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The cultural and demographic threat more pressing than Islam
Richard W. writes:
I continue to be frustrated by the American “Europhiles” and the American anti-Islam crusaders, such as Gates of Vienna, Pamela Geller, and Robert Spencer, with their overwhelming and unwarranted focus on Islam as the main vector of our destruction.
While you have written extensively on the threat Islam poses to the West, one of the great things about your site is that this is balanced with an awareness of the many other (and arguably more pressing) problems we face.
Islam is in third place in my reckoning of the most destructive trends facing America. The Hispanic invasion is much more significant existential threat to us, and the threat from both Islam and the Hispanic invasion in America is due to the ideology of liberalism and multiculturalism, our top enemy.
The Hispanic invasion dwarfs anything that the Muslims could conceivably do to harm the USA. Whatever problem Europe has with Muslims, we have here, but with Mexicans. By continually going back to the well to pull up another Muslim misbehavior, often in far away places like Brussels, the American anti-jihad activists are effectively masking the more virulent and deadly strain of multiculturalism that is already upon us. They compound this when they demonize those who want to discuss these more pressing problems with names like “xenophobes” and “bigots.” [LA replies: I cannot entirely agree with this. Yes, Islam critics are wrong and blind not to see problems other than Islam, but they are not obligated to see those problems; the fact that they are concerned about Islam does not obligate them to be concerned about, say, Hispanic immigration. They are one-issue people, and have the limitations of such people. They do not, like us, start from the perspective that our civilization is self-destructing, and then look at the particular ways that it is self-destructing. They are simply focused on Islam. It’s up to people who have that broader view to try to spread a broader awareness of the multiple threats we face. It’s unrealistic to expect a professional one-issue person, such as Robert Spencer, to become a multiple issue person. He does his work, we do ours. Which does not mean that we should not reproach the Spencers of the world when they sound liberal notes or deal inadequately with the Islam problem.]
In doing so they reinforce the central tenets of our civilization’s most destructive faction, the leftist intelligentsia. In this way they are not leaders, but more properly “useful idiots” in the classic sense, that is, idealists with a very limited understanding of the real forces at play who can be counted on to distract attention from the central conflict at hand).
To put it another way, if by some miracle we were able instantly to implement Auster’s “A Real Islam Policy for a Real America,” we would still be faced with losing our nation rapidly. I’m not sure what the demographics look like in Europe, but are they really facing things as drastic as becoming a minority in their own nations by 2050? Are the largest nations in the EU already no longer primarily European? No, France is still mostly full of French people, and Germany full of Germans.
Can we make the same statements about Texas and California, the largest States in America. No, we cannot. We are already worse off.
Now, it’s true, the Hispanic invaders don’t have a comprehensive ideology for ending our civilization like the Muslims do. On the other hand they do quickly transform areas in which they are in control into little Tijuanas. We see Hispanic patterns of crime emerging in the border states. Kidnapping, an extremely rare crime in most of America, but a staple of Mexican criminal enterprise, is now becoming a serious problem in Phoenix and a concern in the San Diego area, according to news reports. Corrupt crony governments, the Mexican model, is now taking root in Southern California.
We see endemic lawlessness that is a signature of life in Mexico: the culture of bribing police instead of following laws that is part of the everyday fabric of life there, is moving here. Illegals in the USA are routinely unlicensed (including professional licenses, business licenses, auto licenses, insurance, etc.), and of course they are illegal. Culturally it’s not something that worries them. Which means that I could take you, today, to dozens of areas in the US that are effectively already under “Mexican law.”
Muslims talk big, but in America are relatively small and ineffective. The Hispanics don’t say nearly as much, but are continually transforming every aspect of our culture in a negative way. Speak softly and carry a big machete seems to be the more effective, and therefore more dangerous, approach.
We are in danger of losing the war for America because we are not choosing are targets wisely. One of the key decisions in the War in the Pacific was to ignore small islands that the Japanese held in favor of more quickly getting to the Japanese mainland, where the war could be decided.
If we repulse the Hispanic invasion we will have a country and a government with which we can sort out dealing with Islam.
