American Renaissance magazine
Vol.12, No.12	December 2001

CONTENTS

Sugar Bowl 1956: A Southern Armageddon
How the South Was Won
England Invaded
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

Sugar Bowl 1956: A Southern Armageddon?

The racial battle was first lost on the playing field.

by Gilbert Caldwell

Throughout most of American history the South was the repository of wisdom and courage when it came to racial and cultural survival. Despite having suffered the desolation of the war and the oppression of Reconstruction, the citizens of Dixie emerged at the end of the nineteenth century with their peoplehood intact, protected by social custom and law. This situation continued with little disturbance until after the Second World War. It was then that a coalition of forces led by the United States government, launched a massive assault upon white southern institutions.

Popular accounts of the turbulent two decades that finally brought the former Confederate states to their knees focus on the intensity of Southern resistance. In reality, we now know that Southern politicians were often negotiating surrender even as they stood in schoolhouse doorways. Equally distressing is that the masses of Southerners, although concerned with racial survival, were often far too concerned with other things. Among those other concerns was the desire to play big-time college football.

What follows is a brief account of one conflict between the demands of racial survival and the pursuit of sports. It tells us much about changes that had taken place in the hearts and minds of those whose ancestors sang, “and rather than submit to shame, to die we would prefer.”

On November 26, 1955, at Atlanta’s Grant Field, the all-white Georgia Tech football team defeated the all-white University of Georgia team by a score of 21–3. This victory made Tech 8–1 — 1 for the year, and earned it an invitation to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, where it would face the University of Pittsburgh. The Pitt Panthers had finished with a record of 7–3, but had captured the Eastern College Lambert Trophy, and were seen as capable of giving the powerful Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets a good game.

Three days after the victory, the legendary Tech coach Bobby Dodd received a telegram from Hugh C. Grant, a career diplomat and founder of Georgia’s States Rights Council. It read, “Urge your cooperation in preventing a breakdown of our laws, customs and traditions of racial segregation.” What prompted Grant’s telegram was the presence of a black fullback, Bobby Grier, on the Pitt roster. Tech had a tradition of all-white athletics, and Grant wanted to be sure that tradition would be upheld.

The Southern Tradition

Throughout the twentieth century Southern schools had refused to compete against integrated teams. This normally resulted in a gentleman’s agreement, sometimes written into game contracts, stipulating that when an integrated team played a Southern school the black players would stay out of the lineup.

If Northern teams did not bench their black players, Southern schools refused to play, whatever the consequences. In 1907, the University of Alabama baseball team refused to take the field against the University of Vermont in Burlington, when the latter insisted on keeping two black players in the lineup. The Alabamans chose to be fined and forfeit the game. In 1923, the Washington and Lee football team from Virginia refused to play Washington and Jefferson College in Pennsylvania, because the latter team would not bench its black quarterback. The Virginian squad just packed its bags and went home.

On November 2, 1929, a visit by University of Georgia to New York’s Yankee Stadium for a football game against New York University touched off an enormous controversy. The Northern press and even some congressmen demanded that NYU not honor the gentleman’s agreement to bench its two black players — to no avail. In Georgia, even the liberal Atlanta Constitution hailed NYU’s decision to remove the blacks from its roster.

Even border states shared the sentiment against integrated sports during the pre-World War II period. In 1930, the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, demanded that Ohio State keep an all-Big Ten black tackle out of the game. The Buckeyes honored the request.

As the years went by, the talents of black football players made the standard Southern request sound like a desire for unfair advantage. Thus, for a 1934 game between Georgia Tech and University of Michigan, the Wolverines agreed to keep their star black end, Willis Ward, out of the game only if Tech benched its star end, Hoot Gibson.

As in so many racial matters, the Second World War was a turning point in the formerly consistent Southern position. The late ’40s saw the integration of major league baseball by Jackie Robinson, and the fledgling National Basketball Association signed three blacks in 1950. Pro football, which had an unspoken color line from 1934 till 1946, was rapidly hiring blacks.

The first defections from the Southern position occurred when schools (with the notable exception of those in Mississippi and Alabama) began to play integrated teams, provided the games were not held in the South. Georgia adopted this new policy in 1950 at a game in San Francisco against St. Mary’s College, and Tech followed in 1953 at Notre Dame.

The Sugar Bowl itself followed this Northern standard. In 1955, in order to lure a Northern opponent to the big game in New Orleans, the bowl committee followed the pattern of the Orange and Cotton Bowls, and made two crucial changes. Integrated teams could come, and segregation would not be enforced in the visiting team’s section of the stadium. These changes cleared the way for the invitation of Pitt to the 1956 game.

Until then, no Deep-South team had ever played an integrated team in the South, and this was what prompted Grant’s telegram to Coach Dodd.

Controversy at Tech

The coach brought the matter up with university president Blake R. Van Leer, who notified the governor’s office. It is reported that even before the telegram from Grant, Coach Dodd had polled his team and found that every member wanted to play the game, even with Grier on the field. He contacted Governor Marvin Griffin, who replied, “Bobby, I can’t come out publicly and support this [game]. But you go ahead and do it.”

In the morning of December 2nd, Governor Griffin called the Tech Athletic Association and asked for 24 tickets to the Sugar Bowl game. Amazingly, a little later that same day the governor held a press conference in which he fiercely denounced participation in the game. These hypocritical antics were to be common in the ensuing years as the likes of Governors Faubus, Wallace and Barnett raged passionately against integration in public while they helped promote it in private.

That day for the public, at least, Griffin said: “It is my request that athletic teams of the University System of Georgia not be permitted to engage in contests with other teams where the races are mixed or where segregation is not required among spectators. The South stands at Armageddon. The battle is joined. We cannot make the slightest concession to the enemy in this dark and lamented hour of struggle. There is no difference between compromising the integrity of race on the playing field and doing so in the classrooms. One break in the dike, and the relentless seas will rush in and destroy us.”

But this was not the 1930s, and the response of Tech’s student body as well as its football team was much different from that of the school that simply refused to play an integrated Michigan team. That same night, December 2nd, a huge crowd of Tech students marched on the Capitol Building and the Governor’s Mansion to protest the governor’s segregationist views. On the way they smashed stores, tore up parking meters, and overturned trash cans. They broke into the Capitol Building, smashing locks, windows and furniture. They chanted and waved signs saying “To Hell With Griffin,” “Impeach Griffin,” “Grow Up, Griffin,” and “Griffin Sits On His Brains.” The Governor stayed in his mansion with the lights out, and only when former Tech football star Milton “Mugsy” Smith assured the crowd that the team would go to New Orleans did the students disperse, around three in the morning.

The riot prompted one Georgia state legislator to remark in the following days that “no one should in the future be admitted to Tech if he adhered to the principles of integration.”

Sentiment around the state was mixed. The University of Georgia held a “For Once We’re With Tech” rally to encourage Tech to go to New Orleans. The Atlanta Constitution now saw the Governor as “embarrassing the University and the state.” In another significant reversal, the acting Chancellor of Pittsburgh announced there would be “no compromises,” and Grier would “eat, sleep and play with his team.” Contrary to what it had done for half a century, the North was not backing down. It was up to the South to act.

The final decision rested with the 15-member Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, which met on Monday, December 5th. Despite the opposition of some well-known segregationists on the Board (among them Roy Harris, later President of the Citizens Councils of America) the board decided overwhelmingly to play the game. Indeed, the school’s president Van Lear threatened to quit if the board reached any other decision. Nonetheless, the board affirmed that segregation would be enforced at all Tech home games.

Now that he had taken a publicly segregationist stand, Griffin had no choice but to cancel his order for the 24 seats. He said he and his staff “would give no comfort to Negroes and white folks playing on the same field,” and “did not want to see colored folks sitting next to white people in the stands.”

The Game

On January 2, 1956, the 22nd annual Sugar Bowl was held in New Orleans before more than 80,000 fans. Bobby Grier started the game for Pitt, and even made the tackle on the opening kick off. Later, on a crucial play, Grier was called for pass interference at the Pitt one-yard line, and Tech scored on the next play. The score did not change after that, resulting in a 7–0 Georgia Tech victory. After the game, Grier claimed the call against him had been unfair, but he did admit that the Tech players had been gentlemanly throughout the contest. According to the New York Times, the crowd “repeatedly cheered the Negro fullback for a gallant performance.”

When the Georgia state legislature convened the following year, Senator Leon Butts introduced a bill that would legally ban “all athletic matches, physical games, social functions and entertainment events” in which blacks and whites participated together. Butts declared that “when whites and Negroes meet on the athletic fields on a basis of complete equality it is only natural that this sense of equality carry over into the daily living of the people.” The bill passed the Georgia Senate but was defeated in the House. The Atlanta Constitution editorialized against the bill because it would make it impossible to schedule north/south games, and would adversely affect the “national status of the Southeastern Conference.”

