Eric Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century, Profile Books, London, 2010, pp. xxii + pp.269 + Notes & Index, ISBN 978 1 84668 144 8
The purpose of the whole evolution of a nation, in every people and at every period of its existence, is solely the pursuit of God, their God, their very own God, and faith in Him as in the only true one. God is the synthetic personality of the whole people, taken from its beginning to its end. It has never happened that all or many peoples should have one common God, but every people has always had its own special one […] If a great people does not believe that truth resides in it alone (in itself alone and in it exclusively), if it does not believe that it alone is able and has been chosen to raise up and save everything by its own truth, it is at once transformed into ethnographical material, and not into a great people.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Devils (1871-1872)
© Frank Ellis 2011
The main theme of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? consists in the empirical fact that the religious are having more children than the non-religious, the secular, and that, if this trend continues, the religious shall inherit the Earth. To quote Kaufmann: ‘Simply put, this book argues that religious fundamentalists are on course to take over the world through demography’.1 All the religious groups studied by him – Christians, Amish, Jews and Muslims – are having large families demonstrating an immunity to the temptations of secularism. In Israel, the rise of the ultra-Orthodox or Haredim is a remarkable and moving story in view of the fact that so many perished in the Holocaust. Kaufmann also reports that the Amish, a very impressive religious denomination, members of whom this reviewer has had the privilege to meet, are also thriving.
According to Kaufmann, ‘The most visible aspect of today’s demographic revolution is the changing ethnic composition of Western populations’.2 This is certainly a revolution: more accurately it is an invasion. Kaufmann’s use of ‘Western populations’ as in - ‘the changing ethnic composition of Western populations’ - is misleading since it implicitly accepts millions of Somalis, Arabs and Sub-Saharan Africans who have entered the states of Western Europe legally or in most cases illegally as belonging to Western populations. In any political, economic, cultural, racial, religious, intellectual and moral context Somalis and Arabs are not part of Western populations even if they live in Western states. Indeed, how can they be part of Western populations, when courtesy of Western taxpayers – the secular infidels whom they despise as the godless ones - they live in parallel worlds so as to isolate themselves from the white indigenous population?
At every opportunity in this book Kaufmann attempts to deny whites their natural and legal status as the rightful owners of their lands. For example, he goes out of his way to avoid using ‘indigenous’ when talking about Britain and uses ‘native’.3 Another evasion is ‘dominant majorities’4 or ‘dominant group’5 instead of indigenous. The use of ‘dominant’ obscures and denies the fact that whites are dominant not because they have suppressed blacks in Europe but because Europe is the land which in evolutionary and historical terms created whites. Europe is white not black. The use of ‘dominant majority’ also implicitly concedes that if whites are replaced as the ‘dominant majority’ a new non-white ‘dominant majority’ will emerge and whites will have to accept it. If in this scenario ‘dominant majority’ is replaced with ‘indigenous population’ the notion that the ‘indigenous population’ should just accept this fact is revealed for what it is: the racial, cultural and physical dispossession of the indigenous population. To allay the fears of the white indigenous population Kaufmann tells us that the Normans fitted in and adapted after 1066. Well yes, they did but the Normans were fellow North-West Europeans. Pat Buchanan made a similar point a few years ago when he asked who would adapt better to modern Virginia: a million Englishmen or a million Zulus. Whatever happened after 1066 and regardless of their genetic propinquity with our Anglo-Saxons ancestors, the Normans still invaded England. I prefer not to be invaded even by my close relatives. The generation of my father and mother felt the same way in the summer of 1940.
Kaufmann speculates on how the struggle between secularists and religious fundamentalists might end: ‘And while fundamentalists can be smashed by Soviet or Nazi-style repression, this contradicts liberalism’s very own principles’.6 I wonder where Kaufmann has been living for the last twenty years. Where exactly is this liberalism that does not act in a manner that contradicts its very own principles? Is it buried in the vaults of the BBC or written in code in secret protocols annexed to the charters of universities and accessible only to a select group? That, to which Kaufmann refers as liberalism, is, judged by its behaviour, a form of soft totalitarianism. So far liberalism has not used concentration camps and tanks to repress opponents yet it has exploited Soviet-style methods of repression in order to silence opponents. Speech codes in American universities, affirmative action, attacks on free speech in both the USA and UK under the heading of combating what liberals call ‘hate crime’, virulent and sustained attacks on white history, culture and achievements, censorship and political correctness (a Soviet term) all bear witness to the fact that behind the mask of ‘we-love-you-all liberalism’ lurks a readiness to use Nazi and Soviet-style methods of repression, above all in the fields of culture and language. And why do Kaufmann’s liberals remain silent about the ANC-sponsored murder, rape and torture of whites in South Africa? There is nothing at all liberal about contemporary liberalism: it is new variant totalitarianism.
