different but relatively similar European groups makes someone a “mongrel,” then indeed we are all mongrels. But this does not invalidate in any way the concept of race, or the fact that the various “mongrel” populations are still genetically and phenotypically distinct from each other and thus are separate races. Both genetically and physically, Englishmen clearly belong in the European group and Koreans in the Northeast Asian group.
The “we are all mongrels” arguments fails in two ways. First, the various stocks that have gone into producing many of today’s ethnic groups were relatively similar to each other, so it stretches the definition of the word to call them “mongrels.” How different were the Anglo-Saxons from the Celts? Likewise, would a person of mixed English and German ancestry be considered a “mongrel?” French-Italian? Do we call the millions of white Americans of mixed European stock “mongrels?”
Second, mixtures of related stocks can stabilize over time, and form a new, unique, and separate ethnic group, race, or breed. Such is the case with the various European ethnic groups, formed by mixtures of related ethnic strains. Europeans could be bred for hundreds — perhaps thousands — of generations without producing offspring that look like Africans or Asians. The reverse is also true. Even if today’s races are the result of ancient mixtures the mixtures are distinct and extremely stable.
“Population differences are superficial and only skin-deep.”
This is simply not true. Many consistent group differences have been found in intelligence, behavior, brain size, resistance to disease, twinning rates, speed of maturation, etc. Prof. Arthur Jensen has gathered irrefutable proof of racial differences in average intelligence. In Race, Evolution and Behavior Prof. Philippe Rushton has not only documented the large number of other racial differences but shown how they fit the varying reproduction strategies followed by different racial groups. Sometimes the race-does-not-exist argument appears to be a desperate attempt to shut down the argument about racial differences that the left has clearly lost. Since egalitarians have nothing to say in the face of mountains of evidence for racial differences, they have suddenly shifted their ground and try to pretend that race itself does not exist.
Even the most anti-racist medical doctors recognize that transplant donors and recipients often have to be matched not just on the basis of race but on close ethnicity within race, because inter-racial transplants are likely to be rejected. They also know that people of different races react differently do the same drugs and suffer from different diseases. To say these differences are only “skin-deep” is completely at odds with reality.
“There has not been enough time for racial differences to have evolved.”
This is an odd argument because there has clearly been enough time for physical differences to evolve. Pygmies and Norwegians presumably once had a common ancestor but are now so different from each other a biologist from another planet might well think them different species. This argument therefore is an attempt to deny differences in average intelligence or other mental traits. In Why Race Matters Professor Michael Levin shows that the IQ difference between Europeans and black Africans has had more than enough time to develop during the estimated 4,400 generations since the two groups split from a common ancestor. According to his calculation,
it would have required a rate of selection per generation of 0.000106 against recessive genes, a very small rate of genetic change that is the equivalent to a change in 11 individuals per 100,000 per generation. In nature this is an extremely slow rate of evolutionary change.
“The white race — like all the others — is a social construct.”
Here we begin to see the motivation behind all of the “there is no such thing as race” nonsense. If people of European descent can be convinced that race does not exist, in particular that their race does not really exist, there will be no resistance to the displacement of whites by the forces currently at work in America, Europe, and elsewhere. People will not defend something they have been convinced is not real.
If — against their own instincts and the clear evidence of their senses — whites can be made to think race is an illusion they can have no reason to oppose across-the-board integration, miscegenation, and massive non-white immigration. If whites are mixing with and being displaced by people who are really no different from themselves nothing is being lost.
The irony, of course, is that when it comes to “affirmative action” — policies that penalize whites — the very people who say race is a social construct insist that it is a valid basis for preferential treatment. People who say race is not biological somehow have no difficulty claiming to be “black” or “Asian” or “American Indian” if there is an advantage in doing so.
Nor in the vast majority of cases is there the slightest disagreement about who belongs in which race. Children can distinguish race unerringly by the age of two or three. Nature is parsimonious and does not often endow its creatures with senses to distinguish things that do not matter. An inborn ability, acquired at a very early age, of who are “our people” and who are not is essential to group survival. Any attempt to override or downplay that ability is a direct attack on the group itself.
Needless to say, it is only whites who parrot obviously absurd notions about race and who pretend that indifference or even disloyalty to race is a virtue. Non-whites have a healthy consciousness of race and know that it is a fundamental part of individual and group identity. They must be hugely amused by the potentially suicidal silliness they hear whites urging each other to believe.
The claims of certain demagogues notwithstanding, Europeans are both a cultural and a biological reality. Like all racial and ethnic groups they have the right to preserve that reality and to resist efforts to obfuscate science in an attempt to eliminate races in fact, as well as name.
Michael Rienzi is the pseudonym of a biological scientist living in the Northeast.
SPECIAL REPORT |
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The Galton Report
A sampling of recent scientific literature
It’s Official: Races Differ Genetically
Ethnicity can be inferred from the frequencies of alternative forms, or alleles, of genes; allele patterns differ by racial origin.
Thus spake Science magazine, the official organ of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
We live in confused times. As science increasingly proves the fallacy of the egalitarian myth, politicians and scientists who know better keep feeding the public absurd and wrong banalities to the effect that races do not exist. The absurdity of these proclamations is all the greater in that sequencing of genomes from the different “ethnic groups” is only now beginning.
Even so it is already easy to categorize people by race just by looking at their genes. This is because there are many DNA sequences (such as STRs, or Short Tandem Repeats, and SNPs, or Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) that differ absolutely from one race to another. Many SNPs common in various African tribes have not been found among Caucasians or East Asians, and vice-versa: there are Asian-specific and Caucasian-specific markers not found among sub-Saharan Africans. Also there are markers that are found in all races but at very different frequencies. Combining the results of just a few such markers can determine race with virtual certainty (one out of many millions).
Forensic genetics — DNA profiling — makes use of these differences and could soon replace fingerprinting. In October, 1998, the FBI started CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) to consolidate DNA identification from the various state systems. CODIS looks at only 13 STR chromosome markers, but that is enough for absolutely certain individual identification: As Science notes,
The chance of two [unrelated] individuals on average having the same DNA profile [of just those 13 STRs] is about one in a million billion.
Soon to be added will be markers on the Y-chromosome, which is transmitted only in the male line, from father to son, and already a number of race-specific Y-markers have been found. In forensic applications Y-markers will be useful because many violent crimes are male-on-female, and the resulting “bodily fluids” are often a messy mix of DNA from both perpetrator and victim. Analysis of Y-markers will automatically concentrate only on the male DNA.
Forensic identification is also just beginning to use another source of DNA called mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA. This stuff is interesting because it exists outside the nucleus of the cell — in the mitochondria — and is passed in the egg, from mother to offspring. Thus all the individuals in a female line of descent have the same mtDNA. Of course, families differ, and races may be thought of as extended families, or sets of people related by common descent.
MtDNA is useful also because there is a lot of it: As Science notes, “there’s probably 10,000 times as much mtDNA as there is nuclear DNA. In a sample that’s aged or degraded, it’s quite common that the nuclear DNA has been degraded beyond the point of recovery, and yet there is mtDNA that can be recovered.”
This is why mtDNA is extracted from ancient remains, such as 100,000-year-old Neanderthals. It was mtDNA that linked the 9,000 year-old “Cheddar Man” to a “relative living today just down the road in Cheddar, England.” It is mtDNA that would have to be analyzed to determine Kennewick Man’s race.
For criminal identification the best is yet to come. There is research at places like the Galton Laboratory (University College London) on determining physical appearance from DNA. “Geneticists can assess the likelihood that a person is a redhead simply by testing for mutations in the gene for the receptor for a hormone that spurs production of the pigment melanin. All facial characteristics are on the agenda. A noble Romanesque profile or deeply cleft chin could be a villain’s downfall . . . [W]ithin 10 years we might be looking at genetic tests for the basis of the main facial characteristics like, for example, nose, chin, and forehead shape.” [Watson, A., “A new breed of high-tech detectives,” Science, Vol. 289, 11 Aug. 2000, Pp. 850-854].
Jewish Y-Chromosomes are Semitic
An international team of scientists from Israel, the United States, Italy, England, and South Africa, has investigated Y-chromosome markers to see if they shed light on the origins and genetic relationships of Diaspora Jewry.