Total Surrender

In retrospect the bill’s passage or defeat seems irrelevant. In 1959 the United States Supreme Court declared a similar ban in Louisiana unconstitutional, and the Brown decision on school integration was slowly being carried out throughout the South. For a brief period in the late 1950s, Alabama and Mississippi teams refused invitations to national tournaments and bowl games against mixed-race teams, but eventually they, too, capitulated.

As Southern schools became integrated, it was inevitable that their athletic teams would follow suit. First to fall were the Southwestern and Atlantic Conference schools. Eventually the Southeastern Conference (SEC) border states joined them in fielding mixed-race teams. In 1971 Ole Miss itself had a black basketball player and in 1972 a black football player. By 1975, close to half the athletes in all sports in the SEC were black, and in 1980 the number reached 70 percent. Today the figure is no doubt even higher.

What difference does it make whether sports teams are integrated or whether white players take the field against blacks? During the Sugar Bowl controversy of late 1955, the Atlanta Constitution criticized Roy Harris and Hugh Grant for thinking that “a football game (is) a social event. No tea will be served. As further assurance for the extremist group, there are no females on either team and there is absolutely no danger of intermarriage as a result.”

It is significant that the paper implicitly endorsed social segregation and condemned miscegenation, but it failed to think things through. The Constitution and the pro-game contingent failed to grasp that any form of easy social mingling inevitably yields friendships and eventually, inter-racial dating and marriage. As the reality of fewer than 50 years later demonstrates, the prophecies of the integrationists were wrong, and those of the segregationists were right.

Furthermore, the entry of large numbers of blacks into sports changes their very character. Black behavior is the precise opposite of the standards of graciousness, humility, and sportsmanship whites developed over a period of centuries. In black-dominated sports it is now a matter of course to insult and humiliate one’s opponents, to swagger in victory and sulk in defeat. At the same time, the emergence of black “super-stars” has accelerated the general acceptance of non-whites in all areas of society.

The American South is, of course, not alone in suffering the consequences of letting athletics become the first concession against racial integrity. It was under the National Party that sports-mad South Africa opened the first breach in apartheid by letting a racially-mixed New Zealand rugby team tour the country in the late 1960s. Three decades later, it was the same National Party that surrendered the entire country to black rule and the savagery that has followed. White Rhodesians wanted to play international cricket — and got the nightmare of rule by Robert Mugabe.

As for the students of Georgia Tech, all they wanted was to play in the Sugar Bowl. They have lived to see their grandchildren come of age in a multi-racial South, in which whites have no more racial pride than New Yorkers or Californians.

If it was not entirely clear in 1957, it is certainly clear today. Whites everywhere are under siege; and for a people under siege there can be no compromise.

Gilbert Caldwell is the pen name of an unabashed reactionary who coaches an all-white athletic team in an East Coast city.

BOOK REVIEW

How the South Was Won

Andrew Jackson’s policy of Indian removal.

Andrew Jackson & His Indian Wars, Robert V. Remini, Viking, 2001, $26.95, 317 pp.

reviewed by Thomas Jackson

On August 30, 1813, Creek Indians attacked Fort Mims, a makeshift enclosure about 40 miles north of Mobile, Alabama. They came in through an open gate and killed every man, woman, and child they could. They picked up small children by the heels and smashed their brains out against the stockade fence. They scalped the women, and cut unborn children out of pregnant mothers. Some 20 to 40 escaped but more than 250 people were butchered. Thus began the Creek War, and Andrew Jackson’s first major military command. It was the start of a long career of dealing with Indians, which included much fighting, some friendship, and culminated in the removal West of the Mississippi of tens of thousands of people who stood in the path of American expansion.

Robert Remini, a noted historian and Jackson expert, has written a lively and fair-minded account of the seventh President’s Indian policies. He makes the standard apologies for “racism,” but fully understands the need to evaluate Jackson according to the standards of the times, and generally seems to have achieved his own stated goal: “simply to explain what happened and why.”

Jackson’s own life story is a good example of what happened and why. He was born in South Carolina in 1767 at a time of constant conflict with Indians. Like virtually every white who lived on the frontier, Jackson had ample reason to fear and hate Indians. A family member, probably an older brother, was killed by Indians, and as a boy during the Revolutionary War he had first-hand experience of the havoc wrought when an enemy — in this case Britain — stirred up Indians against settlers.

At age 21, when he first traveled to Nashville, the trip was a very dangerous one through hostile Indian territory. His band was saved from massacre only because Jackson recognized that what sounded like owls hooting were Indians signaling an attack. He traveled a great deal on business, and seems to have spent most of his young adult years either hunting or being hunted by Indians.

All these experiences convinced him that Indians could not co-exist with whites, and that European powers would constantly be recruiting them to fight against the young republic. Indeed, both Spain and England regularly armed Indians and encouraged them to resist American expansion. All the Indians living along the Gulf of Mexico were susceptible to foreign manipulation, and at least by 1809 Jackson was convinced the only solution was to send them elsewhere. As Prof. Remini emphasizes, Jackson was certainly aware of the value of the land that could be taken from Indians, but his main concern was always to remove what he considered a threat to American security.

The vast territory acquired in 1803 by means of the Louisiana Purchase seemed the perfect place to send these troublesome people and, indeed, Thomas Jefferson himself had been among the first to propose this, writing that if the Indians could not be civilized, “we shall be obliged to drive them, with the beasts of the forests, into the Stony [Rocky] Mountains.” Prof. Remini points out that Jackson nevertheless respected Indians who were faithful to their ancestral customs, and did not want to see their heritage disappear under the white onslaught. Removal would protect their customs, make their land available to whites, and secure the frontiers of the United States.

In Jackson’s view, one of the great obstacles to achieving this was the government’s inconsistent approach to the legal status of Indians. Were Indians members of sovereign nations or were they subject to the laws of state and federal government? George Washington had begun the policy of treating them as sovereign nations with whom treaties were negotiated and sent to the Senate for ratification. However, as the nation grew stronger, it became powerful enough to treat Indian tribes more or less as it pleased, and increasing contact between whites and Indians raised many awkward questions: Was an Indian who killed a white subject to Indian law? state law? federal law? How were contract or trading disputes to be resolved?

At the same time, the United States had neither the means nor the will to abide by its own treaties. These often established areas to be used exclusively by Indians, but the expanding white population kept pushing into them. This often led to violent retaliation not only against the squatters but also against whites just outside of Indian territory. Jackson had no patience for white treaty violators, whom he rightly accused of stirring up unnecessary conflict, and he spent much of his time as a military commander chasing white trash off of Indian land. Indians could count on his evenhanded enforcement of treaty obligations, and chiefs often appealed directly to him to protect their boundaries. However, as Prof. Remini points out, not even the entire American army could police the vast lands held by Indians, and Jackson’s frustration with this impossible task only strengthened his resolve to remove the Indians.

The United States, with General Jackson often acting as its agent, carried out contradictory policies. It would swing from outright war with hostile Indians to alliances with friendly tribes. It would sign treaties with peaceable or defeated Indians but renegotiate them as whites increased in number and demanded more land. Jackson was equally determined and ruthless, whether he was negotiating treaties with Indians or killing them.

As a soldier, he had no formal military training but was a natural leader and tactician. He had a commanding presence, an aura of authority, and hard blue eyes that could terrify people. Indians gave him the name Sharp Knife, and some claimed his furious look could kill a man.

Although Jackson never permitted violence against women or children, he gave warriors no quarter. On one occasion, when he was at war with Florida Indians allied with the British, he had a naval commander lure two enemy chiefs on board by flying the British flag. Jackson promptly hanged the chiefs. After the battle of Horseshoe Bend, the decisive engagement of the Creek War, he wanted an accurate count of enemy dead, and had his men clip off the ends of dead warriors’ noses to make sure there was no double counting. (The total came to 557.) Indians, on the other hand, sometimes dug up buried American casualties to scalp them, mutilate them, and steal their clothes.

Prof. Remini underlines the ambiguity in Jackson’s attitude towards Indians. He had no illusions about the compatibility between whites and Indians and wanted them gone. Yet he credited them with great courage, and even set free one captured chief because he so admired the fearless dignity with which he stood before his captors. Nor was he indifferent to what the Indians suffered. During the Creek War he wrote to his wife, “It is anough to make Humanity shuddar to see the distressed situation of the Indians,” but this in no way tempered the fierceness with which he pursued his foe.