Despite the well documented Soviet-style measures adopted by liberalism in pursuit of its goals, Kaufmann nevertheless argues that the great danger comes from religious fundamentalists: ‘from the gradual seepage of puritanical mores into society: restrictions on freedom of expression, science, recreation, the rights of women, minorities, heretics, gays and converts – even a return to barbaric punishments’.7 Bear in mind that all the restrictions on free speech that have emerged over the last twenty years have been based on the liberal agenda and introduced by liberals, measures which are intended to silence and to criminalise any criticism of liberal fundamentalism and its multicultural agenda. Kaufmann’s complaint about fundamentalist puritanism would be more convincing if, for example, he acknowledged the damage inflicted by feminism. Feminism is a creed based on hatred of men. It would not have been so bad if feminists had just seeped into the North Sea but they have unfortunately seeped - to borrow Kaufmann’s term - into every facet of our lives, corrupting and poisoning everything they touch: marriage; love; divorce; education; law and order and the military.
Throughout much of history populations have, Kaufmann notes, stayed stable (the better off had more children who survived). After 1900 increasingly generous welfare provision ensured that more children from the less well off survived. In 2011 this clearly relates to the demography of immigrants from the Third World in First World states. Desperate to avoid any association with eugenics, Kaufmann, in a nice example of attempted neutralisation by clear statement, instructs us that: ‘We do not have to accept the alarmist tropes of eugenicists to see that this has demographic implications both within the developed world and between the wealthy West and poor global South’.8 So, does Kaufmann find this reversal of man’s evolution alarming, and if not, why not? And if he is alarmed just whose tropes is he using? It was after all eugenicists such as Francis Galton and Charles Darwin who noted that the less responsible and the low-IQ were having more children than the more affluent. They sounded the alarm. Kaufmann’s use of ‘demographic implications’ is a just a politically correct way of saying that this is alarming without giving any credit or recognition to eugenicists who have got it right. When Kaufmann notes that if the rate of population growth in Africa ‘goes unchecked, there will come a time when death and starvation readjust the world’s population to its carrying capacity’9, it should be pointed out that eugenicists and others warned about this long ago: Thomas Malthus for example. The danger for the West is that it will continue to waste billions of dollars and euros (if the currency survives) and pounds sterling on top of billions already wasted trying to stop natural, 4-horsemen solutions to population growth in the Third World. As Kaufmann observes, ‘Demographically pressured populations are not free to move, but will fight to do so’.10 True, but the West has an army.
Throughout this book Kaufmann repeatedly plays down the nature of Islam and its complete incompatibility with the West. He recognises the totalitarian nature of Islamic societies, especially if you are not a Muslim, yet asserts:
Some argue that fundamentalism is merely another wonderful colour in the multicultural rainbow of liberal society. In the West, they are largely correct, but the argument only holds as long as fundamentalists do not become a plurality or a majority that can restrict the liberties of others.11
How is Islamic fundamentalism ‘another wonderful colour in the multicultural rainbow of liberal society’? Muslims in the West live in parallel societies funded by unbeliever taxpayers; Muslims are hostile to the West and its institutions and too many Muslims preach hatred and support terrorism. Moreover, as part of their contribution to the paintwork of liberal society they bring with them colourful forms of behaviour such as female circumcision, cruel forms of animal slaughter, crime, honour killings, arranged marriages (with all the medical problems) and terrorism. In Norway and Sweden Islamic immigrants are responsible for the huge increase in brutal and exceptionally violent rapes of indigenous girls. How do these forms of violent, culturally hostile and revolting behaviour possibly enrich Western societies? The question we have to ask here is that if the indigenous population is enduring all these problems now what will things be like when aggressive Islamic breeding, supported by the generous welfare and the superior health provision of Western states provides Islamic immigrants with a large electoral majority? Kaufmann is aware of the political implications of out-of-control Islamic population growth but lacks the intellectual honesty to admit that these problems, present and future, have been caused by a complete failure to police our borders. It is entirely possible that as the Muslim population grows, and forces what is currently the white indigenous majority population into minority status, that Muslims will have their Damascus moment and abandon all the nasty cultural baggage, preferring Burke, Locke and Mill to the ravings of clerics (just don’t bet on it).
