June 2002
| American Renaissance magazine | |
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| Vol. 13, No. 6 | June 2002 |
| CONTENTS |
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France Sets the Tone
Le Pen in His Own Words
Europe on the March
The Anatomy of Ethnic Conflict
What the Kurds Can Teach Us
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers
| COVER STORY |
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France Sets the Tone
The National Front shakes up the political establishment — again.
On April 21, the head of the National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen, astonished the world by coming in second in the first round of the French presidential election, and winning a place in the runoff against the incumbent Gaullist, Jacques Chirac. In the final round, running against the united opposition of the entire French political system, Mr. Le Pen went down to a disappointing defeat, winning only 18.04 percent of the vote against 81.96 for Mr. Chirac. Still, the 73-year-old former paratrooper’s breakthrough in the first round was hugely encouraging for all European (and American) nationalists, and once again showed that millions of Europeans are prepared to fight against Third-World immigration and for the reassertion of national sovereignty. The Le Pen campaign and others like it throughout Europe show that vigorous racial and national sentiment can rise to the surface when political systems permit it.
History of Steady Growth
Despite the constant accusations of “fascism” and “Nazism,” the program of the National Front has always been one most American conservatives of just a few decades ago would find congenial. Besides his wish to preserve France from waves of non-white and Muslim immigrants, Mr. Le Pen supports the death penalty, opposes abortion, wants greater independence from the European Union, and thinks social welfare benefits should favor native Frenchmen.
Mr. Le Pen founded the National Front in 1972 and made his first of four runs for the presidency in 1974, winning less than one percent of the vote. The front’s first real breakthrough came in 1984, ironically in elections to the European Parliament. In balloting based on proportional representation, the front gained 11 percent of the national vote, and Mr. Le Pen led a front delegation to the parliament in Strasbourg. In the 1988 presidential race, Mr. Le Pen won 14.4 percent of the vote, and in 1995 he won 15.2 percent.
The party’s representation in the National Assembly has been kept artificially low because all the French parties gang up against it in the two-round election process. After splitting the vote in the first round, parties of both the left and right ordinarily withdraw candidates from the second round to improve the better-placed “right” or “left” candidate’s chances of winning, but no party will play that game with the National Front. Only in 1988, when President François Mittérand introduced proportional representation in an attempt to split the conservative vote, did Mr. Le Pen find himself at the head of a 35-member legislative bloc. The next election, when Mr. Chirac as Prime Minister reintroduced the two-round system, the front lost all but one seat in the assembly, despite winning 400,000 more votes.
In 1997, the front’s 3.9 million votes won it only one seat in the legislature, and because the front and the “conservative” Gaullists did not withdraw in each others’ favor in the second round, the left, whose Communists, Socialists, and Greens all withdrew candidates in favor of each other, went on to a massive and undeserved victory.
The next year, the front suffered a terrible internal rupture, with Mr. Le Pen’s number-two man, Bruno Mégret, walking out to form his own National Republican Movement. It was a very bitter, very public divorce, which so weakened the patriotic right that many observers thought it was finished. It was therefore as something of a return from the dead that Mr. Le Pen entered the 2002 presidential election — and he almost failed even to get on the ballot.
To enter the election, a candidate must win the endorsement of at least 500 French mayors, who are courted and feted in the run-up to the election. Despite his standing as one of the most durable and popular political figures in France, Mr. Le Pen almost failed to get his 500 signatures. Officials elected from Mr. Chirac’s Gaullist party, the Rally for the Republic, boycotted Mr. Le Pen in the hope of keeping him from splitting the “conservative” vote.
It was finally Socialist mayors who made up the difference for Mr. Le Pen’s 500, mouthing high sentiments about the need for democratic recognition of all points of view, but in fact delighted to help field a candidate who would draw votes from Mr. Chirac and improve the chances of the Socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin. The fact that no fewer than 16 candidates managed to get their 500 endorsements — including assorted Trotskyites and a hunters’ and fishers’ party — shows how steeply the political deck is stacked against Mr. Le Pen.
According to the French presidential system, if no candidate wins a majority in the first round, the two who did best face each other in a runoff two weeks later. Virtually everyone except Mr. Le Pen himself expected the two winners to be Mr. Chirac and Mr. Jospin. The Gaullist president and Socialist Prime Minister were both colorless men with virtually identical platforms, but represented the two traditional centers of political gravity.
The Thunderclap
| Candidate | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Chirac | 19.65% |
| Le Pen | 17.06% |
| Jospin | 16.05% |
In the field of 16 candidates, however, the three Trotskyite candidates, together with the Communist and the Green, took nearly 20 percent of the vote, virtually all of which would have gone to the Socialist Jospin in a head-to-head left/right race of only two candidates. This vote-splitting on the left pushed Mr. Le Pen past Mr. Jospin, with the following results:
The other 13 candidates trailed in far behind, all with single-digit showings. If the 2.37 percent of the vote that went to Mr. Mégret were added to the Le Pen total, the National Front vote would have come within a fraction of a percent of edging out even Mr. Chirac. It was the first time since 1969 that no candidate from the left had survived into the second round.
In fact, it was not so surprising a result. There was a very high abstention rate of 28.4 percent in the first round, with many voters bored at the prospect of the Chirac/Jospin contest the polls predicted. Mr. Le Pen himself did not win that many more votes than the 15.2 percent he had won in the first round of the previous presidential election, and his supporters are committed people who vote even when others stay home.
As much as it was a victory for the National Front, the vote was even more a slap in the face of the French ruling class. There were more non-voters than ever before — six percent more than in the previous worst case in 1995 — and also more spoiled ballots (2.4 percent). Mr. Chirac got fewer votes than any sitting president in the history of the Fifth Republic, and for a sitting Prime Minister not even to make the second round was so deep a humiliation that Mr. Jospin promptly announced his retirement from politics. The high vote totals for nationalist candidates and for the hard left also demonstrated the disgust the French feel for their rulers. Even the Communists, who have been a considerable force in French politics since the party’s founding in 1920, were flattened by the steam-roller of protest against politics as usual. Their candidate, Robert Hue, got a miserable 3.41 percent of the vote.
Mr. Le Pen was the top vote-getter in 35 Departments (out of 100) and in nine Regions (out of 22). His strength was greatest in those parts of the country with the highest concentrations of immigrants, and he came in first in such cities as Marseille, Perpignan, and Avignon. Much to the chagrin of the Socialists, he was the favorite of the working class and the unemployed, and he also polled well with mid-level managers.
Mr. Le Pen appealed to many voters because he was the only candidate to speak bluntly about the issue that most troubles the French: crime. Hard as it may be for Americans to believe, Paris now has a higher crime rate than New York City. There are Arab housing projects so tough and dangerous the police never go near them. Burning cars in the street has become something of a national sport. Virtually every square inch of wall in Paris outside the tourist areas is covered with le tagging, the spray-paint graffiti that used to make New York so ugly. No fewer than 58 percent of voters said crime was their biggest worry, and this was followed by 39 percent who said unemployment was their biggest concern.
Mr. Le Pen blamed both problems on immigrants, many of whom work for sub-standard wages and many of whom commit crimes. Ever since Sept. 11, and the realization that Muslims intent on murder had been living freely in Europe, a sense of siege has settled upon the French. The Socialists, for whom it was considered “racist” even to talk about crime, left the issue almost entirely to Mr. Le Pen and Mr. Chirac.
The National Front also got support from an unlikely quarter: Jews. Mr. Le Pen has been regularly regarded as an anti-Semite (see next article), but he was the only candidate to speak out vigorously against the Muslim immigration that is fueling increasing violence against Jews. At 600,000 the French Jewish community is the largest in Europe, and its leaders are unanimous in the view that the current rash of beatings and synagogue bombings is the work of Muslims protesting Israeli action in the West Bank, not an upsurge of French anti-Semitism. Many French Jews have finally begun to understand that five million Muslims are a much greater threat than the National Front’s alleged anti-Semitism.
Jo Goldenberg, one of the pillars of the Jewish establishment and whose family owns the best-known Jewish restaurant in Paris, Chez Goldenberg, publicly announced he had voted for Mr. Le Pen in the first round. Many Jews criticized him for this, but Jews generally played a muted role in the chorus of anti-Le Pen screeching that met the results of the April 21 vote.
And the screeching was deafening. On the very evening the first-round results were announced, lefty mobs took to the streets to shout their dismay. In Paris alone 10,000 people filled the Place de la Bastille, waving signs that said “I’m ashamed to be French,” and chanting slogans like “First, second, third generation — we’re all immigrants.” In various cities around the country police had to use tear gas to break up anti-Le Pen mobs.
The great irony was that the anti-Le Pen forces were united in calling the National Front’s success a “threat to democracy” — and were united in their desire to crush the “fascists” by any means. Some of the least lunatic lefties were even a little uneasy about this, with Socialist leaders urging their people not to demonstrate, for fear that thuggishness would play into the hands of the nationalists.
Needless to say, the National Front has never shown the slightest hint of an anti-democratic impulse. It has never called for violence or dictatorship, and its elected officials have always left office when they lost an election. It is pure nonsense to call Mr. Le Pen a threat to democracy.
Immediately Trotskyites, Greens, Communists — everyone but Bruno Mégret, who promptly urged his followers to support Mr. Le Pen in the second round — joined forces against the National Front. The contemptible Jacques Chirac accepted the endorsement of Communists and Trotskyites even as he warned against the “anti-democratic” dangers of the front. “The values of the republic” are “at risk,” he warned voters; “France needs you and I need you.” Communists were apparently going to help Mr. Chirac defend “the values of the republic” against the fearsome Mr. Le Pen.
Just a few days after the first round, when the nationalist leader rose to speak about the Middle East in the European Parliament where he still holds a seat, dozens of parliamentarians — faithful servants of democracy, no doubt — waved signs saying “Non,” and tried to shout him down. He had planned a press conference that day but decided against it, since so many potentially unruly protesters had mingled with journalists. Dozens of protesters had already gathered around the room, many wearing yellow stickers that said “Stop the Nazis.”
Although it is a tradition that the two candidates in the second round meet for a series of public debates, Mr. Chirac did his democratic duty by refusing to face Mr. Le Pen. “Faced with intolerance and hatred,” he explained primly, “no debate is possible.” Of course, it was Mr. Chirac who was hateful and intolerant in his treatment of Mr. Le Pen. Finance minister Laurent Fabius denounced Le Pen’s victory as “a cataclysm of terrifying proportions,” and every major newspaper beat its breast over the horror of the Le Pen campaign.
Foreigners also poured contempt on the freely-expressed choices of the French people. Neil Kinnock, former Labour Party Leader and now European Union Commissioner pronounced himself “astounded and horrified,” and said the vote “throws a great dirty rock into the European political pool.” The chairman of the British Labour Party, Charles Clarke, grieved over the “tragic situation for France.” Iain Duncan Smith, leader of the supposedly conservative Tory party, said “I consider this to be a very worrying development . . . This rise of extremism must be taken head on.” The Church of England bishops of the West Midlands denounced the National Front, saying it was misusing Christianity in its campaign. The Economist, which is perhaps the most influential British magazine, wrote of “the odious Jean-Marie Le Pen.”
Spain’s interior minister, Mariano Rajoy said the vote was “not good news for the stability of democratic systems.” A Greek government spokesman said Le Pen was dangerous for Europe’s future. Pat Cox, president of the European Parliament, called his success “a wake-up call to the French democratic process, for all those who believe in the fight against racism and xenophobia.” The Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet called the election “an insult to democracy.”
In Brussels, officials of the European Union were studiously silent, afraid to repeat their disastrous mistake of having sanctioned Austria for the success of Jörg Haider’s freedom party, only to back down in humiliation. George W. Bush was a rare voice of sanity when he observed, through spokesman Ari Fleischer, that French elections were a matter for the French, and that he had no comment.
Only fellow nationalists congratulated Mr. Le Pen. Filip Dewinter, leader of the Vlaams Blok in Belgium, hailed the French vote as part of a Europe-wide trend, saying, “We are brothers in arms.”
As expected, the opposition to Mr. Le Pen used every means at its disposal, no matter how crude. Just a few days before the first round, a movie called Ferocious was released to French cinemas. It stars veteran star Jean-Marc Thibaut (brother-in-law to Lionel Jospin) as a far-right party boss whom trailers describe as “a total swine, an ogre, the pure incarnation of evil.” The hero of the movie is a French Algerian whose sister is kidnapped by “fascists” and who wreaks vengeance upon the “total swine.” The press release for the film makes no secret of its political purpose: “Since [the split of] 1998, some have said that Le Pen and Mégret were finished . . . The coming elections could give them an opportunity to take center stage again . . . 2002 could be the year of their resurrection.”
The movie posters, which show a back view of an imposing man who looks like Mr. Le Pen, are just as straightforward. “The film you must see before you vote,” they shout. The movie had been completed for some time and was held in reserve specifically for the elections.
Likewise, the television station Canal + reached far back into its archives and reran an interview given by Mr. Le Pen’s former wife Peirrette at about the time of their divorce. In it, she says many uncomplimentary things about Mr. Le Pen that she now wishes she hadn’t said. Writing in the newspaper Rivarol, she explained, “I gave this interview at a particular time in my life, and I am scandalized that it has been rebroadcast now without my permission . . . Jean-Marie Le Pen has all the qualities of a future president of the republic.”
During the two weeks between the first and second rounds, Mr. Le Pen relished the opportunity to pitch his message harder than ever. He said he would round up illegal immigrants and hold them in “relatively comfortable transit camps” before expelling them. Former education minister Claude Allegre said this plan “is not yet Nazi, but pre-Nazi.”
When British prime minister Tony Blair called him a “racist,” Mr. Le Pen pointed out that the French have had to build a detention camp at Sangatte, near the entrance to the channel tunnel, to hold people who are trying to sneak through the tunnel to Britain but are refused entry. If the British are so “anti-racist,” said Mr. Le Pen, “I think we could make a special train to send them [the detainees] to Mr. Blair.”
Mr. Le Pen also hit hard at Mr. Chirac, whom he repeatedly referred to as “super-liar” after a satirical anti-Chirac television program of the same name. The Gaullist leader has an unshakable reputation for crookedness because of allegations that he used the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars in public money to pay for vacations for his family and friends while he was mayor of Paris. He now says he was entitled to use the money, which came from a special fund. No one believes this, and government investigators have looked into other allegations that he took millions in kickbacks that he funneled into his political party, the Rally for the Republic.
Eric Halphen is an investigating magistrate who spent the past seven years tracking down evidence of the president’s corruption, but has been stymied by France’s highest judicial body, the Constitutional Court, which recently ruled that a sitting president is immune from prosecution or subpoena. Mr. Halphen said he is convinced Mr. Chirac is a crook but that he would reluctantly vote for him in the second round, explaining that “when one candidate is not an advocate of democracy . . . it’s necessary to vote for the one who is a democrat.”
Mr. Jospin had a better reputation than Mr. Chirac, but last year he, too, was exposed as a liar. For years he denied he was an admirer of Leon Trotsky, but evidence finally surfaced that he could not argue away. Even the French, who are broadly tolerant of dishonest politicians, have been disgusted by their current rulers.
The Backlash
In the end, though, the demonization of Mr. Le Pen was a success. Scores of French sports figures, movie stars, church authorities, and intellectuals joined in denouncing the front. “Vote for the crook, not the fascist,” became a popular slogan, as many left-leaning citizens who are usually apathetic suddenly woke up to a desire to do as they were told. In a two-day period between the voting rounds, the Socialist Party received more applications for membership than it had in the whole of 2001. The Greens, who had been in Mr. Jospin’s coalition government, said they had had 500 new members in four days compared to 60 in a normal week. There was an unprecedented rush for voter registration and applications for absentee ballots. Hundreds of high school and university teachers cancelled classes so students could demonstrate against the fascist menace.
“I’ve become a factor of national unity,” Mr. Le Pen joked, noting the monolithic consensus of opinion against him. “I have for myself only one ally” he added, “but it is a very substantial one: The French people.” As columnist Samuel Francis has pointed out, the ferocious opposition Mr. Le Pen aroused makes it clear that in the West today, there are only two kinds of politicians: those who defend race, nation, and civilization, and those who attack anyone who does.
May 1, which fell just four days before the final round of voting, is a traditional day of celebration for the National Front, and Mr. Le Pen gives an outdoor speech by the statue of Joan of Arc in Paris. This year, there were so many lefty counter-demonstrations planned that the party seriously considered canceling its own rally for fear of violence. Paris authorities mobilized no fewer than 3,500 extra police and put the fire department on high alert, and the five demonstrations and counter-demonstrations went off without major incident. The “Le Pen-is-a-Nazi” crowds were far larger, however, with an estimated one million tramping the streets of various French towns, claiming they were marching for democracy.
Even with their man in the second round, many Le Pen supporters still felt they had to stay in the closet. “If you admit you’re a Le Pen supporter, you’re automatically marginalized in society,” said a Paris schoolteacher at the May 1 rally who would gave her name only as Catherine M. “I don’t tell my friends or colleagues. I even hide it from my children.”
Mr. Le Pen hoped that some of the people who had voted for hard-left candidates in the first-round would continue their protest politics in the second round and vote for him, but very few did. Voter turnout was nearly ten percent higher than in the first round, and a huge part of the electorate made it clear it was not voting for Mr. Chirac but against Mr. Le Pen. Many voters wanted to go to the booths wearing rubber gloves or with clothes pins on their noses, but French election laws would not permit this. Mr. Le Pen proclaimed that anything short of 30 percent of the vote in the second round would be a personal failure, and by that standard he failed, winning only 18.04 percent against Mr. Chirac’s 81.96 percent. Still, to have won six million votes against a tidal wave of denunciation — the best figure ever for the National Front — was a great achievement, and demonstrated that with the Socialists torn to pieces by the hard left, the front is the second-largest party in France.