They do. Studies of Y-chromosome markers (transmitted from father-to-son) show that “religious affiliation is a better predictor of the genetic affinity among most Jewish populations in our survey than their present-day geographic locations . . . [D]espite their high degree of geographic dispersion, Jewish populations from Europe, North Africa, and the Near East were less diverged genetically from each other than from any other group of populations in this study.” In other words, Y-chromosome markers indicate that Jews throughout Europe, North Africa and the Near East constitute a single genetically-related group that has bred endogamously despite wide dispersion.
Among the seven Jewish populations tested (Ashkenazi, Roman, North African, Near Eastern, Kurdish, Yemenite, Ethiopian), only the Black Ethiopian Jews were not a part of the Jewish genetic cluster. Instead, Ethiopian Jews were very similar to non-Jewish Ethiopians, and both populations were clearly distinct from Jews. Not surprisingly, Ethiopian Jews in Israel have encountered many problems, just as blacks have in other Western societies.
The Lemba tribe of southern African blacks, who speak a Bantu dialect and claim Jewish ancestry, were remotely related to other Jewish groups, with about 40 percent of their Y chromosomes coming from African blacks. It is thought that they are descended from Jewish traders who established a trading outpost on the African coast.
Complex statistics, including multidimensional scaling, show that non-Jewish sub-Saharan Africans, North Africans, and Europeans form three distinct genetic clusters. As in other genetic studies, the sub-Saharan cluster differed most from all other population groups or, as the authors put it, “sub-Saharan African populations were characterized by an almost completely different set of [markers].”
The Jewish populations (excluding the Ethiopian Jews) formed a tight group located at a point between the North African and European genetic clusters. In the center of the Jewish group (and indistinguishable from the Jews) were non-Jewish Palestinians and Syrians, while other non-Jewish Middle-Easterners (Saudi Arabians, Lebanese, and Druze) were on the periphery of the Jewish group. Further genetic tests confirmed a “close genetic affinity of Jewish and Middle-Eastern non-Jewish Populations.” These findings are consistent with Jewish history and folklore, according to which modern Diaspora Jews are descended from Middle-Eastern Semites and have remained genetically distinct from host populations.
The results appear to disprove Arthur Kestrel’s theory in The Thirteenth Tribe, according to which Ashkenazi Jews are descended from the Asian Khazar tribe that converted to Judaism in the eighth century. However, the results of this study are entirely from male-line Y-chromosomes. In the unlikely event that the Khazars were converted by the method described in Deuteronomy in which the men were killed and the women taken as prizes, analysis of mtDNA transmitted in the maternal line might tell a different story. The authors point out that “comprehensive comparisons of mtDNA variation in Jewish and neighboring non-Jewish populations are not yet available.” [Hammer, M. F., and 11 co-authors, (Communicated to NAS March 15, 2000), “Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, published on-line before print at www. pnas.org.]
The ‘Whites’ of Brazil
The racially mixed population of Brazil has played an important role in conceptions of the nature of man. In the nineteenth century Charles Darwin visited Brazil during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle and was struck by the extent of miscegenation. He wrote that the differences between African Negroes and Europeans were so great that any anatomist would classify them as separate species. However, he suggested they were better thought of as separate races (or subspecies) of a single species because of their proclivity to intermate.
In the mid-20th century Brazil was often held up to Americans as an ideal example of an integrated, hybridized, egalitarian society without racial discrimination. This utopian vision was false. Brazil remains a very stratified society in which lighter-skinned people and recent European and Asian (mostly Japanese) immigrants tend to be at the top of the social order with blacks at the bottom. Amerindians are relegated to reservations. In a 1996 census 51.6 percent of Brazilians called themselves white.
Recently scientists have analyzed the genetic markers of mtDNA, transmitted in the maternal line of descent, in order to determine the percentage mix in the present “white” population of Brazil from three sources: women of European descent; women from sub-Saharan Africa (blacks); and women from Amer-indian (or Asian) stock. This is possible because there are now known to be quite a few mtDNA markers that are unique to the major races.
The authors note that Europeans have been in Brazil for 500 years. Between 1500 and 1808 (when the country was opened to other nations) about 500,000 Portuguese — mostly men — immigrated and, for a time, were encouraged to mix with Indians to form a Brazilian population. After 1808, immigrants included a variety of European and Middle Eastern populations, as well as Japanese. From about 1551 until 1850 when the slave trade was halted, it is estimated that some 3.5 million blacks arrived.
The researchers analyzed mtDNA from 247 unrelated persons from the middle- and upper-middle-class — mostly whites. (Unfortunately, they do not identify their sample very well, giving the impression that it included at least some people who acknowledge mixed ancestry. If even a few obviously mixed-race people were included in a sample of “whites” the study exaggerated the extent of non-white admixture among people who consider themselves to be white.)
The results indicate that on average the maternal ancestry of “white” Brazilians from the middle- and upper-middle-classes is 33 percent American Indian, 28 percent African, and 39 percent European. The results varied somewhat by region of Brazil. In the north, mtDNA was 54 percent of Amerindian origin, while in the northeast the largest single component was 44 percent from Africans. In the south, European origin accounted for 66 percent of the mtDNA. The African mtDNA was mostly from central Africa, the areas of present-day Cameroon and Angola.
The authors conclude that “our mtDNA study of a random sample of white Brazilians has revealed an astonishingly high matrilineal contribution of Amerindians and Africans. Present-day Brazilians thus still carry the genetic imprint of the early-colonization phase: the pioneer-colonial population typically had Amerindian ancestry — and, after a few generations, increasingly African ancestry — in the maternal line but Portuguese ancestry in the paternal line.”
They also note that “these values are probably minimum percentages, because, since our study group is primarily composed of middle- and upper-middle-class Brazilians, a bias toward a higher contribution of European mtDNA is to be expected.” It should be pointed out that this study determined genetic contribution only from female ancestors. Even if we were to assume that every “white” in Brazil has had only pure European male ancestors, only 70 percent of the genes of the average “white” Brazilian are European. Of course, this is an impossible assumption because once the early mixes took place, at least some hybrid males undoubtedly went on to contribute to the “white” gene pool, so many “whites” undoubtedly have non-white ancestors on both sides of the family tree. In any case, it is clear that for Brazilians “white” is a considerably more flexible category than in the United States. [Juliana Alves-Silva & 6 co-authors, “The Ancestry of Brazilian mtDNA Lineages” American Journal of Human Genetics, August 2000, v.67#2, Pp. 444-461.]
Contributing Editor Glayde Whitney is professor in psychology, psychobiology and neuroscience at Florida State University.
ARTICLE |
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Immigration and the Election
Commentary from Canada.
“I’ve never heard of a country with an immigration policy as plain stupid as this.”
— Gordon Shrum, former Chancellor of Simon Fraser University, March 26, 1975.
In the quarter of a century since Professor Shrum spoke out, nothing has changed except for the worse. Traditional Canada, or if you like, White Canada, is being replaced by Anything Canada and Nothing Canada, with all the joys that such a transformation entails. Yet silence is the rule. And now we are going to have an election in which it will be pretended once again that all is well in the best of all racial and cultural worlds.
As a glance at any daily newspaper shows, however, it isn’t. On October 20, most of the front page of the Vancouver Sun was devoted to a story of Sikh crime under the headline, “Gang slayings escalate.” And there were six pictures of Sikhs who had recently been murdered. Not by whites, but by their own kind.
Inside, there was a list of 25 Sikhs, all of whom had been killed, charged with murder or manslaughter, or otherwise involved in deadly crime. Plus another headline that read: “Police frustrated by lack of community cooperation,” meaning that the Sikh community was either too scared to give information to the police or too loyal on racial grounds to do so.
Large scale immigrant crime is of course not confined to Sikhs. Not only on the West Coast, but right across the country, criminals from India, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, and the Caribbean are hard at it on the crime front, having discovered that Ottawa welcomes them, that our courts will coddle them (“Convicted drug dealer can stay,” National Post, Oct. 12) and that our people have been bullied into keeping their mouths shut by human rights commissions or by having the “racist” finger pointed at them.
Is that an overstatement? Not at all. It’s an understatement. Let’s go to the news reports again.
“Blood in the streets” — Vancouver Province story of Feb. 17 describing how the public is at risk as Vietnamese gangs go on the rampage.
