As the Channel migrant crisis deepens, and one half-baked scheme after another bites the dust, our thoughts turn more and more to Jean Raspail and his prophetic Camp of the Saints (1973), in which the first of an armada of a hundred ships arrives off the Mediterranean coast of France from India, a decrepit old British steamer carrying some 50,000 of the destitute seeking a new life in the land of plenty.
Raspail’s fictional migrants came from India, but his warning to France concerned the ‘vanguard’ of hundreds of millions of North Africans, predominantly Muslims, on the opposite shores of the Mediterranean. The choice of India, he commented later, was merely to avoid exacerbating racial tensions in France with existing North African migrants. There is talk among some of the novel’s protagonists of repelling the invasion by force, but credulous virtue-signalling liberal sentiments predominate, and the migrants are welcomed. The floodgates are opened, and soon the West is overwhelmed.
Raspail’s message was simple. A few hundred million white and aging Europeans, the last bearers of Western civilization, would inevitably be submerged in a tidal flow of billions of impoverished Africans and Asians, from countries unable to feed their exponentially rising populations. The problem was not primarily that there was a disparity in population and wealth. It was, wrote Raspail in 1985, that the West ‘had no soul left’, no sense of self-belief in its cultural inheritance, its values, its destiny. He says of his own people, the French, that, ‘they are no longer in solidarity with anything, or even cognizant of anything that would constitute the essential commonalities of a people’. And without a soul, the ‘decisive battles’ involving ‘nations, races, cultures, as well as individuals’, are lost.
One shudders to think what Raspail would make of today’s self-flagellating cult of diversity and inclusion, the active deconstruction of our cultural inheritance in the name of decolonization, the witch hunts to root out ‘whiteness’ in all its forms from our society.
It would be nice to imagine that race had nothing to do with the battle. There is no necessary connection between race and culture – because culture is not transmitted in our genes. One could be Black or Asian, or even Chinese, and incorrigibly English in one’s attitudes and sensibilities. It all depends on upbringing and education – on the culture or civilization one is initiated into. Unfortunately, mass migration makes assimilation highly unlikely; the desire of the migrant not to integrate but to live apart, who despises the West and all it stands for, makes it even more improbable; and the refusal of the host nation even to attempt to assimilate newcomers out of an ideological attachment to post-Marxist deconstructive multicultural theory – what Raspail terms ‘an aggravated utopian humanism’ – makes it downright impossible. So it is that the battle lines are drawn, as Raspail foretold.
Did Raspail see any hope for the West? In the case of France, the most likely scenario was that it would soon be peopled ‘by hermit crabs’ who ‘live in the shells left behind by the representatives of a species gone forever which was called the French species’, and that ‘will have been clothed with this name’. Indeed, the process had ‘already started’. But there was another possibility, one which Raspail, writing in 2004, notes ‘I could not formulate otherwise than privately, and which would require that I consult my lawyer beforehand’. This was ‘that the last isolates resist until initiating a kind of reconquest, undoubtedly different from the Spanish, but taking as its starting point the same reasons’.
Some of us thought that France would at last bite the bullet in the recent presidential election. The feisty Eric Zemmour campaigned on Raspail’s platform, even naming his new party ‘Reconquest!’ But it was not to be, and the French people returned Macron. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine cannot have helped matters, as Zemmour had previously expressed admiration for the Russian leader, even confiding ‘I dream of a French Poutine’. But at least in France the great existential issue of our time is being openly debated – and so there is still hope. Here in Britain, there is silence.
There is no solution to the Channel migrant crisis, for wedded as we are to the dogma of multi-culture, diversity, and inclusion, we have no will or soul to resist. As the crossings become more frequent and the dinghies get larger – as dinghies turn into boats and boats into ships – it is only a matter of time before the floodgates are fully opened. We might as well institute a ferry service for migrants now and have done with it. For ‘Global Britain’ is a tolerant, open, diverse, and welcoming society.
As for the English, the bearers of the old civilization of England, and of the West, they must decide where, and how, the last stand is to be made.
Good article – I always enjoy reading what James has to say. As Nigel Farage pointed out in The Telegraph, we need a new electoral system. That would put these subjects on the menu and allow different voices to be represented. In the other European countries in which such subjects can be debated, they have fairer voting systems. The Tories are too committed to diversity and inclusion – if not equality.
Regarding the “assimilation” of second generation of immigrants in England, compare the situation in Sweden, once boringly stable and now vibrantly diverse, see Denes Albert, REMIX NEWS, 27 June 2022, online.