And we will defeat neither Islam nor the Hispanic invasion as long as we fail to refute the destructive and evil ideologies of liberalism and multiculturalism which are their strongest weapon. Sadly most of the anti-jihadi fetishists either tacitly or explicitly support these ideologies, and for this reason are not fit to lead our fight.
LA replies:
While I agree with your overall concern, I disagree with you when you construct the situation as an either/or: either we oppose Islamization, or we oppose Hispanicization. No. Both must be opposed.
Beyond that, I agree that our side must do vastly more to bring awareness of the Hispanicization problem into mainstream awareness. And that involves bringing the problem of MASS LEGAL NON-EUROPEAN IMMIGRATION into mainstream awareness. At present, and for the last 25 years, the only immigration problem that is an object of mainstream awareness is illegal immigration. But, as I’ve said a hundred times, all illegal immigration could be ended tomorrow and all illegal aliens removed from the U.S., and we would still be taking in a vast influx of legal immigrants that would be steadily transforming America into a non-European, mainly Hispanic/Mestizo country.
This is the issue that propelled me to begin writing about immigration over twenty years ago, and, sadly, in the years since then, despite some sparks of mainstream debate in the early ’90s, LEGAL IMMIGRATION has remained virtually a non-issue among conservatives. Worse, many conservatives positively declare that ONLY illegal immigration is a problem, and that all legal immigration is good. Meanwhile, the white percentage of the U.S. population continues to drop at a rate of about two thirds of a percentage point per year, from 89 percent of the U.S. population in 1965, to about 65 percent today.
Since the issue of the legal transformation of the U.S. into a non-European country is at best non-existent, and at worse actively prohibited, on the mainstream right, how can it become permitted and existent? A few books here and there, such as The Path to National Suicide, Alien Nation, and Death of the West, will not do it. An entire website dedicated to the issue, such as Vdare, will not do it (especially when that website makes anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism part of its message). Immigration reform organization such as FAIR and CIS, which decline to discuss the demographic and cultural consequences of immigration but focus mainly on utilitarian and economic consequences, will not do it. (Indeed, when the executive director of CIS declares his support for the non-discriminatory, “treat-all-source-nations-equal” immigration that was inaugurated by the 1965 Immigration Act, one may fairly wonder which side of the issue CIS is on.) There must be an active and organized movement dedicated to spreading understanding of the demographic and cultural problem, of the solution to the demographic and problem (namely stopping and in part reversing Hispanic and other non-European immigration), and of the fact that both the awareness and the solution are not morally wicked, but are true, right, and necessary. I admit my own responsibility in not having done anything to build such a movement. But, whoever does it, it must be done.
- end of initial entry -
Bartholemew writes:
You wrote,
“Yes, Islam critics are wrong and blind not to see problems other than Islam, but they are not obligated to see those problems; the fact that they are concerned about Islam does not obligate them to be concerned about, say, Hispanic immigration. They are one-issue people, and have the limitations of such people.”
Yes, the fact that they are concerned about Islam does not obligate them to be concerned about Hispanic immigration.
But the fact that they are fellow white, Christian men certainly does.
You call these men “one-issue” people, but there is no such thing. What man can simply be an “anti-jihad” person? What does the life of such a person look like? Does he eat in the evening with fellow anti-jihaders, sleep with fellow anti-jihaders? Does he worship the creed of anti-jihad with other anti-jihaders in their anti-jihad lodge? Of course not. He has a family, a wife, a church and a people. He is, in a word, a man, not a “one-issue person” whatever that is.
Richard W is right to criticize these men for shirking their duty to defend the rest of those institutions and things upon which their existence relies. He is right to say, Look, if you anti-jihaders were simply a kind of anti-jihad special ops within a larger army dedicated to defending the totality of you and we all are, then your job would be necessary, laudable even. But you aren’t. You not only refuse association with us; you actively undermine and attack those of us fighting to defend the rest of who you are, even while you enjoy those things which we are defending. You have no right to do this.
It is difficult to distinguish such men from parasites, detrimental to the health of their host.
That is harsh, yes, but it is true.
Also, you wrote, “They do not, like us, start from the perspective that our civilization is self-destructing, and then look at the particular ways that it is self-destructing.”
