Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Demography Is Destiny

I get bored with writing about race and demography. I get cheesed when those who don't like black or Asian people assume that I agree with them. I worry that some of the remarks in the comments threads will put off the people I want to attract to the blog - lefties who've got the odd niggling doubt as to whether all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds, and who might be prepared to look at evidence to the contrary. I worry that this blog's getting a bit monochrome in its choice of subjects. As an ex-lefty, I look with my old eyes and see a swivel-eyed single-issue merchant.

But I'll carry on - because I see it as the most important issue facing Britain, and the one with the greatest possibilities for danger. Continuing to import large numbers of peoples and cultures into Britain - mostly into England - while making no attempt to integrate them (indeed, no longer having a strong culture to integrate to) seems to me, no matter how pleasant individual members of those cultures may be, to be asking for trouble. When at the same time the native population is in demographic decline, unlike the fecund newcomers, phrases like 'busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre' seem apposite.

I'm pleased to see that Christopher Hitchens understands.

The most alarming sentences that I have read in a long time came from the pen of my fellow atheist Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, at the end of a September Los Angeles Times column upbraiding American liberals for their masochistic attitude toward Islamist totalitarianism. Harris concluded:

The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists. To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.


As Martin Amis said in the essay that prompted Steyn’s contempt: “What is one to do with thoughts like these?” How does one respond, in other words, when an enemy challenges not just your cherished values but additionally forces you to examine the very assumptions that have heretofore seemed to underpin those values?

Two things, in my experience, disable many liberals at the onset of this conversation. First, they cannot shake their subliminal identification of the Muslim religion with the wretched of the earth: the black- and brown-skinned denizens of what we once called the “Third World.” You can see this identification in the way that the Palestinians (about 20 percent of whom were Christian until their numbers began to decline) have become an “Islamic” cause and in the amazing ignorance that most leftists display about India, a multiethnic secular democracy under attack from al-Qaida and its surrogates long before the United States was. And you can see it, too, in the stupid neologism “Islamophobia,” which aims to promote criticism of Islam to the gallery of special offenses associated with racism.

The second liberal disability concerns numbers. Any emphasis on the relative birthrates of Muslim and non-Muslim populations falls on the liberal ear like an echo of eugenics. It also upsets one of the most valued achievements of the liberal consensus: the right if not indeed the duty to limit family size to (at most) two children. It was all very well, from this fatuously self-satisfied perspective, for Paul Ehrlich to warn about the human “population bomb” as a whole, just as it is all very well for some “Green” forces to take a neo-Malthusian attitude toward human reproduction in general. But in the liberal mind, to concentrate on the fertility of any one group is to flirt with Nuremberg laws. The same goes for “racial profiling,” even when it’s directed at the adherents of an often ideological religion rather than an ethnic group. The Islamists, meanwhile, have staked everything on fecundity.


RTWT

31 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes do carry on, as this is a very good blog (if a bit pessimistic) for precisely the reasons you state. I too am an ex-lefty, 47, Islington-dweller becoming notorious among left-lib pals for raising such issues for years - although I think they, too, have changed, even in the last two years. They cannot ignore it any longer, and those old lefties who are stuck in the ostrich position and still 'celebrating diversity' with all the public money they can muster, come across as the reactionaries in the minority-majority discourse, parroting those old anti-nazi league lines like 7:7 never happened. Sadly, they are in power in London.

I imagine that welfare cuts will decrease child bearing dramatically among the Islamic community so let's trust that Cameron will institute them before it gets too late. And no, I don't dislike Muslims - I dislike Islamism. Which yes, comes mostly from the Muslim community.

Anonymous said...

Like you I am ex-left (Trotskyist). I share your disquiet about the "it's not culture, it's race, commentators".

