The Virginia Tech killer was a South Korean English major named Cho Seung-Hui
(The Virginia Tech killer was apparently connected with Islam, as suggested by the words “Ismail Ax” written on his arm, discussed in a comment in this thread. If anyone has further information on this, please send it to me.)
Has anyone ever added up the number of white Americans killed by non-white immigrants over the years, starting with the murder of Frank Lloyd Wright’s mistress Margaret Cheney, her two children, and three house guests and the burning down of Wright’s home Taliesen by a black immigrant servant in 1914, up to the murder of New York City actress Adrienne Shelley by illegal alien Diego Pillco in November 2006? It is not an insignificant number. Whatever the number, barely a week passes in which a white American is not killed by a non-white immigrant or illegal alien.
Is that a racist thing to say? The fact is that immigration is by itself a traumatic experience, and that the immigration of poor non-whites into a prosperous, majority-white country often (and predictably) triggers feelings of racial alienation, racial envy, and racial hostility on the part of the non-white immigrant toward the white majority population.
Undercover Black Man writes:
Greetings, Mr. Auster.
Sometimes you impress me with your fair-mindedness. Such as your care in distinguishing fact from fancy in the Knoxville torture-murders.
But then you seize upon the race of the Virginia Tech binge-killer, absent any indication that Cho Seung-Hui was motivated by racial animus or insane with “racial alienation.”
If the killer had a Muslim name, you’d make it about the violent nature of Islam.
If the killer were black or Hispanic, you’d make it about the criminal proclivities and anti-white motives of blacks and Hispanics.
And if the killer had been white? My guess is you’d be discussing the Virginia Tech massacre in terms relating to humankind generally. The fragility of the human brain, the flawed nature of the human soul… Fallen Man, or whatever you point to religiously to make sense of inexplicable human evil.
With a WHITE binge-killer, you would consider his whiteness irrelevant. For a NON-WHITE binge-killer, race is crucial.
The one thing you can’t expect from non-white immigrants is that they be more perfect human specimens than white Americans. Some will commit crimes, some will become mentally ill, some will murder. Why is your first impulse not to view Cho Seung-Hui as a human being doing what humans occasionally do?
And would it have truly brought you more comfort if a white man had murdered 33 people at Virginia Tech yesterday?
LA replies:
We don’t know yet what his motivation was. We do know there is an unending stream of homicides of whites by nonwhites, and that given racial and immigration dynamics this is inevitable and increasing. We do know that vast numbers of whites have been killed who would not have been killed absent non-white immigration.
If the killer in this case had been a white American, I obviously would not have brought in the immigration angle. But in fact he was a Korean. Last year there was the Muslim student at a North Carolina campus who mowed down people with his car. Then there was the Muslim who went on an automobile rampage in San Francisco. Before that was the Muslim who murdered several people at a Jewish organization in Seattle. Before that was the mass murder of commuters by black immigrant Colin Ferguson on the Long Island Railroad, whose motive was revenge against America. Then there are the ongoing rape/murders of white women by Hispanics, not to mention the continual danger that white women are under from black rapists. Then there are the recent atrocity murders of young whites by blacks, in Knoxville and elsewhere. Then there are the endless number of Americans killed by illegal alien Hispanic drivers.
I don’t have a statistical overview of this phenomenon, but it is not surprising that as our historically white-majority country lets itself be taken over by nonwhites who have no historical connection with or loyalty to this country and its white people, and who are generally on a lower socioeconomic level than the whites, the combination of anti-white racial animus and social and behavioral disorder associated with lower-class and recent immigrant groups will make life in this country increasingly dangerous for whites.
