Posted on December 15, 2019

Camp of the Saints, “Eco-Fascism,” and Liberal Consternation

Chris Roberts, American Renaissance, December 13, 2019

Credit Image: © Mint Images / ZUMA Wire

The mainstream media regularly provide half-truths, lies of omission, and spin. I ignore most of it, but occasionally there’s something so awful I just can’t. Thus, I must respond to “The Eco-Fascists Are Coming,” by Jennifer Wright.

The beginning addresses President Trump’s climate change denial and its supposedly disastrous impact. Yet Miss Wright suddenly pivots to warn that environmental collapse will increase Third World immigration to the US. She predicts an eco-conscious right-wing will emerge. It will keep immigrants out, or even kill them, to save the planet.

Among the Far Right, some exhort “lifeboat ethics”, a theory that postulates the following.

“When a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship’s axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides.”

Except that’s not true. The United States is not a flimsy lifeboat. It is a landmass almost comically massive. In nine states—Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wyoming—cows outnumber people. If every member of the United States lived in an area with the population density of Brooklyn, New York, all 327 million of us could fit into New Hampshire. (As someone who lives in Brooklyn by choice, I can promise you, it’s quite pleasant.) With some changes in the layout of our cities and our expectations about suburbia as a default living situation, even assuming certain U.S. regions become entirely inhospitable, we could accommodate not only the refugees likely coming to us from Latin America, but those around the world.

The author she quotes (but dares not name) is the Finnish deep-ecologist Pentti Linkola. His “lifeboat ethics” concept has nothing to do with refugees. The radical Mr. Linkola believes the human population should be dramatically reduced to save the planet. He famously proclaimed, “If there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice myself without hesitating, if it meant millions of people would die.”

Pentti Linkola (Credit Image: Soppakanuuna / Wikimedia)

He never implied anything about which people should die, just that there should be a lot of them. He wants to preserve the environment, not the West, not Europe, and certainly not America — a country he openly despises. He and his followers don’t think America is a “flimsy lifeboat” threatened by refugees. They think that the planet is a flimsy lifeboat threatened by humanity.

Still, I appreciate Miss Wright’s candor in the excerpt above. Hopefully every American reads it and realizes that we can import the whole world. We all just have to live in anthills like New York City. Miss Wright says she likes living in Brooklyn, so there’s no reason the rest of us won’t.

Her observation about states that have more cows than people is revealing. Where does she think food comes from? Perhaps she thinks the heartland’s farms and ranches could be transplanted to coastal cities. We’ll shove cows into tiny studio apartments that cost $1,500 a month.

If you are proud of your house, enjoy your backyard, and think good fences make good neighbors, take Miss Wright seriously. Mass immigration will rob you of those things, and liberal writers will cheer.

Miss Wright isn’t done yet. She pivots again, suddenly focusing on the novel The Camp of the Saints, though the book doesn’t address ecology at all. Stephen Miller has read it (or at least knows about it) and this is bad.

Like most liberals, Miss Wright says the book is racist. Yet she also says, “When they [Third World ‘refugees’] arrive in France — and the government fails to shoot them en masse — they promptly rape all the white women.”

Even in the era of “#MeToo” and “believe all women,” all you have to do to get liberals to mock rape fears is mention race. Miss Wright clearly thinks The Camp of the Saints is absurd. Yet there are numerous real-world examples of what it depicts.

The UK had the “Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal.”

[A]n estimated 1,400 children, most of them white girls, had been sexually abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013 by predominantly British-Pakistani men (Kurdish and Kosovar men were also involved). British Asian girls in Rotherham also suffered abuse, but a fear of shame and dishonour made them reluctant to report the abuse to authorities.

After their conviction, some of these Asian men shouted “Allahu-Akbar.”

Finland had the “Oulu child sexual exploitation scandal” perpetrated exclusively by men from the Islamic world.

Germany had the “2015–16 New Year’s Eve sexual assaults.” “1,200 women were sexually assaulted. . . at least 2,000 men were involved, often acting in groups.” These men were mostly from North Africa and the Middle East.

In America, Miss Wright might want to look into the FBI’s statistics on rape and race.

These stories are common, but Miss Wright may not read the outlets that report them.

Just a few more recent examples:

I believe these women. Their abusers should be prosecuted. We must stamp out rape.

These statements make me a feminist, unless I mention race. Then, suddenly, I become an “eco-fascist,” at least according to this essay from Harper’s.

In 2017, I wrote about my shock that so few liberal and feminist media outlets reported on rape. I am still shocked. I invite Miss Wright to give me an explanation.

While she comes up with one, she may want to do some more reading on environmental thought within the Dissident Right. One misunderstood quote from an obscure Finnish thinker isn’t good enough.

So, for Miss Wright’s enlightenment, some recommendations: