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The BNP: Don't be Fooled

The British National Party (BNP) made a bit of a splash this week by getting two of its members elected to the European Parliament.

Some American conservatives seem to welcome this development, because they sympathize with the BNP's unambiguous stands against mass immigration and anti-white discrimination.

But this is a mistake.

Peter Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens' smarter younger brother, and a sound traditionalist conservative if ever there was one, absolutely nails the BNP here:

"I receive a distressing number of letters and emails from seemingly sensible people beguiled by this organisation.

"They think it is genuinely concerned with Britain's problems. I don't think so. I think it is obsessed with discredited and un-Christian racial theories.

"If it cared about Britain and wanted a real part in national life, it would surely get rid of a leader who once jeered that belief in the Nazi massacre of six million Jews was comparable to a belief that the Earth is flat.

"It would surely get rid of a clause in its constitution that makes 'ethnic origin', not opinions, the key test of membership..."

Hitchens goes on to cite this absolutely damning video of Nick Griffin, party leader and newly elected member of the European Parliament, on stage with the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke:

And if that's not enough, my second favorite neo-con, Jonah Goldberg, has some great quotes from the endlessly entertaining Daniel Hannan, pointing out that there is nothing the least bit conservative about the BNP. They are nationalists, and they are socialists. But nationalism + socialism does not = conservatism.

Never has, never will.

N.B.: I am sure that many BNP voters are good people who do not sympathize with the darker side of their party, but are frustrated by the awfulness of the mainstream alternatives.

I feel their pain.

Comments (72)

And here comes the next Liar Distorts post: "What's wrong with the world? People like Steve Burton, apologist for the BNP, whose N.B. in his latest post gives away his real motives..."

Ed - heh!

N.B.: I am sure that many BNP voters are good people who do not sympathize with the darker side of their party, but are frustrated by the awfulness of the mainstream alternatives.

This is what happens when people notice the difference between democracy-as-taught-in-the-classroom and democracy-as-it-actually-works. When the nominal "lesser of the evils" don't actually act on their stated beliefs, it makes room for miscreants that will get stuff done at a price. Whatever abuse happens if and when the BNP becomes a serious player will be in no small part the personal fault of almost every conservative and labour politician who support their parties' status quo.


Steve Burton calls Peter Hitchens "Christopher Hitchens' smarter younger brother, and a sound traditionalist conservative if ever there was one."

Anyone who seriously believes that Peter Hitchens is smart, let alone smarter than his evil (and smarter) brother, and anyone who agrees with P. Hitchens that the BNP—the only force challenging the British establishment—must be opposed at all costs, might want to read some of my articles on P. Hitchens and the BNP.

Since, as I remember, this website makes it difficult to include hyperlinks in comments, you can bring up the articles by doing a Google search for:

Site:http://amnation.com "Peter Hitchens" bnp


When you look at the forces arrayed against the BNP--all the Liberal suspects--whipping up a frenzy of hysteria against the BNP, I can only assume they are truly, deeply afraid.

Spend one Friday evening in Little Riyadh, er, the Manchester Airport, and you 1) are glad to get out of there alive and 2) wish the BNP well.

I've a book by Peter Hitchens, and to say he's got probslems, serious problems with Uncle Sam is an understatement. That man blames most of Britain's present day ills on the United States.

And what was he proposed reaction to September 11th? Hardly Churchillian.

Why doesn't somebody start a "good ideas of the BNP with the racial past removed" party in Britain? Sort of "all the conservatism you want without the baggage you don't want" version?

Like most British "conservatives," Hitchens has gotten where he is due to his considerable polemical skills. When challenged that he has no real answer to the problem of mass Third Word immigration and that his take on British identity is not materially different from the multiculturalists he denounces, he simply responds that the accusation is ridiculous and does nothing to clarify his position. He literally believes than any ethnic conception of the British isles is poisonous, but from the other side of his mouth bemoans British immigration policy. Again, when challenged, he angrily dismisses the criticism, insists on no contradiction, and does nothing to articulate a clear position on the issue. And let's be clear about this: it's the single biggest issue facing Britain, by a mile.

Hitchens is excellent at the English art of the well-phrased insult, the rhetorical flourish, at political polemics. He is very much like Theodore Dalrymple, always eloquent in his wailing over the state of things, and he even has a few ideas in the realm of policy that make sense. But the bottom line is that he is incoherent, PC-whipped, and utterly incapable of admitting it to himself. If he or anyone here wants to know why people ignore him and vote BNP anyway, there's your answer. People are going to migrate to those organizations that will at least go so far as to name the biggest problems facing the country, and moreover, the endless expansion of the word "racism" to cover things that any normal person feels has done much, ironically, to legitimize the concept and to take the sting out of the charge.

Steve,

Who is your favorite neo-con, if Jonah is your "second-favorite"?

Why doesn't somebody start a "good ideas of the BNP with the racial past removed" party in Britain? Sort of "all the conservatism you want without the baggage you don't want" version?

Yeah, they could shift their policy to "no Muslim immigration allowed." That would totally redeem them!

Why doesn't somebody start a "good ideas of the BNP with the racial past removed" party in Britain?

I was under the impression, perhaps influenced by Auster, that they did and the party was called the BNP. The notion that England should remain dominated politically by "English" people is hardly, ipso facto, racist. No more racist, at least, than the notion that Zimbabwe should be ruled by black Africans. Or is England really more an idea than a place anyway?