Notice also that before I learned that the killer was Korean, I talked about the Eloi syndrome that kept the campus authorities from warning the campus of the murders. So there is an overlap here. The Eloi syndrome makes Americans helpless in the face of all evil, such as the Columbine killers, who were white. But the Eloi syndrome is exacerbated when it comes to nonwhites and immigrants. If a white American instead of a Muslim foreigner had threatened the female Agriculture Department official (whose name I keep forgetting and I get tired of looking it up), she probably would have reported it. But, as she herself said, she saw Atta as an immigrant, as a recent arrival who didn’t know the country’s customs (such as that you do not go into government offices and threaten to harm federal officials), as someone whom she needed to make feel welcome.. So she didn’t report his threatening behavior and bizarre comments. She didn’t do anything. (And please never forget: if she had reported Atta’s behavior to the police, he would not have continued at liberty to lead the destruction of the World Trade Center.)
Similarly, if there were a mass Nordic illegal alien invasion of America increasing our population and the stress on our resources, the Sierra Club would have no problem being consistent with its environmental principles and calling on the government to stop this invasion. But because the invasion is non-white, the Sierra Club says it would be racist to stop it, and so the Club abandons its environmental principles in the name of the higher law of anti-discrimination.
The point is that whites are MORE vulnerable to nonwhite disorder and nonwhite violence than to white disorder and white violence, because of the non-discrimination imperative of liberalism. Further, many nonwhites have a specifically racial motive to harm whites that whites do not have. Put those two facts together, and you have white Americans’ helplessness before nonwhites and non-Westerners who in many cases do not mean them well.
LA continues:
Two further points:
First, I have never said that evil is “inexplicable,” whether done by whites or nonwhites. That is a typical liberal relativist view that I have often attacked, especially in my article about the mass murder on the LIRR.
Second, there are obviously many nuances in this complicated issue and I have not dealt with all of them in my brief reply to Undercover Black Man. But here is a way to sum up the key issue that UCM raised concerning the relationship between the problem of evil and violence in general and the specially racial aspect of evil and violence by nonwhites against whites. Evil is always there; the potential for violence and crime is always there. But injecting huge poplations of nonwhites into a historically white society in a process leading toward the whites losing control over their country is going to increase by an order of magnitude such disorder and evil and make it racial. It is the job of leadership to encourage the factors that make for a more orderly, safe, and happy society, and to lessen the factors that make for a more disorderly, dangerous and unhappy society. Racially transforming America from a white into non-white country makes America vastly more disorderly, dangerous, and unhappy, and it makes it especially so for the whites.
Dobeln writes:
Hi! Another Scandinavian reader here.
I have two major issues with your Virginia Tech and immigration post:
One: Statistics matter. An influx of high-crime groups such as blacks or low-class Hispanics will indeed create the effects you describe, because of their generally poorer social performance combined with their higher propensity for violent crime.
An influx of low-crime groups such as Koreans or Chinese, who display crime levels lower than most white groups will, on the contrary, tend to make society safer (on average—they make society more dangerous in the same way as more live births among low-crime groups make society more dangerous).
It is not terribly productive therefore to rage against Korean exchange students in general based on a single incident. Anecdotes matter when backed with statistics. Otherwise, they shouldn’t be used to make generalized arguments.
Two: Spree killings or mass killings are, unlike more run-of-the-mill killings (where blacks and Hispanics dominate in the U.S.), as far as I know a rather equal-opportunity crime. Especially the sub-sub category of the low-status young male slipping into nihilism and hate, then going on a suicidal killing spree tends to be dominated by whites. Immigration isn’t terribly relevant to this rather marginal (if spectacular), genre of crime.
A reader writes:
East Asians have the rare distinction of making America safer by being here, in regards to run of the mill violent crime. According to Jared Taylor’s Color of Crime report, Asians commit violent crime at a rate of half to three quarters of the white rate. I’ve heard lower figures from sources I do not recall at the moment. There is probably also some variation between the different Asian communities—e.g., Phillipinos being more violent than East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans). There is quite a difference in mean SAT/IQ scores between East and Southeast Asians.
