Monday, July 2, 2018

Rod Dreher - Two Kinds Of Barbarians

This is a difficult post for me because I'm a liberal who has always been very anti-racist. My best friend is Indian and I've known him most of my life. But I noticed one day that there was hardly any white kids coming out of the schools,  and then on another occasion I saw that at my old college there was hardly any white people either.  Soon after that I was in my local high street and I seemed to be the only white person there, and it is a big South London town so there was thousands of people. I felt very uncomfortable and sad.

My hunch is that most liberals feel the same as me but can't admit it, so they have allowed the neoliberals, who are right wing, to get away with mass immigration. New Labour and the elite did not encourage mass immigration because they are anti-racist, in my opinion, but for business reasons, where the demand for housing would sky rocket making the bankers and landlords a fortune as well a bringing in cheaper workers. It was neoliberalism.

Anyway, we humans maybe evolving towards enlightenment but we still have some way to go,  so we still need the feeling of security  and familiarity we get by being in our own culture. When I was my town that I grew up in and I was the only white people there, I felt I had lost my home, that it belonged to someone else, all familiarity had gone.

I will never move to the right, I just want the left to cotton onto this and become honest with themselves like I have before it's  too late.  And those immigrants that are here who are liberals and socialists should understand people with feelings like mine, and if they don't and become intolerant, then they are not true liberals.

Rod Dreher says he all for a multiracial and multicultural society, but not one that overwhelms the host culture.  I believe this issue is the Achilles Heel of the left that could keep them out of power for a long time.  KV




The Edsall column jumped out at me yesterday because I was dealing on Twitter with people who called me racist for likening the present and future mass African migration to Europe to the barbarian invasions of Rome in the 4th through 6th centuries. I did so in a post about a program an Azorean professor has in which he introduces high school students in a creative and intense way to ancient Greek thought.  The professor, who teaches geopolitics in a university, simply mentioned that managing the massive migration efforts out of sub-Saharan Africa (this, given the skyrocketing birthrate, and lack of economic development) is going to be the chief challenge of Europe in this century. Whatever you think the right answer is to the challenge, there can be no denying that this is the key challenge.
European elites — political, academic, ecclesial, etc. — have not wanted to deal with this. The information in the Edsall column indicates why: because they are terrified of sounding and being racist. They believe that defending the integrity of their own cultures, and the ways of their own people, is somehow immoral. We can see that our own liberals view it the same way. The European elites are, therefore, conceptually defenseless against the migrant invasion. One imagines that Europeans, with their militaries, have the means to stop the inflow, but they lack the will.
There really is a racist white right. This is undeniable, and it is a repulsive fact. But when the left refuses to distinguish between Richard Spencer and ordinary white people who, like every other ordinary person, likes his culture and tradition, and doesn’t feel that it is something to be ashamed of they either drive people towards the racist right, or neutralize the contempt that many white conservatives rightly have for the bigots. Because it is so promiscuously deployed, the word “racist” doesn’t carry much weight — and in fact, as the studies Edsall cites show, it actually has the opposite effect.

The American Conservative 

Rod Dreher - Two Kinds Of Barbarians

12 comments:

John said...

The ghettoisation of minorities is overwhelmingly due to the indigenous population's desire to have little to do with the minorities. In their characteristically smug, self-satisfied and knowingly disingenuous way, the indigenous population argue that this liberalism and "multiculturalism" rather than the bigotry it is. White flight ("there goes the neighbourhood" as soon as a non-white has the temerity to live amongst white) is the issue. That isn't to say there aren't issues within the newly arrived migrants: there is a natural desire to live amongst those who find themselves in the same circumstances, trying to come to terms with a new country and a new culture. A safety in numbers until they can find their bearings. But the greatest fault should be levelled at the country as a whole who have given citizenship or right to stay to these new populations, but refuses to integrate them in any way.