It is interesting to note that in our own US history, the democrats started a party with the racist past removed and called it the Democratic Party.

No more racist, at least, than the notion that Zimbabwe should be ruled by black Africans. Or is England really more an idea than a place anyway?

This is a fine example of what Zippy would call an unprincipled exception. To the liberal mind, it's only natural for most societies to claim that their culture has a racial component. When was the last time you heard a liberal say with a straight face that Han Chinese culture is just an idea, and that a black man raise in China is just as Chinese as his neighbors or that a white man raised in India speaking Hindi is a bona fide Indian?

Yet anyone can be a European because European culture is "just different, mmmkay?"

Mike T yesterday wrote: "Whatever abuse happens if and when the BNP becomes a serious player will be in no small part the personal fault of almost every conservative and labour politician who support their parties' status quo."

I reply: yes. Precisely so.

Mike T today writes: "To the liberal mind, it's only natural for most societies to claim that their culture has a racial component...Yet anyone can be a European...?"

I reply: yes. The modern "liberal mind" is hopelessly inconsistent on this point. But is it right to respond to such inconsistency with a consistent racism, or racialism, or whatever you want to call it?

What's wrong with a consistent anti - racism, or racialism, etc.?

In the spirit of consistent anti - racism etc., here are some more good lines from Peter Hitchens:

"I am not specially concerned about the 'ethnicity' of the people in this country. I am concerned about whether they are British, and I do not think...that their Britishness is a product of their ‘ethnicity’ but of a thousand years of law, liberty, faith, culture, landscape, memory, music, architecture, humour, self-sacrifice, martial valour, conscience, self-restraint, and all the things that go to make us what we are. There are...plenty of people in this country whose 'ethnicity' may be British (if by that you mean the colour of their hides) but who have, thanks to multiculturalism and other demoralising forces, entirely ceased to be British in any recognisable sense. Whereas there are people here whose skins are black or brown who honour and value those traditions greatly, and seek to uphold them. Therefore...'ethnicity' cannot be the defining matter."

Why doesn't somebody start a "good ideas of the BNP with the racial past removed" party in Britain? Sort of "all the conservatism you want without the baggage you don't want" version?

Partly because the BNP isn't a conservative party. Their manifesto is all about nationalization, worker ownership of enterprise, increased taxes and regulation, and so forth. Nick Griffin (the BNP leader) used to write anonymously for Green publications and bills the BNP as "the Labour party your parents voted for."

If you find the BNP's non-racial policies appealing, you can vote Green. If you're looking for a conservative party that takes a firm line on immigration, there's the UKIP (which won 13 seats in the EU election, versus the BNP's two). In either case the BNP doesn't have much to recommend it.

Lawrence Auster: it's just silly to deny that Peter Hitchens is smart - unless you're prepared to relegate well over 99% of the human race to the ranks of the un-smart.

But it seems that the closer people get to your own position, the more furiously you denounce them for whatever disagreements still remain - as witness your ceaseless jeremiads against Mark Steyn & Melanie Phillips.

I simply can't understand why you do this.

And did you watch that video of Nick Griffin on stage with David Duke, explaining that, while he shares David Duke's goals, he recognizes the need for ideological camouflage? (I paraphrase, obviously - but I don't think that I paraphrase unfairly).

How could you not be appalled by that?

The notion that England should remain dominated politically by "English" people is hardly, ipso facto, racist. No more racist, at least, than the notion that Zimbabwe should be ruled by black Africans.

I can't decide if this is supposed to be a joke or not. Can someone really be suggesting that the UK ought to emulate the government of Zimbabwe?

Gintas the Man: it is one thing to wish the current incarnation of the Labour & Tory parties ill, and quite another thing to wish the BNP well.

Surely there must be other choices.

Sage - Peter Hitchens has called, quite clearly, for an end to all mass-immigration into Britain:

"A country which does not demand acceptance of a monoculture will become a series of hostile solitudes, and eventually ungovernable and unworkable as a society. Integration and the inculcation of a single culture cannot be successfully achieved if there is a constant high level of immigration. Migrants already here need time to integrate, and can most effectively be enabled to do so when immigration is low or non-existent. The levels of migration into this country at present are qualitatively higher than anything previously experienced, and endanger the culture of which I speak. The evidence of history is that this country has absorbed people from different cultures (and non-Christian religions) in the past. But only under conditions of controlled immigration, and only when a monoculture was generally supported. The same is largely true of the USA, which before the 1960s ensured that migrants became American, learned English etc."

Jeff Singer - thanks for asking.

My very favorite neo-con would be Mark Steyn - by a country mile.

OMG, but that guy can write!

;^)

Surely there must be other choices.

Pray tell, what are these other choices?

Steve Nicoloso: would you be willing to join a political party (or any other organization) that admitted as members William Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Ward Churchill, while shutting out Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, and Ward Connerly - on grounds of ethnicity?

Please say no.

Well, Gintas, at first glance, it looks to me like UKIP (The U.K. Independence Party) could have greatness thrust upon it, here - if only it could get its act together.

Fingers crossed.

UKIP? The party that David Cameron once called the party of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists."

(Source: If you can stand Takimag getting a hit, Derek Turner has an article about all this at Takimag:

http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_right_way_to_brussels/ )

Gintas - thanks - I read it this morning. Kind of mealy-mouthed, I thought.

BTW - I read Takimag every day, just before, or just after I read VFR - depending on my mood.