One of the most famous of Jackson’s Indian encounters was his rescue of a 10-month old Indian boy, who was found after a battle in the arms of his dead mother. Jackson raised the boy as his own son, gave him the name Lyncoya, and grieved deeply when the boy died at age 16.

The story of Jackson and Pushmataha is also touching. Pushmataha was a Choctaw who had fought at Jackson’s side during the Creek War and at the Battle of New Orleans. This did not stop Jackson from pushing a harsh relocation treaty on the Choctaw in 1820, but the two men were in close professional contact until Pushmataha’s death in 1824. Jackson was at the death bed and leaned over to ask, “What is the last request of the chief?” Pushmataha whispered, “Bury me with the big guns firing over my grave.” Jackson honored that request, laying the chief to rest in Washington, with an artillery salute, two military bands, several companies of soldiers and marines, and all the honors of a brigadier general.

But Jackson never let sentiment interfere with duty, whether he was making war or making peace. In his view, the main purpose of treaties was to persuade Indians to give up their land, and he resorted to threats, bribes, charm, and guile to get what he wanted. He liked to make a powerful impression by arriving at the treaty ground with a large military escort. He also brought plenty of liquor with which to loosen up the chiefs, not a few of whom were blind drunk when they signed away their ancestral lands.

These negotiations were an almost farcical blend of feigned friendship, coercion and legal punctilio. Jackson loved to address the assembled Indians as “friends and brothers.” Here is a typical opening: “Friends and brothers! We have been chosen by your father the President of the United States to meet you in council, and brighten the chain of friendship by shaking hands and greeting you as his children.” Their “father” the President, he might go on to say, “wants to make all his red children happy.” (The Indians took readily to this paternalist language, and tribes affiliated with the British sent letters to “our good father, King George.”)

After this ritual declaration of love, Jackson would stun his “red brethren” by demanding that they give up their land and move West of the Mississippi. He would paint idyllic scenes of rivers teeming with fish and forests filled with game, in areas Indian scouting parties had already discovered were rocky scrub land. The government, he would add, was offering to pay generously for their current holdings, would transport them for free, and give them provisions with which to start their new life in the West. If they didn’t accept this offer, their “father” would be angry, and would do nothing to stop the whites from pouring into their land and despoiling it.

It was invariably an awful deal for the Indians, who by now knew there was no hope of driving the white man back into the sea, and who just wanted to be left alone. The chiefs would reject the offer, and then would come the threats, liquor, and bribes. Jackson hated the process — especially bribing chiefs to, in effect, betray their own people — but he almost always got the treaty he wanted. The appearance of legality would continue with ratification by the Senate.

The payments to the Indians for their land were not huge but they were not derisory either, running into the millions of dollars. By means of these treaties Jackson acquired millions of acres of land for use by whites. The state of Mississippi was so grateful for the land Jackson got for it by means of the Treaty of Doak’s Stand in 1820 that it named the state capital in his honor.

There was a falseness about the whole process that was not lost on Jackson. Although he took his negotiating responsibilities very seriously and insisted that the government stick to its terms, he thought treaty-making was a mistake. He thought Indians were savages, but did not see why they should not be under American law like everyone else. He thought the United States should drop the pretense of international negotiation, and simply legislate its relations with Indian tribes.

And that is precisely the approach he took as President. Until he took office, Indians had been dealt with through executive agreement, sometimes with the assent of the Senate. Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe all favored removal, and tried to achieve it, but Jackson was the first to regularize the process, by means of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The act did not pass easily. It won by narrow margins, against the opposition of New Englanders who had settled their Indian problems long ago, and who could afford to strike a “humanitarian” pose.

Among Americans today, it is the removal of the Cherokee that is best known — primarily because it went so badly. Part of the problem was the stubbornness of the principal chief, a half-breed by the name of John Ross. In the face of a two-year deadline to prepare to move, he told his people to sit tight, do nothing, and wait for a miracle. The Cherokee made no preparations, the miracle failed to occur, and the government then went about its work very badly. Militia showed up at the homes of Indians and herded them into camps. Looters followed, burning whatever they could not steal. The Indians were packed like animals into box cars for part of the trip, and then made to walk the last 800 miles into Oklahoma. It was this last leg that became known as the “trail of tears.” From the beginning, government-supplied provisions were inadequate, and of the 18,000 or so Cherokee who set out, perhaps as many as 8,000 died.

Prof. Remini points out that the Cherokee made their forced march in 1838, a year after Jackson left the White House, and that Jackson would never have countenanced such mistreatment. He always worried about the fate of the poorest Indians, and insisted that all government payments be prompt and in full. The Cherokee tragedy seems to have been an unfortunate combination of bad preparation, heedlessness, and government corruption.

Although they are the best known because of their suffering, the Cherokee were just one of several tribes that were sent West. In all, about 81,000 Indians made the trip, of whom 46,000 were deported during Jackson’s presidency. The removal of Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, etc. was not joyous, but the Cherokee appear to have suffered the worst.

Nevertheless, as Prof. Remini points out, “Removal was meant to prevent annihilation, not cause it.” Jackson was convinced to his dying day that removal had saved the Indians — and Prof. Remini concedes that he was right. The collision of Western man with stone-age savages had only four possible outcomes. One was extermination of the Indians, and Prof. Remini makes it clear no one seriously considered this. The second was integration, which neither whites nor Indians wanted. Prof. Remini says whites rejected integration out of “racism” while the Indians, presumably not “racist,” wanted to preserve their customs. The third option was to leave the Indians where they were to enjoy their traditional homelands, but the press of whites made this impossible. Prof. Remini leaves no doubt that there was no force in America powerful enough to keep white settlers from overrunning the hunting grounds. Contact with whites tended only to corrupt the Indians, turning them away from their traditions and into drunks and beggars. The only real option was removal.

And, indeed, as Prof. Remini points out, the tribes whom whites encountered before the Louisiana Purchase made removal a possibility — the Mohegan, Delaware, Narragansett, Yamasee, etc. — did not survive as nations. They were overrun or absorbed. It is the Cherokee and others, whose removal we are supposed to look upon as the blackest mark on our past, who survived into the present. Prof. Remini concludes:

Andrew Jackson genuinely believed that what he had accomplished rescued these people from inevitable annihilation. And although that statement sounds monstrous, and although no one in the modern world wishes to accept or believe it, that is exactly what he did.

What would have been the result had the balance of power been different? Unlike whites, Indians had no scruples about killing women and children, and practiced torture and extermination when it suited them. The great Shawnee chief Tecumseh was no doubt expressing his sincerest desires at an 1811 war council meant to stir up as many tribes as possible: “Let the white race perish! . . . Burn their dwellings, destroy their stock, slay their wives and children, that the very breed may perish.”

Indians were probably fortunate to have had whites as their most powerful enemy rather than the likes of Tecumseh.

BOOK REVIEW

England Invaded

How easy is it to turn men into serfs?

“When William Came” (1913). Included in H.H. Munro, The Complete Saki, Penguin, 1982, $19.95 (softcover), 944 pp.

reviewed by Thomas Jackson

White Americans live under something akin to an alien occupation of the mind. Our churches, politicians, journalists, and professors all promote a view of the world that is as damaging to us as would be an ideology imposed by a conquering power. Of course, there has been no military conquest of the United States, and therefore no specific event to which we can point as the origin of this campaign against us. For this reason, only a minority of whites recognize that we are under enemy occupation — intellectually speaking — and many whites are unwitting collaborators in a system that could prove fatal to their civilization.

But what of those who recognize the dimensions of the crisis and have the choice of acquiescence or resistance? When the opposition is in firm control, the rewards of collaboration attract the cowards, conformists, and the unprincipled. Those who are loyal to the memory of older and better ways must be ready to sacrifice — but which sacrifices are meaningful, and how powerful is the temptation to collaborate?

It is these questions that the British author Saki — whose real name was Hector Hugh Munro — explores in his satirical 1913 novel, When William Came. In this case, Britain does not suffer intellectual occupation by the forces of “anti-racist” liberalism but military occupation by the German Kaiser’s armies. The British are defeated in a lightening campaign in which their navy is destroyed, and the United Kingdom is incorporated as a German province. The Royal Family escapes to India, where a band of loyalist exiles maintains symbolic resistance in the colonies.

Most of the novel describes how members of the leisure class of London accommodate themselves psychologically to a firm but civilized occupation. Just as American whites today are reminded daily of the intellectual occupation under which they live, the British must accustom themselves to new currency and postage stamps, bilingual signs, taxes to pay for the administration, strange uniforms, and an alien flag flying over Buckingham Palace.