People I know have shifted, like Oliver's friend, but I would characterise them as falling into two categories:

The first category are those who at root questioning their beliefs but are outwardly still "left". If questioned too hard they will fall back into a "it will turn out alright in the end" meme, although they can't quite say what will reverse the trends that they acknowledge are happening. If the Euston manifesto people developed a coherent domestic strategy and it got regular MSM coverage, this group might move towards that position.

The other category are those who have decended into a quasi conspiracy theory mentality. They don't like being challenged but at root they believe in secret cabals conspiring behind the scenes. They believe in the power of nightmares, big oil and the right of third-worlders to indulge in terrorism. Thinking in particular of two friends (and this couple are probably ex-friends such was the last "argument"); they believe that the Americans carried out 9/11, that Israel indirectly has caused all these troubles, even that Diane was assasinated by the secret service [note please that both are university lecturers in West Yorkshire].

Unfortunately, the latter group seem to be larger than the former and peversely, they were in general the less political of the two in former days. When I speak to teachers at my son's school, they tend towards the latter position.

I do not believe that Cameron will cut welfare. No conservative government ever has. On the contrary, I think that as the crisis unfolds, we as a country, will accelerate the current program in a last desperate attempt to "reach the uplands". I expect to see the situation get much worse before anything changes.

Anonymous said...

Do not give up. Those of us that actually read your blog regularly, know where you are coming from.

Those who pop in and assume things about you (whether they react with horror or pleasure) are neither here nor there.

Issues of culture and identity cannot be left to the combined efforts of morons Left & Right, caught up in the poverty of their own intellectual short comings. Normal people need to discuss these issues, if we are not to see even worse polarisation than we currently have.

Anonymous said...

Please carry on, Laban. Just ignore the foam-flecked posts from the race obsessives and the BNPers

johnm:

they believe that the Americans carried out 9/11, that Israel indirectly has caused all these troubles, even that Diane was assasinated by the secret service [note please that both are university lecturers in West Yorkshire].

You may be interested in an occasional series I write on
http://www.bloodyscott.blogspot.com
called Groves of Academe. Just search the archives.

Harry J said...

It seems this may be a refuge for ex-lefties. The issues surrounding immigration and multiculturism seem so much more profound than any other poitical issue. I suspect that's why you post on it so regularly. It's certainly the issue that caused me to think again and precipitated my shift across the political spectrum. Surely it's the left, liberal, Marxist, whatever you want to call it, perspective that's got 'us' into this position and it's that that has to be resisted. It's not just on the issue of immigration they've got wrong that is the one with the most far reaching effects and so therefore demands closer attention. I've recently started commenting on a few of the more 'right wing', nationalist websites in an effort to explain that it's all down to culture and not race and to reserve any hostility that's felt for those who deserve it. The Ken Livingstones, Lee Jaspers, George Galloways and Claudia Webbs (courtesy of Blink - I read an article by her on the site yesterday and I'm letting the rage settle a little before I email a response. See the link below) of this world. Perhaps it's as necessary to try and reason and discuss with those further to the right than some of us find ourselves as well as those to the left?

http://www.blink.org.uk/pdescription.asp?key=13822&grp=76&cat=419

Harry J said...

Laban, perhaps your blog does more 'good' than you think. It's certainly been of tremendous help to me as I reassessed an awful lot of things. In turn I've now completely lost my fear of being branded a 'racist' for talking about these issues. In fact when I have done it's been largely well received and made quite a few of my more apolitical friends think about things a lot more. It's the 'demographics' that wakes them up the most. It's these people that need to be reached the most. The millions who never vote for whatever reason.

paul ilc - I'm not likely to become a member of the BNP mainly because I don't share some of their views on homosexuality and I have concerns over the death penalty. That said, after a lot of thought and consideration, I intend to vote for them at the next election. I can't see a better way of expressing my concerns about immigration. I also have a lot of time for Nick Griffin and all he's done to change the party He speaks out on matters that many others shy away from. I feel his voice is a necessary addition to political life in this country. Feel free to argue otherwise.