Please note that I share Peter Hitchens' extremely low opinion of David Cameron. With Tories like him, who needs the Labour Party?

Blackadder: here's a great quote from your link: "the battle between socialists and fascists is a battle between brothers: that's what makes it so vicious."

And here I never thought of Hayek as a phrase-maker!

UKIP? The party that David Cameron once called the party of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists."

I'm not sure how to tell you this, but if you require David Cameron's seal of approval before considering a party, then the BNP isn't going to make the cut either.

Blackadder:

I can't decide if this is supposed to be a joke or not. Can someone really be suggesting that the UK ought to emulate the government of Zimbabwe?

No joke, tho' there was no intention to suggest, what you suggest I suggest, that the UK ought to emulate Zimbabwe. There could be a million reasons (or perhaps even trillions and trillions) to not have a black African government in Zimbabwe, but it isn't, as I said, per se racist merely to suggest the contrary.

Steve Burton:
would you be willing to join a political party (or any other organization) that admitted as members William Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Ward Churchill, while shutting out Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, and Ward Connerly - on grounds of ethnicity?

I'd be unwilling to "join" any political party that required obeisance and sacrifice to their favored gods.

What's wrong with a consistent anti - racism, or racialism, etc.?
Because in light of racial and ethnic disparities in status and accomplishment, and in light of the fact that blood is thicker than water, it is rejected by non-whites as an assertion of the white privilege to which it was supposed to be the antidote, leading to non-white resentment and aggression. The white response to this is to attempt to clear their guilty consciences by backing down again and again, leading to a situation where whites are going to be a minority in their ancestral lands. All of this, of course, makes neo-conservative efforts to hold some sort of cultural line by concocting a propositional nationalism doomed to failure. They are, after all, just further assertions of the special worth of a white history and white customs that preexisted the arrival of the newcomers and appear again to be simple claims of privilege couched in (self-defeating) univeralist terms.

Nothing is forever, and racial conflict in a place can be eliminated eventually, by generations of actual assimilation, which is to say intermarriage, and the creation of a real shared ethnic history on the part of the new, mixed people. The more visibly different two peoples are, the longer this will take. It will not be eliminated by the assertion of an obviously false history, in the manner of Obama's placing Islam at the center of America's past in his Cairo speech. Nor will it be eliminated by principled anti-racism or colorblindness, which can not work in a mass democratic society where the rhetoric of equality can not be squared with the reality of racial inequality.

Griffin can disavow his odious associations when the Labour party do tearful penance for their decades of apologia for and aid and comfort to Communists.

The sort of populist nationalism the BNP peddles has a track record. You can find the same sort of thing in Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, Chavismo in Venezuela, Peronism in Argentina, Hamas and the PLO in the West Bank, and the Nation of Islam in the U.S. (not to mention in numerous African dictatorships such as the aforementioned Zimbabwe). Generally it serves as little more than a vehicle for thugs and buffoons to enrich themselves while peddling economic twaddle and impoverishing their own people. Whether it should be counted as racist is to a certain extent beside the point; it's not something any civilized country should wish to emulate.

"Peter Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens' smarter younger brother, and a sound traditionalist conservative if ever there was one"

Peter Hitchens is no traditionalist conservative, sound or otherwise. He's a utopian universalist.

All nationalism used to be "populist nationalism". The notion that nationalism could and should be joined to libertarianism is fundamentally incoherent. Libertarans detest nationalism, and rightly so from their perspective. Why does anyone imagine that these two strange bedfellows can make a lasting couple? Nationalism by definition favors the particular, libertarianism by definiton favors the universal. They cannot coexist for long.

At the same time, ponder this

Steve Burton (to Lawrence Auster): "But it seems that the closer people get to your own position, the more furiously you denounce them for whatever disagreements still remain - as witness your ceaseless jeremiads against Mark Steyn & Melanie Phillips. ..."

So true, and so sad. And so utterly pointless.

"Peter Hitchens is no traditionalist conservative, sound or otherwise. He's a utopian universalist."

From what I've read of P. Hitchens (one book -- the one on PC in Britain -- and quite a few columns) I've never gotten this impression. BTW, did he recently become a Catholic?

The things I've read by Roger Scruton on the issues of multiculturalism and immigration seem to me to be quite sane and balanced.


The primary thing that BNP has going for them is that they aren't Labour or Tories. There might be some value in them getting a few EU seats just to shake things up and to reduce the power of those parties. It's a nice slap in the face and a lesson to those parties that they need to take to heart: The British people hate you so much that they are even willing to vote for these kooks instead of you.

Also, it's probably not harmful for them to gain some power in the EU elections, since their main foreign policy initiative - the reduction of immigration - is something that Britain needs. However, if they were to actually get the power, particularly on the domestic front, to do what they want, it would be a total disaster. Being happy that Labour is getting their butts kicked all over the place is one thing, but it's crazy for any conservative to champion BNP on their own merits.

What's wrong with a consistent anti - racism, or racialism, etc.?

Nothing, but it is extremely rare to the point of being an academic concept. I take it for granted that the Left cannot be taken seriously on such matters because of their inability to condemn their own who behave in openly hateful ways. That, IMO, makes their outrage automatically subjected to dismissal on any topic.