Especially revealing in Kaufmann’s assessment of Islamic fundamentalism in the West as another wonderful colour and his reaction to its becoming a majority is a clear example of the totalitarian impulses that are part of modern liberalism. Kaufmann’s point is that as long as Islamic fundamentalists remain an electoral minority – liberals pretend not to see the baggage – they are a wonderful colour. However if their numbers grow and this translates into real power such that Islamic fundamentalists can impose their will on the unbelievers, they lose their wonderful-colour status. Islamic fundamentalists could argue – they will argue – that if they have the electoral mandate of the believers to impose Sharia and much else on the unbelievers they can: and they will do it. Kaufmann’s concerns about the demographic rise of Islam underlines the hypocrisy of modern liberalism: free speech is wonderful (provided it is not used to attack multiculturalism and to highlight low mean black IQ and black crime); and free and fair elections are wonderful (provided the electorate votes for policies approved by liberals. If they do not the result is null and void, illegitimate). Liberals, and this includes a great many so-called conservatives, for all the talk of rights and tolerance are just as intolerant and hostile to individual freedoms as Islamic fundamentalism. The key difference is that Islamic fundamentalism is honest about its goals and aspirations and undoubtedly will impose Islamic totalitarianism on the unbelievers if it can, whereas liberalism preaches tolerance for its chosen causes – multiculturalism, feminism, black-by-popular demand and mass immigration – yet uses censorship, legal and administrative terror, secondary violence and media and legal harassment to impose its totalitarian agenda. Home-grown liberal fundamentalism with its barely concealed hatred of its own indigenous population and its avowed anti-white racism and Islamic fundamentalism are both enemies of Britain. There are some striking parallels here with National Socialism and Soviet Communism, our two main enemies in the last century.
Kaufmann’s explanation for why Muslims in Britain stick to Islam is also far from convincing and betrays a clear refusal to face the empirical reality of Islam all over Europe:
Second-generation Muslims are detached from their ethnic roots but also feel spurned by the white majorities in their nation states. This condition of existential purgatory makes the option of Muslim identity more enticing.12
Second-generation Muslins do not have to remain detached from their ethnic (racial) roots. These Muslims may feel spurned but the nation states in which they are resident are not their nation states. They are free any time to leave Britain and recover their ethnic (racial) roots. Nor do Muslim immigrants have to endure ‘existential purgatory’ in Britain when they are only a five hour flight removed from Pakistan. Why do they exercise the option of remaining in a white, north-west European country if they feel detached from the land and culture of their origin? The answer is that given the choice of remaining detached and enjoying all the benefits of a First World economy or returning to the corrupt and backward Third World slums whence they came, they prefer to remain in a state of affluent, second-generation detachment. Again, why do these second-generation Muslims feel spurned by the white, indigenous majority population? It is surely related to the many bizarre and cruel customs which the Muslim immigrants have brought with them, quite apart from their active, terroristic hatred of unbelievers and striving to make Britain part of some slave state (Eurabia).