For the USA, see the studies by Heather MacDonald, Byron M. Roth, Michael Levin, Charles Murray, Tom Barker.
It is now “racist” to criticise communities of colour and “racist” to defend communities not of colour against criticism, never mind the replacement of our English notables in “education” by Others; see e.g. Simon Evans, “Poetry will soon be lost for good,” Spiked Online, 29 June 2022.
The longer things carry on as they are the more it looks like the supposedly fictional story The Lancaster Plan by John M. Joyce published a few years ago is likely genuine.
In their eagerness to integrate, some 2,000 African men of ‘military age’ stormed the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco yesterday (June 24).
People need time to integrate. Typically, it is the second generation that does so. The first generation never really conforms, because they still share the values and culture of the old country.
From what I can see, England is already dead. The old English were always a bit snobby and horribly uptight, but in a very endearing and cute sort of way. But today, it’s just a dirty cesspool of violence; the wages are low; the taxes are high; people walk around with tatooes and piercings. The country of well-read snobbish gentlemen transformed into a country of thugs and losers.
I try to avoid London if I can.
@Jodi
There are still plenty of English snobs around – though I doubt if they are well-read now that the legions of Woke seek to decolonise (censor) every part of the Western canon that might offend a third-worlder. In fact 21st Century snobbery is steeped in that politically correct pseudo-moralty. I suspect that if those black-clad Antifa thugs currently defending ‘Transgender rights’ were to be forced to remove their masks they would be exposed as nothing more than posh, privileged, privately educated quasi-revolutionaries.
As for integration: it is often said by travel snobs that mass tourism ultimately destroys the very thing the tourists come to see. ‘Destroy’ is perhaps too strong a word – ‘degrade’ might be more fitting. Similarly, those economic migrants who come to the West in vast numbers (legally or otherwise) in pursuit of that fabled ‘Better life’ end up degrading their new homeland through lack of any need to integrate. A Polish lady of my acquaintance who came to England in the 1980s, long before Poland joined the EU, was dismayed by the huge influx of Poles and other East Europeans, post 2004 who, she felt, would change the country for the worse. She had long been critical of English deference toward the demands of immigrants – something she found inexplicable. ‘Why are you giving your country away like this?’ she would ask. ‘It wouldn’t happen in Poland’.
@Jodi
Integration: so far as immigrant communities are concerned, they are not culturally homologous and their individual members have different attitudes. Many early Caribbean and Indian immigrants were quite respecful towards their host society, and weathered hostility with some grace. Some younger people have assimilated but others have gone in the other direction, identifying with their ancestral cultures or race abroad, and joining in attacks either political or criminal against the indigenous host society.
To generalise, my English people have virtues and vices, the latter accelerated by the decadence of modern “sex, drugs, rock and rap”, but tend also to be deferential, unlike the French or Italians, and this attitude has been exploited by their enemies, especially with the development of oppressive woke-legislation.
The story of post-WW2 immigration and “race relations” is very complicated, and cannot be summarised here.
However, England and Englishness are not yet altogether extinct, despite various attacks on our institutions and identity, some of which I propose briefly to list in a forthcoming online essay for “The Quarterly Review”.
Accurate comprehension of the internal dangers and possible escape routes are essential to resistance and recovery, even for what the German spies and sleeper agents in the 1930s were told was “a phlegmatic but somewhat juvenile people”.
For intellectual resources, consult the Bibliography I prepared online for The Royal Society of St George, although it needs some updating.
London is not part of England and hasn’t been for a long time.
My wife and I did not move from Outer London to North Norfolk quite some time ago because of “white flight” but for other reasons. I have taught students of Caribbean and South Asian heritage and got on pefectly well with them, long before my birthplace-borough was almost totally transforned by 20 mosques (some men only) and murder-gangs like the Mali Boys.
However, many people have vacated parts of London and other cities to feel more at home with “people who look like” them (to coin a phrase) and behave in a familiar way – “escape to the country” has become “escape from the country”.
But this internal migration of the “white”-skinned is now included among the “evils” of “rural racism”. Whereas ethnic communities are permitted each to retain their own identity on our vacated territory or in their own homeland territory, the English ethnic community is not permitted to retain its own identity anywhere within its own inherited ethnic domain. Ukrainians and Tibetans, but not the English.