In the spirit of consistent anti - racism etc., here are some more good lines from Peter Hitchens:

"I am not specially concerned about the 'ethnicity' of the people in this country. I am concerned about whether they are British, and I do not think...that their Britishness is a product of their ‘ethnicity’ but of a thousand years of law, liberty, faith, culture, landscape, memory, music, architecture, humour, self-sacrifice, martial valour, conscience, self-restraint, and all the things that go to make us what we are. There are...plenty of people in this country whose 'ethnicity' may be British (if by that you mean the colour of their hides) but who have, thanks to multiculturalism and other demoralising forces, entirely ceased to be British in any recognisable sense. Whereas there are people here whose skins are black or brown who honour and value those traditions greatly, and seek to uphold them. Therefore...'ethnicity' cannot be the defining matter."

Taken as a whole, however, one must strongly question how much that holds up for the Indian and Pakistani communities in Britain. They don't share the same faith as ancestral Britain, so that is automatically off the table. Most of the Muslims, regardless of ethnic background, share little of the love of genuine liberty or English law, taking those off the table as well.

The US is unique among countries. It is a country in which race has no component in nationality. That is an ironic aspect of our history of slavery; blacks have every bit as much of a reason to proudly claim that this is their country as whites. However, it is unrealistic and unnatural to expect most countries to behave like that. They are nations, and nations have an inherent racial component in them no matter how minor.

It is important to remember that racism has a survival instinct component to it. We are a race of pack animals, and we prefer our pack by instinct. That manifests itself in myriad ways, and we ought to not encourage situations which could provoke that. Part of that is encouraging mass immigration between ethnic groups that are markedly dissimilar. That will only promote hatred, fear and violence.

Another way of looking at it is that the US has accomplished with race what Switzerland has historically done with language. It should give us pause that Switzerland is a unique phenomenon in European history when we consider trying to recreate that elsewhere.

It's worth reading "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer.

One of his themes is that radicals, whether far right or far left, tend to be similar in practice. So much so, that he notes how many members of the Communist party in Germany would bounce to Nazism, and vice versa. There is something about radical craziness, about surrendering your soul, your free will to evil, that makes it all similar.

A modern example would be the occasional report we hear about a former Neo-Nazi who converts to Islam. Both racial fascism and religious fascism are evil, and attract evil people.

Anyway, I'm Jewish, and I just want to say I think there should be more sites like yours. There is something really wrong going on here, a lot of Christians are being murdered and ruined by religious fanatics, aided and abetted by silent Western nations.

There is an evil wind blowing across the world these days. The only consolation I can offer is the well known truth - "the darkest hour is the one before the dawn". I think humanity is about to see it's darkest hour. I think we are all going to see the greatest dawn ever.

Cyrus: your comment at 10:08 yesterday contains, in a very short space, much food for thought, so this is just a quick and not too careful right-back-atcha: alas, yes: "a consistent anti - racism" has been "rejected by non-whites as an assertion of the white privilege to which it was supposed to be the antidote, leading to non-white resentment and aggression." But does the rejection of a consistent anti-racism by many, perhaps even most, non-whites necessarily discredit the idea? I can't see why.

Cyrus, again:

"...principled anti-racism or colorblindness...can not work in a mass democratic society where the rhetoric of equality cannot be squared with the reality of racial inequality."

Well, yes. That's the crux of the issue.

Steve Burton: But does the rejection of a consistent anti-racism by many, perhaps even most, non-whites necessarily discredit the idea? I can't see why.

I think it depends on whether you're examining the disembodied idea, or more interested in the empirical consequences of that idea. In the former case, no, its rejection by non-whites in no way discredits the idea. In the second - well, that culture can supercede race is probably true as far as it goes - that "as far as it goes" defined as limited numbers of immigrants into a confident host majority. (Even immigrants of the same racial/civilizational background can cause friction in too large doses; the problems are magnified greatly when the newcomers aren't cultural "cousins".) The problem is numbers and facts-on-the-ground. Europeans constitute a small percentage of the world's population (under 10%, iirc). They have also built very attractive countries, where many, many of the world's billions would like to live. It is implausible that the unprecedented numbers of non-Euro migrants that have been pouring into Western nations in recent decades are doing so out of a passionate philosophical hunger for the non-economic values or culture of the West. (And, really, it is arrogant, not just naïve, for whites to believe they're all so eager to shuck the cultures of their hearts for what, as others have pointed out, can't have all that much resonance for most of them.) And assimilation is a numbers game - the BNP and similar parties in Europe gain traction because it has become disturbingly clear to the natives that they are the ones who are expected to assimilate, not the newcomers, because the numbers have been far beyond what is prudent and digestible. (This is, I think, analogous to the claims that integrating the world's economies, e.g., letting China into the WTO, would, eventually, turn them into mirrors of us. Instead, due to their size and dynamism, our workers are losing the gains of centuries and being "third-worldized", and our vaunted quality and safety standards "normalized" to a much shabbier status.)

Thus it is in the world - it seems to me a pretty wanton denial of reality to say that a minority - a handful of millions of Britons (or Europeans in general) - will be able to scrupulously (and succesfully) uphold "anti-racist" policies while the rest of the groups in the world, in their billions, continue to play by the old rules of a forthright and unapologetic "racist" way of looking out for their own. This idealism can be downright dangerous in a world where that minority is declining in numbers, power, and wealth relative to other groups. Understanding this doesn't require any ugly belief in racial supremacy or the inferiority of other groups (though, let's not forget, non-whites rarely feel any guilt about engaging in that, either). Just a normal preference for one's inherited culture and a desire to pass it on to one's heirs, that nobody but whites would ever dream of apologizing for.