“40 kids seized in war on drugs” — Vancouver Sun story about Viet kids involved in drug trade because their parents know nothing will happen to them.
“Thousands of Tamil guerrillas in Toronto, police say” National Post story telling us that the city may be home to 8,000 members of terrorist factions.
“Canadian financed terror bombs, Sri Lankans say” — the “Canadian” being a Tamil Tiger who allegedly paid for 60 tons of explosives for use in bombing attacks in Sri Lanka that killed 86 civilians and injured 1,400.
Not to mention that our very own Liberal finance minister was pleased to speak at a dinner put on by a group described as being a front organization for Tamil terrorists.
“Canada for sale?” — headline in The Report magazine of June 19 concerning a former foreign service officer who claims that Chinese criminals have subverted officials and politicians at a high level in Ottawa (Project Sidewinder). Despite all the evidence, the media and the politicians of all parties, including the Alliance Party, don’t really want to know about it. The Alliance did raise the Tamil dinner item in the House (and was called racist for its pains) but no-one dares to raise the real issue, which is:
Do we want this kind of immigration? And do we want to replace the majority white population with what we are getting from elsewhere?
We don’t, but what we want has never mattered, certainly not to the Liberals, Tories or the NDP. They want what THEY want, which is immigrant votes and support from immigrant associations financed by our taxes. It makes a neat kind of circle that cowed white Canadians cannot break.
Nor need we expect any lead from the media. The last anti-immigration editorial appeared over 30 years ago when the Liberals were planning their racial revolution and when Tom Kent, Lester Pearson’s stooge, was saying privately that universal immigration would break the Tory hold on Toronto, which it did.
At that time, of course, the immigration fifth columns did not exist. We also had free speech.
These days, despite all the stuff in its own pages, you will never see an editorial in the Vancouver Sun challenging our immigration policies. The same applies from coast to coast. As far as immigration is concerned the media are staffed by deaf mutes, and the politicians are no different. That includes the Alliance Party, even though Sikhs tried to get rid of [Alliance member of parliament] Art Hanger in Calgary.
Any political leader who damned what is going on would sweep the key province of Ontario, media or no media. But it won’t happen. In this country there can be revolutions, but no counter-revolutions. We can stop Mount Logan being renamed Mount Trudeau, but we cannot stop Canada being renamed Mount Nothing.
Reprinted by permission from the author. From 1983 to 1997 Doug Collins was a columnist for Vancouver’s North Shore News. He has twice been brought before “human rights” tribunals for columns that hurt the feelings of ethnic minorities. In Canada the truth is no defense, and Mr. Collins is fighting in court to change the law.
BOOK REVIEW |
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The Mind of the White Man
What Caused our Decline?
From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, Jacques Barzun, HarperCollins, 2000, 877 pp., $36.00
From Dawn to Decadence is long, erudite and, despite the attention it has received from the major media, important. In what is probably the last major book in a long and celebrated career, French-born Jacques Barzun writes about the west with an eye to understanding why, as he puts it, “the culture of the last 500 years is ending.”
The official view, of course, is that with ever-expanding rights for everyone, and with a benevolent United States in the lead, we are marching towards a radiant destiny. It is therefore immensely significant that a man of Prof. Barzun’s stature and perspective is prepared to say that our civilization is collapsing. Despite his great learning, Prof. Barzun misses some obvious causes and correlates of decadence, but in these evil times one can only welcome a major statement from a man who loves the west.
It is important to note at the outset that this is mainly a history book and a diagnosis only in passing. The cultural pulse-taking — though of particular interest here — is sprinkled through perhaps 50 pages out of nearly 900. The rest are a personal and sometimes idiosyncratic account of what the white man has been up to since the Reformation, and Prof. Barzun sees several great themes at work in the last 500 years. From 1500 to 1660 Europe was consumed by the struggle between the Church of Rome and its wayward children. From 1661 until the French Revolution in 1789, Prof. Barzun sees the major questions as the status of the individual and the role of kings and governments. From 1790 until 1920, the west struggled with the question of how to achieve social and economic equality, and since that time it has generally gone into decline.
Prof. Barzun does not stick slavishly to these themes. One of the pleasures of this book is its wide-ranging treatment of people and events, which often come alive quite charmingly. Each reader will have different favorites, but there is an engaging account of the court of Louis XIV and of the French cultural expedition to Egypt in 1798. We learn how the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra got its name and that the word “opera” is not the plural of “opus.” Prof. Barzun includes an admiring account of the aristocratic form of democracy that kept Venice prosperous for 500 years, and tells the story of the playwright Beau-marchais’ unrecognized efforts in support of the American Revolution.
There are a great many turns and twists in this centuries-long story, most of them well narrated. Even the non-historian, though, can find sour notes. Prof. Barzun takes Tolstoy’s late-in-life saintliness at face value despite his well known debauchery, and seems to think people still take Freud seriously. Even more surprising, he writes that the British gave the Boers “a generous peace” at the conclusion of what was one of the most transparently exploitative wars a European army ever waged.
Decadence
But what about decadence, and why should we care if our culture unravels? Prof. Barzun is bold enough to say it is better than others:
The west offered the world a set of ideas and institutions not found earlier or elsewhere.” “In the non-western world elected legislatures are either make-believe institutions or bodies in recurrent disarray.
Western music
has raised the expressive power of music to heights and depths unattained in other cultures.
He says that long before we scour the Third-World for scraps to add to the cultural cannon we should rediscover the neglected masterpieces of our own culture. He is disgusted by ritual denunciations of the west and calls the reign of political correctness a modern-day Inquisition.
But to return to decadence, it is important to know how it feels:
It implies in those who live in such a time no loss of energy or talent or moral sense. On the contrary, it is a very active time, full of deep concerns, but peculiarly restless, for it sees no clear lines of advance. The loss it faces is that of Possibility. The forms of art as of life seem exhausted, the stages of development have been run through. Institutions function painfully. Repetition and frustration are the intolerable result. Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.
One of the institutions that function most painfully is the welfare state; Prof. Barzun puts himself at odds with our time by attacking what many believe to be its greatest achievement. He says any attempt to ensure security for all while promoting the desire for freedom is
self-contradictory and probably unworkable,
and that government hand-outs are
the opposite of charity to the sick and poor.
Writing of the present as if it were already past, he adds,
the task of distributing benefits alone was overwhelming. High taxes were unavoidable, and so was waste . . . There was still poverty, derelicts on the street, unattended illness, and complaints of “not enough’ from every welfared group in turn . . .
He points out that in the frenzy to distribute wealth the old functions of government like defense and justice become
a kind of afterthought,
yet no white society dares consider any alternative. Redistribution means that
‘legislation filled hundreds of pages, an impenetrable jungle for citizens and officials both’ because ‘the welfare state must pass laws by the bushel.’
But most significantly, Prof. Barzun does not even trust the welfare impulse:
[C]ompassion easily becomes a selfish pleasure fostering self-righteousness. It requires a constant supply of the poor and the weak, instead of encouraging the healthful and self-reliant.
All this busy-body uplift has produced a
ceaseless endeavor to aid and permit [that] was a spectacle unknown to any previous civilization.
Prof. Barzun has no faith in universal solutions because he understands people are unequal. He writes that Jefferson’s famous declaration about equality was in a denunciation of the abuses of royal power, not in a charter of government. He notes much jabber about the search for excellence, especially in public schools, but finds that
at the same time the society pounces on any show of superiority as elitism. Observers spoke of the decline of authority, but how could it survive in a company of equals?
He points out that most people are nobodies, not because they are “oppressed” but because of their “modest powers.” He has no time for coddling and excuse-making:
Finding oneself was a misnomer: a self is not found but made.
All this implies that part of our decline is western man’s determination to deny inherent differences in ability — but Prof. Barzun fails to make this argument.
Still, he piles up signs of decadence with energy and acuity, pointing out that one of its basic symptoms is the disappearance of any sense of forward motion:
This ending [of the culture] is shown by the deadlocks of our time: for and against nationalism, for and against individualism, for and against the high arts, for and against strict morals and religious belief.