Anonymous said...

guardian apostate:

I could never vote for the BNP because:

1. they are economically interventionist and nationalist and so more of the left than the right. I prefer free markets and capitalism's creative destruction.

2. Nick Griffin's changes to his party are cosmetic and presentational. Meanwhile, Griffin has said of the Holocaust: “The ‘extermination’ tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie and latter-day witch-hysteria”. And the BNP's Director of Publicity, Mark Collett, (Nick Griffin's recent co-defendant) is on record as saying “Churchill was a fucking cunt who led us into a pointless war with other whites standing up for their race.”

3. I am not convinced of the BNP's democratic credentials. I suspect that they are pro-Nazi, pro-tyranny, pro-genocide, and that they would seize power given half a chance.

4) That said, you may say that your vote is a protest vote to send a warning shot across the bows of the two main parties. I would say that may work - as long as too many others do not behave similarly!

dearieme said...

Cheer up, chaps. A combination of Global Warming and Scottish Independence will give you somewhere more, eh, comfortable to move to.

Anonymous said...

BTW, Mark Steyn's book, which Christopher Hitchens refers to in his article, is excellent. If you haven't read it yet, I advise you to do so ASAP.

Guessedworker said...

I said here recently that I support Laban in his effort to talk to "the recovering left". I do, but there is reason to try, at least, to explain something that none of you, including Laban, yet seem to grasp:-

The great issue of racial demographics in the West is not something to do with left versus right. My friends use the word "right" only out of convenience. But perhaps we should avoid it, for it is a sower of confusion. The left's fixations upon democracy, egalitarianism and progress à la Marx and the right's upon democracy, egalitarianism and "progress" à l'américain are equally liberalism.

I urge you to strive after an understanding outside the liberal zeitgeist. For only there will you gain a view of the moral right of the English to England, for example, that is comprehensible in its own terms

In the final analysis, we are all on a journey out of liberalism, for liberalism has brought us within sight of the extinction of our own people - and that is not tolerable.

Harry J said...

paulilc - on point 1 I've got to be honest and say I struggle to come to a definite conclusion on 'free markets'. How sensible is to allow a sizeable chunk of our manufacturing industry to be exported to India and China or allow much of our utility and power suppliers to become foreign owned. Paticularly when other European 'partners' don't reciprocate. I don't know.

Point 2 - Nick Griffin's recent writing on the subject of Israel etc has been quite supportive. He's been especially critical of the American far right and their anti-Jewish rhetoric. I've changed my mind perhaps he has too. Again I'm not sure.

Point 3 - Not truly convinced of any of this. Certainly not from anything I've read of things connected to the BNP. I check their site regularly and it seems to me the democratic process is exactly what they have chosen. More importantly I think that the vast majority of their new found support would not countenance anything remotely like what you've suggested. Perhaps I'm wrong though as I say I doubt it

Point 4 - as I explained it's for this reason that I'm likely to vote for them but only because of the absence of any suitable or creditable alternative. Not voting at all seems the worst option of the lot. I need to do something.

Anonymous said...

Laban: If people are going to find remarks about demographics, or certain comments posted on this site, so offensive that they reject the whole site out of hand, then they probably were never really prepared to change their liberal views anyway. If they are prepared to consider a viewpoint opposed to theirs (e.g. if they really were prepared to leave the left), then they will not be put off by having their liberal sensitivities hurt. Discussion of demographics will put off the first type of person, but will simply help persuade the second type. It is the second type we need, not the first. So, keep going! And good luck!

Anonymous said...

For what it's worth, I'm Caribbean-British female who finds your blog a breath of fresh air; save for Migration Watch no other forum discusses the pressing problems of immigration so eloquently and cogently. Although I am still part of the north London liberal intellegentsia, I am desperately trying to extricate myself.