The hero, Murrey Yeovil, was traveling overseas at the time of the defeat, and when he returns home after a long absence finds he no longer lives at 28 Berkshire Street but Berkshcirestrasse acht-und-zwanzig. He also finds that his wife Cicely has cheerfully accommodated herself to what is known as the fait accompli. He suggests they emigrate and join the resistance in the colonies:

‘It’s a difficult question,’ said Cicely, “whether one should stay at home and face the music or go away and live a transplanted life under the British flag. Either attitude might be dictated by patriotism.”

‘It is one thing to face the music, it is another thing to dance to it,’ said Yeovil.

‘Really, Murrey,’ she adds later, ‘if you will think things over a bit, you will see that the course I am following is the one dictated by sane patriotism.’

‘Whom the gods wish to render harmless they first afflict with sanity,’ says Yeovil bitterly.

Yeovil is appalled that his wife’s gay social life goes on despite the occupation — “rather like merry-making with a dead body lying in the house,” as he puts it — but is reminded of a passage from a book about Bulgarian social life under Turkish rule:

Bondage has this one advantage: it makes a nation merry. Where far-reaching ambition has no scope for its development the community squanders its energy on the trivial and personal cares of its daily life, and seeks relief and recreation in simple and easily obtained material enjoyment.

Saki continues: “The thought of that determined little nation [Bulgaria] came to him with a sharp sense of irony. There was a people who had not thought it beneath the dignity of their manhood to learn the trade and discipline of arms. They had their reward: torn and exhausted and debt-encumbered from their campaigns, they were masters in their own house, the Bulgarian flag flew over the Bulgarian mountains.”

Mastery, when it comes, is worth any sacrifice.

Yeovil roams London, trying to understand what has happened, estimating the chances of throwing off the occupation. He strikes up a conversation with a young clergyman who “had a keen, clever, hard-lined face, the face of a man who, in an earlier stage of European history might have been a warlike prior, awkward to tackle at the council-board, greatly to be avoided where blows were being exchanged.”

Yeovil asks how the lower classes, among whom the cleric works, are taking the defeat. The answer could as well pass for how ordinary Americans feel today about their own occupation: “They take it badly,” said the young man, “badly, in more senses than one. They are helpless and they are bitter — bitter in the useless kind of way that produces no great resolutions.”

The cleric is not prepared to take things lying down: “I have learned one thing in life,” he continues, “and that is that peace is not for this world. Peace is what God gives us when He takes us into His rest. Beat your sword into a ploughshare if you like, but beat your enemy into smithereens first.”

Yeovil meets a Hungarian, who argues that the British were beaten because wealth and luxury had made them soft, and because they had lost their island-bred suspicions: “For the old insular belief that all foreigners were devils and rogues they substituted another belief, equally grounded on insular lack of knowledge, that most foreigners were amiable, good fellows, who only needed to be talked to and patted on the back to become your friends and benefactors.”

“We in Hungary,” he explains, “live too much cheek by jowl with our racial neighbours to have many illusions about them. Austrians, Roumanians, Serbs, Italians, Czechs, we know what to think of them, we know what we want in the world, and we know what they want; that knowledge does not send us flying at each other’s throats, but it does keep us from growing soft. Ah, the British lion was in a hurry to inaugurate the Millennium and to lie down gracefully with the lamb. He made two mistakes, only two, but they were very bad ones; the Millennium hadn’t arrived, and it was not a lamb that he was lying down with.”

The fieriest character in the novel is an old aristocratic woman Yeovil consults about what he should do:

‘Are you going to be a fighter, or the very humble servant of the fait accompli?‘ she asks.

‘I shall never be the servant of the fait accompli,’ said Yeovil. ‘I loathe it. As to fighting, one must first find out what weapon to use, and how to use it effectively. One must watch and wait.’

The old woman astonishes Yeovil by telling him that if she were a young man like him she would become a traveling salesman:

Yes, one whose business took him up and down the country, into contact with all classes, into homes and shops and inns and railway carriages. And as I travelled I would work, work on the minds of every boy and girl I came across, every young father and young mother too, every young couple that were going to be man and wife. I would awaken or keep alive in their memory the things that we have been, the grand, brave things that some of our race have done, and I would stir up a longing, a determination for the future that we must win back . . . That is what I would do. Murrey, even if it is a losing battle, fight it, fight it!

Yeovil cannot bring himself to take this advice.

Meanwhile, the Germans are doing their best to turn Britons into Germans, and one of the occupiers has hit upon an eerily prescient set of weaknesses upon which to play:

[T]here is the alchemy of Sport and Drama to bring men of different races amicably together. One or two sportsmanlike Germans on a London football team will do more to break down racial antagonism than anything that Governments or Councils can effect. As for the Stage, it has long been international in its tendencies. You can see that every day.

This German recognizes that the older generation may never be won over, and that it will be necessary to cultivate the young:

The youth of the country, the generation that is at the threshold now. It is them that we must capture. We must teach them to learn, and coax them to forget. In course of time Anglo-Saxon may blend with German . . .

Indeed, as we know, if a generation is got hold of early enough, with a will to “teach them to learn and coax them to forget,” a great people can be made into sheep in just a few decades.

When William Came has a happy ending, but it is rather forced. At the best possible moment, under the most dramatic circumstances, the younger generation peacefully proves its loyalty to Britain, and we are led to believe that this portends eventual liberation from German rule. However, there is little in the novel up to that point to lend credence to this happy ending; the author instead seems to be telling us that once enough people are prepared to collaborate with the unthinkable, the unthinkable becomes routine.

Clearly, there are no answers here to the question of whether so many white Americans have come under the spell of alien consciousness that liberation is impossible. However, we know that for Munro, these were not merely abstract or artistic questions. He appears to have been cut from the same cloth as the young cleric who was intent on beating his enemies into smithereens.

At the age of 44 he enlisted in the Royal Fusilliers as a private and refused a commission. He was killed in combat in France in 1916. He was a far better man than those who pass for the writers and “artists” of our time.

IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Cincinnati Smoldering

On September 26, Cincinnati police officer Stephen Roach was found innocent of negligent homicide and obstructing official business, in connection with the shooting death of Timothy Thomas. The shooting prompted three days of rioting, and Officer Roach became the first Cincinnati police officer ever to be prosecuted for fatally shooting a suspect. Hamilton County Municipal Judge Ralph E. Winkler said Officer Roach shot Thomas in a “split-second reaction to a very dangerous situation that was created by Mr. Thomas,” and that Officer Roach believed he must either shoot or be shot by a suspect who fled from police and acted suspiciously in a dark alley in a high-crime neighborhood at two in the morning.

The judge’s decision angered blacks. Rev. Damon Lynch, III complained, “The officer clearly took a man’s life unjustifiably, and now he walks.” Ronald Dixon predicted more violence: “It’s about to be round two up here,” he said. “I wish there was a better way. But people are mad.” Sporadic violence did break out in Cincinnati’s black Over-the-Rhine-neighborhood, but city officials contained further outbreaks by ordering a city-wide curfew for the two nights following the verdict.

The verdict has by no means brought to an end the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation of the Cincinnati police department for civil rights violations. Despite a $17 million budget deficit, the city agreed to pay black (alleged) super-lawyer Billy Martin $195,000 to help fight the case. This turned out to be just a downpayment. His firm has already billed the city more than $300,000, and no end is in sight.

At an NAACP fund-raiser on Oct. 5, black Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree described the rioters not as thugs, but revolutionaries, and said the riots reflected legitimate frustration with the police and courts. [Jane Prendergast, Roach Not Guilty; City Under Curfew, Cincinnati Enquirer, Sept. 27, 2001. Kevin Aldridge, City Race Issues Analyzed, Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 6, 2001, p. B5. Robert Anglen, Cincinnati’s Bill for Lawyer Over Limit, Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 6, 2001, p. B7.]

Keeping Terrorists Out

The United States has finally changed its visa-granting procedures in light of the September terrorist attacks. Members of 74 terrorist groups and people who have contributed money to them will not be admitted into the country. Most of the groups are Middle-Eastern, but some have made trouble in places like Rwanda and Ireland. People who use positions of prominence — imams, college professors, journalists, etc. — to advocate terror will also be refused admittance. The Department of Justice says a computerized system to keep tabs on all foreign students could be operating by next summer. [Mary Sheridan, Immigration Rules Tightened, Washington Post, Nov. 1, 2001, p. A3.]

The FBI is slowly taking the gloves off when it comes to investigating religious leaders for potential terrorism. Muslim clerics have been bellowing hatred of the United States for years, but authorities have been shy about going after them. An FBI official reports that even after the events of Sept. 11, “the veil of religion that has been draped over mosques . . . will be tough to move off. The Arab-American community,” he adds “can become enraged and beat on the FBI.”