He points out that not even science, which in the 19th century seemed infallible, clearly points the way. We are confused by conflicting scientific views on global warming, genetically modified crops, food additives, agent orange, or the costs of illegitimacy. The disappearance of common understanding means the disappearance of common goals:
[M]ost of what government sets out to do for the public good is resisted as soon as proposed. Not two, but three or four groups, organized or impromptu, are ready with contrary reasons as sensible as those behind the project. The upshot is a floating hostility to things as they are.
Prof. Barzun writes that until about 100 years ago, every educated man knew Latin and Greek and that this was a tangible expression of cultural kinship to civilizations thousands of years old. Classical languages have gone the way of universal Bible reading, leaving nothing but television and comic strips as cultural common ground. Likewise, up until the 19th century the purpose of art was moral uplift; Bach, for example, thought of all his compositions as prayer in the form of music. By contrast, today’s art is
the attack on authority, the ridicule of anything established, the distortion of language and objects, the indifference to clear meaning, the violence to the human form, the return to the primitive elements of sensation ..
Prof. Barzun sees similar decline everywhere:
In the 1890s, sports then in their infancy had been praised for developing the high moral outlook called sportsmanship. In less than a hundred years, sports had lost their honor, though not their glamour.
Likewise, until the late 20th century Europeans tried to look their best in public; now,
to appear unkempt, undressed, and for perfection unwashed, is the key signature of the whole age.
The very mechanisms for propagating tradition have decayed:
In our day, celebrations with significant phrases and music have become obsolete; and the words pomp and patriotism invite ridicule. But for centuries such public reminders of community proved indispensable as popular spectacle and conveyor of tradition.
We have witnessed the birth of what is almost a new species:
Modern Man looks forward, a born future-ist, thus reversing the old presumption about ancestral wisdom and the value of prudent conservation. It follows that whatever is old is obsolete, wrong, dull, or all three.
Entertainment becomes the chief goal in life for many people.
At the same time, “pluralism” has the practical effect of forbidding judgments of value since no culture or point of view is permitted to be superior to any other. This is reflected in the university, where
the number of courses . . . kept increasing, in the belief that any human occupation, interest, hobby, or predicament could furnish the substance of an academic course.
Likewise in the university, Prof. Barzun finds that motive and attitude are often so much more important than facts that if anyone can claim loudly enough that his opponents are tainted he can win the debate by default.
At a more existential level, as Christianity declines in importance, people adopt the view — heretical in any but our own age — that man’s very existence is absurd. It is perhaps in response to this that new cults and religions — a sure sign of decadence — have become so popular. Even among the secular, in the 1970s the British psychologist Ronald D.Laing sowed yet more seeds of distress by arguing that only the insane were really sane.
But perhaps Prof. Barzun’s most concise indictment of our time is to point out that no one today says, as Erasmus and Wordsworth did, “Oh, what a joy to be alive!” Indeed, it is hard to imagine those words on anyone’s lips today.
But what caused our decline?
The blow that hurled the modern world on its course of self-destruction was the Great War of 1914-18,
The west stumbled into a pointless war that killed some 10 million men:
The reckless expenditure of lives was bound to make a postwar world deficient in talents as well as deprived of needful links to the prewar culture. What proved equally devastating in the sequel was the policy of the Allies toward Germany.
Prof. Barzun sees the second war as an almost inevitable consequence of the vengeful peace that ended the first. By then
western civilization had brought itself into a condition from which full recovery was unlikely.
Prof. Barzun notes that The Great War was the first total European war. Conscription involved millions of civilians in the first conflict to bring out the full bloodlust of intellectuals, artists, and the clergy. Freud, for example, wrote of “giving all his libido” to Austria-Hungary. Even socialists, who were supposed to defend class rather than nation, happily butchered their fellow proletarians.
Prof. Barzun notes that in 1917 there was a mutiny in the French trenches that was forcibly put down and kept secret. It is yet another sign of our times that in 1998 the French prime minister said the mutineers were worthy of respect, and the press agreed. As another sidelight on the war, Prof. Barzun points out that the use of colonial troops
marked the entry of Third World settlers into the European nations.
By unfortunate coincidence, just as the west was tearing itself apart, Communism appeared as an attractive alternative. For many intellectuals, it seemed to offer the promise of a fresh start with clean hands but it only hastened the decline.
Prof. Barzun sees the war’s effect on art as a harbinger of its deadly effect on everything else. After the carnage,
it was impossible to paint, sculpt, or compose in the old way: equally impossible to start from scratch like a beginner.
Artistic movements began to
take past and present and make fun of everything in it.
The Dadaist movement was based on the “the nihilism of the joke” and avant-garde artists praised “the maximum of disorder.” The celebration of Found Art, Junk Art, and Disposable Art
told the world that art as an institution with a moral or social purpose was dead.
Later, fads of art by children, convicts, the mentally ill and even chimpanzees was part of what Prof. Barzun called “the most enduring idea” of modern times: that there is no such thing as genius and that all people are creative. The result:
Individuals of ordinary talent or glibness were encouraged to become professionals and thereby doomed to disappointment; and too many others, with just enough ability to get by, contributed to the lowering of standards and the surfeit of art.
The 1950s may have seemed a time of cultural coherence, but according to Prof. Barzun the damage had already been done:
Modernism [is] at once the mirror of disintegration and an incitement to extending it. And all this was going on long before the moral, sexual, and political rebellions that shook the western world in the 1960s.
Other Causes
Prof. Barzun proposes no causes for the west’s decadence other than the war. This is particularly surprising because much of his narrative is devoted to what was once the animating spirit of the west — Christianity — and he fully understands how important the Church has been to Europe. The Reformation, he tells us, was a great psychological blow because:
It posed the issue of diversity of opinion as well as of faith. It fostered new feelings of nationhood . . . It deprived the West of its ancestral sense of unity and common descent.
This, even when Europeans were all still Christians. Prof. Barzun repeatedly underlines how inevitable faith felt to our ancestors:
[I]n earlier times people rarely thought of themselves as ‘having’ or ‘belonging’ to a religion . . . just as today nobody has “a physics;’ there is only one and it is automatically taken to be the transcript of reality.
This is in stark contrast to our time in which
people blithely speak of someone’s (or their own) religious preference — as if it were something like a taste in food or sport.
Unquestioned religious unity was an impregnable bulwark against doubt or despair:
When all around take fundamental ideas for granted, these must be the truth. For most minds there is no comfort like it.
Europe was so much the Church, and the Church Europe that the continent was known as Christendom, and “Christian” and “white man” meant the same thing. In Treasure Island, when Jim comes across a castaway, the first words out of the man’s mouth are “I’m poor Ben Gunn, I am; and I haven’t spoke with a Christian these three years.” Jim himself immediately thinks, “I could now see that he was a white man like myself . . .”
Christianity made men proof against the nihilism, revolt, cynicism, and rejection of tradition that Prof. Barzun deplores. How can the decline of something so central to cultural and even racial identity not have a devastating effect? Although one could well wonder whether the retreat of the white man’s ancient faith was not, itself, as much consequence as cause of decadence, it is hard to understand how Prof. Barzun managed to overlook the connection.
Something else Prof. Barzun has failed to notice is the European’s peculiar inability to reproduce. Every Third-World dung heap has a thriving population, but the wealthiest people in all of history are too cynical and self-absorbed to have children. If anything were a sign of decadence, surely this is.
Not surprising but still disappointing is Prof. Barzun’s obliviousness to race. For example, he laments armed patrols in schools and assaults on teachers, but fails to notice this problem afflicts only certain schools. Perhaps we can expect no better from someone who is also the author of a book called Race: a Study in Superstition (written in 1978 and now mercifully out of print), but he is sniffing around the edges of the problem when he writes:
Look at the phrase ‘our past’ or ‘our culture’ and the reader is entitled to ask ‘Who is we?’ That is for each person to decide. It is a sign of present disarray that nobody can tell which individuals or groups see themselves as part of the evolution described in these pages.
In fact, it is easy to say who Prof. Barzun’s story is about. He need only ask himself how many non-whites have bought his book, much less think of it as a story about “their” people. He also writes that we face
nothing but constraints at every turn, because the stranger, the machine, the bureaucrat’s rule impose their will. Hence the desire to huddle in small groups whose ways are congenial.