Our once famous Little Theatre in seaside Sheringham is now planning to teach the locals what’s what about our “rural racism” and the benefits of “multiculturalism”. One is reminded of the wail of Sir Cedric Hardwicke in “Things to Come” – “Oh progress, is there no end to this progress?” However, that was a film about science in an all-white world, not about survival in an emergent Afro-Asian empire.
The words “racism” and “decolonisation” now mean the opposite, like the slogans of Big Brother in 1984. But there are signs of resistance already emerging and the carapace of woke could crack and collapse like communism in eastern Europe.
The idea that “the West has no soul left” probably has a seductive appeal for people who like to dream of the West’s glorious history – now in decay. Unfortunately, for those who believe the remedy is a return to Christian values, that decay looks very much like a hollowed out version of Christianity – the substance of the religion has been discarded and all that remains is a soggy ethical code which (in nannying tones) requires that we be benevolant and non-judgemental toward any who could be deemed less fortunate than ourselves. “Clothe the naked, feed the hungry, heal the sick” – has transmuted into “celebrate diversity, strive to be inclusive, judge no one but yourself and, above all, show the world that you are a caring and compassionate person”.
The feminised West has come to view world events through the primary lens of care-and-compassion. We cannot simply turn away economic migrants because we don’t want them and they have no right to move into our country. That would be uncaring. No, we must pretend that our main concern is to protect them from villainous people smugglers.
To believe in Christian values one must believe in God, otherwise they will be hollowed out.
Indeed! For those of a Liberal/Progressive mindset the traditional Christian God is problematic. “He” is a patriarchal authority figure and is only tolerated insofar as he can be made to support Liberal/Progressive values. Thus, over time, this God has been transformed into a more comfortable caring and compassionate being – a personal God who makes helpful suggestions rather than demands. And soon to be made gender-neutral I suspect.
Oh yes, God the Mother is already in “feminist theology” though in competition with “single mum” Mary raped by a Roman centurion (a view ironically shared by ancient Jews and modern Nazis).
Jesus has been variously described as a Black man, an Aryan, a Transgender (cf Matthew 19.12), a Homosexual, if not a Vegetation Myth, a Revolutionary, a Cynic, a UFOnaut, a Socialist, a Nutcase, a Conjuror, a Buddhist, an Aristocrat, an Essene, a Stand-up Comedian, a Lame Dwarf, a Misguided Prophet, a Faith-healing Hypnotist – sources available on request.
What has been kept by the Weeping Welbys and the Liberal Clerisy is a misreading of a passage, ascribed to Our Lord but probably written by Christians undergoing Roman or Jewish persecution, in Matthew 25, which is NOT a call to feed everyone in the world, but a warning that whole nations who harm or neglect Christians will be tortured for ever in hell.
There is an apocryphal story ascribed to a previous archbishop: “My fellow bishops are either atheists or homosexuals, except for those who are both.”
Is resistance “useless”?
No it’s “racist”.
It has often occurred to me that, sadly, that day has already come. There are occasional glimpses of hope but there is a tidal wave of indifference that usually swamps even that.
It has been carefully managed by the politocracy since Powell’s voluntary assisted repatriation and immigration control policy received 80% national poll support. Thatcher gave the impression she was against “swamping” while the three big parties agreed to keep “race” out of election discussion, while subversion proceeded surreptitiously in education, etc. Then the politicians pretended they were concerned about immigration but acted otherwise after elections. Blair then brought in millions of Muslims while killing others overseas. The Brexit referendum result was a disguised protest against immigration. The capitalists want cheap labour, and the communists want revolution fodder.
So facts on the ground now mean that swollen immigrant communities are powerful factors against “nativism” and can swing support for more and more multicultural settlement, extended families and refugees from home countries. All opposition is taboo – or criminalised.
Accident, or incremental design? To suggest the latter is to be criticised as a Nazi conspiracy theorist who incites people to mass-murder.
We need a national network of well-informed and adroit English patriots even so.
I see that Prince William has joined the “virtue”-signalling remote rich to advertise the new Windrush Day which is now added to Stephen Lawrence Day, Nelson Mandela Day, Pansexual Visibility Day, Black History Month….
A woke-robot with a rabbit-grin?
Diversity (Mali Gang, Kriss Donald, Lockerbie, Manchester Arena) – what about Equality (Duke & Duchess of Cornwall, net worth $40m, three big & beautiful homes, hereditary succession)?
Given HRH’s much attacked recent warning on African overpopulation rates, someone should ask his approachably royal self, “Will the Bandwagon of Republican Diversity become the Hearse of Monarchist England?”