Posted on October 4, 2024

The Camp of the Saints After 50 Years

Peter Bradley, American Renaissance, October 4, 2024


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[Editor’s Note: A PDF version of The Camp of the Saints is available here, and Jean Raspail’s most recent foreword and a translator’s introduction is can be found here.]

Written in 1973, The Camp of the Saints describes the end of the white world through mass Third World invasion. The book was controversial when published, but rereading it today is even more jarring. The dire things author Jean Raspail portrays are coming true and can be seen every day throughout Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, and nearly every corner of the West.

The Camp of the Saints tracks the fictional journey of a million Indians from the slums of Calcutta to France aboard leaky, old boats. The West must decide how to respond. The novel is mostly about whites. The invaders are the backstory of how all elements of white society seem to have lost the ability to defend themselves despite having more than enough power to do so.

The title is taken from a Bible verse depicting the apocalypse:

“And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them. . . .” (English Standard Version, Rev. 20:7-10)

The invasion starts when the Belgian consulate in Calcutta informs a crowd that they are not accepting any more Indian babies for adoption in Europe. Seemingly driven by an innate force, mobs of poor Indians storm old rustbuckets sitting idle in the port. The India Star and Calcutta Star are the two main vessels, but there are many others. Soon, there are a million Indians sailing toward Europe — with a handful of white leftists and religious leaders onboard to assist them.

They are met with only token opposition by European officials in India, but there are still many deaths as the mob tramples helpless victims, and numerous corpses are left floating in the water. Their complete indifference to human life and suffering — including of their own people — is a theme that Raspail returns to throughout the book.

In France and throughout the white world, the “Last Chance Armada,” as it is called by the press, is almost universally celebrated. Slogans and virtue signaling in favor of the invaders are combined with ritual denunciations of any whites who dare to speak out against them.

Raspail describes a popular magazine series on Indian culture written in support of the armada. “Considering all the wonders that the Ganges had bestowed on us already — sacred music, theater, dance, yoga, mysticism, arts and crafts, jewelry, new style in dress — the burning question, by the end of the issue, was how we could manage to do without these folk any longer!”

Celebrities write songs such as “The Ballad of Man’s Last Chance” and hold art exhibits with the theme “Our Guests from the Ganges.” The winning entry in a contest to raise funds for the armada is the following slogan: “There are no more Hindus, no more Frenchmen. Only Man, and that’s all that matters!” Banners announce, “WE’RE ALL FROM THE GANGES NOW!” Graffiti proclaims, “WORKERS, GANGES REFUGEES UNITED FOR FREEDOM!”

The Pope (a Brazilian) uses his Good Friday address to inform listeners that they should “open their hearts, souls, and worldly wealth to all these poor unfortunates whom God has sent knocking at our doors.” He also announces that he will sell all objects of value in the Vatican and give the proceeds to the invaders.

Non-white nations react in quite a different way. When the armada tries to pass through the Suez Canal, the Egyptian military threatens to fire on the ships. Confronted by men who mean business, the armada makes a detour toward the Cape of Good Hope. But this only buys the West some time.

There is opposition to the invasion, but it is sporadic and unorganized. The right-wing editor of a small-circulation newspaper warns whites about what is in store if the refugees are allowed to land. A Belgian official shoots some of them as they storm the ships in Calcutta before he is trampled to death. A retired French literature professor unloads his shotgun on an obnoxious leftist who has journeyed to the coast to welcome the invaders. When an armada ship sinks, the captain of a Greek vessel plows through the drowning survivors rather than rescue them.

As the landing draws nearer, many French — including the ones who voiced the most support for the armada — simply flee the country. With no one in charge, chaos ensues, and criminals are freed from prisons. White leftists start gathering near the coast. They drink, take drugs, and lounge in now-empty houses and loot from abandoned stores. All the institutions of French society are shown to be weak, hypocritical, and hollow.