What about large groups whose ways are congenial? Prof. Barzun emits a glimmer of light when he asserts that
the strongest tendency of the later 20C was Separatism.
He also notices that the Third-Worlders who have come to the west huddle in their own separate societies and that those who point this out are “racists.” Why can’t he see why this is or where it leads?
He is also on to something when he asks:
‘What Makes a Nation?’ A large part of the answer to that question is: common historical memories. When the nation’s history is poorly taught in schools, ignored by the young, and proudly rejected by qualified elders, awareness of tradition consists only in wanting to destroy it.
This is true and even well put, but who calls Columbus a pirate and Washington a wicked slave-holder? If the historical memory of American expansion is a celebration for whites it certainly is not for Indians or Hispanics.
But at an even deeper level, what can we say about a civilization whose direct heirs seem perfectly prepared to open their homelands to all comers and let themselves be displaced by aliens? This fatal loss of confidence is another unmistakable sign of decay Prof. Barzun would recognize immediately if he were ever to find it in any non-European people. The aliens who are displacing us are eager to overturn our monuments, insult our heroes, rewrite our history, and uproot our culture. They know they are not men of the west and don’t want to be. Their allies among the white self-haters know this, too. It is only the defenders of our civilization who do not understand that it is the work of a specific people. It is one of the profoundest stupidities of our time not to recognize what every non-white knows without reflection: that “the west” is a monument to one race only, and that without that race it cannot survive.
IN THE NEWS |
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O Tempora, O Mores!
‘We’d Rather Not Know’
The city of Nyack on the Hudson River north of New York City has long cultivated an image of racial diversity. It is one of those places interracial families move to looking for a welcome. Earlier this year, a parents’ group set off a stink bomb by releasing statistics about racial differences in school achievement. Just as they are everywhere else, blacks are more likely to be in remedial courses, less likely to take honors courses, and more likely to be suspended. The news apparently came as a terrible shock to this well-heeled suburb, which spends $13,000 per year per child in school. Blacks yelled about “racism” while whites claimed that problems start at home and can’t be cured in school. People got into shouting matches on the sidewalk and a few windows were smashed. “This has polarized our community like no other issue,” said Kim Raso Stewart, a white parent of two children. “It’s like us against them.”
What there has been general agreement on is that the numbers should not have been released at all. Black school board member Pierre Davis complains that “for some folks, this is just going to prove the point: “Hey, I told you those folks weren’t too bright.’” White parent Meg Ferrazano says, “It made the district look bad. Anybody who read the paper would say, “Oh my God, I won’t send my child to that school; look at all the problems they have.’ That’s not good for our school, our town, our property values or anything else.” Edmund Gordon who specializes in the racial achievement gap says, “I think that Nyack school people probably thought they were doing as well as any other school district, but they didn’t know what to do about it, so why open up this can of worms?”
Fewer school districts are going to get away with the ostrich approach. Several states already require publication of race data and New York plans to do so next year. Under a new program, authorities will grade schools on the performance of students of each race. In the past, if a school had a small number of blacks with bad grades it might not lower the averages enough to affect the schools overall grade. Next year it could. This could make for edifying discussion when teachers and parents find out their schools are mediocre — but only because the blacks and Hispanics do so poorly.
Another idea behind publishing racial data is that it is supposed to inspire schools to close the performance gap. This, too, could have lively results. When the data from every school from every district in every state are the same — no matter what kind of remedial tricks have been tried — it might even force people to consider the real reasons for racial the gap. [Kate Zernike, Racial Gap in Schools Splits a Town Proud of Diversity, New York Times, Aug. 4, 2000.]
Mbarmy Mbeki
South African President Thabo Mbeki has become famous for promoting the view that AIDS is caused by something other than the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). He has finally let the other shoe drop, and now says the HIV theory is part of a fraud perpetrated by western drug companies on the developing world. If the companies can convince people HIV is to blame for the epidemic there are fortunes to be made selling drugs that do no good. In an address to African National Congress members of parliament, Mr. Mbeki also said the CIA was part of the disinformation campaign. He added that the west is particularly annoyed with him because South Africa is leading the Third World in the struggle to get better terms of trade with industrial countries. This latest outburst has dismayed Mr. Mbeki’s handlers, who have tried to downplay his eccentric views on AIDS and realize they are damaging his credibility. [Howard Barrell, Mbeki Fingers CIA in Aids Conspiracy, Daily Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg), Oct. 6, 2000.]
Mr. Mbeki has, however, helped his image somewhat by finally condemning the violent expropriation of white-owned farms in neighboring Zimbabwe. Now that it looks as though a good number of Zimbabweans have turned against their president (see next item), Mr. Mbeki appears to be willing to do the same. His comments are also seen as an attempt to reassure foreign investors who, he has discovered, disapprove of expropriation. [Ed Stoddard, Mbeki Comments on Zimbabwe Welcomed by Analysts, Reuters, Oct. 26, 2000.]
More Chaos in Zimbabwe
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the main Zimbabwe opposition party that won 57 of 120 contested seats in elections in June, has offered a motion to impeach President Robert Mugabe. He is charged with failing to maintain law and order during the elections, during which his supporters killed at least 26 black MDC supporters and five white farmers. Mr. Mugabe helped prompt the measure by granting amnesty to virtually everyone involved in the violence, that is to say, to his own supporters. The impeachment charge also includes an indictment for the slaughter of an estimated 20,000 Ndebele tribesmen during the mid-1980s when Mr. Mugabe was consolidating power for his own tribe, the Shona.
Mr. Mugabe has responded as usual by attacking whites. He now says resistance to the black liberation war of the 1970s was “genocide.” Beginning with Ian Smith, the last white leader of what was then Rhodesia, he promises to charge every white who supported the former regime with war crimes. “After all,” he explains, “in Europe they are still hunting for those behind Nazi war crimes, and Zimbabwe cannot be an exception.” MDC officials have pointed out that this would violate the constitution, which grants amnesty to all participants in both sides of the war, and would open the door to charges against “liberation” leaders as well.
In the meantime blacks continue to force white farmers off their land and out of business. Production of both food and export crops has plummeted, driving up prices. This has led to riots and looting in the major cities, and increasing numbers of Zimbabweans are ready for Mr. Mugabe go. According to a recent poll, 75 percent of Zimbabweans want President Mugabe to resign and 51 percent would like to see him prosecuted for human rights abuses. [Angus Shaw, Mugabe Threatens To Try Whites, AP, Oct. 26, 2000.]
The Old Yam Trick
We reprint the following item verbatim from the London Telegraph:
Two members of a lynch mob in Lagos, Nigeria, who attacked a man they believed had turned two children into dogs, were shot dead by police. A rumour had swept through the Lagos suburb of Oko-Oba that the man, a dealer from northern Nigeria, had transformed a missing boy and girl after giving them each 20 naira (10p). Local vigilantes detained the man and gathered up the dogs. Police arrived as they were about to lynch him and arrested 15 people. During the fighting, two of the mob died. The rest, including the dogs, were taken to Lagos state police command in Ikeja. A police spokesman, Victor Chilaka, said: ‘We do not know quite what happened so we are detaining all of them.’ Including the dogs? ‘Including the dogs.’ On what charge? ‘I am not sure,’ he said. ‘I am sure we will not hold them for long.’ Belief in witchcraft, and the power of humans to transform themselves into animals and vice versa, is widespread in Nigeria. In the past two years newspapers have reported alleged incidents of a vulture which became a man and a schoolboy who turned into a yam. [James Allen, ‘Witchcraft’ Lynch Mob Members Shot, Telegraph (London), Oct. 15, 2000.]
Reasons to Stay Honest
The AIDS epidemic in South Africa is raging through the prisons. The disease now accounts for about 90 percent of non-violent deaths among South African prisoners, which have gone from only 186 in 1995 to more than 1,000 in the first ten months of 2000. Gideon Morris of the South African Office of the Inspecting Judge says rape spreads the disease: “It is estimated that between 70 percent and 80 percent of all arrested suspects are sodomized by fellow prisoners before they are even officially charged,” he explains. “Many suspects are raped within the first 48 hours of being detained.” Overcrowding and lax prison guards make it easy for prisoners to assault each other. Mr. Morris is particularly concerned about the 40 percent or so of arrested suspects who are eventually found not guilty but go home with a case of AIDS. [AIDS-Linked Deaths in S. African Prisons Soar, AFP, Oct. 17, 2000.]