To use an American example, La Raza's (usually mistranslated) motto is an age-old statement of group solidarity for survival and advancement - and it is pretty much a universal motto, made objectionable only by the fact that it has been introduced into a society that aspired (if not always successfully) to live by impersonal law and civic virtue, and above ethnic identity politics. That it has been successfully introduced, to the tune of massive public and corporate subsidy, and general indifference, is another testament to how the weight of numbers subverts assimilation to the host culture, no matter how admirable, and to how bootless are Peter Hitchen's ideals when measured against o'ertaking reality. (As an aside, I wonder if Hitchens has ever questioned how much excessive and disrupting immigration, rather than just the usual social-welfare culprits, have contributed to the demoralization and "de-culturation" of the native Brits.)

Mike T: The US is unique among countries. It is a country in which race has no component in nationality.

One hopes. But I think we Americans sometimes give ourselves too much credit for our magic assimilation powers. We all know how fraught and tragic black/white relations in this country have been, even after the end of slavery (and still not resolved into neutral citizenship, despite great progress). Perhaps we pat ourselves on the back way too much over having assimilated a bunch of people who were overwhelmingly of the same race and from the same civilization, who wanted to be here, under what were probably uniquely favorable circumstances. (And the fact is that until very, very recently, Americans thought of themselves as a white nation, quite specifically, as an "Anglo-Saxon" nation - whatever the actual white-ethnic make-up of the country - and were seen as such by the rest of the world). To translate this, as if often done, into a boast of "we can assimilate anybody, from anywhere, in any numbers, and have" is simply false. We haven't. We are now in the process of finding out if we can, but we haven't yet. (Not saying you're making that claim here, just saying.) I fear our heedless belief in the magic Americanizing properties of the water supply has allowed the forces of balkanization to take root, which may yet be our undoing.

"I am not specially concerned about the 'ethnicity' of the people in this country. I am concerned about whether they are British, and I do not think...that their Britishness is a product of their ‘ethnicity’ but of a thousand years of law, liberty, faith, culture, landscape, memory, music, architecture, humour, self-sacrifice, martial valour, conscience, self-restraint, and all the things that go to make us what we are. There are...plenty of people in this country whose 'ethnicity' may be British (if by that you mean the colour of their hides) but who have, thanks to multiculturalism and other demoralising forces, entirely ceased to be British in any recognisable sense. Whereas there are people here whose skins are black or brown who honour and value those traditions greatly, and seek to uphold them. Therefore...'ethnicity' cannot be the defining matter."
This is typical right liberal muddleheadedness. Bengalis and Jamaicans have their own histories, of which they are understandably proud, and that their history is not British (passing by with a mere glance how fraught that term) is, to be unfashionably blunt about such things, as plain as the skin on their faces. If anything, they're likely to conceive of their people in opposition to Britishness, as victims of British depredation and exploitation, a stance which is positively encouraged across the European world. Neoconservative propositional nationalists may feel themselves admirably liberal for espousing the sentiments encapsulated in Hitchens' quoted statement, but do so only by being oblivious to the racial subtext of their demands on immigrants, a subtext visible to the immigrants themselves, to leftists, and to those few who inhabit whatever ideological kiosk this is that I'm in right now. Hitchens wants those aforementioned Bengalis to pretend that their ancestors sailed against the Armada, wrote Jacobean poetry, campaigned against Popery, and invented modernity. To say it is to see the absurdity.

Perhaps the conceptual problem with anti-racism is that it is premised on a recognition of the categories of race, and indeed of white supremacy and noblesse obligé, for which it is supposed to be the cure.

Mike T: The United States simply is not unique in the ways you say it is. First, through most of its history, it had a racial conception of citizenship. It is by no means unique in no longer having one. France and Brazil are the two examples that spring to mind. Secondly, it shares the trait of racial diversity with most of the countries of the Western Hemisphere. Thirdly, America's success at assimilation has been vastly overstated. The further away from Great Britain proper, culturally or geographically, a group of immigrants originated, the less reducible they have been once they've arrived. Germans and Dutch assimilated more readily than Irish or Italians, who assimilated more completely than Jews, who have assimilated much more successfully than Mexicans, and so forth. Protestants have assimilated more readily than Catholics, too. Even so, differences remain, as do imported resentments. Blood is thicker than water. And assimilation is no one way street. Populations generally assimilate to each other. The last great wave of immigration changed America in ways that I do not believe would have been seen as desirable to the bulk of Americans living here before that wave, and this ongoing second great wave will no doubt do the same, has done the same already, in fact.

I must sign off for tonight.

No other known man . . . is so violently the blowhard [as the Anglo-Saxon]. In this fact lies the first cause of the ridiculous figure he commonly cuts in the eyes of other people: he brags and blusters so incessantly that, if he actually had the combined virtues of Socrates, the Cid and the Twelve Apostles, he would still go beyond the facts, and so appears a mere Bombastes Furioso … Braggadocio, in the 100% American—“we won the war,” “it is our duty to lead the world,” and so on—is probably no more than protective mechanism erected to conceal an inescapable sense of inferiority...