The classic case of FBI restraint was its unwillingness to look into the activities of Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian radical who was finally convicted of planning the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Mr. Rahman arrived in the United States in 1990 despite years under suspicion in Egypt. For a time he had been held under house arrest for alleged support of the group that assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. He was released and then charged again by Egyptian police, but by that time he was in the United States. The FBI knew about his suspicious past and was aware of his harshly anti-American sermons, but hesitated to move against a religious figure. Mr. Rahman is now serving a life sentence for his part in the World Trade Center bomb attack. [Walter Pincus, FBI Wary of Investigating Extremist Muslim Leaders, Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2001, p. A4.]

Needless to say, the FBI’s job has been complicated by loose immigration policies that let people like Mr. Rahman into the country in the first place. The country is now likely to limit free speech and increase covert surveillance because it has foolishly let so many America-haters into the country.

The Chinese have a much more straightforward way of fighting terrorism. Some of their ticket agents have simply stopped selling airline tickets to people from Afghanistan, Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, Sudan, Libya, Algeria, and Pakistan. People with Palestinian passports can’t buy tickets either. [Helen Luk, Middle East Nationals Kept Off China Flights, Washington Times, Oct. 3, 2001, p. A5.]

Keeping it in the Family

Robert Johnson, chairman of Black Entertainment Television (BET), is a billionaire. Recently The New Republic looked into how he got that way. In 1979, Mr. Johnson hit upon the idea of starting a cable television station for black viewers. At that time, cities were the only untapped markets left for cable, which had already wired up the lucrative suburbs, and cable companies that could claim they were purveying black culture had a big political advantage. A Denver-based cable giant called TCI decided to put up $500,000 for a minority share in a joint venture for which Mr. Johnson put up only $15,000. TCI could then tell mayors and city councils then awarding cable deals that it could offer a black-owned, black entertainment channel. It got a lot of business. Ten years later, TCI admitted it never made much money on this lop-sided investment, but it made Mr. Johnson rich.

For broadcast content, BET has relied on the cheapest footage it can get its hands on, mainly music videos that record companies distribute as free promotion. These are mostly sex-and-swagger rap clips that give BET its characteristic feel. In 1996, one BET executive admitted she never let her daughter watch the channel.

Over the years, Mr. Johnson has given a lot of money to Democrats, but with George W. Bush in office, he has found new political allies. Back when Mr. Bush had other things on his mind besides Osama bin Laden, he was trying to eliminate the estate tax. To his dismay, a splashy group of white millionaires led by William Gates opposed abolition of the tax, arguing that the rich had an obligation to give wealth back to the community rather than to their children. It looked like the tax would stay.

Into the breach stepped Robert Johnson, arguing that the inheritance tax was racist and penalized blacks. He and some rich black friends took out newspaper ads claiming whites had inherited their money but blacks came into wealth by “a different way” (which, incoherently, meant their children should inherit money). The ad said abolishing the tax would let blacks keep their hard-earned wealth and “will help close the wealth gap in this nation between African American families and White families.” This was a curious argument, in that although blacks are 12 percent of the population, there are so few with large estates that they account for only one half of one percent of the people who pay the tax. Needless to say, Mr. Johnson would be among them, and dumping the tax would save his children a lot of money.

Simple-minded George let himself be played like a flute, and started acting as if lifting the tax were a “civil rights” issue. “As Robert Johnson of Black Entertainment Television argues,” he said, “the death tax and double taxation weighs heavily on minorities.” He was thick enough to add that abolition would allow people to transfer wealth “from one generation to the next, regardless of a person’s race.” Mr. Bush got rid of the tax and the Johnson family will keep its millions. [Jonathan Chait, Robert Johnson, W’s Favorite Race Baiter, New Republic, Aug. 27, 2001.]

‘White Slut’

When Rebecca Porcaro entered Seattle’s Rainier Beach High School in 1995, she was part of a white student minority of only 18 percent. The largest group was blacks, who taunted and harassed her virtually from the day she arrived. Almost daily she would hear: “White slut.” “Stupid white girl.” “White bitch, go back to Bellevue.” “This is our school.” She faced constant threats of violence and endless lewd propositions, and started skipping class. She also took as many off-campus classes as possible so as to get away from other students. She and her parents repeatedly tried to get help from school authorities (race unspecified), but were ignored. Miss Porcaro’s mother thinks Rebecca was singled out for particularly harsh treatment because she is blonde and dresses stylishly, which made her appear “super-white.” She is also convinced the school would have stopped the mistreatment if the victim had not been white. Last year, only eight percent of the school’s 683 students were white, 52 percent were black, 30 percent Asian, eight percent Hispanic and two percent were American Indian.

Miss Porcaro graduated in 1999 and eventually filed suit against the school district. She has now won an apology, a $40,000 settlement, and a promise that all high school teachers and staff will get race and sensitivity training — training that presumably includes the startling news that whites, too, can be victims of racial abuse. [Rebekah Denn, White Woman Settles School Reverse-bias Suit, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Aug. 14, 2001.]

Loss of Diversity Brings Boom

The city of Hoboken, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, is enjoying a revival. After decades of slump, its sidewalks are clean, its shiny storefronts bursting with everything from gourmet coffee beans to windsurfing equipment. The city is full of young professionals, attracted by rents that are lower than in Manhattan. Since 1990, the town has added 2,500 new housing units to accommodate the newcomers — who are mostly white. In the last decade, 22 percent of the city’s Hispanics — 2,253 people — cleared out, while 4,804 whites moved in. Hoboken is now 81 percent white, which makes it the whitest town in all of Hudson County.

Needless to say, this is cause for much mourning. Ruben Ramos, a City Councilman of Puerto Rican extraction says the city used to be “an ideal melting pot,” but now, “you walk down Washington Street and most of the faces you see are white . . . It just doesn’t have that neighborhood feeling anymore.” What drove out all the wonderful diversity? Mr. Ramos says the authorities haven’t done “anything to try to save affordable housing stock in Hoboken, and that’s what really hurt Latinos.”

Whites are probably delighted by the change — otherwise, why are they coming? — but apparently feel compelled to regret it. Francisca Alexander, 32, moved from Richmond, Virginia, five years ago, and has witnessed the change. “I can tell the ethnicity balance just isn’t the same,” she says. “I wish it was different, more diverse. I think that’s really healthy for any community.” Abbie Rivers, who owns Empire Coffee & Tea Co, says “A community where everyone is the same just isn’t interesting.” [Karen Mahabir, Loss of Diversity as Hoboken Booms, Journal (Hoboken), Aug. 7, 2001.] Apparently it hasn’t occurred to either of these ladies that “healthy,” “interesting” communities of the kind they claim to want are very easy to find — and probably charge lower rents.

Brain Waves

When a person looks at the faces of people, his brain reacts differently according to whether he is looking at someone of his own race or a different race. A test conducted at Stanford University used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to detect brain activity when whites and blacks were shown pictures of faces. There was a lot of activity in the subjects’ brains’ fusiform regions, an area associated with expert appraisal. The fusiform regions of bird-watchers, for example, light up when they look at birds, and all people have a certain expertise in recognizing human faces. However, there was significantly more fusiform activity when people looked at faces of people of their own race.

In a variation of the test, subjects were shown a set of pictures of black and white faces, and were then shown the set again, with additional black and white faces mixed in. When testers asked which faces they had seen before, whites were better able to remember the white faces, and blacks were better able to remember the black faces. It appears that people have a more advanced ability to appraise and remember faces of people of their own race. [Emma Hitt, Brain Reacts Differently to Faces Based on Race, Reuters, July 27, 2001.]

Seeing the Darkness

Adriana Stuijt, a Dutch journalist, used to be a fervent anti-apartheid crusader. After several years of covering the new South Africa, she is not nearly as happy with it as she expected to be. “I used to work as a medical journalist in South Africa for many years and have covered a large variety of epidemics in those years,” she explains. “Nothing I have seen compares to the current slaughter inside the country today: More than 200,000 people have already been murdered in crime-related violence . . . South Africa’s small number of remaining commercial farmers are indeed the world’s most endangered profession.”

Miss Stuijt notes that public health has collapsed under black rule. Not only is AIDS out of control, but 100 people have died of cholera in the last few months. Millions of children suffer from malnutrition, and the country is now going through the worst tuberculosis epidemic in its history. Malaria and sleeping sickness, which whites brought under control are making a comeback.

The country’s health authorities have taken one important precaution against AIDS. They have issued condoms to South African census takers for their protection, should they be “led into temptation” as they make their rounds. One opposition member of parliament worried that census takers “may be encouraged to forget that their task is to accumulate statistics to help good government.” [Christopher Munnion, Condoms Given to Census Staff, Telegraph (London), Oct. 8, 2001.]

