I think it’s time for a brief review of some simple, obvious facts about human nature and the character of human societies.
1) People generally prefer to live with others like themselves. Even in highly diverse places like great port cities, people generally associate homogeneously in their private lives.
2) In highly homogeneous societies, those things that form the social framework of homogeneous groups in private association — commonalities of language, religion, folklore, history, humor, cuisine, manners, literature, music, sport, custom, courtship, drink, pastimes, ritual, dress, taboo, myth, and legend — may also be shared in the public square, without friction or controversy.
3) This expansion of shared values into the public square favors, in turn, high social cohesion and public trust, and, importantly, a feeling of liberty that flows naturally from congruence of manners, desires, aversions, attitudes and behavior. (See this post from a couple of years back.)
4) In small amounts, diversity, existing in conformance with (and subordinate to) a society’s ambient culture, adds flavor and spice to a community.
5) The more diverse a society becomes, however, the less congruence there is between the social lexicons of its several subpopulations. As more circles are added to the cultural Venn diagram, the area of mutual overlap — the region that represents the range of commonality suitable for uncontroversial expression in the public square — diminishes, rapidly.
6) In contrast to 3), this shrinking commonality erodes social cohesion and public trust (even, it has been shown, trust within one’s own group). As it does so it erodes liberty, and happiness.
7) There is, then, a “sweet spot” for diversity: a percentage of exotic residents and influences that is sufficient to season and enliven an otherwise homogeneous society without becoming large enough to begin to usurp its ambient culture or disrupt general social cohesion. Beyond that “tipping point”, though, the effect on the host society is increasingly divisive and detrimental.
8) Just where the tipping point is depends, in large part, on the rate of immigration, and on how similar the new arrivals are to the culture they are joining. Denmark, for example, could far more easily absorb a large wave of Norwegian immigrants than an equal number of Somali Muslims. I think we will all agree that if, say, you were to swap out three-quarters of the native population of Denmark with Somali Muslims, that the indigenous, traditional cultural life of that nation would be irrevocably changed, and effectively destroyed — and that the happiness of the remaining Danes would be greatly diminished. (It should be obvious that on this cultural level, the same is true for any people’s traditional homeland — Danes, Somalis, Tibetans, American Indians, indigenous Australians, or anyone else.)
9) It is nearly impossible to know in advance just where this tipping point is. By the very nature of this sort of gradual change, it only becomes apparent after it has already been crossed.
10) Once wrought, the demographic changes brought about by mass immigration are almost impossible to reverse, without recourse to great, often sanguinary, unpleasantness.
11) Given, then, a) the destructive effects of excess diversity; b) the difficulty of knowing when the demographic “tipping point” has been reached; and c) the irreversibility of demographic change wrought by immigration, it seems that wisdom, prudence, and a concern for general happiness all counsel that any ethnic homeland’s immigration policy should err strongly on the side of caution and moderation, particularly as regards immigration from profoundly (often irreconcilably) alien cultures.
These commonsense truths are the basis of the widely accepted idea that indigenous societies have a fundamental right to defend and preserve the cultural and demographic integrity of their homelands. Nobody in the liberal West imagines, for example, that the forcible settlement of Han Chinese in Tibet, and the ongoing displacement of traditional Tibetan culture, is conducive to the happiness of the Tibetans.
There is a curious blindness, however, on the part of the educated elites of the liberal West to acknowledge that these obvious principles, the generality of which should be entirely and uncontroversially self-evident to anyone of sound mind, might in fact apply to Western peoples and homelands. Can any person not a child or an imbecile look at, for example, Britain, Sweden, France, or the Netherlands and seriously imagine that the native people of these countries are happier (or freer) now, after decades of mass immigration of Muslims and other non-Europeans, than they were when the populations of these nations were almost exclusively British, Swedish, French, and Dutch? Can anyone even begin to think such a thing is actually true?
Apparently so, even now.
It would have seemed unimaginable just half a century ago — but barring a very sudden and dramatic awakening from this deadly enchantment, the ancient peoples and cultures of the Western world are on a path to self-inflicted extinction.
32 Comments
It’s not self-inflicted. People like Barbara Spectre in Sweden aren’t Swedish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QoJGvEVogI
“I think there is going to be anti-Semitism because at this point in time Europe has not learned to be multicultural. And I think we’re going to be a part of the throes of that transformation, which must take place. Europe is not going to be the monolithic societies they were once were in the last century. Jews are going to be at the center of that. It’s a huge transformation for Europe to make. They are now going into a multicultural mode and Jews will be resented because of our leading role. But without that leading role and without that transformation Europe will not survive.”