...Civilization is at its lowest mark in the United States precisely in those areas where the Anglo-Saxon still presumes to rule. … Wherever he is firmly in the saddle, there we look for such pathological phenomena as Fundamentalism, Prohibition and Ku Kluxery, and there they flourish.
http://www.takimag.com/article/ludicrous_albion/

Lawrence Auster is absurdly naive when it comes to the BNP. First off, it's socialist, and we all know what a disaster socialism is. Secondly its roots, which it has never repudiated, are antisemitic and violent.

They are a bunch of thugs. Lawrence Auster, who has the thinnest skin of just about anyone on the web, would wilt if he were in the same room as them.

Mass politics starts in the streets. That's a large part of what's wrong with it, but a right that doesn't play that game is simply out of the game. The left plays it. We can wistfully pretend that we live in 5th century B.C. Athens or 18th century America, but we don't.

"Mr. Mencken," I read Bramwell's piece. As I usually am with him I was struck by the pointless pompousness of it all. At least it was more coherent than much of what he writes; he not infrequently attains a level of inscrutability not seen in conservative opinion since the later years of WFB. He's a perfect example of WASP self-loathing and inanition.

Mary Jackson - agreed on all points, except that "they are a bunch of thugs" seems too strong - at least, if "they" is meant to include everybody who votes for &/or sympathizes with the BNP. As I said in the original post, I think there are a lot of good people who support the BNP *faute de mieux.*

I wonder what you think of UKIP.

Steve:

"They" certainly doesn't refer to many BNP supporters, who voted for them in the absence of a credible alternative. However, there is a hard core of party members and supporters who are "old style" National Front types.

I voted for UKIP and support their stance on immigration and Europe, but they need to be more forceful about Islam. My position is similar to Geert Wilders, who is not even the slightest bit racist but is anti-Islam for the same reasons.

Cyrus - still thinking about some of your earlier comments, but I just wanted to express whole-hearted agreement with your assessment of that lazy Austin Bramwell screed. Pointless & pompous, indeed.

Mencken is always great fun to read, even when he's being perverse - but Mencken filtered through Bramwell?

Eh. Whatever.

Mary Jackson - thanks for your response. Auster keeps insisting that the BNP is "the only force challenging the...British establishment," and I keep hoping that he's wrong about that. From afar, it looks to me like UKIP is also challenging said establishment on immigration and on the EU - but they don't get anywhere near as much coverage in the American press as the BNP, even though they get a lot more votes. I'm glad to learn that you take them seriously enough to be worth voting for. So perhaps there's hope, there.

The BNP is more conservative than the right-liberal Hannan or the neo-Conservative Goldberg. It is not particularly conservative to plump for free-trade, condemn 'protectionism', or prostrate yourself before the god of international financial capitalism. Both Tories and NuLabor have done just that, and we see how it has worked out for the British economy. Protecting workers, seeing to it that a country's economic policy is oriented towards helping the people of that country--particularly the indigenous people-- is hardly non-conservative, unless you mistake conservatism for a foolhardy libertarianism. Nor is a willingness to sell off the nation's natural heritage and environmental well-being to the highest bidder 'conservative' -- after all, the Republicans were the party of national partks, the democrats of the eco-system destroying Tennessee Valley Authority. While I may disagree with the the means the BNP would pursue to benefit the working, indigenous population of Britain, and their environment, their heart is in the right place. Not the libertarian/neo-con/right-liberal place, but the *right* place.

As to the race issue, the BNP is the party which seeks to represent the indigenous population of Britain. It recognizes that race is a reality, and wishes to defend its people biologically. In this day and and this is supposedly 'racist'. But this is the position of many current states, from Japan to Israel, and the historical position of most Western countries -- see the 1924 immigration law in the US, or Winston Churchill on 'keeping Britain white'.

I hadn't visited this thread since I posted a comment here three days ago, and didn't realize it had become such a lively thread.

Steve Burton says to me:

"But it seems that the closer people get to your own position, the more furiously you denounce them for whatever disagreements still remain—as witness your ceaseless jeremiads against Mark Steyn & Melanie Phillips.

"I simply can't understand why you do this."

When I have written many articles on a given subject, such as I have on P. Hitchens and especially on Steyn, explaining repeatedly and precisely why I take a certain position, and someone like Mr. Burton comes along says that he "simply can't understand why" I take that position, then I must regretfully that Mr. Burton refuses to read what is in front of him. I simply can't understand why he does this.

In any case, his refusal to take in my clearly argued reasons for my positions on Hitchens and Steyn, and his assertion that I take those positions not for the reasons I have argued in many articles, but out of some perverse egotism, namely that the closer to my own position a person supposedly is, the more "furiously" I denounce him, then it becomes clear that Mr. Burton not only refuses to read and understand my plain meaning, but that he is indulging in baseless and ugly smears against me.

Not what one would expect from this supposedly high-toned conservative website.

Commenter Gintas writes, over at VFR:

"I don't know how closely you've followed that WWWtW thread on the BNP, but even that fanatical suffragette Mary Jackson (she's of the New English Review, right?) has emerged there and is piling on (you're "thin skinned", by the way). When something meaty shows up over there, directly related to the glorious-but-tirelessly-maligned defense of the West (for which purpose WWWtW was supposedly established), they line up with its enemies. When there's a chance to do philosophical gymnastics, they go on endlessly, especially if it's about abortion. Is this a Catholic thing?"

Well, no, Gintas. It's not "a Catholic thing." It's a basic decency & rationality thing.

"When something meaty shows up over there, directly related to the...defense of the West...they line up with its enemies."