Miss Stuijt has also noticed another casualty of black rule: freedom of the press. Although the evidence of decline is everywhere, it is not permitted to write about it. “Self-censorship inside South African news media is now greater than ever,” she says. [Anthony LoBaido, South Africa Deteriorates Under ANC Rule, WorldNetDaily.com, Sept. 16, 2001.]

Miserable as South Africa is, the legacy of white rule continues to make it attractive to other Africans. A South African unemployment rate of 30 percent is no deterrent to Zimbabweans, who have seen Robert Mugabe drive their own unemployment rate to 60 percent. Thousands of Zimbabweans have been living in squatter camps, causing resentment by underbidding South Africans for jobs. Recently rumors swept a settlement west of Johannesburg that Zimbabweans had killed a woman, and mobs started burning the squatters out of their shacks. Thousands were left homeless as hundreds of shacks went up in flames. “The Zimbabweans are all gone now. Hopefully they will go back to Zimbabwe,” says one contented rioter. [Ed Stoddard, S. African Settlement Tense After Zimbabweans Flee, Reuters, Oct. 23, 2001.]

Land of Despair and Shame

The Schools Prom is an annual musical celebration for British students sponsored by the National Union of Teachers. Traditionally, it is a patriotic event at which children wear Union Jack hats and sing the “Land of Hope and Glory” lyrics to Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance.” This year, says the appropriately acronymed NUT, what with the Afghan war and all, there must be nothing “triumphalist” about the prom. Instead of wearing Union Jack hats, children will wave the flags of all countries. The NUT has also changed the words to “Land of Hope and Glory” as follows:

Old	New
Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free, How shall we extol thee, Who are born of thee? Wider still and wider Shall thy bounds be set, God who made thee mighty, Make thee mightier yet!	Music and our voices, Unite us all as one, Let our sound be mighty, Sung by everyone. Deeper and still deeper Shall our bounds be set Bring our world together Make us closer yet.

NUT General Secretary Doug McAvoy explains that the old words could be “seen today as something that might be jingoistic, that might be triumphalist,” and adds: “[Children] will come from schools with mixed groups, different faiths and in the present circumstances it is totally inappropriate to end on that note.” [Prom Anthem ‘Too Jingoistic,’ BBC News, Oct. 12, 2001.]

Rape the White Girls

Last spring, police in Denmark reported that 68 percent of the country’s rapes were perpetrated by the Muslim minority. Danish women have been demonstrating against what they believe is the Islamic view that any woman who exposes her face and legs is a whore, and deserves whatever treatment she gets. “I am convinced that we can build a large network to nip the development of this unpleasant and tragic situation in the bud,” says Aase Clausen Bjerg, who is a leader of the anti-rape movement. She seems to have overlooked the fact that most of the perpetrators are second- and third-generation immigrants, who can hardly claim to be in the thrall of ancient ancestral customs. [Muslim Rape Concern, Copenhagen Post, Sept. 18, 2001. Erling Andersen, Danish Girls are not Sluts, BT Online (Copenhagen), April 27, 2001.]

Comes Another Rapist

According to the popular Danish gossip magazine Se & Hoer (See & Hear), Mike Tyson, convicted rapist, ex-con, and ear-biting boxer, has decided to move to Denmark. The magazine says Mr. Tyson “wants to continue his explorations into ‘beautiful blonde Danish girls’.” The former world heavyweight champion, who has already signed a contract to buy a house in a leafy Copenhagen suburb, reportedly feels safer living in Denmark after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. [Mike Tyson Reportedly Moving to Denmark, Reuters, Oct. 25, 2001.]

Wicked Yanquis

Ever since the events of Sept. 11, the United States is actually taking a good look at what comes across the Mexican border. Scrutiny is so intense that many cocaine smugglers have given up trying to get drugs into the United States and are selling them in Mexico. According to Crime Prevention Director Pedro Jose Penaloza, traffickers are so eager to unload their cocaine in Mexico it is now even cheaper than marijuana and likely to lead to serious addiction problems. [Official Blames Fortified U.S. Border for Rise in Mexican Cocaine Use, AP, Oct. 17, 2001.]

Multiculturalism

Muti, or African black magic, may be finding its way to Europe. African witchdoctors like to use human body parts in charms and potions, and it is estimated that hundreds of children are chopped up for parts every year in South Africa alone. Recently, the body of a black boy, about five years old, was spotted floating down the Thames River near Tower Bridge in London. It was missing its arms, legs, and head. Scotland Yard suspects muti, but it is not ruling out an attack by pedophiles. Earlier this year, a white girl was cut up in a similar manner in Holland, with various parts of her body recovered in widely scattered places. [Witchdoctor Killing Feared in Thames Torso Murder, Ananova, Oct. 16, 2001.]

Who Guards the Guards?

Anthony Tang, a Chinese Brit, who used to work for the Birmingham Partnership Against Racial Harassment, was recently awarded the equivalent of nearly $300,000 for racial harassment — by his former bosses. They kept taunting him about being a Chinaman, and wanted him to cook the statistics to make it appear racial attacks in Birmingham were worse than they actually are. They wanted to announce a 150 percent increase, so they could justify a big spending program to fight “racism.” A tribunal singled out Mary Mallet (race unspecified) and Haroon Saad (unlikely to be white) as having particularly mistreated Mr. Tang. [Andy Wilks, Anti-Racism Chiefs Fined, The Sun (London) Oct. 7, 2001.]

Progress in Norway

The Progress Party of Norway, led by Carl Hagen, wants to bring immigration down to no more than 1,000 people a year. It opposes foreign aid on the grounds that poor countries are poor because they can’t get organized. In September, it won 26 seats in the 165-member Storting or Parliament, and now holds the balance of power. By pledging its support to the Christian Democrats, it forced out the Labor Party. Although Progress does not hold any cabinet positions, the Christian Democrats will need its support to get a majority and pass legislation. This is the first time since the Second World War that the far right has had real political influence in Norway. [Andrew Osborn, Far Right to Share Power in Norway, Guardian (Britain), Oct. 18, 2001.]

Come One, Come All

Britain has such a loose asylum policy that it now harbors plenty of radical Muslims wanted for terrorism in their home countries. Abu Hamza al-Masri fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia, and displays his war wounds as if they were medals. In Yemen, he is wanted in connection with several bombings, including one that killed three people, and a kidnapping that ended in a rescue attempt that left four hostages dead. A British citizen since 1985, the 43-year-old imam is protected from extradition, and spends his time preaching the destruction of Britain and the United States. “It’s now the time for martyrdom — the end game for all those who bear animosity toward Islam,” he says. Imam al-Masri says he also runs “self-defense” camps for young British Muslims who want to fight infidels in Chechnya or Kashmir.

Yasser al-Sirri has lived in Britain since 1984, and runs a Muslim “human rights” monitoring group in London. He has been sentenced to death in Egypt, where police say he was in the military wing of Islamic Jihad, the terrorist group blamed for the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat and a series of assassination attempts in the 1990s.

Authorities think Europe harbors hundreds of men like these, who have fled insufficiently radical Arab countries. Many have been members of the roving Islamic brigades that have fought in Chechnya, the Balkans or Afghanistan, or have thrown bombs at their own governments. France, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are among the countries that have long complained of easy British asylum for accused terrorists.

Britain is also the favorite hiding place for members of the Armed Islamic Group, an Algerian terror gang blamed for a wave of bombings in France in the 1990s. Muslim militants linked to armed groups fighting Indian rule in the Himalayan province of Kashmir are also on the loose in Britain.

At least a few Brits have begun to wonder if something shouldn’t be done about these fruits of diversity. MP Andrew Dismore of the Labour Party says laws should be changed to permit the expulsion of those “who abuse our democratic system and actively seek to destroy the society that protects them from the regimes that they would themselves impose on others.” [Hamza Hendawi, British Mullah Has Anti-U.S. Message, AP, Oct. 21, 2001.]

Greasering the Ways

A reader reports that Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado recently recounted some immigration horror stories on C-Span. A young Hispanic who was caught mugging an elderly woman told police he was a Mexican illegal. They turned him over to the INS, which gave him a choice of jail or deportation. He chose deportation. He was not, however, an illegal alien but an American-born citizen. From Mexico he telephoned his mother, who came down with his papers and brought him back to the United States — with no criminal record. Rep. Tancredo says this is a trick well known to Hispanic criminals.

Invitation to Your Own Funeral

A reader in Columbus, Nebraska, has sent us an invitation he received to attend a “Faces of Columbus” meeting sponsored by a local United Way agency called the Columbus Collaborative Team. Dr. Sue Schlightemeier-Nutzman, a specialist in community development and cultural diversity, was to speak on the need to “address challenges by building on strengths.” Participants could also look forward to “a full ethnic meal.”