The president of France, despite his public pronouncements, is scared of the armada. As it approaches, he prepares a speech that will order the military to turn back the ships. Yet his will breaks during the address and he simply orders every man to follow his conscience.

Church leadership comes off the worst of all French institutions. Raspail, who remained a Catholic his entire life, portrays them as non-believers who preach a distorted “social gospel” version of Christianity. The Pope and other church leaders actively support the invaders. Priests deliver sermons instructing their parishes to accept and welcome them. Many suffer gruesome endings — including a bishop who accompanies the armada and is simply left behind to drown when they land.

The military is shown as cowardly. Some units do deploy along the coast, but most soldiers flee rather than fire on the armada. A handful remain true to France, especially an old-school paratrooper who battles against both the invaders and their leftist fellow travelers.

The media, unions, academics, students, and celebrities are shown as corrupt and trendy, though ready to direct intense hatred at anyone who defends France.

The business class is represented by a manager at a pork processing plant. Looking to take advantage of cheap labor, he is slaughtered like a pig by African workers and turned into a can of pate.

A childless couple — Marcel and Josiane — represent the middle class. They are concerned by the armada but feel better after watching television programs and reading newspapers that assure them all will be fine. They end up meekly offering their nice apartment to an Arab family with several children.

There were non-whites in France in 1973, though not nearly as many as today. Raspail’s fictional non-whites do menial jobs while biding their time until the armada arrives. One of them, a dark-skinned Moroccan named Clement Dio, is a main cheerleader of the armada. A well-known columnist, he has a barely concealed resentment of whites — though he enjoys living among the wealthy elites of French society.

They arrive

The armada lands in a small seaside town on the southern coast of France on Easter Sunday. Though some shots are fired by the remaining troops, they barely make a dent in the mass of Indians swarming the beach. Most of the soldiers run away before the mob rather than continue fighting. A group of elderly monks are trampled as are many of the whites who had come to welcome the Ganges refugees.

The final defenders of the white world are a group of 20 men who form the camp of the saints. Most are soldiers but they are joined by others, including the French professor who shot the leftist, the Greek ship captain who has escaped from prison, and the right-wing editor who tried to warn his readers. One of their number includes a Hindu who, knowing how his people truly are, wants to defend Western civilization. They give a good account of themselves, killing 312 invaders and 66 fellow travelers, before being bombed by French fighter jets. The same military that would not fire on the invaders kills the last defenders of France — and Europe.

Emboldened by the refusal of the whites to defend themselves, non-whites from the entire world set out for white nations. Chinese swarm the Soviet Union with only one drunken Russian soldier firing a shot. Africans descend on South Africa. Australia, the United States, and the rest of the white world are consumed in a matter of months.

The remaining whites do not enjoy the universal brotherhood that they were promised. Whites must share their houses with non-whites. White women are kept as forced prostitutes for the new masters of Europe. Many commit suicide as a result. Eventually, whites are not allowed to marry or reproduce with other whites. The Queen of England is forced to have her son marry a Pakistani.

Leftist supporters of the invasion are not spared, and Raspail arranges well-deserved endings for many of the worst characters in his book. Clement Dio is trampled by new arrivals who do not know or care that he was their champion against whites. His equally leftist Eurasian wife is gang-raped by criminals and kills herself as a result. The whites who initially accompanied the armada are strangled and thrown overboard. The buffoon who came up with the “There are no more Hindus, No more Frenchmen” slogan is killed while trying to flee the invasion as are several of the celebrities who most vocally supported the armada.

The last holdout for whites is Switzerland, which stubbornly closes its borders and even deports its non-whites. We find out in the closing pages that the author has holed up in the country while writing the elegy for his race. But even Switzerland eventually caves to international pressure and will open up in a few hours. So ends the white world.

While often dismissed as a racist work by the Left, The Camp of The Saints was published by a mainstream publisher (Editions Robert Laffont) and was well-received in France where it was reviewed by mainstream outlets. Francois Mitterrand, the French president from 1985 to 1995, was said to have read the book as did many prominent French politicians and writers. As of 2006, it had sold more than 500,000 copies, and it even returned to the French bestseller list in 2011.