After the results were in, there was self-congratulatory foolishness all across Europe about democracy having been saved. French Arabs joined in the crowing. “We’re happy for democracy,” said 62-year-old Moussa Brahim. “For Algerians in France it’s a victory,” said Fatima Helal at the Place de la République who was waving, of course, an Algerian flag.
The key question now is whether Mr. Le Pen’s showing in the presidential race will translate into gains for the National Front in the legislative elections to be held on June 9. If the vote goes well, the front could hold the balance of power in as many as 150 of France’s 577 legislative districts. Mr. Le Pen said he looked forward with confidence to the coming contest, and predicted that the anti-front unity would be short-lived. “I won’t have to wait long to see the allies of this morbid coalition tear themselves apart,” he said. He was right. As soon as the Chirac victory was announced, lefties who had voted for him poured back into the streets to denounce him.
If Jacques Chirac’s Gaullists would abandon their insane policy of battling the front to the death in the second round, thereby splitting the conservative vote to the advantage of the left, Mr. Chirac would have a solid, supportive majority in the National Assembly with which to roll back the Socialist gains of the past five years. This is not likely, given the bloody-mindedness of a president who accepts the help of Trotskyites in the fight to save democracy from Mr. Le Pen. Still, the June 9 vote will be another fascinating indication of the racial and national health of the French in the face of unrelenting hysteria.
| ARTICLE |
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Le Pen in His Own Words
Jean-Marie Le Pen has been a fighter all his life. He fought for his country in Indochina and in Algeria, and has been fighting for it politically since he founded the National Front in 1972. His hero is also a fighter — Joan of Arc — and his house is filled with statues of the Maid of Orleans.
Like anyone who talks sense about race or immigration, Mr. Le Pen must contend daily with mind-readers who claim to know what he thinks better than he does himself. During the latest campaign, practically every article about him that appeared in the American press reminded readers he was a notorious anti-Semite who had unmasked himself by calling the Holocaust a “minor point” or “footnote” of history. It is fascinating that one phrase spoken 15 years ago can follow a man around like a ghost, but let us see exactly what he said.
First, Mr. Le Pen was talking about gas chambers specifically, not the Holocaust. The California-based Holocaust revisionist organization, the Institute for Historical Review, has provided a translation of his remarks made during a television interview in September, 1987, in which he was asked about the controversy over Professor Robert Faurisson’s assertion that the Germans had not used gas chambers to kill Jews:
“Do you want me to say it is a revealed truth that everyone has to believe? That it’s a moral obligation? I say there are historians who are debating these questions. I am not saying that the gas chambers did not exist. I couldn’t see them myself. I haven’t studied the questions specially. But I believe that it is a minor point [point de détail] in the history of the Second World War.”
Far more astonishing and significant than this remark is that Mr. Le Pen was convicted under a law that forbids the French to “contest” “crimes against humanity” as defined by the Nuremberg Tribunal that tried Nazi war criminals after the war. After a long court battle, a judge fined Mr. Le Pen the equivalent of $200,000 for failing to give the gas chambers the importance French law requires.
Ten years later on a trip to Germany, he was asked what he had meant by his earlier remark. He replied: “There is nothing belittling or scornful about such a statement . . . If you take a book of a thousand pages on the Second World War, in which 50 million people died, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or 15 lines, and that’s what’s called a detail.”
Amazingly, in Dec., 1997, a Paris court again found him guilty, fining him and ordering him to pay to have the court’s decision printed in a dozen French newspapers. At that time, he vowed never again to talk about gas chambers, noting that it is now a legally taboo subject, on which certain opinions are now required by law.
Although Le Pen’s comments may sound insensitive, as Professor Faurisson himself has noted, his views are no different from those of several distinguished authorities. There is no mention of gas chambers at all in Dwight Eisenhower’s 559-page war memoir, Crusade in Europe, nor in Winston Churchill’s six-volume The Second World War, nor in Charles de Gaulle’s 2,054-page Mémoires de Guerre. The British tank warfare specialist and historian Sir Basil Liddell-Hart never mentioned Jews in his final book, The Second World War, much less the gas chambers.
Mr. Le Pen speaks in vigorous phrases that lend themselves to quotation, both by friends and enemies. During the campaign, he summarized his positions this way: “Socially I am to the left. Economically I am to the right. Nationally, more than ever, I am for France.”
Here is a selection of some of his other observations:
Look at California. The Americans conquered it from Mexico. Now Mexico is getting it back through immigration.
Our system of social support encourages the lowest elements of society to breed like rabbits — why should we spend our tax money to pay for unwed black mothers to produce more babies who will grow up into illiterates?
I call the Euro ‘the currency of occupation;’ it’s the currency of the European Bank, of Frankfurt [seat of the European Bank]. It doesn’t express anything for me. The Franc, on the other hand, is bound to our national and historic identity. The loss of our monetary independence will lead to the loss of our budgetary independence, and then to our political independence as well.
There is an Islamic population in France, most of which comes from the North African countries. Though some may have French citizenship, they don’t have the French cultural background or sociological structure. They operate according to a different logic than most of the population here. Their values are different from those of the Judeo-Christian world. Not long ago, they spat at the president of the republic. They booed when the national anthem was played at a soccer game [in Paris, between the national teams of France and Algeria]. These elements have a negative effect on all of public security. They are strengthened demographically both by natural reproduction and by immigration, which reinforces their stubborn ethnic segregation, their domineering nature. This is the world of Islam in all its aberrations.
The identity of France “is indissolubly linked to blood, soil and memory . . . It is composed of a homogenous people living on a territory inherited from its forefathers according to tradition.”
In the Olympic Games there is an obvious inequality between the black and white races in sport, running in particular. This is a fact . . . I observe that the races are unequal.
We are supposed to be electing a president of the republic but the republic no longer exists. France does not even have the powers of an American state like Florida or California because it cannot even reestablish the death penalty [which is forbidden by the European Union].
| ARTICLE |
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Europe on the March
There is an encouraging renaissance of nationalism all across Europe. The movement is still fragile in most countries and no nationalist party has yet taken power, but the trends are unmistakable. Before long, if the European Union continues to sanction countries that include nationalists in coalition governments — as it did Austria — it will have no one left to sanction. The next great breakthrough to hope for is a nationalist president or prime minister, which would probably lead to similar successes in other countries. For now, the situation is as follows:
Austria
The nationalist right is represented by Jörg Haider’s Austrian Freedom Party (FPO). In the October 1999, legislative elections, it surprised the world by winning 27 percent of the vote and coming in second. Since February 2000, it has shared power with the conservatives, in a coalition government in which the FPO holds five cabinet posts as well as the vice chancellorship. For seven months, the European Union imposed sanctions on Austria because of the FPO’s participation in government, but backed down as the absurdity of punishing a country for its electoral choices became increasingly clear. Recently, the FPO’s popularity may have begun to decline. Its support dropped from 27.9 percent to 20.25 percent in the municipal elections in Vienna in March 2001.
Holland
Politics in Holland were thrown into turmoil by the assassination on May 6 of Pim Fortuyn (pronounced fore-TOWN), an openly promiscuous homosexual and former Marxist who had burst into prominence as leader of a party that wants no more immigration. A white, animal rights fanatic named Volkert van der Graaf shot him five or six times as he was leaving a radio studio after an interview. The killing, the first political assassination in Holland since 1672, deeply shocked the nation, in which politicians rarely have body — guards and often take public transportation. Every political leader, even those bitterly opposed to Mr. Fortuyn’s views, strongly condemned the killing, and supporters mourned en masse in large demonstrations.
Mr. Fortuyn’s assassination comes at an awkward time. After having emerged from obscurity to win control of the city government of Rotterdam, Mr. Fortuyn’s party was likely to take a fifth of the vote in the May 15 general elections, and enter a coalition government. The political establishment, shocked by the killing, considered canceling the elections entirely, but decided to hold them as planned and refrain from campaigning out of respect for Mr. Fortuyn. Opinions are divided as to whether his party, the Pim Fortuyn List, will get a large sympathy vote or will wither away without his magnetic leadership.
Immediately after the news of the killing, Mr. Fortuyn’s supporters gathered at his office near the national legislature, blaming the government for creating an atmosphere of hostility that contributed to the murder. Mr. Fortuyn had recently received death threats and had even hired bodyguards. Earlier this year, someone threw a mixture of feces and vomit in his face. Not long before he was killed Mr. Fortuyn blamed the authorities for “demonizing” him and added, “If something happens to me, the government is co-responsible. They created this climate.”
Mr. Fortuyn was an anomaly in the nationalist movement, which has generally been led by conservatives. He favored the legal drugs and free sex that characterize Dutch society, and held himself aloof from leaders like Mr. Le Pen and Mr. Haider. The shaven-headed 54-year-old ex-hippie seems simply to have realized that two million foreigners in a nation of 16 million are too many, especially when 800,000 are Muslims. Non-whites are concentrated in Dutch cities, where their criminality and unwillingness to assimilate are particularly obtrusive.