Of course it’s self-inflicted. Pick the name of any European leader, and Google it along with “multicultural” or “diversity”. No outside group could impose these policies upon the ancient peoples of Europe without the consent of their ruling elites.
Indeed. What is not apparent, however, is why. What can possibly account for “this deadly enchantment” or, as I see it, this mass hysteria?
Free-market capitalism, which I wholeheartedly support, has, at its core, the fundamental premise that people respond favorably to incentive. I have never encountered a coherent argument that negates this premise. So, what on earth could possibly be the incentive for all those people who subscribe to the prevailing leftist worldview?
How is it possible that the continents of Europe and North America are in thrall of policies that unequivocally spell doom for their civilization? Similarly, how could the American people, “the last best hope of earth”, elect, and subsequently re-elect, a President who, as he promised, is fundamentally changing America, and clearly not for the better?
Seriously. WTF is going on here? And why the f*ck is it going on here?
Henry,
There are several causes, acting in concert.
First, there is the radical rejection of the idea of innate statistical differences among human populations (and of any and all discrimination in human relations). Belief in such differences having been a necessary factor in the Holocaust, such discrimination — and ethno-nationalism in general — has since then come to be associated with ultimate evil.
Added to that is secularism, which eliminates both tradition-based moral systems and the cohesive effect of shared religion on society. In its place we have an atomizing Rawlsian universalism that sees no difference in principle between one’s own people and everyone else.
This tainting of all discrimination with the infinite evil of Nazism, combined with radical secular universalism, has, for Western peoples, turned what was once rational, commonsense cultural self-interest into “xenophobia”, “racism”, “nativism”, “bigotry”, and “hate”.
The effect has been to cause Western societies to make the dogmatic rejection of plain facts about human biodiversity and the organic nature of human societies into a new kind of secular religion, and to make frank acknowledgment of these features of reality into a modern form of heresy.
Malcolm,
Though I do not disagree with your explanations in principle, I am not inclined to think that the majority of people who subscribe to those views are sophisticated enough to understand your explanations. Hence, I find it difficult to accept that your explanations can account for the degree to which the leftist worldview is held by so many adherents. There must be another crucial factor that can explain the intense fervor with which the majority of these useful idiots cling to the self-destructive path the leftist elites are leading Western civilization.
Henry,
A person doesn’t have to be able to parse and articulate this dogma in order to embrace and instantiate it. It is sufficient that one be raised to believe it, to be surrounded by others who believe it as well, to be led by elites who propagate it, enshrine it into law, and suppress dissent, and to be able to distance oneself enough from its negative consequences that the cognitive dissonance required to keep believing in it all does not become unbearable. (“Boiled-frog” gradualism certainly helps, too.)
That last condition is becoming harder and harder to maintain, and so we begin to see ethno-nationalism strongly on the rise in Europe. But it is too late now to undo this catastrophe without some real ugliness.
OK, fine. I get how gradualism can get that nasty job done. But here is the kernel of my remaining puzzlement: Why are some individuals, like me and you, not taken in by it? Why did millions of liberals, like both of us used to be, succumb to this creeping perversity, where some others saw through it (and in my case, I smelled the Obama rat from the get go)? What is that rare elixir that prevented us from joining the sheeple? And how, if possible, can we bottle it for widespread dissemination?
Let’s face it, Malcolm. No amount of logical discourse seems to make a dent in the obtuse mindset of the leftists. How can we neutralize the Kool-Aid?
Those are hard questions.
A great part of it must just have to do with how one is raised and indoctrinated. What is now considered despicable heresy was ubiquitous, mainstream common sense until the social upheavals of the postwar, postcolonial era. In some places it still is.
It also has to do with personal experience, with whether one has ever really had to confront hard evidence from the real world. Blank-slate universalist multiculturalism sounds fine in the abstract, and were it not for those pesky facts about history and human nature, it’s easy to see it as real moral progress, as the expansion of the circle of moral inclusion. In sheltered, affluent life-circumstances, one isn’t forced to see the cost of denying reality. This also explains the widening disconnection between ruling elites and the subordinate classes with regard to how they perceive the effects of multiculturalism and mass immigration.