It sounds like you are saying that they are simply looking at the modern world from a different perspective, rather than a wrong one. But any perspective that refuses and suppresses the manifest truth that our civilization is self-destructing is wrong. That isn’t merely a “different” perspective; it’s a false one. And it is evil because it, as Richard W. argues, deceives those who sense that our civilization is in trouble, into leaving defenseless those areas most vulnerable to attack. By diverting the attentions of the few Western men still sufficiently conscious to fight, they thereby assure our destruction.
Bartholemew continues:
I did want to add, I agree completely with your full response to Richard W. at the bottom of the entry. I felt compelled to write regarding your formulation of the “one-issue” man which for so long provided me with an easy excuse for complacency (I work with the poor, you see).
Comments received December 8, posted December 14
Mark Jaws writes:
As I have said over and over again, I know Hispanics as well as any Gringo can. All my nieces and nephews are Hispanic and I grew up in a heavily Puerto Rican neighborhood. I speak Spanish well for a non-Hispanic white. So, I am a realist, and thus conclude we will never stop Hispanic immigration per se. Too many Hispanics are intermarrying with non-Hispanic whites, and white or predominantly white Hispanics with their near levels of white American IQ have successfully mingled and mixed into the fabric of our society and culture. For years my house in heavily white Stafford County, VA has been sandwiched between a Cuban American and a Mexican American. Both men are graduates of our military academies, both men are married to non-Hispanic white women, and both men are conservative. Of the five children these men produced, only one child resembles the “Hispanic type.” And yet, both men do not like it when “Hispanics as a people are targeted.” No, it is best, they have told me, to go after the welfare cheats, the illegal aliens, the anchor-baby brood cells who cross the border and have one child after another, the gang bangers, the welfare-mongers, etc. They both maintain that by ending the welfare system, deporting the trouble makers and those working with false SSN’s, we will make life difficult for the bad or illegal Hispanics, and the problem will take care of itself. I am inclined to agree with them. When we halt both legal and illegal immigration, we will have to do so indiscriminately, to allow the country to digest what it has ingested the past 50 years, and to build the infrastructure to accommodate the growth.
Debra C. writes:
As you can imagine, living here in southern Arizona—even south of Tucson—I view the Hispanization of America with great alarm. But not wanting to rehash the excellent comments already made today on this topic, I do want to stress that this phenomenon could not occur if Americans, generally, were not already steeped in the stew of multiculturalism that spreads its poison throughout our popular imagination. The view is firmly held that no one, no culture, is better than any other. This is nihilism at its very core, taking root and spreading through pluralism, relativism, and the like, and leaving in its wake NO rational means of protecting, much less promoting, one culture over another in an effort to perpetuate America as founded. This, I know, is a constant theme in your writings, too.
Anecdotally, I talked today with a candidate running for a county GOP political office. I managed to steer the conversation to fundamentals, such as the threat to Western civilization posed by unassimilable peoples, and I got as far as pinning her down to thinking about whether one culture was better than any other. Her response was revealing but not surprising. She did NOT want to say that any one culture was better than any other, not until at last I reminded her about and confronted her with the truth about Sharia (choosing as I did a blatant example of an inferior culture and not one locally relevant). Then she could agree that “we” were a better culture, but she was very guarded in making that assessment and eager to make sure I knew she welcomed all peoples to the melting pot that was America. And this from a woman who would consider herself a proud conservative.
Again. The root of the problem lies in the success of the PC weapon to condition the West into adopting relativism and its logical offspring, multiculturalism. The Enlightenment paved the way by abandoning revelation and enthroning reason in its stead. Thus jettisoning absolutes and Biblical morality, nothing is left but personal opinion, shaped by the current dystopia; and nothing remains to rationally oppose destructive ideologies, as multiculturalism surely is, as a subset of liberalism.
John McNeil writes:
I think Richard W. touches upon another idea, although perhaps I am expanding his idea into something more than what he had in mind. He points out how the top enemy we face is neither Islam nor Reconquista, but our own liberals and conservatives who embrace self-destructive ideologies that enable these invasions to occur. I agree with him, and would further argue that the fight to preserve our own nation will be impossible without first rebuilding our own civilization.