Mr. Fortuyn’s success was clearly due in part to his glib, non-threatening personality, but he has tapped a deep resentment among the Dutch who, until now, have been afraid to speak out against the invasion of their country. The nationalist movement has suffered a setback, but the other parties are already starting to steal its clothes. It will not now disappear.
Germany
The nationalist right tends to be divided and weak, and does not have a single elected legislator at either the federal or regional level. There are three main parties, the German People’s Union (15,000 members), the Republican Party (11,500 members), and the German National Party (6,500 members). At one time, the People’s Union had 16 elected members of the regional legislature in Saxe-Anhalt, but it will not be fielding candidates in the next elections in September. The Republicans have gone from defeat to defeat, and the German National Party — often criticized as neo-Nazi — is under investigation by the Constitutional Court, and may be banned.
Denmark
Last November, the Danish Peoples Party leapt to third place in the country, wining 12 percent of the vote in legislative elections. Its success helped topple the leftists who had governed Denmark for the previous 72 yeas. Led by a woman, Pia Kjaersgaard, the party has made opposition to immigration the central plank of its platform. Although the party supports the ruling conservatives, it does not hold any cabinet positions.
Britain
The British National Party (BNP) is the best known of several small nationalist parties. Until May of this year, it had won only one local council seat in its 20 years of existence. In the latest elections for 6,000 positions on town councils, it fielded 68 candidates and won three seats in the industrial city of Burnley, which was the scene of race riots last June. The Burnley council has 45 members and remains under Labour control. The BNP had five candidates in Oldham, which also had race riots, and though none won seats, four took second place in their races. The BNP has been demonized as vigorously as any European nationalist party, and considers this recent success the first step in returning the country to its white majority.
Belgium
In the general election of June, 1999, the Vlaams Blok became the fifth largest party in the country, winning 10 percent of the vote. Since then, it has made considerable progress in municipal elections in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking area to the north of the country. Most notably, it won 33 percent of the vote in Anvers, the second-largest city in Belgium, where it was supported by a good cross section of the electorate, including workers, managers, and the rich. It has very smooth, articulate spokesmen, an active youth movement, and a broadly popular appeal that is not likely to be shaken any time soon.
Italy
Umberto Bossi’s anti-immigration League of the North holds three ministries in the conservative government headed by Silvio Berlusconi. Since May, 2001, 30 league members sit in the lower house and 17 in the Senate. Mr. Bossi recently outraged Eurocrats by describing the European Union as a “relic of Stalinism.” Mr. Berlusconi’s coalition includes the “post fascist” National Alliance, whose most famous member is Allesandra Mussolini, il duce’s granddaughter. Mr. Berlusconi recently appointed National Alliance leader Gianfranco Fini to the European Union’s Convention on the Future of Europe.
Elsewhere on the continent, in Portugal, the Popular Party of Paulo Portas seems to veer between tough conservatism and libertarianism. It won 8.8 percent in the latest elections and supports a centrist government. In Switzerland, Christoph Blocher’s Swiss People’s Party won 23 per cent of the vote by demanding that Switzerland remain Swiss. In Norway the anti-immigrant Progress Party is propping up the new centrist government in Oslo.
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The Anatomy of Ethnic Conflict
Finally, a scientific look at “diversity.”
Tatu Vanhanen, Ethnic Conflicts Explained by Ethnic Nepotism, JAI Press, 1999, $82.50, 370 pp.
Today, most of what passes for social science does not just ignore biology; it deliberately contradicts it. Among sociologists, it is virtually obligatory to assume that different outcomes for races, sexes, and even individuals have nothing to do with genetics but are caused by “oppression” or “injustice.” Likewise, ever since the end of the Second World War, the study of group conflict has ignored one of the most obvious and fundamental facts of human nature: tribalism. It has been the fashion to argue that groups compete along economic class lines and that money in one form or another is at the heart of every conflict.
Tatu Vanhanen of the University of Helsinki is a refreshing exception. In this very important — but largely ignored — study of group conflict, he outlines a biologically-based view of human nature. He writes that it is natural to our species to favor our relatives over people who are unrelated to us. Almost all people care more about immediate family members than anyone else. They also care more about people who are not immediate family members but who are genetically close to them.
As Prof. Vanhanen explains, from an evolutionary point of view, the theory of “inclusive fitness” explains why individuals are likely to sacrifice themselves for others who share large numbers of their own genes. From an evolutionary point of view, it makes just as much sense to ensure the survival of a large number of nephews and nieces as it does to ensure the survival of one’s own children. A sense of biological connectedness finds its ultimate expression in the willingness of men to die for their people in time of war. Prof. Vanhanen calls this commitment to one’s own kind “ethnic nepotism.” It is an extension to one’s larger biological family of the nepotistic preferences people show to close family members.
Prof. Vanhanen is brave enough to point out that the most obvious sign of genetic similarity is physical similarity; people who look like us are likely to be closely related to us. Racial characteristics are obvious indicators of genetic closeness, and one’s race is one’s largest extended family.
The presence of different races in the same territory is always a problem. As Prof. Vanhanen puts it: “I assume that the divisions based on race or color are the genetically deepest ones because they are tens of thousands of years old . . . [I]t is justified to assume that ethnic nepotism leads more certainly to interest conflicts between racial groups than between other types of ethnic groups . . .
I assume that racial differences represent the most important dimension of ethnic cleavages.”
Race is the most difficult cleavage because people of different races do not feel kin to each other. Prof. Vanhanen argues that even many religious conflicts are between groups that have not interbred for hundreds or even thousands of years, and are therefore genetically separate. Religion, culture, and language can be sources of conflict even if they do not reflect biological differences because, as Prof. Vanhanen explains, the family/non-family distinction has spread to many different kinds of groupings: “Our tendency to favor kin over non-kin has extended to include large linguistic, national, racial, religious, and other ethnic groups.”
Occasionally there is conflict between groups that are genetically indistinguishable from each other. Examples would be purely economic unrest or insurrections to overthrow native but oppressive regimes. In previous decades when Marxism was in favor, scholars went to absurd lengths to argue that all group conflicts were class warfare. When this became obviously absurd, sociologists came up with the theory that ethnic conflict is a primitive vestige that disappears with modernization. As Prof. Vanhanen points out, history has proven them wrong: “[E]thnic interest conflicts have emerged within all cultural regions and at all levels of socioeconomic development. It would be difficult to imagine any cultural explanation of ethnic conflicts that could explain the appearance of these conflicts across all cultural boundaries.”
Ethnic Heterogeneity
Ethnic Conflicts Explained by Ethnic Nepotism is not just a theoretical treatise. It is an ambitious research project designed to test the theory that “the more a population is ethnically divided and the more ethnic groups differ from each other genetically, the higher the probability and intensity of conflicts between ethnic groups.” Prof. Vanhanen also set out to see what else affects levels of ethnic conflict. He wanted to know, for example, whether different forms of government raise or lower tensions, and if there are certain patterns of social organization that defuse group conflict.
To this end, Prof. Vanhanen first constructed what he calls an Index of Ethnic Heterogeneity (EH), which is a number on a scale of 0 to 200, indicating how much ethnic, tribal, racial, and linguistic diversity is to be found in a country. He also took religious differences into account when the religions were very old, and their adherents had tended not to interbreed. He calculated EH scores for every country in the world that has a population of more than one million. This is clearly an inexact process, since it is difficult to make precise international comparisons, but Prof. Vanhanen explains his methodology clearly, and seems to have made as fair an attempt as possible to rank nations according to diversity. The lowest scores are 0 for North and South Korea, 1 for Lesotho (a tiny African country established as a homeland for a particular tribe), and 2 for Japan and Portugal. The highest scores are Chad (144), Sudan (124), and Bosnia-Herzegovina (112). The United States has an EH score of 35, which puts it in line with such countries as Cuba, New Zealand, Russia, and Uzbekistan.
Prof. Vanhanen than constructed an Index of Ethnic Conflict (EC), likewise running from 0 to 200. He notes conflict is even harder to quantify than ethnic diversity, but he included such things as the existence of ethnically-based political parties, the degree to which national politics is an ethnic struggle, and the type and level of communal violence. Prof. Vanhanen limited his analysis to the period 1990 to 1996, and not surprisingly finds that Bosnia-Herzegovina gets a perfect score of 200 — that is to say, it was in a state of full-scale ethnic war. Other very high scores were for Sudan (180), Rwanda, Burundi, and Somalia (160), Croatia and Afghanistan (140). Low scorers are North and South Korea, Mongolia, Lesotho, and Tunisia, all of which got scores of 0. The United States was at 40, pretty much in line with its EH index, and gives it about the same level of ethnic conflict as such places as Nepal, United Arab Emirates, Spain, Laos, and Uzbekistan.