You are right that because the perpetrator is not white, our society will be more likely to bend the rules and lighten the punishment. But ironically, this may be less true in this case because the shooter is an (East) Asian, a group not known for committing a lot of crime, relatively speaking. That is, people are more hesitant to punish blacks and Hispanics (to a lesser extent) precisely because they famously commit more crime, and, generally speaking, don’t fare very well. More broadly, I’ve found that Americans are more willing to speak unkindly about Asians—not that they dislike Asians more than other groups necessarily, but are more willing to voice whatever grievance they have about them. Perhaps this is so because they are less physically intimidating, but also possibly because their success and low crime rate is so obvious, that silence-inducing pity and guilt is no longer appropriate—they are obviously not an “oppressed class,” so political correctness is less apt.
It would be wrong, statistically speaking, to seize on a murder by say, a Hispanic immigrant and conclude that Hispanic immigrants are undesirable. It might be that Hispanics as a group commit crime at a lesser rate and therefore make the country safer. I’m afraid this will occur here, because people are so incompetent in statistical matters. One must, of course, look at the group’s tendencies. As for Hispanics, their crime rate is significantly higher than the white rate (see Color of Crime above). A story about a Mexican illegal immigrant murderer might serve as a backdrop to this fact, if only because anecdotes are more bracing and persuasive. In response to your black correspondent, it would be wrong to criticize Hispanic immigration for a single Hispanic murderer, but not to point out that Hispanics are more likely than other ethnic/immigrant groups to be murderers, and that this should inform our immigration policies.
LA replies:
I certainly have not said that East Asians increase the rate of violent crime in the U.S. I am saying that immigration has filled this country with people who—not through any fault of their own, but because of racial and cultural differences—do not belong here and who do not identify with America as a country, and who in many cases despise the white majority which they see either as their historic oppressors, or as contemptible weaklings who are abandoning their control over their own country, abandoning their women to be raped by blacks and Hispanics, abandoning their history to be re-written by America haters. If you think the fabled East Asians respect the white majority which they correctly see as fools surrendering their own country, even as they resent them for still vestigially dominating the country, you are wrong.
White America is turning itself into a victim of the uncontrolled moral and racial disorder, greed, hate, and aggression that it has released via mass immigration. Whether the Virginia Tech killer was motivated by anger against the majority or by some other factor having nothing to do with race, we don’t know yet (though I do expect that cultural or racial alienation will turn out to be part of the picture).. We do know that through the white majority’s non-discriminatory mass admission of non-Westerners, including East Asians, it has put itself in a racially vulnerable position the effects of which are seen across the board.
Dave B. writes:
My wife directed me to a story about the VT killer that read in part “They said Cho also died with the words “Ismail Ax” in red ink on one of his arms.” In addition “A note believed to have been written by Cho was found in his dorm room that railed against ‘rich kids,’ ‘debauchery’ and ‘deceitful charlatans’ on campus.”
Wondering what on earth “Ismail Ax” meant, I typed the phrase into Yahoo and this came up as the 6th hit.
The website has the story of Ibrahim, in which he destroys the idols of the people, their idols of wealth and debauchery. He used an ax. Allah, thankful of this happening, blessed Ibrahim with a great prophet, whom Ibrahim named Ismail.
Maybe it’s all just a coincidence? The news media are reporting about the tattoo, but I wonder if we’ll get any further than that?
Mark J. writes:
You wrote: “Racially transforming America from a white into non-white country makes America vastly more disorderly, dangerous, and unhappy, and it makes it especially so for the whites. “
I would go a step further and argue that even if the demographic changes had a disproportionate impact on non-whites, and the harm to whites was relatively less than to any other group, there would still be a problem. And the reason (from my perspective as a white American) is that these non-whites are not of our people.
The same argument could be made in terms of my family. If my family were being harmed by other families moving into our neighborhood, it would not comfort me to learn that these other families were actually suffering more than my family from the upheaval and change. My family is my primary concern. I don’t wish these other families ill; in fact if they would stay in their own neighborhoods and out of mine, I might be interested in a friendly back-and-forth with them. But if their presence negatively affects my family at all, or the character of my neighborhood at all, I don’t want them here even if the change is harder on them than it is on my family.