The only integration the elites want is the integration, and exploitation, of working class labour and the larceny of the professional classes from desperate societies. The oh-so progressive liberals are nothing if not welcoming if it means cheap nannies and being served cheap lattes. Let any of the offspring from these working classes show their faces in their children's schools or, heaven forbid, work hard and buy a home in the bijou neighbourhoods and the progressives bigotry seeps out like waves of fat flowing over Trump's 60-inch waist. Just as Trump will do nothing about his tidal waves of abdominal fat, there is little hope that the elites will do anything to reverse this ghettoisation. It would take decades of radical social democratic policies to integrate these populations, demolish these physical ghettoes and erase the mental ghettoes that infect our minds.

The Windrush scandal was evidence enough of a deep-seated racism. The Windrush migrants are as English as it is possible to be in terms of culture and habit, including a love of monarchy and the Church which few of us now have, yet a pet with a passport was treated better and had more rights. What then of those who are not as integrated into the national culture as the Windrush generation? If we don't get our act together, we're heading towards US-style culture wars and racism, which in some respects we already have. The US rightly gets a bad rap but, in comparison to Europe as a whole and the UK in particular, it's done a much better job of handling race and religion. While Europeans think nothing of voting for neo-Nazis, I think it would be safe to say that this would be unthinkable in the US, whatever one thinks of the obese orange clown who only got elected because Americans were given the unenviable choice of a weird clown or a criminal lunatic.

Matt Franko said...

“like waves of fat flowing over Trump's 60-inch waist”

Nice to see you back John lol!

Imo it’s not over 44”....

Konrad said...

@ Kaivey:

PART 1 of 2

“We humans are maybe evolving towards enlightenment but we still have some way to go, so we still need the feeling of security and familiarity we get by being in our own culture.”

I understand. However our own culture perpetrates the imperialistic wars that create refugees, which come to us as immigrants. Our own culture spreads poverty and neoliberalism throughout the world like a plague.

I have been to London. I witnessed the scarcity of white people. This is the result of Anglo-American culture, which has always despised the poor, for example, and consigned them to Dickensian conditions. Even though the U.K. government could create infinite money out of thin air, the poor were only taken care of if they agreed to toil in horrendous conditions in a workhouse (or a “spike” as they were called). This aspect of U.K. culture began in 1388. Most people in the workhouse toiled at breaking stones, or crushing bones to produce fertilizer, and so on. This included children, the elderly, the infirm and the sick. Here in the USA we had the same thing in mines, mills, and factories.

Meanwhile Britania was busy colonizing foreign lands, impoverishing and enslaving as it went. This wasn’t all bad. I lived in India for 2½ years, and I was impressed with the railway system, which had been designed by British engineers, and built under British supervision.

My point is that when we think of “our culture,” we tend to think in nostalgic and romanticized terms. In reality, our culture is rather barbaric. This is why we are overrun with immigrants. There was no immigrant problem in continental Europe until NATO destroyed Libya seven years ago. There was no infusion of immigrants from Caribbean regions until the U.K. government brought in the “Windrush generation” starting in 1948.

So…what to do? As individuals there is nothing we can do except try to love everyone we meet, so that we don’t add to the barbarity. We must try to see non-whites as people too. Try to look beneath their surface layers. It was a lack of love for each other in “our culture” that brought immigrants here in the first place.

“I will never move to the right, I just want the left to cotton onto this and become honest with themselves like I have before it's too late. And those immigrants that are here who are liberals and socialists should understand people with feelings like mine, and if they don't and become intolerant, then they are not true liberals.”

Few “liberals” are true liberals. Consider the raging “liberal” assault on straight white non-Jewish males. Consider how so-called “liberals” claim to care about the poor, unless the poor are straight white non-Jewish males. Many “liberal” women are militant feminists who seek to destroy all men. So-called “liberals” claim to care about immigrants, yet they cheer for wars that brutally create immigrants. Most “liberals” support neoliberalism and inequality by echoing the lie that the U.S. and U.K. governments have a “debt crisis” and are revenue-constrained. Some “liberals” claim to oppose “human rights abuses,” yet they support Israeli atrocities. They support Israel’s “right to defend itself,” which includes the “right” to be the most racist people in world history.

