Peter Hitchens—conservative surrender monkey

In Peter Hitchens’s pointedly entitled article on the election of Obama, “The night we waved goodbye to America… our last best hope on Earth,” he writes that Obama’s election signals America’s “slow descent into the Third World.” However, as you will see in my comments below, there is far, far less to Hitchens’ seemingly bracing frankness than meets the eye.

He writes:

As I walked, I crossed another of Washington’s secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy.

They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.

Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.

These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party—the Republicans—to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.

They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?

Hitchens is “sad” about America’s descent into the Third World which he sees happening as a result of Third-world immigration. In reality he has never taken a stand against the immigration the effects of which he now mourns. To the contrary: he is an ideologically rigid liberal on matters of race. Just last December he said that if you care about race, you’re not a rational or civilized human being and should be mustered out of society.

This wimp has never argued against the mass nonwhite immigration that is leading to the Third-Worldization of the West, but the moment he sees the latter happening, he expresses his “sadness” and is ready to surrender.

Spare me such champions of the West!

Here are several VFR entries about Hitchens, immigration, and race:

An inadequate critique of Britain’s immigration woes—and of the BNP [Hitchen’s convoluted explanation of immigration problem]

When it rains it pours: another Brit calls for immigration reductions [but less to it than meets the eye—but he doesn’t actually, he says we should be “concerned” about mass immigration but doesn’t say it should be stopped.]

The mystery is explained: Why, with the enemy inside the gates, acting as the enemy, Britain still doesn’t react [Hitchens says that Britain’s governing elite has already decided to surrender to Islam—this had a big impact on me.]

P. Hitchens: if you think race matters, you’ve not a civilized human being [Dec ‘07—I tear into him.]

P. Hitchens confirms himself in his liberal folly about race and immigration [Dec ‘07]

Are my criticisms of Peter Hitchens unfair? [Dec ‘07 response to reader in which I lay out the case in more detail.]

- end of initial entry -

Gintas writes:

There you go again, ripping on another rightist, for God’s sake why can’t we all just hold hands and sing “Kumbayah”?

Jeff In England writes:

You nailed Peter Hitchens and there is nothing he can say. No comeback on this by P. Hitchens will have any credibility. Auster at his best, no one does it better.

The subject title was a famous headline on the cover of the Murdoch owned Sun newspaper here in England during the Falkland’s war in reference to the sinking of the Belgrano….

But you are still out of reality in terms of providing realistic solutions to the U.S. population as it is now, not what you would like it to be. Larry, face it, you lost the battle to keep America as a white civilisation. That’s over and the election of Obama symbolises the end of that battle. America will never be a white country again. You fought hard and lost. So now your task is to improve American society as is. Multi-coloured with various religions.

You can still oppose immigration and hope (at best) for a fence and for tougher quotas of legal immigrants. But realistically American whites will be in a minority in the not so distant future. Stop wasting your time thinking (and writing) otherwise. Stop wasting your time focusing only on them. Get your VFR army of readers working on real forward solutions in Obama’s land.

Question: How do you (and your readers) propose to bring traditional conservatism to America as it is now.

To all races and religions.

LA replies:

So one defeatist compliments me for taking down another defeatist, in order to get me to post his, the first defeatist’s, defeatist message!

Jeff in England replies:

It was so obvious you were going to say that, I just hung around my computer working. The big difference is that I have opposed immigration for many years, legal and illegal. Hitchens, Melanie, Spencer did not and now sort of say they do. I still want zero immigration, legal and illegal.

The Japanese who wouldn’t admit defeat after WWII were also called defeatists.

Look, what I say makes sense. It’s not a matter of defeatism. I certainly think you have a lot to offer the American people in these challenging times. But you have to reframe it all and offer it to everybody.

Obama “changed” and became a centrist and you need to “change” too. You lose all credibility if you wrap your traditional conservative message in white civilisation rhetoric. Look at the inroads Spencer has made in the Mainstream. You could do the same.

Paul was smarter than James and his church. He was a realist. He knew he had to offer Chrisitianity to everybody. He was denounced for this by the Christian Jews but stuck to his guns and changed the world.