So when Undercover Black Man says you are unfairly only calling attention to situations where non-whites cause trouble, and ignoring when whites cause trouble, this to me sounds similar to someone saying “You are giving unfair consideration to your own children and aren’t treating the children of others just the same.” Of course we don’t. They aren’t our family, they aren’t our people—why should we treat them the same? We don’t wish them ill, but our threshold for tolerance of their misbehavior is going to be much, much lower than that of our own family or our own people.
I’m not sure you agree with me on this, but my family and my people are my touchstone in these arguments. My people are my extended family. They get special consideration, period. I feel no more compulsion to let alien people into my people’s land than I would to let strangers into my family’s home.
An Indian living in the West writes:
I don’t want to draw unverifiable conclusions against other nationalities in such a time of tragedy. However, in my own experience, as a student of a University in the West which had a large international body of students, I had occasion to interact with East Asian students to some extent—mostly mainland Chinese and also some Koreans. There were very few Japanese and my interactions with them were very limited. My experience was that Mainland Chinese and also bizarrely South Koreans had a very big chip on their shoulder vis a vis the West. Their countries had been “wronged” by the white West and they felt a deep sense of grievance and insult—especially the men. I think the women were a lot less like that.
One student in particular, who was from South Korea incidentally, hated America with an all consuming passion. This I thought was astonishing given the fact that it was America which stopped the whole Korean peninsula from being turned into the Commie paradise that North Korea currently is today. And what was even more amazing was that he felt this way despite the fact that his own sister was by then an American citizen and had a very good life, which he admitted frankly.
This is the paradox—they dislike the West or in some instances hate it (the hatred of whites barely concealed) but they see no problem with coming to the West and enjoying all its fruits. My point is: if your sense of pride in your race and your country makes you dislike the West that much (due to slights suffered—real or imagined), then why come here at all? [LA replies: When an empire opens up its Metropolitan center to outsiders, when have they ever not come?]
Also, the Left is as much a culprit in this because it encourages all international students in Universities to hate the West too. I had plenty of experience dealing with white leftists in my University. I sometimes wondered how some people could hate their own country and their own race with such vitriolic passion.
Finally, at the risk of repeating the same point over and over again, I am NOT taking my experiences to be representative of Chinese or Koreans generally. So if anyone is offended by this, please note the caveats.
Mark J. writes:
Your correspondant “A reader” noted: “East Asians have the rare distinction of making America safer by being here, in regards to run of the mill violent crime. According to Jared Taylor’s Color of Crime report, Asians commit violent crime at a rate of half to three quarters of the white rate.”
Logically, if we are going to judge whether immigrants are a benefit to the country or not based on things like average crime rates, illiteracy, and so on, we should then want to see the white population replaced by Asian immigrants, since then the geographic entity named “America” will have a lower crime rate.
This illustrates the fallacy of making arguments about immigration based on crime rates and so on. The bottom line is that my people—my extended family—need a place to live on this earth just for ourselves. It doesn’t matter where we fall on the crime or competency scale of all of the peoples on earth. Our existence as a people is what matters. That is the purpose of our country. That is the purpose of our society and culture—they are tools for furthering the well-being of our people. Those who are not our people do not belong here, period, regardless of whether they commit more or less crime. The only people who should be allowed to live, work, and raise families in our people’s land are our people, and those select foreigners who are capable of, and committed to, completely assimilating into our people. They should literally be indistinguishable from any of us. And for that to happen they need to be of European ethnic heritage, be Christian or Christian-friendly agnostics, speak English, and be capitalists and value free markets and individual liberty (including free speech, free association, and gun rights). These are my (our) people. No one else has any business living and working in our people’s country (tourists and businessmen excepted).
LA replies:
Is Mark J. excluding Jews from membership in the West?
Jill Miller writes:
Check out my blog posts on this very subject here:
That page is a compilation page—and there is a lot of info there. Search my blog for even more. Here are some of the headlines:
“FACTS ON ILLEGAL MASS MIGRATION ILLEGAL ALIENS / CRIME / TERRORISM It’s a Quality of Life Issue on Every Level”
“Illegal aliens murder 12 Americans daily: Death toll in 2006 far overshadows total U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, Afghanistan”
“Thousands Of Americans Murdered By Illegal Aliens (Bush’s ‘Migrants’) Since 9/11”
“‘Wasted’ Lives: 4,380 Americans Murdered by Illegal Aliens Each Year!”