South African Suicide
Half a century ago, South African Bobby Locke was an international golfing hero. He won the British Open four times and was a source of great pride for his country. At the height of his fame he bought a five-story apartment building in Yeoville, a fashionable white Johannesburg suburb. After his death in 1987 his wife and daughter continued to live in the building, although after apartheid the neighborhood quickly lost both its white majority and its charm. Mrs. Locke, 80, and her daughter Carolyn, 40, complained to friends about the tenants they were now getting and about how the neighborhood had deteriorated. Mother and daughter were also much disturbed by the latter’s failed marriage five years ago to a black man who, it turned out, was already married. They become increasingly depressed and reclusive.
The two recently bid the world good by by swallowing poison washed down with Champagne. The caretaker found them holding hands and lying side-by-side in their night dresses. [Karen MacGregor, Squalor of South Africa Drives Golf Hero’s Family to Double Suicide, Times (London), Oct. 8, 2000.]
Lovefest in Libya
More details are emerging on the exodus of blacks from Libya. As thousands of deported Nigerians stream home — some 10,000 are eventually expected to return — they tell harrowing tales of murder and mayhem. Although figures are difficult confirm, more than 130 blacks appear to have been killed and many more injured in anti-black rioting that began in August and continued into September. Some of the Nigerians have returned with knife wounds that support their horror stories.
Gabriel Edoh, a 32-year-old soccer player from a second-division Libyan team says, “The Libyans went on the rampage and started killing our people indiscriminately. If you were black they would kill you.” He says he was moved into a camp with other blacks but Libyans burned the camp down. Soldiers then moved the blacks to a military camp. Other Nigerians have been showing up with nothing but the clothes they are wearing. Curiously, the Nigerian authorities continue to blame their own citizens rather than the Libyans. Nigeria’s Minister for Cooperation in Africa Dapo Sarumi says: “Most of the deportees are criminals or prostitutes who have become an embarrassment.”
Although Nigerians are blamed for starting the trouble, Libyan rioters killed and burned out blacks from many countries. On October 20 and 21, 1,400 Malians returned home, some having lived in Libya for as long as ten years. Like his Nigerian counterpart, Malian foreign ministry spokesman Moussa Coulibaly did not denounce the Libyans but instead explained, “Most of those who have come back were young people unfamiliar with the customs of the host country and quickly found themselves in the midst of hostilities.”
On October 24, the Liberian ambassador to Libya, Yank Smythe, reported he would repatriate 110 Liberians who have been living at the embassy since the rioting began. They want to go back to Liberia rather than risk further violence by returning to their homes in Tripoli.
Ironically, the troubles are a result of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi’s attempts to make friends with sub-Saharan countries. He relaxed immigration rules, and quickly brought in one million blacks — a sudden jolt to a population that was only six million to begin with. A dispute between Nigerian and Libyan drug dealers is reported to have sparked the violence. [AFP, More Than 130 Black Africans Reported Killed in Libya, Oct. 2000. Panafrican News Agency, Plus de 1.400 Rapatriés de Libye Regagnent le Mali, Oct. 24, 2000. Panafrican News Agency, Le Libéria va Rapatrier 110 de ses Ressortissants de Libye, Oct. 24, 2000.]
White Conspiracy
The Roanoke, Virginia, branch of the NAACP has uncovered a vast white conspiracy against black people. Rev. Carl Tinsley acting president of the branch says state, local and federal law enforcement and judicial authorities are part of the plot, along with the Internal Revenue Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration. “When we fought the Klan, at least we knew who they were because they wore hoods and sheets,” he explained. “These [white authorities] are the same people who have the same biases. It’s a conspiracy.”
Rev. Tinsley offered no evidence of a conspiracy but explained that this is because “there are no clear measures for monitoring what has been going on.” He says the main source of his information is increasing complaints from blacks of unfair treatment by police and employers. More specifically, he says blacks are forced into selling cocaine for a living because they cannot get jobs. He listed other problems: Black police officer Frederick Pledge has been indicted for racketeering and drug conspiracy, black lawyer Rickey Young has been indicted for tax evasion and mail fraud, and black doctor Verna Lewis has been convicted of tax fraud. Rev. Tinsley declined to comment on the guilt or innocence of these people but said they are in trouble because they are black.
Some of Roanoke’s blacks do not seem to be aware of the conspiracy. Jeff Artis, vice president of the Roanoke branch of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, says: “I am insulted and embarrassed by their [the NAACP’s] support of [indicted black] officer Frederick Pledge. Pledge’s problems aren’t because he’s black.” [John D. Cramer, Charges of Conspiracy, Roanoke Times, Aug. 17, 2000.]
California Dreaming
California has passed a law requiring insurance companies that operate in the state to provide information about ante-bellum life insurance polices the companies may have written on slaves. The bill, introduced by Democratic State Senator Thomas Hayden, at this point requires only that the information be turned over, but penalties could come later. As Mr. Hayden explains,
If contemporary insurance giants originally capitalized on the premiums of Confederate slaveholders who treated their slaves like personal property, America needs to know the truth and compensation may be owed to the descendants.
It was common for slaveholders to insure their slaves, just as they insured their houses and their own lives. It is unclear how the descendants of a slave could possibly have a claim on an insurance company because a slaveowner in the distant past insured a slave against damage.
A different bill proposed by Mr. Hayden has recently become law. It asks the University of California at Berkeley to assemble a committee to “analyze the economic benefits of slavery that accrued to [California] owners and businesses” and submit a report of its findings. These findings are intended to be the basis for possible reparations for blacks. [Jordan Pine, Companies That Insured Slaves Must Offer Details Under New Calif. Law, DiversityInc.com, Oct. 5, 2000.]
Family Ties
Ernestine Williams, 63, is an arthritic black grandmother confined to a wheelchair. This did not stop her from running a successful family business that operated across the South from Florida to Georgia. The staff of 15 was recruited largely from among her 12 children and countless grandchildren, and sometimes took in as much $50,000 a day. In October, this thriving business — organized pickpocketing — suffered a serious blow when police arrested Miss Williams, along with two of her children and a grandson. They now join four other members of the staff who are already guests of the state.
Miss Williams, arrested 28 times from 1960 to 1988 for such things as burglary, heroin possession and weapons violations, taught her family the finer points of pickpocketing and sent crews off to stores to lift the wallets of elderly shoppers. She liked to wait in the parking lot for her family to return with cash, checks, jewelry and credit cards. [AP, Florida Police Say Grandmother Ran Family Pickpocket Ring, Oct. 26, 2000.]
Norway Awakes
In Norway, the anti-immigrant Progress Party has now outstripped the ruling Labor Party to become the most popular in the country. With an approval rating of 35 percent, it is poised to take power in elections that will be held in less than a year. Party leader Carl “King Carl” Hagen campaigns on a program to reduce immigration to a maximum of 1,000 a year and would hold a referendum for Norwegians to vote on whether to let in any foreigners at all. He would also deport any asylee who committed a crime.
“Let’s not be naive and blue-eyed,” he says. “If you have too many immigrants you will get social conflict. You can like it or dislike it, but that’s a fact.” He points out there are already so many Pakistanis in eastern Oslo it is known as Little Karachi: “We have knives in schools, which we never had before, and we have gangs shooting at each other.” Mr. Hagen would also cut off all foreign aid, which he says does nothing but buy weapons and luxury goods for dictators. He says poor countries are poor because they can’t organize themselves properly. Mr. Hagen rejects the label “right-wing,” pointing out that he is in favor of expanding the welfare state. He just wants its benefits to go to Norwegians. [Andrew Osborn, Power in Prospect for Norwegian Right, Guardian (London), Oct. 6, 2000.]
Britain-Bashing
Jack Straw, British Home Secretary, is an ardent anti-racist. Three years ago he set up something called the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, which has finally produced a report. It says British history should be “revised, rethought or jettisoned” because it doesn’t pay enough attention to minorities. It says the country should be formally recognized as a multi-cultural society that is a “community of communities” rather than a nation.