There are also dark political realities at work here; there are various interests that are well served by multiculturalism and lax immigration policy. For example, there are:
— Political parties that favor big government and the welfare state, who see these policies as expanding their base;
— Public-sector unions who seek to expand the number of people depending on their services;
— Business interests who want cheap labor;
— Minority groups who want to weaken, and gain ground against, the dominant ethnic bloc;
…and so on.
Finally, a lot of the people who seem to be prominent voices on the neo-reactionary Right are slightly odd sorts who are more concerned with reading old books and digging into history and data than with “fitting in”. You can draw a lot of heat for this sort of heresy, and most folks would rather not.
Mainly I think it’s the moral aspect: that liberal multiculturalism and radical non-discrimination have established themselves as occupying the moral “high ground”.
But what’s the “elixir”? Why do you and I see through this buncombe, while so many others don’t? I can’t really say.
Yes, yes, yes … Everything you say is part of the reality I am familiar with.
But, are you also implying that the reality you describe is a new reality? Put another way, why now and not, let’s say, 3 or 4 decades ago? When did facile thinking not exist? When was there ever a dearth of special interests? Where have all the flowers gone, especially the likes of our Framers who were willing to gamble everything (including their lives) for noble and virtuous causes to benefit all peoples?
In what era of history were the youth of a nation not idealistic? Likewise, when were the rich and powerful not aware of which side their bread was buttered on? When was the last time a capitalist was persuaded to support socialist policy?
What has changed that has enabled today’s malignancy to flourish?
New, yes. And it very much did begin decades ago; many of the immigration initiatives that have so radically transformed the demography and culture of the West had their origins that far back (the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 in the United States, for example).
Youth may have always meant idealism, but idealism took a new form in the postwar era. As for capitalists making common cause with socialists, that happened often in the 20th century; look at, e.g., the arrangements made with industry leaders in Italy and Germany in the 1930’s, and the National Recovery Administration here in the U.S.
Alrighty, then. As Johnny Roseboro signalled to Sandy Koufax, using his index finger, for heat: Bring it!
No, Henry, I do not advocate violence. It isn’t necessary. History offers scant cause for optimism, though.
What I should have said there is that “I fear it is too late now to undo this catastrophe without real ugliness.”
What matters to me is for people to begin to understand the seriousness of what they have, in their hallucinatory rejection of reality, allowed to happen. There are still sensible, peaceful measures that the ruling elites of the West could set in motion to halt, and begin to reverse, the accelerating Untergang of their nations and cultures.
What I fear is that this will not happen, and that in extremis the sturdy, common people of Britain and Europe, facing the imminent extinction of their ancient way of life in their own homelands, and roused at last to incandescent fury, will take matters into their own hands. And that will indeed be ugly.
Goes all the way back to William Wilberforce.
Once you have a ruling elite that has taken power in the name of far away strangers, all of them alien, most of them subhuman, the rest follows.
From the 1820s to 1857 they got power and sex by emancipating women, and after 1857 women were already substantially privileged over males, so emancipating them even further was running into headwinds.
So who to emancipate next? Ah, blacks.
I am not a fan of violence either, Malcolm. But I am also not a so-called “peacenik”, who never condones violence. When a whole nation’s way of life is threatened, and only violence can safeguard survival, I am not willing to be led meekly to the gas chambers.
What I fear is that this will not happen, and that in extremis the sturdy, common people of Britain and Europe, facing the imminent extinction of their ancient way of life in their own homelands, and roused at last to incandescent fury, will take matters into their own hands. And that will indeed be ugly.
Yes, it will. It would be aces if the sturdy, common people would “wake up” and institute sensible immigration policies, recognize the reality of human biodiversity, and stop the gathering genocide of whites in its tracks.
But there is no evidence that any of this is happening or likely to happen soon. You say yourself, “History offers scant cause for optimism.”
Roused at last to incandescent fury is better than subservience and defeat.
Indeed it is. I still hold out hope that those are not the only two choices — but if so, then sooner is better than later.
Malcolm’s “this”, as I read his commentary, refers to “sensible, peaceful measures that the ruling elites of the West could set in motion to halt, and begin to reverse, the accelerating Untergang of their nations and cultures.” Hence, Malcolm implies that what will happen (instead of “this”) is “that in extremis the sturdy, common people of Britain and Europe, facing the imminent extinction of their ancient way of life in their own homelands, and roused at last to incandescent fury, will take matters into their own hands.” Moreover, the latter quoted statement is what I presume Barking Cat refers to as “it” when he asserts that “Yes, it will.”