Anonymous said...

paul ilc:

While it is true that a few years ago the BNP did contain a disproportionately high number of holocaust-deniers, neo-Nazis, and other nutcases, I genuinely believe that they have moved on. The reason is, their attempt to modernise. A large number of people have joined the BNP because they believe that it has changed. My view is that those people now outnumber the real extremists. While the loonies may still be around, their numbers are too small to actually control things . They have been diluted among the decent people. Accordingly, it is unlikely that the BNP will ever return to the, admittedly unpleasant, attitudes of its past. I therefore feel no compunction in voting BNP. Since the mainstream parties offer no real alternative to one another, nor any real solution to the negative trend that our society seems to be following, I would regard a BNP government as being an improvement.

I agree that the BNP's economic policies are very wrong. However, the damage wrought by economic policies is reparable. The damage wrought by allowing our society to be destroyed by immigration and multiculturalism is not.

Anonymous said...

Your blog is great but you do seem to attract some, er, 'unsavoury' types.

I always check up on news from the Mother Country with a scan of Laban Tall.

Tell you racist readers to go f*ck themselves.

Anonymous said...

I never associate the views of commenters with the original poster unless they actually indicate agreement.

G Apostate, perhaps you are not as ex-leftist as you think if you intend to vote for the national socialist party, haha.

I wouldn't vote BNP because I have non-white friends who would prob be annoyed and it would seem hypocritical.
But I do agree with a lot of the non-race related policies of them. Such as death penalty for child rapists. And I don't see why two ass-penetrators should get some kind of special government enforced rights. A child is not a toy for social engineers, a child needs a mother and a father if possible.

Race is far from the only thing that the leftists have messed up in this country.

Anonymous said...

You may be interested in this if you didn't see it previously.

Video: Steyn at Heritage foundation



--

Tbh, I don't understand labans or most of these ex-leftists position on this issue who keep saying "Its Culture not Race".
You are repeating the liberal & libertarian position that humans are basically a blank slate who can be moulded into any kind of adult that the enviroment dictates to them.

*If* you believe humans are an equal blank slate then demographics do not matter as an immigrants children will be as British as me once exposed to enough 'culture'. If you believe demographics do matter then you are talking about 'race' no matter how uncomfortable that is.

If you believe that simply being exposed to certain foreign cultures is enough to cause serious problems for otherwise innocent little boys from the shires why aren't more people talking about 'control' of foreign books, TV, Music etc.
The reality is no one actually thinks a bit of foreign culture is going to dramatically affect otherwise normal peoples behaviour, not generally speaking at least.

What we are seeing in Britain if the demographic forcasts are anywhere near accurate, is simply the replacement of one group of humans with another. Its happened before and will happen again. In the past it took the Anglo-Saxons + Vikings 300+ years to become dominant in England.
It will take MiddleEastern & Pakistani Muslims about 100 years from start to finish. Speeded up by white flight.

I suppose the Celts were racists for not welcoming the Anglo-Saxons in?
(yeah I know they did originally, but after that!)

I personally don't think the forcasts are accurate because the liberal liars from the 60's & 70's will soon turn on each other as is starting to happen. 'Interesting' times ahead, in a sad kind of way.

Anonymous said...

The above posts are somewhat behind the current academic research on group differences. An easy introduction to this and much else besides is:

http://www.amazon.com/Before-Dawn-Recovering-History-Ancestors/dp/1594200793/sr=1-2/qid=1163882279/ref=sr_1_2/102-1072917-6628126?ie=UTF8&s=books

Slightly dated now, as it is about two years old is:

http://www.amazon.com/Race-Reality-Differences-Vincent-Sarich/dp/0813343224/sr=1-1/qid=1163883195/ref=sr_1_1/102-1072917-6628126?ie=UTF8&s=books

Or check the research of:

Bruce Lahn http://www.hhmi.org/research/
investigators/lahn.html

Gregory Cochran
http://homepage.mac.com/
harpend/.Public/
AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf

Linda Gottfredson http://www.udel.edu/educ/
gottfredson/reprints/
pubtopics.htm

The latter in particular is an easy read.

