Posted on July 21, 2017

Emmanuel Macron and the Crisis of the Elite

Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, July 21, 2017

Did we back the wrong candidate in France? Is Emmanuel Macron — dare I say it — “our guy”?

Only a few months ago the Great and the Good were celebrating the victory of the fanatically pro-EU and anti-nationalist Emmanuel Macron in the French presidential election. The brand-new party Mr. Macron founded then went on to win a majority in the French parliament.

Mr. Macron’s approach towards his own country had been approaching nihilism. He called colonization a “crime against humanity,” and suggested France must apologize. He called mass immigration from the Third World “unstoppable.” He even denied the existence of French culture, saying that “there is culture in France and it is diverse.”

His opponent in the presidential election, Marine Le Pen, had asked voters to “choose France.” Mr. Macron chose Europe, by celebrating his victory with the “Ode to Joy,” the anthem of the European Union. Mr. Macron, who claimed France had voted for him to “defend the Republic” against the unpalatable Ms. Le Pen, was a formidable champion of neoliberalism and transnational elitism at a time when many nationalists were dreaming that a populist wave was about to break over Europe.

Emmanuel Macron delivers a victory speech outside the Louvre in Paris after being elected president of France. (Credit Image: © Emmanuel Macron/London News Pictures via ZUMA Wire)

And yet since entering office, Mr. Macron has unsettled the leftist elite. He horrified progressive opinion by inviting Donald Trump to Paris for Bastille Day and by all accounts created a warm friendship with the American president. Mr. Macron appears to have moderated his predecessor’s demand for the ouster of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, infuriating opposition groups and moving closer to the Russian position. And he also mused about how his thoughts are too “complex” for journalists, and how his could be a “Jupiterian,” quasi-monarchial presidency.

Yet all of this pales in response to Macron’s recent comments about Africa. When asked by an African journalist why there was no Marshall Plan for Africa, Mr. Macron stated, “The challenge of Africa is completely different, it is much deeper. It is civilizational today. Failing states, complex democratic transitions, the demographic transition.” He later said, “One of the essential challenges of Africa . . . is that in some countries today seven or eight children [are] born to each woman.”

Mr. Macron’s statement has been termed racist, colonialist, and imperialist. The latter accusation came from National Review, where one Elliot Kaufman leapt at the chance for the Beltway Right to deploy its favorite claim: Democrats Are the Real Racists (DR3). “To think of people this way — not as unique individuals created by a loving God, but as burdens and roadblocks to economic development — is cruel, but liberal above all,” he wrote.

It is a strange “conservatism” that welcomes reckless procreation and dismisses an awareness of limits as “liberal.” And yet Mr. Kaufman and Mr. Macron’s other critics are reacting to something real. The French president’s suggestion that African women are breeding like animals and must be restrained by an enlightened elite awakens primordial terrors in the hearts of the mainstream Left and Right.

The Left, intellectually paralyzed by Cultural Marxism, brooks no criticism — even well-meaning criticism — of non-whites by whites. Leftists believe supervision, guidance, or even objective observation of non-whites by whites inevitably leads to colonialism and imperialism, in the same way they hold that recognizing racial differences leads to death camps and genocide.

The “Right,” intellectually paralyzed by the fear of being called racist, defines itself by a universalist creed of “values” that can be imposed on everyone. If anything, Africans are morally superior because they continue to have large families while whites have children below replacement levels.

Both Left and Right share the fundamental premise that whites should learn from Africans. The Left blame whites for Africans’ “failed societies,” while the Right denies they have even “failed.” Both are rationalizations to avoid thinking about Africa. Both are retreats into sentimentalism and wishful thinking. Neither white guilt nor sentimental dreaming about blacks will increase the African standard of living. And both avoid the looming question that will define the 21st century.

In what Steve Sailer has called “the world’s most important graph,” the UN projects population growth in African: from approximately 1.25 billion people today to more than 2.5 billion by 2050 and an astonishing 4.46 billion by the end of the century. Nigeria could have more people by 2050 than the United States.

Only the most hopelessly naive continue to pretend the “Syrian refugee crisis” has anything to with Syria, or, indeed, with “refugees.” To the surprise of no one except those who read The Economist, most of the migrants entering Europe are economically worthless. As even commentators such as Lauren Southern now concede, mass migration into Europe is population replacement, with the indigenous population of many European nations projected to reach minority status within a century.