On the clear and present danger posed by Muslims in Britain and the rest of Europe Kaufmann is thoroughly evasive and unable to face the threat:
The principal reason that most Europeans worry about the growing Muslim population has less to with sharia and jihad than old-fashioned ethnic nationalism – the wish to see the dominant ethnic majority remain congruent with the nation state. We shouldn’t exhibit the presentist myopia that views Muslim immigration as a greater challenge because Islam is more exotic or conservative than Catholicism.13
First, what is wrong with ‘old-fashioned ethnic nationalism’? The wish of Europeans (ipso facto white) to see their countries remain European and the wish that the white indigenous majority populations remain totally dominant is perfectly rational and wholesome. Why should Europeans want it any other way? Kaufmann provides no answer. He just begs the question: it is bad because it is bad because it is bad because Kaufmann says so. Would the Japanese welcome their being culturally and racially dispossessed in the Land of the Rising Sun or the Chinese in the Ancient Kingdom? No chance. Even Kaufmann concedes that: ‘Global demographic change cannot affect states unless they open themselves up to it’.14 The Japanese and the Chinese want none of it. They are not interested in multicultural babble and the menace of diversity. So why should Europeans be expected to welcome their own racial, cultural and physical dispossession; their being targeted for displacement and elimination in their ancient homelands by aliens? Only a person with a cultural, racial death wish would welcome the Islamic invasion – for that is what it is – of white, Christian Europe or pretend that it is something beneficial for whites when it heralds their elimination. Second, given that sharia and jihad and all the other non-European baggage represent the behavioural, cultural, psychological and intellectual manifestations of distinct, non-white racial groups – Turks, Africans, Arabs and Pakistanis – the conflation of Europeans’ fears about the racial origins of the invader-immigrants and the fears that they, Europeans, will be displaced as the rightful majority are logical and fully justified. Europeans are the rightful majority precisely because whites are the indigenous population with effective possession of their lands sanctioned by millennia of occupation. Third, it is not ‘presentist myopia’ for Europeans to worry about the threat posed by Islam to Europe. On the contrary, it demonstrates a sense of the past – recall Charles Martel at Poitiers – and a sense of the future; an awareness that if this invasion succeeds, it is the end of Europe. Fourth, Kaufmann’s evasive assertion that we should not worry about Islam because it is ‘more exotic or conservative than Catholicism’ misses the point (or ignores the point). It is the nature of Islamic exoticism and conservatism that worries Europeans: suicide-homicide bombers, sharia, jihad, the obscene practice of female circumcision, honour killings, stoning women to death, polygamy, the sexual grooming of white girls, extreme censorship, hatred of free speech, hatred of white European host societies and the cruel murders of Christians in the Middle East (and Turkey). Catholicism, with all its faults and demonstrable historical sins, is, for better or for worse, part of Europe’s heritage: Islam’s incursions and invasions have always been unwelcome and rejected as something utterly alien. They remain alien and rejected.
The basic plot of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? is undoubtedly compelling. When Kaufmann confines himself to the rise of various religious groups in their relevant societies and how they might succeed in inheriting the Earth he adds a great deal to our understanding of major historical shifts and even cyclical changes. For this he is to be applauded. The fatal weakness of this book however is the author’s endless willingness to make concessions to non-Europeans and to refuse to acknowledge the indefeasible rights, history and culture of the white indigenous population. Why should Englishmen tolerate being dictated to by aliens, such as, Trevor Phillips, Bhikhu Parekh, Baroness Warsi, John Sentamu, Andrew Marr and Gisela Stuart who come with a hostile agenda and do not have England’s best interests in their hearts and souls? Parekh and other members of the cult never address the obvious question: why should the English permit England to be invaded and overrun by immigrants? Whenever Kaufmann attempts to integrate the alien Muslim narrative into the narrative of the white indigenous population, he sacrifices the legitimate interests of the white indigenous majority, above all the English, in order to appease Muslim immigrants, so imposing a liberal fundamentalist gloss over much which is very nasty. This means that the full truth, short and long term, remains hidden or only hinted at.
Kaufmann is historically naïve in his interpretation of religious groups making common cause against secularists on issues such as abortion, as if this heralds some kind of permanent rapprochement. This is a mere tactical solution, something analogous to the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. Once the seculars have been defeated or marginalised then the real business of determining which religion shall rule the Earth can begin in earnest. This question has exercised the minds of men since they invented or received religion and it will not be resolved in endless synods, commissions about the lack of ‘community cohesion’ (the reasons for which are obvious) and the publication of more anti-white tracts along the lines of the Macpherson Report (1999), The Parekh Report (2000) and Our Shared Future (2007). These publications are little more than government-sponsored propaganda assaults which are intended to destroy the morale and to weaken the legitimate status of the white indigenous population, primarily the English. No, war, as always, will be the final arbiter in determining who shall inherit and rule the Earth.
1 Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, p.ix.
2 Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, p.xix.
3 Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, p.68.
4 Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, p.68.
5 Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, p.69.
6 Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, p.xx.
7 Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, p.xxi.
8 Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, p.47.
9 Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, p.47.
10 Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, p.47.
11 Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, p.118.
12 Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, p.178.
13 Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, p.183.
14 Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, p.62.
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