BTW I find your blog worthwhile together with eureferendum.com and vdare.com which I compare and contrast with the BBC output.

Bert Rustle

Harry J said...

Dave - maybe I'm not. Just because I've altered my opinions on much of what the left holds dear doesn't necessarily mean I have to automatically subscribe to everything seen as being 'right. I'm still in a sate of flux on some issues but at the same time I'm trying to understand. Perhaps that's what Laban was getting at. However important the demographic/immigration debate is there are other things to be discussed. Though, as someone elsewhere said, when your house is on fire your number one priority is to put it out. Everything else can wait.

I too have non-white friends but I fail to see anything hypocritical in voting BNP.

Anonymous said...

"I get cheesed when those who don't like black or Asian people assume that I agree with them."

Why should it matter to anyone if you don't 'agree' with their personal preferences - in this case, their preference to live in a homogenious neighbourhood?

Anonymous said...

'I worry that some of the remarks in the comments threads will put off the people I want to attract to the blog - lefties who've got the odd niggling doubt as to whether all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds, and who might be prepared to look at evidence to the contrary.'

No need to worry, I assure you. And here's some evidence that you're not quite as much of a voice crying in the wilderness as you may sometimes feel:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2563000,00.html

Anonymous said...

Tbh, I don't understand labans or most of these ex-leftists position on this issue who keep saying "Its Culture not Race".
You are repeating the liberal & libertarian position that humans are basically a blank slate who can be moulded into any kind of adult that the enviroment dictates to them.


The "post modern" left believes two things:
1. Humans are basically a blank slate.
2. Our traditional culture is fundamentally flawed. Therefore the culture needs to be replaced.
[I think the traditional socialist left didn't agree at all with (2) and only partially with (1)]

Rejecting the absolutist position (1) does not imply that the answer is the equally absolutist position of "it's only race". It's quite possible to acknowledge there is both of nature and nurture. For example culture stopped slavery, gave us democracy and gave women equality; certainly not our genes. In this debate, culture gives us the faculty to understand that even if the racial differences such as IQ results were not controversial, we would still have a moral obligation to treat people equally.

If genes are the answer, then how can I explain the creation of the white underclass. There are a whole raft of problems for which race can be no explanation. Focusing on genes means focusing on the one thing I can realistically do bugger all about. It effectively limits me to eugenics and ethnic cleansing. It is a dead end.

The problem today is that the left has totally rejected our culture. My opposition to that stems not from a belief that culture is constant and unchanging but from the idea that we ought to be wary of revolutionary change imposed centrally by utopians. Culture evolves and I'm not afraid of that. I am afraid of the consequences of bringing up a generation to unquestioningly accept that the west is the cancer of the human race; that there was nothing good in our past. Ironically, my position gives me more cause to worry than the race believers - if culture is natural and of no consequence then forcing culture to bend against it's will leads inevitably to a restoration of the status quo at some point. I on the other hand see that there is no connection between Greece of antiquity and today, or between Rome and Italy.

Anonymous said...

I on the other hand see that there is no connection between Greece of antiquity and today, or between Rome and Italy.

This is scarcely fair to the Greeks, who continue to speak a language closer to Ancient Greek than Modern English is to even Middle English, exhibit the same age-old Greek weakness for internecine squabbles to the point of bloodshed that so troubled both the ancient city states and indeed the Byzantine Empire, and maintain a strong and vigourous national identity of which they are allowed (indeed encouraged) to be proud.

Considering the 400 years of Islamic tyranny (practically all obvious traces of which were joyously obliterated in the 19th century), they have achieved a remarkable degree of cultural continuity with Byzantium and thereby to the ancients.

I certainly feel more hopeful about the survival of Western Civilisation when walking around in Athens than I do in London. Let it not be forgotten that there are millions of Europeans in the Balkans who know exactly what is at stake with Islam and will never submit...