In short, very few “leftists” are actually leftists. Most are mirror images of right-wingers.

This is Our Culture.

Continued below…

Konrad said...

.
PART 2 of 2

From the article…

“European elites — political, academic, ecclesial, etc. — have not wanted to deal with this because they are terrified of sounding racist. They believe that defending the integrity of their own cultures, and the ways of their own people, is somehow immoral. We can see that our own liberals view it the same way. The European elites are, therefore, conceptually defenseless against the migrant invasion.”

They are not helpless. Liberals encourage the migrant invasion via the things I described above. Most “liberals” are so full of blind seething HATRED of straight white non-Jewish males that they celebrate the immigrant invasion as “justice.” They constantly call straight white non-Jewish males “racists.”

Meanwhile straight white non-Jewish males are too cowardly to support and defend each other.

Don’t blame immigrants for this. Blame our own culture.

Kaivey said...

Thank you, Konrad.

Matt Franko said...

Taleb: “5) THE ANACHRONISTIC FALLACY

Injustice was done in the past with invasions, etc. But justice cannot operate without STATUTES of LIMITATIONS: we can't invoke the Pilgrims, w/o going back to Bronze Age migrations.

Arguments abt who did what >100 y ago are necessarily invalid.”

https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1013762308546420736?s=21

Tom Hickey said...

Arguments abt who did what >100 y ago are necessarily invalid.”

Not necessarily.

This is true, for example, the originalist interpretation of the US Constitution holding that the meaning should be based on the intentions of the Founding Fathers as revealed in the documents of the time, for example.

ON the other hand, the "living document" interpretation holds that the Constitution should be interpreted in the the contemporary context.

These are not necessarily mutually exclusive in that interpretation can take both into account.

The anachronistic fallacy applies only where there is no relation between the facts and contexts of different periods.

This often committed in economics by mixing data from different context while presuming a similarity of context that doesn't exist and can be shown to exist, as is the case with different monetary system. This is not only a matter of time, but also geography. The EZ has a different monetary system than the ROW.

Logic is nuanced.

Tom Hickey said...

I should have added, there is a difference between those trained in logic (philosophers, systems people) and those trained in math (STEM folks), as well as those trained in neither.

Matt Franko said...

Personally I try to be only thinking ahead all of the time...

Tom Hickey said...

Personally I try to be only thinking ahead all of the time...

A great paradox of life is that as "a person" everyone is equally free, e.g., to think what they want, and in liberal societies equal under the law at least in principle.

But as embodied individuals humans are socially embedded, which implies a great many qualifications and imposes a great many boundaries, some explicit and some implicit, and some tacit. For example, humans are socially determined and culture-bound much more than most realize or admit.

This is reflected in the whitewashing of cultural traditions, for example, so that the whole culture ends up living a lie.

This paradox results in many paradoxes of liberalism. Liberalism assumes homogeneity based on personhood yet life is filled with heterogeneity. Thus the liberal-conservative divide in liberal societies.

John said...

Matt, thanks for the welcome back. I hope you're behaving yourself! Defending Trump's policies is one thing, but defending a 44-inch waist is taking the piss. I know people with 40-inch waists, and they look trim compared to Trump. The man should begin the day with some oatmeal and hit the gym with Paul Ryan and his P90X groupies. That way he can be in office until he keels over in 2188. At this rate, with Pelosi and Schumer at the helm, the useless Dems have no chance against Trump. The presidency is his for however long he wants it: he could easily overturn the two-term limit, run until the 23rd century and then hand over the presidency to Donald Trump VIII, who'll reign for a thousand years. There's more chance of that than the Dems being anything other than completely useless. I'm seriously considering putting some money on the Republicans to not only hold what they already have in Congress but also taking some useless Dems down in the midterms.

Ryan Harris said...
This comment has been removed by the author.