Not surprisingly, Prof. Vanhanen finds a very strong correlation of .726 between EH and EC scores. There is a very clear trend: The more diversity, the more conflict. After establishing this point, Prof. Vanhanen looks into the countries that deviate the most from the trend line. Some countries have much more conflict than would be expected from their levels of diversity and others have less; Prof. Vanhanen wants to know why.
At the beginning of his research, Prof. Vanhanen theorized that democratic countries were more likely than authoritarian ones to be able to contain ethnic discord, because people could express nepotism thorough politics rather than through violence. In order to test this theory he calculated something called the Index of Democracy for each country, and plotted it against levels of group conflict. He found that as a general rule, the presence or lack of democratic government seems to account for only about 10 percent of the level of conflict, leading him to conclude that “the level of ethnic conflicts seems to be nearly independent from the degree of democratization.” Part of the problem is that democracy is usually found in countries that are ethnically homogeneous, where there is probably not much conflict anyway. When the EH index is held constant, differences in the degree of democracy do not seem to have much effect on the level of conflict.
This still leaves the question of which countries have either more or less group conflict than would be expected from their levels of diversity. The graph above is a scatter plot with each point indicating a nation’s scores for both diversity and conflict. Only the most strongly deviating countries (in both directions) are named, and it is interesting to note that the most extreme deviations are in the direction of unexpectedly intense ethnic conflict. In other words, it is more likely that countries with moderate ethnic diversity will have very intense conflict than it is that countries with great diversity will have ethnic peace. The most extreme cases are in the direction of more conflict rather than less.
The two countries most distant from the trend line are Rwanda and Burundi. Both have relatively small tribal minorities, and EH scores of only around 20. However, during the period Prof. Vanhanen investigated, both had gone through savage rampages of tribal violence that gave them very high scores for conflict. Prof. Vanhanen notes that Tutsis and Hutus differ physically from each other considerably more than is usual for neighboring tribes in Africa, and suggests this contributed to the savagery of the violence.
As a general rule, Prof. Vanhanen finds that former Communists countries and former parts of the Soviet Union have higher levels of conflict than their levels of diversity would suggest. This is probably because Communist regimes kept ethnic struggles bottled up, and they are only now reappearing. Prof. Vanhanen predicts that although Cuba has followed the Communist practice of suppressing racial strife; as soon as Cubans are free to express themselves, conflict is likely to break into the open.
What about the countries on the chart that have unexpectedly low levels of group conflict? Mauritius is a small Indian Ocean island nation that has a population very differentiated along racial, ethnic, and religious lines, but does not have much ethnic conflict. Prof. Vanhanen writes: “Mauritius provides an excellent and rare example of a country where ethnic conflicts have been mitigated by adapting institutions to the requirements of ethnic nepotism.” By this he means that the unicameral parliament is deliberately set up to balance the representation of different ethnic groups. It is worth pointing out, however, that Mauritius has an EC score of 60, 20 higher than the United States, and its score is low only in comparison to its EH index of 110.
Brunei, the other extreme case, is an oil-rich sultanate carved out of a tiny corner of the island of Borneo. It is a good example of why democracy is not always the best way to control ethnic conflict. Brunei, like the oil-rich Arab countries, is not a democracy at all. It has a very small number of native citizens and many immigrants who have no political rights. It expels trouble-makers.
Prof. Vanhanen points out that Arab oil exporters do the same. In Saudi Arabia about 40 percent of the population are non-citizens. They are economically useful — indeed, native Saudis are so accustomed to well-paid government and other make-work jobs that foreigners account for no less than 93 percent of the private-sector workforce! When it has suited them, Saudis have expelled hundreds of thousands of foreigners, so immigrants know not to make trouble.
After the 1991 Gulf War, Kuwait decided it was dangerous to have a large population of foreigners, and expelled hundreds of thousands in an attempt to establish a Kuwaiti majority of at least 60 percent. However, there are so many jobs rich Arabs will not do that and in a just a few years, the foreign population grew back to pre-war levels.
The United Arab Emirates is the most extreme case of all; only 19 percent of the population are indigenous Arabs and therefore citizens. As Prof. Vanhanen notes, it is understandable that the UAE should have an authoritarian system: “It is abnormal that non-citizens comprise 80 percent of the population. Democratization would endanger the hegemony of the native Arab population.” Singapore is another country that has kept potential trouble down through firm rule.
Prof. Vanhanen finds that the data support a number of generalizations about what raises or lowers the level of conflict, and his findings are summarized in the very interesting table on this page. The upper portion lists countries where there is more conflict than would be predicted by the level of diversity (countries with what Prof. Vanhanen calls “large positive residuals”). Asterisks indicate the presence of exacerbating factors like External Intervention or Territorial Conflict.
| Country | Externalinterventions | Territorialconflicts | Institutionalinequalities | Strongauthoritarian
rule |
Large non-citizen
population |
Populationisolated from
politics |
| 1. Countries with large positive residuals (higher that 28.9) | ||||||
| Europe | ||||||
| Azerbajian | * | * | ||||
| Bosnia-Herzegovina | * | * | ||||
| Crotia | * | * | * | |||
| Georgia | * | * | * | |||
| Moldova | * | * | ||||
| Yugoslavia | * | * | * | |||
| Asia and Oceania | ||||||
| Afghanistan | * | |||||
| Burma | * | * | * | |||
| Iraq | * | * | * | * | ||
| Israel | * | * | * | |||
| Lebanon | * | * | ||||
| Sri Lanka | * | * | * | |||
| Tajikstan | * | * | ||||
| Africa | ||||||
| Angola | * | |||||
| Burundi | * | * | * | |||
| Mauritania | * | * | * | |||
| Rwanda | * | * | * | |||
| Somalia | * | * | * | |||
| Sudan | * | * | * | |||
| Total (N=19) | 13 | 16 | 13 | 6 | 0 | 0 |
| % | 68.4 | 84.2 | 68.4 | 31.6 | 0 | 0 |
| 2. Countries with large negative residuals (higher than -28.9) | ||||||
| Western Hemisphere | ||||||
| Trinidad & Tobago | ||||||
| Asia and Oceania | ||||||
| Oman | * | * | * | * | ||
| Singapore | * | |||||
| Turkmenistan | * | |||||
| United Arab Emirates | * | * | * | * | ||
| Africa | ||||||
| Central African Rep. | * | |||||
| Cote d’Ivoire | * | * | ||||
| Madagascar | ||||||
| Mauritius | ||||||
| Sierra Leone | * | |||||
| Zambia | * | |||||
| Total (N=11) | 0 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 6 |
| % | 0 | 0 | 18.2 | 45.5 | 18.2 | 54.5 |
Prof. Vanhanen points out that when outside forces join in, ethnic conflict often gets much worse. He also notes that battles over land are extremely bitter, and countries may be inviting conflict if they have formal institutions that maintain ethnic inequality. Strong authoritarian rule can make conflicts worse — if a ruler encourages persecution — or relieve it if government suppresses tensions the way the Communists did. And as the countries with less-than-expected conflict show, disfranchised foreigners or a primitive population unaware of what goes on outside the villages are advantages in keeping ethnic peace.
Prof. Vanhanen includes in his book a page or so on every country in the world, describing the major population groups and conflicts. This is a very handy reference, and perhaps the only one of its kind. In it we find many interesting facts, from which a few generalizations emerge.
Many Latin American countries, for example, show lower levels of group conflict than one would expect, given their large Indian populations. This is because whites and mestizos exclude Indians completely from politics, and keep them on the margins of society. In Bolivia, for example, 60 percent of the population are Indians, but have no power. Prof. Vanhanen thinks it inevitable that there will be a political awakening of Indians, and sees the 1994 Chiapas rebellion in Mexico as a sign of things to come. Some Latin American countries will not have to face this problem. Costa Rica and Uruguay, for example, solved their Indian problems rather brutally many years ago. The Uruguayans deliberately exterminated the natives in the 19th century, and the Indians in Costa Rica were so warlike they would not live peaceably with Europeans and had to be eliminated.
Prof. Vanhanen finds that miscegenation can take the edge off ethnic conflict. He offers Brazil as an example of extensive interbreeding that dilutes racial boundaries that would otherwise be much sharper.
Like Latin America, Africa often has lower levels of group conflict than one would expect because so many Africans are isolated subsistence farmers. Prof. Vanhanen offers an example: “Because of Burkina Faso’s extremely low level of socioeconomic development and literacy (18%), national politics does not have a significant role . . . Contact between different ethnic groups and opportunities for conflict are limited.” In very poor, very primitive countries, “national politics is still limited to urban centers.”
If these countries ever do modernize, contact across tribal lines will certainly lead to conflict. Prof. Vanhanen points out that many African countries “are not natural entities from an ethnic point of view.” Chad, for example, he says is “composed of an accidental collection of very different ethnic groups.” There will be unpleasant consequences if these tribes ever become politicized. The first steps towards modernization often bring primitives into contact with people they find they do not like.