I agree that some organization/movement needs to arise, and I believe it’s priority should be in seeking to build a positive European-American identity. My problem with even moderate anti-immigration groups is that they spend too much time criticizing Third World immigration without fully understanding what they are trying to defend. Nationalists, whether American or European, pretend that they are defending a Western Civilization, that in my opinion, is largely dying. Materialism, consumerism, and secularism have laid waste to our holidays/values, civic nationalism has destroyed our understanding of identity, political correctness has made us despise and be ashamed of our own history, etc. No doubt you are also aware of how decayed our society is, but most nationalists/anti-immigration activists don’t get it. They need to understand that when they argue that white America should be preserved, most whites will respond with “why?”
It’s every nationalist’s responsibility to be able to rebuild what we’re trying to protect, so whites won’t ask that question.
LA replies:
That is why I constantly speak of the two threats we face, which I express in shorthand as unassimilable immigration from without, and nihilism from within.
James P. writes:
With respect to the discussion of whether the Hispanic invasion is more threatening than Islam, we should note that these threats are not in all cases distinct. That is, there are Muslim terrorists of Hispanic extraction. Examples of these two-fers include “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla, and in the news today, Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, accused of plotting to blow up a recruiting station in Maryland. (Note how the Post headline helpfully describes him as a “Maryland Man,” thus obscuring both his Hispanic and Muslim aspects.) We may note that Latinos have obvious advantages for Islamic terrorist recruitment—Latinos often have U.S. citizenship, and it is easy enough for Latino non-citizens to get into this country. Moreover, they are not generally viewed as potential terrorists by the government or the public, and like Padilla, there is a large pool of Latinos in prison susceptible to conversion to Islam. All this is just one more compelling reason to control our borders, as if there weren’t enough such reasons already.
Buck O. writes:
I’m still learning, but, it seems to me that ending modern liberalism is the reason that VFR exists. Not simply to combat destructive cultural or public policy, but to end modern liberalism and to re-establish our maligned, under-siege traditional conservative nation and to protect it. I guess that’s obvious—VFR’s view can only be to the left. [?] The overwhelming majority of discussion topics are, at their root, concerns over the manifestations of the cancer that is modern liberalism. I don’t care what we argue about, among ourselves, the root problem is modern liberalism—it’s insidious perversion of the concepts of freedom and charity and others.
Modern liberalism is a cancer. It may very well be in our DNA. It gets into the blood and infects our organs, tissue and bones. We can’t cure cancer. We can’t stop it from appearing in new forms. We treat the symptoms and try to save as many patients as we can. Some forms we manage better than most. We have highly specialized and trained experts who focus in their areas of expertise, while others focus on theirs. We are all, hopefully, after the same thing—the cure for cancer. If Robert Spencer spends all of his time on Jihad, and David Horowitz spends his time focusing on the restoration of a classic liberal education, and others do their thing, there is one thing that is clear—if modern liberalism ended today, many of these people would have to look for meaningful work.
Modern liberalism ends, and the West’s problem with Islam ends, uncontrolled and non-selective immigration ends, the culture war ends, etc. Every problem discussed at VFR ends. We are, for the most part, and hopefully, on the same team. The disease—the cancer, is also in our DNA and we must continue to seek and to get treatment. Even then, the prognosis for many of us is poor.
VFR is the walk-in clinic of choice, with branches everywhere. We can argue our heads off in the waiting room about who’s ailment is worse, but we all get treatment, like it or not. Name another clinic that offers such a holistic view and diagnosis of our essential nature. We must continue to deal with every symptom, but not at the risk of ignoring the root cause.
Alan M. writes: I would add one more point to Buck O’s comment:
We are all born with liberalism as our default mode of thinking and this medicine is needed every generation.
James R. writes:
“I guess that’s obvious—VFR’s view can only be to the left. [?] ”
I’m fairly sure he meant that VFR’s gaze/attention is always directed at the left. The counter-example of this might be VFR’s frequent critiques of mainstream conservatism, but these critiques consist of identifying how mainstream conservatives have adopted liberal attitudes/viewpoints, and thus fail to offer a real alternative or even grapple with our real problems in a meaningful way. So even in its posts on conservatives, VFR’s “view” (attention) is at the left.
it didn’t mean VFR was in any way the viewpoint/perspective of the left.
Buck O. writes: Thanks to James R. for rectifying my muddled language. Well said.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 08, 2010 01:46 PM | Send
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