It also suggests the country needs a new word to describe its inhabitants: “Britishness, as much as Englishness, has systematic, largely unspoken, racist connotations. Whiteness nowhere features as an explicit condition of being British, but it is widely understood that Englishness is racially coded.” The report does not suggest what term should replace “British,” but it does make all the usual recommendations about enforcing “tolerance,” putting more non-white faces on television, policing the police, “inclusiveness education,” etc.
Mike O’Brien the Home Office minister calls the effort “a timely report which adds much to the current debate on multi-ethnic Britain.” Lord Parekh, a Labour peer and chairman of the commission that wrote it, says it is “a statement of who we are,” adding that “it is a way of saying to ethnic minorities and the world that we not only tolerate but cherish our diversity.”
Not everyone is glowing with anti-white ardor. Tory MP Gerald Howarth calls it “social engineering on an enormous scale” and “an extraordinary affront to the 94 percent of the population which is not from ethnic minorities.” [Philip Johnston, Straw Wants to Rewrite Our History, Telegraph (London), Oct. 10, 2000.]
Yet another report to the Home Office has recommended that British police give preference to non-white officers in recruitment and promotion because it will “have the effect of increasing the visibility of ethnic minorities in the police service and the visibility of senior ethnic minority officers in the popular media.” Opposition Tories denounced the report, which was the result of 18 months of study, as “political correctness gone mad.” [David Bamber, Police Told to Promote Black Staff Above white, Telegraph (London), Oct. 29, 2000.]
White Bashing
Britain is reporting an increasing number of hate crimes, and non-whites are committing more of them. The number of such crimes in the year ending March 2000, was 20,632 or more than double the preceding period’s 9,503. Of the 27,017 suspects 63.3 percent were white, 20.1 percent were black and 7.8 percent were Asian. Britain does not keep detailed figures of the number of non-whites in the population they are estimated at five to ten percent. Even if they are as much as ten percent, they are four times more likely than whites to commit what is classified as a hate crime. As in the United States, however, it is crime committed by whites against non-whites that receives the most attention. [John Steele, More Whites Become Victims of Racially Motivated Crime, Telegraph (London), Oct. 12, 2000.]
Russell Revealed
The British publisher Jonathan Cape has just brought out the second volume of a massive biography of Bertrand Russell, and some of the philosopher’s observations have set the usual alarm bells ringing. In 1929 he reportedly wrote, “It seems fair to regard negroes as on the average inferior to white men.” In his book Marriage and Morals he wrote that “feeble-minded women” should be compulsorily sterilized, because “as everyone knows” they “have enormous numbers of illegitimate children, all, as a rule, wholly worthless to the community.” The book, Bertrand Russell 1921-70: The Ghost of Madness, is by Ray Monk. [Richard Morrison, Haunted by Madness, Times (London), Oct. 9, 2000.]
The Future of Fiji
The Pacific island of Fiji has a population of about 800,000 of whom 51 percent are native Fijians and 44 percent are descended from Indians brought in by the British during colonial times to do administrative work. In the July issue we reported that a group of ethnic Fijians was attempting to overthrow an elected government dominated by Indians. They stormed the parliament building and held government ministers hostage for 56 days before the Fijian-dominated military installed a Fijian, Laisenia Qarase, as interim prime minister. Mr. Qarase, who has been pondering options for a new constitution, says the Fijian majority will write Fijian dominance into law. “The general feeling among Fijians is that there must be better and stronger guarantees for indigenous Fijians to be in control of their political destiny,” he explained recently.
This is an almost letter-perfect replay of recent Fijian history. When Britain gave the country independence in 1970 it wrote Fijian “paramountcy” into the constitution. In April, 1987, an Indian-dominated party came to power but one month later a Fijian army colonel named Sitiveni Rabuka overthrew the new government and established himself as ruler. White countries put Fiji in the deep freeze, and in 1997 Mr. Rabuka accepted a constitution that did not guarantee Fijian supremacy. By May, 1999, Indians — who are much better organized and harder-working than Fijians — were back in the saddle, and this is what led to the coup this year. Once again the Fijians, who feel they are entitled to run the country, are being treated like international pariahs. Australia, New Zealand, the United States and France have imposed sanctions, cutting military links, reducing aid, ending foreign scholarships and banning visits by Fijian sports teams. Even the British Commonwealth has chucked Fiji out. No doubt Fijians will eventually relearn the benefits of “tolerance.” [Reuters, Fiji Leader Says Ethnic Indians Will Not Rule Again, Oct. 9, 2000.]
Non-Whites Needed
Everyone knows that a newspaper cannot report news properly unless it has non-white journalists. The 90 percent of American daily newspapers that have circulations under 75,000 are having a lot of trouble finding and keeping non-whites, so the American Society of Newspaper Editors, The Freedom Forum, and the Associated Press Managing Editors will sponsor a special effort to help them. The group will pay for 50 two-year fellowships of $20,000 each to supplement the salaries the journalists would have gotten anyway. The plan is to help retain non-whites, who leave the profession at nearly twice the white rate, and to give smaller papers a chance to compete with the big ones. Part of the problem, it appears, is that although most whites still start their careers at small papers, big papers so crave diversity that they are snapping neophyte non-whites up right out of school so the little papers have no chance at them. [Julie Aicher, AP, Oct. 20, 2000.]
Clean Break
The Oslo peace process, begun in 1993, anticipates an eventual independent Palestine with close ties to Israel. The two nations would share water, resources, and electricity, and have relatively open borders. In the wake of the current violence Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Barak has ordered preparation of a plan for complete separation that would reduce contact between the two peoples to zero. Besides separating the economies completely, the most immediate consequence would be to shut 120,000 Palestinians out of their current jobs in Israel. Israelis are confident they can bring in more East Europeans to do the work. The plan would include an elevated highway joining the West Bank and Gaza so Palestinians could move from one part of their country to the other without setting foot in Israel. Palestinians would be forbidden to ship products out of Israeli ports for fear that explosives might be hidden in the cargo. Current Israeli settlements close to the boundaries would be annexed and a few of the more remote ones — surrounded by hostile Palestinians — could be dismantled. The two countries would then behave as if they were thousands of miles apart rather than neighbors.
Separation is being promoted in a recent book that is all the rage in Israel. The author Dan Shueftan is a professor at Haifa University and says bluntly, “I don’t think anything based on goodwill can work with Palestinians . . . We should not be linked in any shape or form. The less contact the better.” [Ben Barber, Barak Scraps Joint Peace Efforts in Favor of Total Separation, Washington Times, Oct. 26, 2000, p. A11.]
Doubting Tomas
In 1997 and 1999, Thomas Edwin Wesson ran unsuccessfully for the Dallas, Texas, city council in a heavily Hispanic district. This year he is running again, but under a different name: Tomas Eduardo Wessen. His opponent, Mike Dupree, accuses him of trying to trick Hispanic voters, and wants the county district attorney to charge him with assuming a false identity. The county elections administrator says there is nothing he can do if someone files election papers under a new name. Mr. Dupree understands the temptation: “You know, someone actually approached me and said I should change my name to Miguel. But I said I wouldn’t do it because I’m not Hispanic. I’m Mike, not Miguel.” Mr. Wesson admits he isn’t Hispanic but defends his new name. “That’s how I spell Thomas,” he says. [AP, Texas Candidate Accused of Pandering, Oct. 11, 2000.]
Snakes Yes, Whites No
Thomas Fallon, a member of John Fremont’s American forces in California, is credited with raising the first American flag in what is now San Jose. Fallon, who later served as mayor of the city and whose restored house is a tourist attraction, planted the flag with little bloodshed in 1846 during the Mexican-American War. In the late 1980s the city spent $500,000 on an equestrian statue of the soldier but stored it in a warehouse when Hispanics complained he was an imperialist wretch. The city council decided it would be best to erect monuments to other ethnic groups before honoring a white man, and over the years put up a statue of local Ohlone Indians, one dedicated to the founding of the original Pueblo San José de Guadalupe by Hispanics, and a representation of the Aztec serpent-god Quetzalcoatl. The city fathers, believing that ethnic harmony had now been achieved, proposed to dust off old Fallon early in 2001 — along with a plaque explaining the controversy about him (no such apologies were necessary for the other statues). A plaque was, of course, not enough. A group called Pueblo Unido (People United) is up in arms, demonstrating at the Fallon House. “The statue is an insult to our ancestors, people who were lynched here,” said member Pascual Mendivil. “It’s like a red flag to racists out there that it’s open season on Mexicans.” The statue question remains unsolved. [Brian Bergstein, Statue Brings Controversy in Calif., AP, Oct. 15, 2000.]