Guessedworker said...

johnm,

Define "race-believer", will you? I don't think you possess nearly enough genetic or sociobiological knowledge to understand the solidity of "race" not its deterministic behavioural and cultural consequences, with the result that you just bandy around your still-surviving leftist prejudices.

Read Salter and Rushton, among others, or your "ex-leftism" will remain not as ex as you suppose.

Anonymous said...


Brain scans predict, Altuistic behaviour



-

John, do you believe that culture and natural inherited personality traits have absolutely no connection at all?

Dangerouslysubversivedad said...

"If genes are the answer, then how can I explain the creation of the white underclass. There are a whole raft of problems for which race can be no explanation. Focusing on genes means focusing on the one thing I can realistically do bugger all about. It effectively limits me to eugenics and ethnic cleansing. It is a dead end."

Bang on.

"Define "race-believer", will you? I don't think you possess nearly enough genetic or sociobiological knowledge to understand the solidity of "race" not its deterministic behavioural and cultural consequences, with the result that you just bandy around your still-surviving leftist prejudices."

Guessedworker, I was out there twenty years ago kicking the arse of anything remotely 'Left' and I havent stopped since. And I still think you use a lot of long words to talk racist rubbish.

Anonymous said...

Large quantifiable differences exist between races or “population clusters”. These include disease resistance, pharmaceutical response, lactose tolerance, testosterone levels, maturation rates and intelligence. In the latter case, the average IQ of an Ashkenazi Jew is around 110 compared to a Bantu of around 70 – approaching three standard deviations. To put these two groups in the same class with the intention of each doing their best is hopeless; see the references above.

Spending X% or 2X% of GDP on education is a political decision which does not contradict scientific observations. Requiring that examination pass rates or employment success must be pro-rata with the population groups does contradict scientific observations; hence they are not achievable and do give rise to false accusations of prejudice. Debating these points is of as much use as debating the desirability of different timings for the tides.

There are also large differences in behaviour. One relevant to Britain is marriage to close relatives. http://www.consang.net/ gives details of this worldwide. The people who came to Britain in large numbers continue this tradition; see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4442010.stm. So what? Firstly, it costs money, to quote “British Pakistanis are 13 times more likely to have children with genetic disorders than the general population - they account for just over 3% of all births but have just under a third of all British children with such illnesses.

Indeed, Birmingham Primary Care Trust estimates that one in ten of all children born to first cousins in the city either dies in infancy or goes on to develop serious disability as a result of a recessive genetic disorder.”

Secondly, these are people born here choosing partners from abroad facilitating chain migration of like minded people - what possibility is there of democracy as we know of it in the West continuing if half the population is married to a cousin?

The current state of affairs is truly shocking. However denying the situation as quantified by scientific observations and voting with one’s feet by relocating to the remaining indigenous areas is only a temporary fix. Where will the children run to?

Anonymous said...

The white 'underclass' can quite easily be explained by genetics.

In the theory of evolution, survival of the fittest. The most fit members of the species will tend to mate with other most successful members of the species to produce an even more fit offspring.
Which leaves the dregs to mate with each other and produce less fit offspring (underclass) who eventually die out unless the eviroment changes to better suit them.

Perhaps you don't believe in the theory of evolution, maybe you are a creationist?


Now saying that, I don't personally believe in the English underclass, its just what anti English racists use to denigrate the old fashioned working class. And as a cover for the failures of the welfare state.
Although I have no problem believing some groups of people may be more intelligent on average than others.

Anonymous said...

If genes are the answer, then how can I explain the creation of the white underclass.

The creation of a white underclass? A white underclass has always existed.

Why? Variance in IQ.

IQ Will Put You In Your Place

Desmond Jones

Anonymous said...

I make it a point to try and keep track of fellow former lefties, whether pre-9/11 or, as in my own case, post-9/11.

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