The Camp of the Saints was published in English by Scribner’s and reviewed favorably in the US by intellectuals such as Max Lerner and Sidney Hook. Ronald Reagan was said to have been “terribly impressed with it.” Prof. Jeffrey Hart gave it a positive review in the September 26, 1975, issue of National Review:

Most people . . . are able to perceive that the “other group” looks rather different and lives rather differently from their own. Such “racist” or “ethnocentric” feelings are undoubtedly healthy, and involve merely a preference for one’s own kind. Indeed — and Raspail hammers away at this point throughout his novel — no group can long survive unless it does “prefer itself.” . . . The liberal rote anathema on “racism” is in effect a poisonous assault upon Western self-preference.

William F. Buckley, Jr., praised The Camp of the Saints in a 2004 column (although he gets some of the details wrong). National Review carried an article on the prescience of the book in 2014, though writer Mackubin Thomas Owens offered the usual conservative dodge: “Of course, Raspail was denounced as a racist, and his emphasis on the white race can indeed be off-putting. But the central issue of the novel is not race but culture and political principles.”

Who was Jean Raspail?

Jean Raspail was a well-known travel writer prior to the publication of The Camp of The Saints. He was the recipient of prestigious French literary awards such as Grand Prix du Roman and Grand Prix de Littérature by the Académie Française. The French government appointed him to its Legion of Honor in 2003. His death in 2020, a few weeks shy of his 95th birthday, was noted in a New York Times obituary. While awash in terms such as “far-right” and “white supremacist,” the Times obit noted his influence on a new generation of writers, including Renaud Camus, who coined the term “the great replacement” for what is happening to Europeans.

Jean Raspail in 2003. (Credit Image: © Ulf Andersen/Aurimages via ZUMA Press)

Marine Le Pen tweeted the following tribute to Mr. Raspail upon his death:

“We must reread The Camp of the Saints, which, beyond evoking with a talented pen the migratory perils, had—long before [Michel Houellebecq’s] Submission—mercilessly described the submission of our elites.”

Jean Raspail seemed aware of his legacy. Shortly before his death, he explained to the New York Times: “People now buy The Camp of the Saints because they want to read the book written by the writer who saw what would happen before everybody else.”

The Camp of the Saints has long held a special place for the Dissident Right and among white advocates in particular. It marks one of the few times a book promoting our worldview has reached a mainstream audience.

The first English-language version of The Camp of the Saints came out in 1975. In the inaugural issue (December 1975) of Instauration, Wilmot Robertson reviewed the book, calling it “a ghastly, shuddering, mind-reeling scenario of what is in store for the West if liberalism and apathy continue to weaken our will to survive.” He praised it as the “first great uncompromising novel of modern times.”

The late Chris Roberts wrote a review for American Renaissance in 2017 where he compares the book to 1984:

George Orwell’s 1984 helped the world understand the last century’s crisis: the struggle between totalitarianism and freedom. Jean Raspail’s novel tackles this century’s crisis: whether the white world can survive the Third World’s demographic tidal wave. That crisis is upon us now — in its early stages — and like Jean Raspail, we do not know how the story will end. But The Camp of the Saints begs us to wake up.

Raspail was pessimistic about the ability of Europe to turn back the clock on the Third World invasion. But he believed rediscovering our identity was the only way to do so:

There are only two ways to deal with immigrants. Either we accommodate them, and France — her culture, her civilization — will be eradicated without so much as a funeral. In my view, that is what is going to happen. Or else we do not accommodate them at all, which means we stop sanctifying the Other and rediscover our neighbors.

The cost of “accommodating them” can be seen every day across the white world. The Camp of the Saints is no longer fiction.

About Peter Bradley

View all posts by Peter Bradley
Peter Bradley lives in Washington, D.C.