African countries that straddle the black/Arab racial boundary have serious ethnic conflict despite their poverty. Tribal differences may not break through the limiting nature of extreme poverty, but racial differences do. Mali, Mauritania, Chad, and Sudan, have violent racial problems that show no signs of resolution. Of these four countries, only Mali has a conflict score lower than 100, and Sudan, Mauritania and Chad are part of what Prof. Vanhanen describes as an outright African race war between blacks and Arabs.
Elsewhere in Africa, Prof. Vanhanen notes that although Nigeria has banned ethnically-based political parties, the parties that are permitted are often just a cover for tribal politics. He thinks governments should openly recognize the inevitability of ethnic nepotism, and provide institutions for its expression rather try to suppress it. He also makes the interesting observation that Africans who follow tribal fetishistic practices rarely have religious conflicts. It is Africans who have adopted the imported religions — Christianity and Islam — who regularly slaughter each other. Finally, he notes that although Madagascar is close to the coast of Africa, it was originally settled about 1,000 years ago by Southeast Asians who sailed across the Indian Ocean rather than by blacks, who were incapable of sailing over the horizon.
Even about Europe Prof. Vanhanen offers interesting insights. He points out that the presence of so many Russians is a constant source of tension in the successor states of the Soviet Union. In the more European of these countries, assimilation is not completely out of the question, but in Central Asian countries it is likely to be impossible.
Switzerland has always been an interesting anomaly: racially united but linguistically divided. The country has largely avoided conflict by giving a great deal of autonomy to the cantons, which are linguistically homogeneous. The most recent serious conflict was resolved in 1978, with the separation of the Jura region from Berne Canton. This gave the French-speaking Catholics of Jura independence from what had been domination by German-speaking Protestants. Separation was found to be the best solution.
The European conflicts Prof. Vanhanen finds most ominous are imported ones: “In Western Europe, where native populations are ethnically relatively homogeneous, principal ethnic conflicts take place between natives and non-European immigrants. Because the pressure of immigration from poor parts of the world to Western Europe is continually increasing, it is reasonable to expect that these conflicts will increase rather than decrease in the future.”
Prof. Vanhanen is refreshingly candid about the desirability of “civilized divorce,” or partition. He believes assimilation across racial lines is almost always impossible, and suggests the black/Arab war in the Sahara would be best solved by separation. He also considers Nigeria, Congo and Afghanistan to be ungovernable as unitary states. Even for the United States, he calmly predicts rising white consciousness in the face of increasing non-white demands, and suggests partition may be an option. He emphasizes that homogeneous nation-states are the most stable because citizens feel they are part of a kinship group.
If countries with diverse populations do not want to be broken up, Prof. Vanhanen suggests they should establish conscious power-sharing mechanisms that recognize tribal and ethnic loyalties. Where groups are living in compact areas there should be federalism with broad local autonomy. If populations are mixed, the best solutions are likely to involve ethnic political parties and some formal method to ensure proportionate ethnic representation in government. He offers Lebanon as a rare example of a country that formalized power-sharing between Muslims and Christians. Lebanon has been wracked with violence but more of its sufferings have been imported than internal.
Diversity is Not Our Strength
The most obvious lesson of this book is that diversity is not a strength. The idea that it is a strength is so obviously stupid that only very intelligent people could possibly convince themselves it is true. The white nations of the world, which are the only ones that have adopted this view, are only planting the seeds of future conflict when they permit large numbers of aliens into their countries. What they are doing is completely contrary to human nature (see next article) and without precedent in the history of the world.
Prof. Vanhanen’s great achievement is to have set aside the mythology about diversity, and to have followed a research plan that accepts the biological basis of human behavior rather than fight it. His book is a model of realistic social science and, no doubt for this very reason, has been so diligently ignored by those who could most benefit from it.
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What the Kurds can Teach Us
Whites must learn the importance of inclusive fitness.
The “O Tempora O Mores” item in the May issue of AR about the invasion of Italy by Kurdish illegal immigrants was quite revealing. The new strategy of these sea-borne invaders appears to be to threaten to throw their children into the sea, unless they are granted asylum. This is like a game of “chicken” in which whites always back down, let the invaders in, thus inviting endless repetition of the same tactic.
This can be looked at from an evolutionary point of view; we can use the Italian-Kurd episode as an example of what is happening throughout the Western world, which is faced with an endless stream of both legal and illegal non-Western immigrant aliens.
The concept of “inclusive fitness” helps explain what is happening. The Neo-Darwinian approach considers life in terms of survival and reproduction; that is, the most “fit” organisms are the ones that produce the largest number of viable offspring. Darwinian “fitness” is all about passing on your genes to the next generation, with the hope that your descendants will continue to be “fit,” and pass their (and your) genes on, generation after generation.
There is direct and indirect fitness. Direct fitness has to do with your own reproductive success; indirect fitness concerns the reproductive success of kin outside of your direct line (e.g., siblings, cousins, etc.). In the beehive, worker bees do not reproduce but slave away to help the queen bee reproduce. Are they losers in the game of fitness? No. The bees in the hive are closely related — they are sisters — and the reproductive success of the queen bee raises the indirect fitness of the workers. Likewise, if Joe has children, that increases his direct fitness; if Joe’s brother has children, that raises Joe’s indirect fitness. Joe and his brother are kin, and share many of the same genes. The combination of direct and indirect fitness is inclusive fitness, or the total reproductive success of oneself and one’s kin.
As Pierre van den Berghe pointed out more than twenty years ago in his book The Ethnic Phenomenon, ethnic groups can be viewed as extended kin groups, and members of these groups tend to have more genes in common with each other than with people outside the group. Therefore, a person’s inclusive fitness interests include not only his family, but his ethnic group. The same can be said of sub-races and races, and even larger, more genetically diluted groupings.
Most racial activists recognize the importance of racial relatedness, and work at that level. However, we must not forget that the ethnic group is the most fundamental large population unit to which people feel reproductive loyalty. Thus, anything that harms the ethnic group damages an individual’s inclusive fitness interests. Kurds have a powerful inclusive fitness interest in Kurds; Italians likewise have a powerful interest in Italians. At a higher level, peoples of European descent have inclusive fitness interests in their larger racial group, as Prof. van den Berghe explained long ago.
To liberals, Kurds are only persecuted refugees looking for a better life, but we can also see them as one group invading the territory of another group to take up residence, gain resources, and reproduce — all in competition with the indigenous population. In genetic terms, Kurdish genes — and the physical appearance, behavior, culture, etc. that result from these genes — are displacing Italian genes.
It is obviously in the interest of Kurds to succeed at the expense of Italians, but it is equally obvious that Italians should resist this incursion. The Kurds take a risk of a devastating loss of fitness — the death of their children by drowning — in a gamble to win a different prize: the right to invade and exploit Italy. These gambles always seem to pay off when they are played against the West, and in this case Italian inclusive fitness suffers.
The same principles apply wherever white and non-white interests clash. In America, non-whites, for whom the pursuit of their inclusive fitness interests comes naturally, go from strength to strength, while whites seem unable to articulate, never mind defend, their inclusive fitness interests. Social welfare handouts, as well as “affirmative action” and a myriad of other government programs transfer wealth from whites to non-whites. America’s immigration policy also favors non-whites, and racial integration increases the fitness of non-whites, who get greater access to white resources.
“White flight” is a classic evolutionary phenomenon. Non-whites agitate for “integration” and move into white areas. The behavior of non-whites — some of it intentional for this purpose, some of it purely natural — makes these areas unsuitable for whites. Whites move out, and non-whites use their new territory for further incursions into more white neighborhoods, where the process is repeated. Of course, even after whites are forced out, they are still exploited by non-whites because they pay taxes for programs that support the reproductive success of non-whites. Non-whites manipulate and exploit the innate individualism and altruism of Western populations to make them vulnerable to this kind of sacrifice.
What to do? In the short term Western populations must refuse to let invaders in under any circumstances. If Western peoples are to survive, they have no other choice. If Kurds or others throw their children into the water, so be it. If they wish to kill their children, that is their choice; Westerners owe them nothing. Only a few children would have to drown before non-whites learned their lesson and dropped these blackmail tactics.
In the long run, more fundamental changes are needed. White people, the peoples of European descent, need to understand the concept of inclusive fitness. Putting that concept into layman’s terms — explaining the analogy between family/kin and ethnicity/race — makes it clearer for a wider audience. We must emphasize that it is just as unnatural to do nothing while your ethno-racial group is destroyed as it is to do nothing while your extended family is threatened. Peoples of European descent must eschew the current fad of aracial radical individualism, and begin to form organizations and adopt ideologies that serve their own interests. People of the West must overcome divisive intra-European conflicts and work together for our common survival.
Michael Rienzi is a scientific researcher working in the Northeastern United States.
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O Tempora, O Mores!
Brotherly Love
John Street, who is black, is the mayor of Philadelphia. On April 13 he bragged to an NAACP audience of 700 about how many blacks he has appointed to his administration. Warming to his task, he boomed out: “Let me tell you: The brothers and sisters are running the city. Oh yes. The brothers and sisters are running this city. Running it! Don’t let nobody fool you; we are in charge of the City of Brotherly Love. We are in charge! We are in charge!”