I’m not denying blacks have lower IQ than whites (Asians have higher than whites) or that Muslims are a problem. But they have to be included in any solutions. They are here and not going anywhere.

LA to Sebastian, who sent the Hitchens article:

You may not like what I posted on this, because I am so tough on him, but I have the documentation to back up my criticisms, which is all linked in the entry.

I could have just focused on what Hitchens says about how Obama’s election signals the coming Third-Worldization of America, rather than pointing to his staggering hypocrisy in saying it. Perhaps I’ll add more along those lines.

Sebastian replies:

You make fair points—I expect and like that kind of intransigence from you. Honestly, I think people who live in white enclaves, even if they share your concerns generally, simply feel the immigration less. The last time a good friend visited from Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was pretty horrified at the changes in Queens since his childhood twenty years ago. Conversely, the last time I visited Boston it was just as I left it in 2000.

You take everyone to task, and I commend you for that. I, on the other hand, give thanks to anyone who doesn’t yell racism. People have different degrees of comfort. People under forty need to unlearn the propaganda and brainwashing that passes for education, so I give them room.

LA replies:

Yes, but remember that Hitchens himself describes as a sub-rational racist unfit for human society anyone who says that transforming the racial composition of Britain is not a good idea, should not have been done, and should be stopped.

Thanks for the backup.

Gintas writes:

Jeff in England says: “Stop wasting your time thinking (and writing) otherwise.”

You identify “Jeff in England” explicity as a defeatist, but “Jeff in England” means “Jeff the English Defeatist,” since,until otherwise proven, we can assume anything from England is defeatist. I’ll let you know if I read something from there with real fighting spirit.

Speaking of surrender monkeys, did you hear about the new English tank? It has five reverse gears, and one forward in case they get attacked from behind. (That used to be about an Italian tank, but given that Berlusconi is showing some grit, maybe it’s time to change it.)

November 13

Van Wijk writes:

You know, my first inclination is to challenge Jeff yet again on exactly why he thinks that being inclusive will do anything but destroy the West, but at this point I think it’s been established that he is unable or unwilling to expound on his views. If he even has views beyond inclusiveness. He seems to be very uncomfortable with true conservatism and yet he continues to send you his defeatist messages. Perhaps he simply craves your approval.

Or perhaps he really works for the BBC. Or perhaps there’s an Asian wife he’s not mentioning. Or perhaps he had a Paki nanny growing up. I would love to find out exactly what’s going on in that head of his.

LA replies:

I don’t think there’s any mystery to it. While he would like to stop further immigration, he thinks that getting the Muslims already here to leave is impossible, therefore we need a plan to make those people less dangerous to us. And his hope is that they will gradually become only nominally Islamic, thus ceasing to pose an Islamic threat to society. I and various commenters have pointed out to him many times that his hope of de-Islamizing them is riskier and more utopian than our idea of making them leave.

Also, there may be an element of “liberalism” in Jeff’s view in that he repeatedly mentions his liking for various Muslims as individuals, and his feeling that they are more moral and upright in their individual behavior than many white Britons. So I suspect that he finds the thought of getting them to leave not just practically unattainable, but morally unacceptable.

LA replies:

Seriously, what concerns me is that the kind of answer I supplied to Michael N. should not be seen as requiring some unusual ability. If people on our side cannot see instantly the falseness of the liberal arguments and be able to come right back at them and put the liberals on the defensive, then we are finished. We are finished. There was nothing in what I said that is or should be seen as somehow out of reach of the average intelligent immigration restrictionist. I say to anyone reading this: if you have been put on the defensive, or if you simply went silent, when something like this was said to you, then you haven’t done the basic reading and thinking that would equip you with the arguments you need to participate in this debate.

On a deeper level, the problem is not conservatives’ lack of thought, knowledge, or preparation, but their lack of effective belief in the legitimacy of our country, and in the legitimacy of basic morality, as the ground on which they stand. The liberal statement that we must stop “demonizing” illegal aliens is an outrage against our country, an outrage against the rule of law, an outrage against the most basic rules of logic and moral reasoning. Yet instead of becoming indignant at such an outrage and putting the liberals on the defensive, our side goes passive, doesn’t know what to say. As I said, as long as that remains the case, we are finished.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 12, 2008 12:44 PM | Send