Forbidden Flags
Santa Ynez Valley Union High School in Santa Barbara County, California, has forbidden students to bring flags to school — even American flags. Mexican students brought in a Mexican flag, to which whites replied with American flags and at least one Confederate flag. The students said they were merely showing patriotism but Principal Norm Clevenger said he thought the flag-waving “suggested intolerance.” He confiscated several American flags and suspended four students — race unspecified. Now the only flag allowed on school grounds is the American flag that flies from the school flagpole. [In Brief, San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 9, 2000.]
No Dual Loyalty Here
Matty Arreola is a Mexican who came to the United States illegally some time in 1980s and benefited from the 1986 amnesty, which made her a legal resident. She is now the co-host of a Spanish-language San Antonio, Texas, talk show called Matty y Ramon en la Mañana. The program, which airs shortly before sunrise and can be heard across the border in Mexico, regularly solicits call-ins from Mexicans who report where Border Patrol agents have been active that day. The idea is to give illegals tips on which border crossings to avoid. On the program agents are called limones verdes (green limes) because, as Miss Arreola puts it, “They are green and they will sour your whole day.” [Coded Radio Broadcasts Used to Tip Off Illegal Immigrants, AP, Oct. 15, 2000.]
Meet Mr. El-Amin
Sa’ad El-Amin is a member of the Richmond, Virginia, city council best known for wanting to remove Robert E. Lee from of an outdoor display of Virginia history. He is a firm opponent of any remembrance of the city’s Confederate past because “it glorifies slavery.”
Mr. El-Amin, a graduate of Yale Law School, was first elected from a largely black district in 1998. He changed his name from JeRoyd Wiley Greene to JeRoyd X Greene but then became Sa’ad El-Amin in the 1970s when he was chief counsel to the Nation of Islam. As a lawyer in Richmond, he set a state record for contempt-of-court violations and had his law license suspended for four years because he neglected clients’ interests.
Mr. Sa’ad El-Amin is in trouble again. He missed so many mortgage payments he almost had his house repossessed, and is now under fire for spending $1,115 in city money on a junket to Jamaica. He says he was hoping to encourage tourism by looking into making the Jamaican city of Negril a sister-city of Richmond but even the black mayor, Timothy Kaine, says Richmond already has six sister-cities and doesn’t need more. [Stephen Dinan, El-Amin Accused of Improper Spending, Washington Times, Sept. 18, p. A1.]
Indian Territory
Sports teams that play for San Diego State University in California are called Aztecs, and the school mascot is Monty Montezuma, who whoops around the field in a loincloth. Something called the Native American Student Alliance has made the usual stink, complaining that this is racist and “dehumanizing.” The student council has duly recommended that Monty, who has been the mascot since 1925, be retired in favor of something tame.
Surprisingly, this cave-in prompted an enormous surge of support for Monty and his Aztecs. The campus has been awash in “Save Monty” posters and buttons, and the school decided to take an official vote on the question. Campus votes are usually lackadaisical affairs, with only seven percent of students turning out to vote for the most recent election of student officers. The Monty vote garnered what was, by contrast, a massive 26 percent turnout. No fewer than 95 percent of voters wanted to keep the Aztec name and 87 percent wanted to keep Monty himself, loincloth and all. The final decision is up to university president Stephen Weber, who is not saying what he will do. [Samuel Autman, 95 Percent of SDSU Students Back Aztec Nickname, San Diego Union Tribune, Oct. 26, 2000.]
Break With the Past
Alabama was one of more than 20 states that wrote a ban on miscegenation into their constitutions. The 1964 Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia overturned all such laws and since then most states have amended their constitutions to remove the unenforceable provisions. Alabama has yet to do so, but a black state legislator has managed to get an amendment on the ballot this November. It is expected to pass, but it may not win by very much. The last state to vote on a similar issue was South Carolina, in 1998. Forty percent of voters wanted to keep the ban on interracial marriage.
LETTERS FROM READERS |
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Sir — I was somewhat surprised to be informed that Sol Invictus was mentioned in an article about new nationalist music in American Renaissance. The article contains several inaccuracies concerning me. For a start, Above the Ruins was formed after I left Death in June, not before Death in June was formed. Above the Ruins was also not a National Front band despite admittedly keeping dubious company and ending up on a CD that was an awful compilation.
As for Sol Invictus, neither the group nor its members have any connection or sympathy with any racial or nationalist movements. Quite the opposite! We do not support any, nor do we wish for their support.
Tony Wakeford, Sol Invictus
Eric Owens replies: If I did reverse the order of release dates for the first LPs of Death in June and Above the Ruins, I certainly apologize. However, it is a sign of progress that Mr. Wakeford even concedes that he and Above the Ruins appeared on the National Front compilation “No Surrender!” along with about 15 overtly National Front white power bands. For years, he denied that he was ever in Above the Ruins! Until a few years ago, when he re-released that band’s premier LP himself, it was available only from Rock-O-Rama Records, the German label for Skrewdriver.
Mr. Wakeford has every right to change his views about racial or nationalist movements, but anyone familiar with the lyrics from “We Drive East” or who has seen the cover art of such Sol Invictus CDs as “Lex Talionis” or “The Killing Tide” can only conclude that his views have changed very considerably indeed.
Sir — Just like your article about National Review, the latest issue of your excellent magazine is getting a lot of attention because of the article that mentioned groups like Death in June (DIJ). There has been discussion about it on the DIJ mailing list (nearly 300 subscribers), which is composed of ‘fans’ who are open minded and intelligent enough to discuss the merits of your organization. The only thing that upsets most of them is reading in the same article about subtle, “experimental” music like the later DIJ and the hysterical, crass music of rock groups like Skrewdriver. I can understand this sentiment but comparing the quality of the music and lyrics was, of course, not the purpose of your article.
Name Withheld
Sir — I found your November issue excellent as usual. Please continue your summaries of news of European nationalist movements. I would suggest making such coverage a regular feature. I’ve noticed that some readers in their letters lament the lack of political leaders who speak for us. In fact, all white leaders, whether from Belgium or Boston, offer us hope. Also, your feature story on pan-European nationalist music has the same effect of expressing a trans-national solidarity or consciousness among our people.
Name Withheld
Sir — Your October critique of Mr. Buchanan’s choice of running mate was excellent. It is not to be questioned that all ethnic groups “insist on principle that they be led by people like themselves.” Our problem is that we don’t see ourselves as an ethnic group. Once we do we can spearhead the drive for our own protection. We already recognize all sorts of other rights. Those who promote tolerance should recognize white ethnic rights, too.
Herbert Mertz, N. Palm Beach, Fla.
Sir — One of the most fascinating things Anthony Brown points out in his depressing little article on American birth rates is that in 1955 white women were having slightly more births per capita than Mexican-American women are today. Just 45 years ago, when the country was still overwhelmingly white, the white population was growing very nicely by natural increase. What has changed? For a people to go from healthy increase to natural decline must surely be one of the most dramatic changes possible.
I have never seen a satisfactory explanation for plummeting birth rates in white populations, but surely these must be some of the reasons: (1) Women’s “liberation,” which sent many women into the workforce, where they postpone or even forego childbearing. (2) Increasing rates of divorce, which destroys the stable circumstances into which whites prefer to bring children. Both these phenomena are really examples of increasing individualism and fascination with self, which has other consequences: (a) people don’t want to be bothered with children, (b) they don’t care if their culture ends in a few generations, (c) they would rather spend money on luxuries and vacations than on children.
I wonder also if many Americans are not chilled by the prospect of an increasingly non-white America, and do not want to bring into the world children who will be minorities. Appealing as this theory may be, it is undercut by even lower white birth rates in places like Eastern Europe and Spain, where there is no popular consciousness of eventual displacement by aliens. The Japanese are not being swamped with Third Worlders either but cannot manage to have children. Whatever the causes, when a society cannot even be bothered to reproduce itself it is a symptom of profound sickness.
Susan Endicott, Waynesboro, Va.