The audience loved it but whites did not. Letters to editors made the obvious point: “What if a white politician shouted the same words to a white organization? Would the title of the article mirror yours: ‘Street touts his record on rights,’ or would it be on the front page, ‘Racist white politician claims white people are in charge’?” Another writer addressed his letter to the mayor. “Mayor Street, thank you for helping my wife and I [sic] decide where to live after we retire. After your revelation at the NAACP meeting, the future don’t [sic] look so bright for us in your city.” Angry whites flooded the phone lines of City Hall and radio talk shows. “There was this unbelievable undercurrent of anger and shock,” says Angelo Cataldi, host of a morning program on station WIP-AM.
The Monday after his speech the mayor said he couldn’t understand what “all the fuss” was about, but by the next day, his spokesman Frank Keel was trying to control the damage: “He meant no offense to anyone and if any offense was taken, he said, ‘I’m sorry. I apologize.’” Mr. Keel also said the public needs to consider the mayor’s audience. “Bear in mind that he was talking to a largely African American constituency — the NAACP conference attendees. People need to understand that this man is extremely passionate. He takes on an evangelical fervor at times, especially when talking to his base.”
Four days after his NAACP speech Mayor Street made another appointment, and Philadelphia now has a black police chief to help the brothers and sisters run the city. [Cynthia Burton, Street Talk Hits a Nerve on Race, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 17, 2002, p. A1. Barbara Boyer, Thomas J. Gibbons Jr. and Robert Moran, Interim Chief Will Keep Top Police Job, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 17, 2002, p. A1. Philly’s Racial Divide, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 16, 2002, p. A18. Letters to the Editor, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 19, 2002, p. A18; April 17, p. A14.]
Watch on the Rhine
On April 15, Cincinnati police stopped a fight between two women in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, scene of last year’s riots. They broke up the crowd of 250 blacks who were watching, and declared the area stabilized. It didn’t take long for it to destabilize, as whites who were passing through soon discovered. The mob started shouting “Get whitey” and throwing rocks at cars.
“I was giving a buddy a ride downtown,” says Steve Wahoff. “Vine is the quickest route. I knew it was sort of dangerous, but it was still light out, so I thought there would be no problem. I saw this large crowd in the street and thought, ‘I’d better get out of here.’ And right then, this huge rock hit the windshield.” Mr. Wahoff says black drivers were not being attacked. “That’s the last time I go down Vine Street,” he adds.
“We were really scared,” says Kiril Merjanski, a Bulgarian. “Things are not good in Bulgaria, but this type of thing would never happen there.” Gary Landers, a photographer for the Cincinnati Inquirer, says, “I was told, ‘Get your white ass out of here,’ and I heard someone say, ‘We oughta just kill all you white (expletive deleted) and we wouldn’t have no more problems.’” [Peter Bronson, Vine Street: What Was the Excuse This Time, Cincinnati Enquirer, April 19, 2002. Peter Bronson, No Excuses: Racism Comes in All Colors, Cincinnati Inquirer, April 24, 2002, p. B3.]
White Will
When Dr. Jesse Coggins died in 1963 at the age of 88, he left his money in trust to the Keswick Multi-Care Center in Baltimore, provided they used the money for a physical rehabilitation center for white patients. If Keswick failed to honor the “white patients” clause, the bequest was to go to the University of Maryland Medical System. The money was in a family trust until the death of Dr. Coggins’s widow in 1998, and at that time Keswick went to court to see if it could use the money even if it ignored the “white patients” provision. A Maryland Circuit Court ruled against Keswick in 1999, saying the money must go to the University of Maryland Medical System. However, on May 6 of this year, the Court of Appeals found the condition attached to the will “clearly illegal” and in violation of “strong public policy,” and said Keswick could spend the money — now $30 million — on integrated facilities. Ironically, in the expectation it would get the money, Keswick built its rehabilitation building back in 1970 — and named it after Dr. Coggins. It has no immediate plans for the $30 million. [Brian Witte, Court Rules Against Doctor’s Will, AP, May 7, 2002.]
On May 6, Republican Party Chairman Marc Racicot announced a television campaign to sell Hispanics on the GOP. The Republicans will run 30-minute infomercials — entirely in Spanish — on the two major American Spanish-language networks, Univision and Telmundo. “Abriendo Caminos,” or “Forging New Paths” was to begin airing in May in Miami, Orlando, Denver, Albuquerque, Las Vegas and Fresno, California. The GOP will promote the shows with billboards, radio ads and TV announcements — all in Spanish. [Ralph Z. Hallow, GOP to Seek Votes in Spanish, Washington Times, May 7, 2002, p. A8.]
No Habla Español
Zita Wilensky was the only white working for the Miami-Dade County Domestic Violence Unit, where her co-workers made fun of her and called her the “gringa” and the “Americana.” Miss Wilensky says her boss told her she had 60 days to learn Spanish. After 30 days, she called Miss Wilensky, disguised her voice, and pretended not to understand English. When Miss Wilensky couldn’t communicate with her, her boss fired her. The boss now claims she only requested that Miss Wilensky learn Spanish, but she has a letter saying she must learn the language. Miss Wilensky is considering suing the county for discrimination and for creating a hostile work environment. [Fired and Furious, WSVN.com, May 1, 2002. Government Worker in US Fired for Speaking English, NewsMax.com, May 7, 2002.]
Death in the Desert
On May 19, 2001, smugglers led a group of Mexican illegals over the border into the Arizona desert, through the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. They charged $1,400 per person for the trip, but on the second day, they got lost and ran out of water. Fourteen people eventually died.
Families of 11 of the dead have filed a claim against the Department of the Interior and the US Fish and Wildlife Service for $41 million — $3.75 million for each dead Mexican. Lawyers say the agencies contributed to the deaths by refusing to put water stations in the desert after a Border Patrol crackdown along more populated areas made crossings more difficult. The complaint adds that the agencies rejected a request from a Tucson group Humane Borders shortly before the deaths to put water stations in the refuge, as it has done in other parts of the desert. “What these agencies knew — or should have known — is that by doing this, and with a history of deaths in the desert, these people would cross in these dangerous areas,” says lawyer James Clark.
A spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service points out that if the agency had done as Humane Borders asked, the nearest water would have been “twelve miles and two mountain ranges away” from the illegals and would have done them no good. The INS estimates that more than 1,000 illegal aliens have died trying to cross the southwestern desert in the last three years. [Steve Miller, Families of 11 Dead Illegals to Sue U.S., Washington Times, May 11, 2002.]
Forced Feeding
For the past 15 years, the Ugandan army has been fighting the Lord’s Resistance Army, which is led by Joseph Kony, a self-proclaimed prophet who wants to establish a nation based on the Ten Commandments. On April 26, on its way to bases in neighboring Sudan, Mr. Kony’s rebels surrounded a group of mourners in a funeral procession. They forced the mourners to cook the corpse in sorghum and eat it. The mourners thought that if they did what they were told their lives would be spared, but Mr. Kony’s men shot all 60 of them anyway. “You cannot begin to make sense of what Kony does,” says Ugandan army spokesman Major Shaban Bantariza. “You will just go mad.” [Paul Busharizi, Uganda Rebels Kill 60, Force Victims to Eat Corpse, Reuters, April 29, 2002.]
Nice Neighbors
On April 20, an 11-year-old black girl went to the home of a 36-year-old white woman in Janesville, Wisconsin, complaining that the woman’s 10-year-old daughter was bothering her. The woman said she’d take care of it, but the girl said, “My black ass ain’t leaving your porch, white bitch, until you take care of it.” According to police reports, the girl then grabbed the white woman by the hair, calling her “white trash” and “white bitch.” The woman freed herself by hitting the girl in the shoulder and knocking her down. The girl’s mother, 44-year-old Johnnie Johnson, appears to have encouraged her children to attack white children and had, herself, argued with a white woman, calling her “dirty white trash.” Janesville police arrested both Miss Johnson and her daughter on hate crime charges. [Woman, Daughter Arrested in Hate Crime, Gazette (Janesville), April 23, 2002.]
Race relations are bad at George Washington High School in North Philadelphia. Last year, there were several race-related fights at the school, and in November, a gang of blacks attacked a white student, Matthew Gremo, leaving him with serious brain injuries. On April 22, after a food fight in the cafeteria, two 14-year-old white students, a boy and a girl, left to get chewing gum out of their hair. Blacks jumped them in the hallway, and began beating them. They pounded the white boy’s head against lockers, and repeatedly punched and kicked him. They hit the girl and pulled her hair, and both students needed medical care. Police arrested two black students for aggravated assault. As usual, school authorities claim the attack was not racial. [Mensah M. Dean and Chris Brennan, 2 Students Hurt in Fight at GW High, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 23, 2002.]