Oh, don't be so silly, Gintas. You mean, "enemies" like Mary Jackson, Peter Hitchens, Melanie Phillips, Mark Steyn, &c?

As opposed to that great defender of Western civilization, Nick Griffin? Who, no doubt, spends his evenings paging through Shakespeare's history plays while the music of Josquin desPrez plays in the background and the screensaver on his computer scrolls through the paintings of Chardin?

Feh.

The Catholic reaction here about restricting Muslim immigration is surprising. I'm starting to suspect (and not just from this site) our Catholic friends of being a bit shaky on this problem.

And the BNP? I'm all for them, if they're the only ones willing to deal with existential threats to England and the Christian West, like the Mohammedan invasion. My concern is for England and the Christian West. The BNP's opponents? The ruling elite all over the Western world, which I consider anti-Christian. No thanks, The Guardian, et al, is bad company that corrupts good character. Should I not be surprised to find you, Mr. Burton, and Mary Jackson, and Peter Hitchens in such disreputable company?

Mr. Auster: I thank you for your reply.

But it is precisely *because* I "read what is in front of [me]" that I find your take on Peter Hitchens, Mark Steyn, & Melanie Phillips so baffling.

These three are among the most effective voices in the world today in raising doubts about the wisdom of mass immigration in general, and mass Muslim immigration in particular.

So why can't you give them a little credit?

BTW, that BNP clip of Griffin is from 2000, is it not? Mr. Burton, is it your intention to say that the BNP today is the same as the BNP in 2000?

Gintas the Man: if the BNP folks were, indeed, "the only ones willing to deal with existential threats to England and the Christian [sic] West, then I, too, might grit my teeth and bear with them.

But they're not. They're just not.

Call me choosey, if you like, but I won't sit down at the same table with David Duke.

Yup, Gintas, that clip is from 2000. And it tells me everything I need to know about Nick Griffin.

As I've said before, I think there are a lot of good people voting for the BNP out of (understandable) frustration.

But they deserve better representation than this.

Steve Burton has basically called all my critical articles about Mark Steyn out and out lies. According to Burton, I don't disagree with Steyn for the reasons I've laid out, I disagree with him because Steyn's views are "really" very close to mine, and for sick ego reasons I need to put Steyn down. That, according to Burton, is why I write what I write.

That's what Steve Burton would have people believe about me. Burton thinks he's as pure as the driven snow. But he behaves like a smear artist.

In behaving this way, he evinces the standard left-liberal approach to conservatives. Liberals never grant to any conservative position the minimal respect of treating it as a reasoned, good faith position. All conservative positions are portrayed as symptoms of dark and irrational forces of resentment, hatred, fear, cynicism, and political calculation.

steve burton: "that clip is from 2000. And it tells me everything I need to know about Nick Griffin."

But it shows only about 60 seconds of the speech, so there is no context to Griffin's remarks. Also, there is a piece edited out at 1:17. A highly truncated section of what was probably a 15 to 20 minute speech will only tell you everything you need to know if you have made your mind up before seeing it.

Larry says the following:

"Steve Burton has basically called all my critical articles about Mark Steyn out and out lies."

But that is JUST NOT what Steve has said. In fact, he repeated his thesis twice -- that he doesn't understand why Larry Auster spends his time attacking what Steve thinks are effective anti-mass immigration (especially mass Muslim immigration) public intellectuals writing and speaking in America and Great Britain.

He hasn't once accused Larry of lying or writing anything false about Steyn, et. al.

However, it is interesting that Griffin has supposedly repudiated his anti-Semitism (if not his socialism).

Finally, to Cyrus, I do in fact believe that at their best, England and America are in some sense propositional nations and that your hypothetical Bengalis and Jamacians don't have to believe their ancestors "sailed against the Armada, wrote Jacobean poetry, campaigned against Popery, and invented modernity" -- instead they have to appreciate that history and be willing to contribute to it in a meaningful way. A Jew was Prime Minister once (sort of) and I say a Bengali can and should appreciate Jacobean poetry and who knows, someday someone dark from a foreign country (say the West Indies) might even write some meaningful poetry.

I agree that many liberals have contributed to a silly multi-culti view of the world, but that doesn't change the fact that immigrants DID assimilate into both Great Britain and in greater numbers America (and pre-1960 I would argue they added more good than bad). I think we can do it again. The trick now is to stop the immigration tide and start working toward old-fashioned assimilation (e.g. scrap affirmative action).

Jeff Singer - many thanks for responding so temperately, before I got around to responding intemperately, to LA's latest remarks.

I need a drink, and a good night's sleep, before returning to all this.

But they're not. They're just not.

That's what the UKIP is for. If they're smart, they'll do whatever it takes to make Daniel Hannan their party leader.

Suffragette? We don't need those anymore because, much as the VFR crowd hate it, women have the vote.

Steve Burton: "... So why can't you give them a little credit?"

I'd say it goes deeper than merely failing to give then a little deserved credit ... all the way into deliberate mirepresentation.