Celebrating the Decline

In 1955 the now-famous Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the white section of a Birmingham, Alabama, bus. This led to a 381-day boycott, and the eventual integration of the bus system. Twenty-five years later, when the bus system was getting rid of extra inventory, what is alleged to be Miss Parks’ bus was sold to a private owner who used it for, among other things, storage. Now the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, has bought the bus over an Internet auction for $492,000, and will emphasize “the important role it has in American history.” [Bus in Landmark U.S. Civil Rights Event Sold, Reuters, Oct. 26, 2001.]

Strike Three

Serial criminal Rodney King was arrested for the third time in six weeks on Oct. 13, once again for allegedly being under the influence of the drug PCP. Pomona, California, police arrested Mr. King after a traffic stop, and released him from jail after he posted $2,500 bail. In September, Mr. King pleaded not guilty to a charge of being under the influence of PCP following his Aug. 28 arrest. Shortly before his court date on that charge, he was arrested on Sept. 29 for suspected PCP use and exposing himself at a public park. During the past few years Mr. King has been to jail twice for various convictions, and remains on probation for abusing the mother of his daughter. [Rodney King Arrested in California, AP, Oct. 14, 2001.]

Hip-Hop Rip-Off

Stanford University offers a course called “The Language of Hip-Hop Culture,” in which students study rap “lyrics.” Instructor Samy Alim says: “Hip-hop is the next chapter of African-American folklore. Street cred is huge, it’s number one. Now we’re developing academic credibility as well.” A typical discussion might be about the meaning of the rapper Killarmy’s line, “Lyrical poems cock back with sharp tacks laced with Ajax.” Stanford is not alone. At the University of California at Berkeley students can take a course on the “poetry” and “history” of rapper Tupac Shakur, and Harvard plans to establish a rap “archive” next year. [Stanford Students Earn Credit for Studying Hip-Hop Lingo, AP, Oct. 26, 2001.]

Cheering Chinese

A reader with State Department contacts reports an incident that has not appeared in American newspapers. The department has a Visitors’ Program, which brings prominent people from other countries to see the American way of life. Usually they come in twos or threes, but this fall State decided to bring over more than a dozen Chinese newspaper editors. These were big bugs — editors of major dailies. The final number was 14, and the Chinese were on their way to America when they heard news of the Sept. 11 attacks. Reportedly “three or four” of the 14 got up and cheered. Some of those who did not cheer were displeased and a discussion broke out in Chinese. The cheering episode was reported up the State Department chain of command, and — whether they were sent home or decided on their own to turn back — the Chinese never made their visit.

Disarming Students

Los Angeles students like to come to school with weapons. Police caught 510 armed students last year and have no idea how many more were walking around with knives and guns. Whenever there are large gatherings like dances or sports events, police randomly pat down students, but this is time-consuming and obtrusive. “What we don’t want to do is make our schools look like jails,” says one school official. In order to camouflage reality, school police are looking into using digital scanning equipment that works better than standard metal detectors. People must still walk through a frame, but instead of just making a noise when there is enough metal present — which could be pocket change or a belt buckle — the new machines have monitors that show where on his body someone may be carrying a lump of metal. Guards need stop only those people who have substantial metal objects in unusual places. School officials are considering buying two of the $40,000 machines. [Daniel Yi, Schools Testing Weapon Detector, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 21, 2001.]

Mexican Miscreance

In 1944 the United States signed a treaty with Mexico under which the US would send one million acre-feet of water to Mexico from the Colorado River, and Mexico would send over 350,000 acre-feet from the Rio Grande. The US delivers as promised, but every year since 1993 Mexico has failed to do so. American farmers who count on this water are furious. In March, Mexico agreed to release 600,000 acre-feet from Mexican tributaries to the Rio Grande, with delivery no later than July 31. Many Texas farmers, assured of this water, planted at least a portion of their usual acreage only to be left with failed crops when the Mexicans reneged again. “It’s unbelievable that our own government would allow this situation,” says Gordon Hill of Bayview Irrigation District 11 in Texas, but President Bush does not want to embarrass his amigo Vicente Fox. [Hugh Aynesworth, Border Good Will Evaporates in Water Dispute, Washington Times, Oct. 15, 2001, p. A3.]

You’ve Been ‘Niggerized’

On Oct. 10, black Harvard professor Cornel West used a lecture on “hip hop culture” to explain how the Sept. 11 attacks have changed America. After comparing current national anxieties to what he called black America’s long history of coping with terror, death, and “institutional forms of terrorism” such as slavery, Prof. West concluded that “America has been ‘niggerized’ by the terrorist attacks.” [Phillip M. Chan, West Shifts Hip Hop Talk’s Focus to Attacks, Harvard Crimson (Cambridge, Mass.), Oct. 11, 2001.]

No Sex Please, We’re Black

AIDS cases among blacks are skyrocketing in Minnesota. Although they are less than three percent of the state’s population, blacks accounted for 44 percent of new cases last year. The infection rate among black women is a staggering 90 times higher than that for white women. James McHie, who works for the African-American AIDS Task Force, says the problem with educating blacks about AIDS is that “when it comes to sex, they don’t talk about it.” Lorraine Teel, executive director of the Minnesota AIDS Project, agrees that education efforts have failed “because we don’t like to talk about sex and drugs.” [Mike Zacharias, Minnesota HIV Cases Increasing Mainly Among Blacks, Minnesota Daily (Minneapolis), Oct. 19, 2001.] These people have apparently never listened to a black comedian or watched the Black Entertainment Television channel.

Winnie Loses

Winnie Madikezela-Mandela, ex-wife of former South African president Nelson Mandela, earned $1,888 a month as president of the African National Congress Women’s League. That wasn’t enough. On Oct. 18, Mrs. Madikezela-Mandela, who is also a member of South Africa’s parliament, was arrested and charged with 85 counts of fraud, and theft of more than $100,000.

Along with an accomplice, Addy Moolman, Mrs. Madikezela-Mandela persuaded banks to make loans to non-existent employees of the women’s league. She signed letters falsely confirming employment for 60 borrowers, and diverted $61,000 to her own accounts. Mrs. Madikezela-Mandela is also charged with stealing $1,040 that was to have gone into a funeral insurance plan. [Winnie Mandela Accused of Fraud, AP, Oct. 19, 2001.]

Commuting While White

Kenneth Jones, a white man in his late 30s, was looking for a seat on a Metro subway train in Washington, D.C., on the morning of Sept. 24. He asked Clarenton Barker, who is black, if he could sit in the empty seat next to him. When Mr. Barker didn’t respond, he asked again, and then sat down. Mr. Barker then attacked Mr. Jones, hitting him repeatedly in the face. Panicked passengers called the train operator on the intercom, and the train stopped. The operator and another Metro employee entered the car to reset the emergency handle, but did not check on Mr. Jones or detain Mr. Barker. At the next station, police arrested Mr. Barker on charges of aggravated assault. Mr. Jones was taken to George Washington University Hospital where he received treatment for facial lacerations and knocked out teeth. There was a brief press account of the attack that did not mention the races of criminal or victim. [Metro Rider Accused of Onboard Assault, Washington Post, Sept. 25, 2001.]

According to an AR reader who attended court hearings on the case, Mr. Jones’ injuries were more serious than reported. Witnesses said he “bled profusely,” was “covered in blood,” and was on oxygen support when he reached the hospital. Mr. Barker will not be facing justice anytime soon. It could be nine months before the Washington grand jury indicts him for felony assault. Prosecutors are not charging him with a hate crime.

Counting Illegals

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of illegal aliens living in the United States has doubled since 1990 to at least seven million. There are also a record 31 million foreign-born, who make up more than 10 percent of the population. The new study was prompted by the discrepancy between the Census Bureau forecast of the 2000 U.S. population and the actual count. As reported by AR in August, instead of the 275 million the Census Bureau expected, it was shocked to find more than 281 million. The six million extra were illegals, and the new study shows even that figure was an undercount.

Cecilia Munoz, vice president of National Council of La Raza, says these results show the need to revive Mexican president Vicente Fox’s amnesty scheme. Amnesty would tell us who is here, she says, adding, “We are much more likely to advance the cause of security in this country if we have a better sense of who is coming into the United States.”

Tougher enforcement at the border will help keep more illegals from coming in, but will encourage the ones who are here to stay, because if they go home they could have a hard time getting back in. [D’Vera Cohn, Illegal Immigrant Total is Rising, Washington Post, Oct. 25, 2001, p. A24.]