Stephen F. writes:
Regarding the Virginia Tech massacre:
Underground Black Man is not incorrect to question the “neutrality” with which white conservatives, anti-Jihadists, etc. are thinking about this atrocity.
I confess to having realized that on some level I not only suspected but hoped this was a jihad attack, because it fits my view of what’s going on and because it would raise popular sentiment against Islam in America. And having heard first that it was a Chinese and then a Korean (and the latter makes more sense), I felt immediately that it was a racial attack. Well, it’s important to be objective and self-critical. But what are the emotional sources of our bias?
First, it’s about the insecurity, strangeness, and loss of control we experience in society where foreigners have equal, even protected, status and where justified different treatment of nonwhites (e.g.
police profiling) is forbidden. At any stage, from Cho’s being admitted to the U.S. at all, to his behavior at school, to the university’s lax response to the first murder, to the media’s ginger evasion of any cultural or racial questions in the aftermath, we know that the concerns and comfort of Americans were not allowed to enter consideration.
Second, it’s about the anti-white nature of liberalism, which means that even the smart, productive, usually gentle East Asians contribute to the anti-white bloc if they enter here en masse. We are being disempowered on both ends—by Hispanics displacing our laborers, and by the “brains” from China and India coming to dominate the sciences (and, eventually, politics and administration). So a crime like this disturbs us in a particular way.
Third, as the Indian reader’s comments suggest, almost every nonwhite group has an anti-white, anti-American element in its culture—most of all the groups that are immigrating here en masse! And every group exploits American liberal guilt. Today the Korean government expressed concern that there would be a backlash against Koreans!
Finally, it’s worth pointing out that Korea has a military, very macho culture and the younger generation is extremely anti-American. I have read comments by Koreans on the BBC site supporting groups like Hamas. I suspect that sympathy for Muslim radicalism has somehow entered that culture.
Alan Levine writes:
Am a little late commenting on your reaction to the Virginia massacre, but I have to say that I thought that connecting this particular incident to non-white immigration seems to me to be more than a stretch. This does seem especially uncharacteristic of East Asian immigrants, notwithstanding the presence of anti-white sentiments among the latter.
Frankly, I thought your comments suggested a too easy “cramming” of the whole immigration issue into a purely racial perspective, also neglecting cultural difference among immigrants. You seem to imply that all nonwhite immigrants are, or potentially are, members of an antiwhite bloc. To be blunt, they dislike each other—and black Americans—too much for that…. Further, this neglects the point that immigration in general (though East Asian immigration the least) threatens the interests of the native-born both black and white, possibly blacks even more than whites.
I would also disagree with your implication that all these people are poor, and also that they are “uncomfortable” here. In my view, the traumatic effects of immigration even in previous generations was exaggerated by men like Handlin, and now it applies less. In NYC there are plenty of clearly middle class Koreans and Chinese and for that matter the recent immigrants seem too damn comfortable—if language arrrangements mean anything. You can drive for miles through Flushing and see store after store with conspicuous Korean and Chinese signs, far more prominent than the English ones. Many people can live quite comfortably in a purely Chinese or Korean atmosphere.
I should say, however, that all the young people of Chinese and Korean origin I encounter who have grown up here have in fact assimilated linguistically.
LA replies:
I don’t think it’s correct to say that I was “cramming” this affair into a “purely racial perspective.” Far from being reductive, I was and have been looking at the issue from a variety of perspectives. One of those is certainly the complex ethnicity/culture/nation/race. We Americans separate out those things. Others, including Koreans, do not. Take any problem in America and it is exacerbated by racial diversity.
Also, Americans tend to have a wholly benign view of Koreans, who are very far from having a benign view of us, as discussed here. It is time to wake up to this reality.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 17, 2007 10:47 AM | Send