Mr. Singer,
I agree that America is a liberal, propositional nation, and we shall simply have to make the best of that for as long as it or we shall endure. England is not, or was not, and turning it or the United Kingdom entire into one represents a hollowing out of Englishness or Britishness, leaving behind mere multicultural liberalism. It was Hitchens who referred to a thousand years of martial valour, faith, common law, music, etc as constitutive of a British identity. I would dispute the "British" part, but as a description of what forms the basis of a non-ideological national consciousness it is pretty apt, and it is also obvious that my hypothetical Bengali can't share in it except by repudiating his own traditions, and affecting a new one. Neither can a Pole, for that matter, but at least for the Pole, physiognomic similarity will permit his children to pass more easily if they should want to, and not excite the Anglo Saxon post-Protestant's civilization-destroying reflexive post-colonial cringe. The Bengali's great-grandchildren may share in that tradition, if his children and grandchildren marry among the natives, but with the practice of marrying cousins from the old country so entrenched, that natural process is likely to take a very long time. But time and intermarriage aside, it is only by taking away that particular history as necessarily constitutive of a national identity that a national self-conception capacious enough to provide space for all the people that both liberals and neoconservatives want to include can be formed. Particular histories, that of England or of Great Britain more than most, have winners and losers, and this simply can not be.

A Jew was Prime Minister once (sort of) and I say a Bengali can and should appreciate Jacobean poetry and who knows, someday someone dark from a foreign country (say the West Indies) might even write some meaningful poetry.
Dark-skinned people from foreign countries have been doing remarkable things since the dawn of time. That they have done so, and no doubt will continue, does not make them anything other than members of their own peoples.

Mr. Auster,
I like your site enough to read it several times a week, and I've even sent you money, but goodness, you are needlessly prickly. You can catch more flies with honey, my friend.

I agree that America is a liberal, propositional nation

It was no such thing at the time of its foundng. Arguably it is such a thing now.

From what I've read of P. Hitchens (one book -- the one on PC in Britain -- and quite a few columns) I've never gotten this impression. (that he is a universalist utopian)

Then how do you describe the sentiments of his cited on this page, for instance - "I am not specially concerned about the 'ethnicity' of the people in this country. I am concerned about whether they are British, and I do not think...that their Britishness is a product of their ‘ethnicity’ but of a thousand years of law, liberty, faith, culture, landscape, memory, music, architecture, humour, self-sacrifice, martial valour, conscience, self-restraint, and all the things that go to make us what we are."

does the rejection of a consistent anti-racism by many, perhaps even most, non-whites necessarily discredit the idea?

Whether it discredits it or not (and what exactly does it even mean to "discredit" it?) it certainly means that white anti-racism in a majority non-white country filled with non-white racialists is a fools game and a dead end.


it is precisely *because* I "read what is in front of [me]" that I find your take on Peter Hitchens, Mark Steyn, & Melanie Phillips so baffling. These three are among the most effective voices in the world today in raising doubts about the wisdom of mass immigration in general, and mass Muslim immigration in particular.

I've not seen much by any of these three on the mass Hispanic migration to America.

does the rejection of a consistent anti-racism by many, perhaps even most, non-whites necessarily discredit the idea?
Whether it discredits it or not (and what exactly does it even mean to "discredit" it?) it certainly means that white anti-racism in a majority non-white country filled with non-white racialists is a fools game and a dead end.
Precisely. It's possible to overthink this. The problem in the realm of facts, rather than of disembodied ideas, is that only whites believe in anti-racism in large numbers, and do so because they believe in white racial guilt. It is in practice, as opposed to theory, an ideology of white self-negation, if not outright self-loathing. Because of these beliefs, whites have chosen immigration policies that within a generation will render them minorities in the United States, and minorities in Europe and Canada in two or three. Nor is this unconscious or unintended. Bill Clinton has spoken expectantly since the mid-1990s of that day, most recently in a speech described here http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090614/D98QA80G0.html, and his eagerness for this eventuality is by no means unique. Real Marxism is dead, but racial Marxism, with white people standing in for the bourgeoisie, lives on.

Unfortunately for 'principled' anti-racism (as opposed to actually-existing anti-racism), while it may be the case that the non-white newcomers believe in white guilt, they don't believe in anti-racism as a principle and the white-guilt-ridden societies into which they are entering have ceded, with their mincing racial preciousness, any power they might have had to ensure that principled anti-racist norms be passed on. Indeed, the message of sensitivity training, affirmative action, and hate speech hysteria, to name a few of actually-existing anti-racism's manifestations, is that every "person of color" is a victim of an irredeemably racist society, which is to say, of irredeemably racist white people. This is not the sort of message calculated not to inculcate hostility or to encourage assimilation. Unless things change very soon in Europe - it is too late to prevent this in the United States - a majority, a voting majority, of the population will be non-white, while whites remain what Amy Chua called a "market dominant minority," with all the social and political ugliness that entails.

It was no such thing at the time of its foundng. Arguably it is such a thing now.
There's hardly any ground for arguing otherwise anymore.

I am totally against the BNP, because of its racist manifesto and its wishes to send us Muslim out of UK. We have every right to live in the UK and make Islam the official religion of UK. Allah (sw) has himself given us the right to do so, and by denying our rights BNP is going against the will of Allah.

Hello everyone. I'm voting BNP this year because i oppose mass immigration. England is now officially the most densly populated country in Europe. Labour have caused this problem and their Tory rivals also have the same history. Are people voting BNP because they are racist? Yeah a few probably. For me it's about space NOT race. More people means "even more" cars, roads, traffic, crime, queing and competion to name only a few. They say immigration gives us a better economy. Yeah it gives the gorvenment more money. If your rich or you have your own bussiness you can pay immigrants less money to clean your house or sweep out the chicken shed but for the average unskilled worker and professional who make up the vast Vast majority of the country won't gain a thing infact they will get less.

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