Thus, it seems to me, Barking Cat is in violent agreement with Malcolm’s expectation.
Yes, Henry, I’d say that’s right all round.
On second reading, I realize that Barking’s “it will” could refer to either Malcolm’s “this will not happen” or to Malcolm’s “that will indeed be ugly.”
Sigh. Such are the minor dangers of using ambiguous pronouns in such discussions …
Henry, now I’ve misread you. I assume that B.C. meant that “it will” be ugly.
Which it will. How I hope (though as I said, I am not at all optimistic) that people will come to their senses. The one cause for any optimism at all is the spinelessness of politicians generally; if the overwhelming mass of public sentiment actually does come round, the pols will roll right over.
Hopefully, in their graves.
Yes, “it” refers to “And that will indeed be ugly.” My apologies if the antecedent was not clear.
A last-ditch counterattack would preferably be avoided. The trouble is that the socio-political policies of every Western country continue to build up the pressure, and the vast majority of indigenes agree or (more often) are indifferent to the foreseeable conflict.
But in all of these countries, even pathetic Britain, there is still a hard core minority that will eventually resist by any means they deem necessary at any cost. Like Malcolm, I nurture a feeble hope it won’t turn out that way. So I do what little I can to change minds, to impregnate the idea of ending Muslim immigration, having real borders again, making it safe to speak openly about topics that are now taboo.
If enough of us do the same … I’m not inclined to think it will stave off the violent cultural clash, but all we can do is all we can do.
True that.
“There is, then, a “sweet spot” for diversity: a percentage of exotic residents and influences that is sufficient to season and enliven an otherwise homogeneous society without becoming large enough to begin to usurp its ambient culture or disrupt general social cohesion. ”
I have to ask where this “sweet spot” idea comes from? What is this stuff about “season and enliven an otherwise homogeneous society”? I need proof of how diversity in small amounts is beneficial to society rather than it, at best, being a drain outweighed by the contribution(intellectual, economical, etc) of the immigrants.
Goodspeed, I can’t prove that to you. It’s a matter of public sentiment.
Some people will always think, as you seem to, that absolute homogeneity is best. They are, however, relatively few in number: most people like to have a little variety sprinkled in. (Don’t you ever go to a Mexican restaurant?)
At some point, though, as diversity increases, more and more people start to notice, and be adversely affected by, its destructive effect on liberty, public trust, and social cohesion.
Where’s the ‘sweet spot’? I suppose it would be the level of diversity that maximizes the percentage of natives who feel that things are about right. (I’m sure it’s different for different cultures.)
The point is, however, that you don’t know where that is until you’ve already passed it, and by then it’s very hard to do anything about it.
I think you have to define “diversity”. I have more in common with my fellow PhD friends from Iran, Taiwan and Nigeria than I do with most fellow Caucasian Americans …..
I rather doubt that, although no doubt you do share one big, important thing. People form trait-groups along all sorts of axes, and such associations can be quite strong.
Usually, though, such relationships, however close, are confined to the workplace (or the philately club, or the dojo, or whatever the particular trait-axis is). Perhaps not, in your case — but that’s unusual.
Bear in mind, also, that the issue here is not all about you, but about the effect of high diversity on society and culture generally.
Perhaps I should refer you to commenter ‘goodspeed’, just above — who thinks that any diversity is too much — and just let the two of you thrash this one out.
No, it’s not just a workplace thing. Honestly, race tends to lose out in comparison to class and status. Don’t you think the centimillionaires of the world have more in common than, for instance, all the white people in Kansas?
(Addendum to above comment)…irrespective of educational background or income.
“…the centimillionaires of the world…”
Are there transnational elites? Of course. And you’re quite right: they have so little in common with the ordinary people of their native cultures that they blithely consign them to perdition.
“Perhaps I should refer you to commenter ‘goodspeed’, just above – who thinks that any diversity is too much – and just let the two of you thrash this one out.”
Please dont put words in my mouth.
What Im trying to find out is how much, if any, diversity is beneficial to society. High amounts of it is obviously a drain but sometimes even low amounts can create problems, like the Chinese in SEA and Jews in the West, both of whom actually do alot better on many metrics compared to the natives.
“Some people will always think, as you seem to, that absolute homogeneity is best. They are, however, relatively few in number:”
Do you have a source on this?
“most people like to have a little variety sprinkled in. (Don’t you ever go to a Mexican restaurant?)”
I like foreign food too, but that doesnt mean that diversity is good for society.