Aiding and Abedding
Sweden has some of the most generous refugee laws in the world. It granted Fawzi Ali Batum political asylum from Somalia in 1993, although he tested positive for the HIV virus. Last February, a Swedish court sentenced Mr. Batum to five years in prison and ordered him to pay $160 million in damages to two Swedish women he infected with the disease. He admitted having unprotected sex with them but said he did not understand the severity of the disease because of language problems. [Man Sentenced for Passing HIV, Herald (Miami), Feb. 21, 2002.]
Free Money for Blacks
Every year, thousands of blacks claim an imaginary slavery tax credit on their federal income taxes. Thirteen thousand made the claim in 2000, and the figure rose to 77,000 in 2001, for a total claim that year of $2.7 billion in reparations. What accounts for the six-fold increase? Some of the people who filed for the slavery credit in 2000 actually got paid, and the word is getting around.
In 2000 and during the first four months of 2001, the IRS paid out more than $30 million in “reparations” refunds. This was not, apparently, pure incompetence. One IRS employee — race unspecified — is being investigated for helping ladle out the refunds. At least a dozen other IRS employees appear to have gotten money.
Most of the claims were for $43,000, which is a figure Essence magazine proposed in 1993 as the current value of 40 acres and a mule. The IRS has announced it will start levying fines on people who are notified that the claim is bogus but who refuse to withdraw it. There is no indication the agency is trying to get back the money it already paid out. [AP, IRS Erroneously Paid $30 million in Credits for Slavery, April 13, 2002.]
Scotland the Brave
According to a recent poll, Scots have been less thoroughly brainwashed than their English cousins. Fifty-four percent do not think immigrants make a positive contribution to the country and almost half would back policies to encourage immigrants to go back where they came from. Rowena Arshad, the director of Scotland’s Centre for Racial Equality, said she was “shocked” by the results. She said this is proof “racism” must be thwarted at an early age by means of forceful instruction in schools. [Jason Allardyce, Shock Poll Lifts Lid on Racist Scots, Scotland on Sunday, May 3, 2002.]
Sensible Solution
In the Nov. 2001 issue we reported that Ronald Schill, a former criminal judge known for his firm stance against immigration, had joined the government of the city-state of Hamburg, Germany. He has now proposed a plan to offer money to African countries if they accept rejected asylum-seekers. Africans are a particular problem because many show up knowing they will not get asylum, but throw away their passports and refuse to say where they are from. This makes it impossible to deport them, and Hamburg now has 2,600 rejected asylum-seekers it must maintain. If an African country accepted the payment, the illegal immigrant would be sent there against his will even if it were not his country of origin. Mr. Schill’s government is reported to be in discussions with several African countries that might be willing to accept people for a fee. [John Hooper and Andrew Osborne, Germans Offer Cash to Return Refugees, Guardian (London), April 30, 2002.]
Kill the Messenger
New York City continues to struggle blindly with the consequences of racial differences in IQ. Recently the city decided to give all public school teachers a competency test, which appears to have been something more than a formality, since more than 2,000 teachers failed. The school system did not immediately fire them. It turned them into substitute teachers, froze their pensions, cut their pay, and revoked their seniority. Naturally, there has been much whooping about racial discrimination, since blacks and Hispanics failed in large numbers while whites did not. There is now a federal class action suit, claiming the test had a “disparate impact” on non-whites and is therefore illegal. Brooklyn federal Judge Constance Motley will hear the case this summer. [Carl Campanile, Pol Seeks Probe of ‘Biased’ Teacher-License Tests, New York Post, April 7, 2002.]
Ethnic Nepotism?
Many Michigan universities have special graduation celebrations just for blacks. University of Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Wayne State, and Oakland University all put on a special do for blacks, so Michigan State’s black students have asked for one, too. It will be held on the same day as the regular graduation ceremony, and 115 of the 200 blacks who will graduate have signed up to attend.
Some whites have criticized the “Black Celebratory,” as it is called, as separatist, but boosters insist it is not. Some have even pointed out the black graduation rate is so low that any blacks who make it through deserve special recognition. Forty-six percent of blacks who entered as freshmen in 1996 had graduated six years later. The rates for other races were: Hispanics 58 percent, Asians 67 percent, whites 70 percent. [Erik Lords, At MSU, Plans for Pomp Create Friction, Free Press (Detroit), April 5, 2002.]
We’ve Been Warned
The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and the Hispanic Caucus Institute are trying to build a black-brown coalition against whites. At a meeting on April 5, representatives of both races said they would make common cause against a legal system that incarcerates them disproportionately, and against a “broken” political system that reflects “the dominant culture.” Blacks and Hispanics also agreed they have a common interest in maintaining racial preferences. “Together, we are 25 percent of the population, and that is not easy to ignore,” says Ingrid Duran, executive director of the Hispanic Caucus Institute. “But it will not happen if we don’t partner.” [Steve Miller, Hispanic, Black Groups Pledge United Front, Washington Times, April 6, 2002.]
| LETTERS FROM READERS |
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Sir — While there is much in every issue of your splendid publication from which I can learn, the essay by Michael Levin on reparations stunned me by its brilliance. As I read this study, I was left wondering whether anything I had published in over thirty years could equal it in depth or analytic courage. Instead of leaving the argument against reparations to blacks where others had brought it, Professor Levin boldly pushes on. He explains why civil rights advocates would necessarily demand reparations from a guilt-ridden but affluent white society.
In the process he looks at the group differences and group dynamics out of which this demand has arisen. Without the cognitive and social problems encountered by the black majority in adapting, even with quotas, to a professional meritocracy, and without the prevalent racial self-loathing in white societies, reparations to blacks would not be a serious political issue. Michael deserves praise for meticulously developing the critique associated with David Horowitz but then going well beyond it, into politically incorrect waters.
Paul Gottfried, Elizabethtown, Penn.
Sir — I read with much appreciation your articles on the reparations question, and was particularly interested to learn more about Randall Robinson, who is closely associated with the reparations effort. This man clearly hates white people! By what sort of suicidal logic are we supposed to listen to arguments for or against reparations from a man whose thinking is driven by racial animus? Only white people could write of him, as the Washington Post reportedly did, that his comments are “an unfiltered, uncensored, smart black voice in your ear.”
My offer of reparations to blacks would be free passage to the African nation of their choice. If six whites chipped in to pay boat fare for each black, they could all leave and it would not be too great a financial burden.
Fred Hooper, Mussel Shoals, Ala.
Sir — I was struck by the wisdom of Prof. Levin’s warning that the size of the current majorities of whites opposed to paying reparations is no guarantee against Congress deciding to pay up anyway. I suspect that if, in the 1960s or 1970s, whites had been polled on their willingness to suffer the consequences of racial preferences in jobs and college admissions, they would have opposed them by the same large majorities with which whites now oppose reparations — but we got anti-white preferences anyway. Reparations could be yet another example of our presumably democratic society flouting the will of the majority.
I disagree with Prof. Levin, however, on the necessity of bringing the IQ question into the debate. It is certainly true, as he points out, that it is insufficient simply to say reparations would cost too much. However, I suspect that if the other points he makes — about fairness, apportionment of blame, legal precedent, and matching of alleged victim with alleged victimizer — will do the job if argued vigorously. A congressman, for example, who read Prof. Levin’s arguments from the floor of the House might well bring others to his point of view. However, as soon as he got to the part about low black IQ, I suspect he would be met with so much outrage (much of it artificial?) that the credibility of the non-IQ arguments would be lost.
Please do not misunderstand: I am all for airing the facts about race and IQ. However, there are times when it can backfire. There are so many good non-IQ arguments against reparations that if they fail, it is a sure sign whites are hopelessly cowed. Whites who are prepared to write a check despite the excellent, non-IQ reasons not to are precisely the kind of denatured, craven whites who would probably be only encouraged in capitulationist folly if anyone dared to point out the inherent limitations of blacks.
Peter Philbin, Boston, Mass.
Sir — If whites were not so intimidated, it would be obvious to them that the black preoccupation with slavery has little to do with the presumed evils of the institution and much to do with seeking advantages from whites. If blacks were genuinely outraged by slavery, they would be working to end it in Africa where it still exists. But attacking today’s slavery in Africa has no attractions because it gives blacks no leverage over whites. Slavery, like everything else blacks bring up when they “speak truth to power” as they like to put it, is about softening us up for yet more handouts. All this would end immediately if whites showed some backbone.
Pablo Alvarez, Newport Beach, Cal.
Sir — If one were looking for proof of the sickness of our times, one need go no further than the “O Tempora” item in the previous issue, “Looking for Mr. Right.” The fact that there are white women who believe they can be cleansed of “bad karma” by becoming the sexual servants of a black man tells us white Americans are steeped in self-loathing. There is, of course, plenty of other evidence of this; the spectacle of whites “celebrating diversity” is a routine and disgusting display. In the excesses of those women who degraded themselves with Winnfred Wright we find only an extreme form of the racial self-abasement that has come to be expected of us. In that sense they are victims of these evil times.
Joan Peterson, Lexington, Va.
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