Keep Greed Alive

Even a few blacks have begun to notice that Jesse Jackson is a holdup man rather than a “civil rights” champion. Harold Doley is one of the 100 richest black men in America, and was the first black to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. For a while he was enthusiastic about Rev. Jackson’s Wall Street Project because he thought it would bring more blacks into the securities business. He quickly cooled on the reverend’s methods. “What worried me was the way he operated, dealing with these veiled threats,” he says. “What he was doing was a kind of RICO operation, both criminal and civil,” he adds. “It was racketeering.” And once he had put the screws on pension funds to send some of their business to black companies it went only to Rev. Jackson’s cronies — “roughly ten firms that qualify,” he says. Rev. Jackson and his organizations get a rakeoff that Mr. Doley estimates at $17 million a year. “He’s done better than any goddamn dot-com stock that I am aware of,” says Mr. Doley. His advice for any black who wants to go into business with a Jackson organization? “I tell them they could go in the hood and go into a partnership with a crack dealer if all they are interested in is the money.”

Frederick Jones is another black businessman who is sick of Jesse Jackson. He approached Rainbow PUSH with a complete business plan for real estate development, hoping to get help and advice. He got nothing. He soon found out no one without connections with the Jackson inner circle could get his calls returned. He said instead that Rainbow PUSH tried to extract “registration” fees and “small business” fees from him. During one call, a woman who would not identify herself asked if he was a member of Rainbow PUSH. “Is it necessary?” he asked. “It helps if you are a member of the organization, to get help from them,” she explained. Mr. Jones finally gave up on the Jackson empire. “It’s a boys club to me, an inner circle,” he says.

Eddie Edwards, one of the most successful black broadcasters, is the founder of something called the Black Broadcasting Alliance (BBA), which he started in competition with the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB). He says that NABOB, which is very friendly to Rev. Jackson, controls broadcasters too tightly. Now, he says, NABOB and the Jackson combine are doing everything they can to wreck his business. “You, in short, play by our rules and deal with us or we will get you,” is how he sums up the message he got from Rainbow PUSH.

In particular, Mr. Edwards is trying to sell off 19 television stations for $1.5 billion, but Mr. Jackson has interceded with the FCC to stop the deal, leaving it in legal limbo since May, 1998. “The influence that Jesse Jackson has in Washington, there are people genuinely afraid of this man,” says Mr. Edwards, explaining why the FCC had held up the deal. He says he could play the reverend’s game and get the sale unblocked, but he refuses. “I am not giving in to him, I won’t give in to his pressure tactics,” he says. “I am the first black or white person to step up and to speak out,” he says. [Marc Morano, Jesse Jackson Accused of ‘Racketeering’ by Top Black Businessman, CNSNews.com, Oct. 22, 2001.]

Spineless NewsMax

AR has been placing advertising for the next AR conference, to be held next February 23-24. The NewsMax.com web page takes ads, and we proposed the following text message, with a link to an electronic registration form on the AR web page:

Must Whites Become a Minority? Join us for a conference “In Defense of Western Man.”

There ensued the following e-mail exchange with Jim Whelan of News Max.com:

‘Sorry we cannot post your ad.’

‘Why not?’

‘The answer to that is in the content of your message.’

Learning to Die

AIDS is the leading cause of death among teachers in the Central African Republic. According to UNICEF, of the 300 teachers who died there last year, 85 percent died of AIDS, and by 2005, between 25 percent and 50 percent of all teachers will have died of the disease. Because it is customary for teachers to have sex with students, they are helping spread the disease. “The average age of female sexual activity is 15, and their first partner is often their teacher,” says Adjibad Karimou of the UNICEF office in Bangui, the capital. “The very people upon whom we rely to teach pupils how to protect themselves against AIDS are often the ones passing on the virus.” Françoise Nboma, head of the English department at Miskine High School in Bangui, says poor girls are most at risk. “They see their teacher as someone to help them. Many parents want their daughters to marry teachers, so they encourage their children to have relationships with them, and the staff don’t refuse.”

“Lots of girls sleep with their teachers. They do it to pass exams,” says Nadine Igala, a student at Miskine. Five girls at Miskine, which has 4,000 students, died of AIDS last year. Teacher-student sex is not only limited to high schools. Grade school children are also being infected by their teachers, and at the University of Bangui, a number of female undergraduates have contracted the virus from instructors. “In certain courses, if a female student is beautiful, she won’t stand a chance of graduating unless she sleeps with her professor,” says literature student Oliver Nyirabugara. Male students bribe their teachers with beer and cigarettes in order to pass exams. [Lucy Jones, African Students Get Lesson in Death by Contracting AIDS From Teachers, Washington Times, Aug. 16, 2001.]

LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — I am writing in response to the main article in the October 2001 issue of AR, “Rearing Honorable White Children.” I am both a reader of American Renaissance and a teenager (18), who has been raised with a racial consciousness. Up until about high-school age, I was almost an exact picture of the children in the article. My father instilled in me racial awareness since I was old enough to remember. I was well-read, well-educated, had an appreciation for classical music, and — most important — had a healthy racial pride.

Today this is all still true, but there were a few dark years of typical teenage yearning for independence that made me branch out at about the time I hit high school. I became interested in the music of today, mostly of the metal/hard-core genre, and am still an avid fan and enjoy promotions and concerts. I started working on performance automobiles, and consider myself a fairly competent amateur mechanic.

My peer group, while not bad by most definitions, certainly does not promote racial consciousness or instill an urge to excel or push myself to higher goals. Nevertheless, despite the trappings of our multicultural society, I remain true to my race and have a strong pride in being white. My appreciation for classical music has never diminished; if anything it has grown. The part of me that was brought up racially conscious has learned to coexist with my participation in the current generation, and it is a duality of which I am proud. In fact, I believe the sheltered life the children Prof. Griffin wrote about may be a handicap. The sad reality is that they will eventually have to deal with the stagnant, multicultural society of America. This is not to say they should become a part of it, but exposure of the kind I had might rejuvenate and strengthen the convictions with which they were reared.

They should be allowed to be a part of their generation, and to work within it to promote racial consciousness. Had I not had that exposure, the people I interact with today would simply consider me an eccentric and ignore any teachings I might offer. Because I am an identifiable member of my generation, I believe my peers are more willing to accept my racial message. I believe that if we are to make a difference, our young people must be exposed to modern American culture. It is easier to fight the cancer of multiculturalism from the inside.

Richard M. Smiley, Alaska

Sir — The article written by Robert S. Griffin in the October issue of AR was excellent. Bravo! It just goes to show that, despite the enemy having total control of both our mass media and educational institutions, responsible parents can overcome the racially harmful effects.

Extra kudos to Ken, one of the fathers of those highly attractive children in Prof. Griffin’s article, who emphasizes the study of Latin. There is no finer way to preserve the high culture of the West than to master the literary language of Caesar, Cicero, Descartes, Spinoza, and many others. Before Western Civilization committed suicide in 1914 (and for a considerable period thereafter) fluency in Latin and, to a lesser extent, Attic Greek were the hallmarks of a well-educated man. More importantly, Latin is the sole Western language without an associated political entity. It is pan-European and devoid of nationalism, which has traditionally been the bane of the West. This manifestation of racial-cultural unity must once again be instilled into our young people so they may continue to carry the torch of our civilization and ensure that it burns bright again.

Populi Aquilae Vincent!

David J. Stennett, Seattle, Wash.

Sir — The central, unstated message of your article about the terrorist attacks is that they are the single most spectacular tragedy to arise from our commitment to “diversity.” To begin with, Muslims around the world hate us because the efforts of one ethnic group in our diverse population have tilted our foreign policy in the Middle East decisively in favor of Israel. Our devotion to “diversity” has at the same time permitted the entry into America of Muslims who want to extend the Palestinian struggle into the homeland of Israel’s most prominent supporter.

It is less well known that immigrants from South Asia — Indians and Pakistanis — are building increasingly sophisticated lobbying groups with which to push American foreign policy in that region in directions not necessarily in out interests. The next time there is a major Indo-Pakistani crisis, we will be treated to the sight of swarthy men with odd accents telling us it would be a grievous violation of American values if we did not step in and help India (or Pakistan, as the case may be). It is just as well we do not have a large and influential Tamil or Sinhalese population. Otherwise, we might very well have thrown our weight behind one side or the other in the civil war that has wracked Sri Lanka. One of the many unpleasant consequences of “globalization” and “diversity” is that every nasty conflict anywhere in the world has the potential to drag in the United States — if enough of its participants have immigrated as part of our “gorgeous mosaic.” Diversity is especially dangerous in a democracy, because every nationalist and sub-nationalist group is free to promote its own overseas interests no matter how damaging these may be for the country as a whole.

Sarah Thompson, Wentworth, Covington, Ky.

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