Some appear to want this. The same media outlets that urge whites not to have more children in order to “fight climate change” demand that Europe admit more immigrants because Europeans are not reproducing enough.

Every policy issue is overwhelmed by the reality of population replacement. To even speak of education, jobs, wages, trade, national security, infrastructure, the budget, or health care without confronting this core issue is a waste of time.

And yet this is precisely what Mr. Macron tried to do during the campaign. Before his recent fall from media favor, adoring journalists noted how Mr. Macron had “avoided the identity debate entirely,” “as if it simply had no meaning.” And upon taking office, Mr. Macron accused Central and Eastern European states of “betraying” the EU by not accepting more migrants. The presumption was that migration of this scale can be managed and difficult discussions avoided simply by spreading around the burden so that people won’t notice.

Of course, this is precisely what Jean Raspail lampooned in The Camp of the Saints. European leaders all hope the ramshackle fleet of Third World migrants will land in some other country or some natural phenomenon will turn the ships back. Their cowardice prevents them from taking any kind of action that will ensure the survival of their own nation. They are strictly passive and ultimately are overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Mr. Macron shows slightly more agency. He recently highlighted the “profound” difference between economic migrants and refugees, suggesting the former have no right to immigrate. France has announced a plan to “systematically” deport illegal immigrants. And ironically for a leader who had accused Eastern Europeans of “betraying” the EU, Mr. Macron has infuriated the Italians by refusing to let migrants travel from Italy to France.

Mr. Macron may be using refugee-friendly rhetoric to cover an over-all restrictionist approach. His comments on the “civilizational” problem of Africa mirrors the approach taken by other European nations, such as Denmark, which is offering birth control to Africa to “limit migration pressure.” But even while talking tough on economic migration, Mr. Macron is vowing to reduce the time for processing asylum requests and to increase welfare for refugees. It is too early to determine his full strategy, or even if he has one.

Yet one can see glimpses of a “Macron Doctrine” on migration: a technocratic approach to managing Third World immigration. The “root causes” of African overpopulation will at least be hinted at. There will be a crackdown on economic migrants, while “legitimate” refugees will still be admitted. And Mr. Macron will do his best to spread migrants around the European Union nations, while trying to ensure as few as possible settle in his nation.

This strategy is already collapsing. Italy is threatening to deploy its “nuclear option” by allowing hundreds of thousands of migrants to push north, to punish other European nations for not helping them. Already, every nation already concedes that inflicting migrants on neighbors is “punishment.” And even contraception will do little to defuse the African population bomb which has already detonated. Even if population growth stopped tomorrow, Africans are miserable and will not stop demanding access to every nation of the West.

Left, Right, and technocratic center — all refuse to think critically about the most important issue of our time, indeed, the most important issue of Western Civilization. Entirely aside from cultural or racial identity, the economies, national security, and fiscal stability of Western nations cannot survive unlimited Third World immigration. Foreign aid, contraception, investment and all the other panaceas will fail to raise Africa to a First World level of development, because they cannot change the reality of racial differences. And the sheer scale of the numbers involved ensure that immigration will only grow in importance as a political issue and overwhelm every other policy question.

Credit Image: © Christian Marquardt/NurPhoto via ZUMA Press

The most moral solution is also the most practical solution: Europeans must form a common Continental defense to stop the influx. More importantly, Europeans must acknowledge that Europeans and Africans are different, and that African overpopulation does not require the First World to commit suicide in order to fulfill some absurd moral precept. The only way to restrain unsustainable population growth in Africa is to prevent black nations from exporting their surplus inhabitants to the West, and to force them to support their own people within their own nations.

But in the end, it is not about them. It is about us. And Mr. Macron is right about one thing: This is a civilizational issue. After Hurricane Katrina, Jared Taylor wrote :

The races are different. Blacks and whites are different. When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western Civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears.

If Europeans are replaced with Africans, Western Civilization will disappear. The choices are simple: The West, yes or no? The white race, yes or no? Our rulers have exhausted all other options. Mr. Macron, and his fellow Western elites, can no longer avoid the question. And we, as whites, must not let them destroy us by making the wrong choices.