http://inverted-world.com/index.php/feature/feature/america_awakes/By Sam Raymond and The Realist • 6/22/07
Recent weeks have been a heartening time for race realists. For decades, we have watched white Americans sleepwalking into the horror of racial dispossession. Mass non-white immigration seemed an unchangeable fact of American life and the reign of diversity as our central cultural value seemed impregnable. However, the rejection of the immigration bill supported by President Bush has been so galvanic that it marks a basic cultural shift. Whether or not the bill passes—and it is looking increasingly unlikely that it will—, we have seen the emergence of a new immigration restrictionist consensus both among American whites and the mainstream conservative commentators who speak for them. While couched in racially neutral terms, moreover, the new restrictionist consensus is clearly rooted in an incipient race realism.
Commentators still commonly oppose amnesty on the grounds that it rewards law-breakers and is unfair to legal immigrants who wait their turn. However, it is plain that the reaction against the Bush immigration bill involves much more than indignation at the unfair treatment of Bangladeshis patiently waiting to become Americans. Rather, the focus on illegal immigration has made Americans aware of the problems created by non-white immigration in general, whether legal or not. Americans have come to recognize that Hispanics and other immigrant populations bring the plagues of gang crime, poverty, teen pregnancy, and other underclass phenomena. Furthermore, the intense anti-American nationalism of Hispanics has forced whites to confront basic issues of racial power. Finally, the American majority has seen that mass immigration is promoted by the business community to keep labor cheap, and thus works against the majority’s own interests. The result of all these recognitions is a white population that is up in arms.
Majority resentment is so powerful that intellectuals have begun to respond. The conservative commentariat has deserted Bush en masse on the issue of amnesty. Beyond this, establishment columnists have started promulgating ideas that would have been considered hair-raisingly radical even five years ago: Peggy Noonan, the consummate voice of the conservative mainstream, has proposed an immigration moratorium; Ann Coulter has written of the threat of a future non-white overclass. It is plain then that a sea-change is occurring in American consciousness.
White Americans and Immigration
Whites are without anything that can be called a “viewpoint.” While all other racial groups are allowed, and even encouraged, to have their own racial viewpoint on issues that impact them as a group, whites, by contrast, remain racially unconscious by and large, and often stubbornly so. A combination of genetic traits (which leads whites towards greater abstract and universalist thinking) coupled with the prevailing anti-white leftist cultural dynamic encourages whites to remain racially unconscious. Most whites assume a kind of generous reciprocity among all groups, which is not in fact evenly shared. The Chinese and Japanese, both very intelligent groups, nevertheless have a strong sense of ethnocentrism. General Douglas MacArthur was able to impose many changes on the post-World War II Japanese, but a widespread sense of racial guilt for their wartime atrocities was not among them. Indeed, the Chinese, Koreans, Malaysians and other groups are often exasperated at Japanese refusals to own up to their racial crimes.
By contrast, it is much easier to inculcate guilt in whites. Indeed, as the Realist has argued, the average white has been convinced that his people’s history consists of one racial crime after another.
At an immigration rally
This too.
Despite their lack of racial consciousness, immigration nevertheless is an issue that rankles the majority of whites for reasons they are still, as yet, unable to articulate. It is one of those “gateway” issues (like the proverbial “gateway drugs”) that can lead them on to harder positions and a more developed racial consciousness. This is no doubt why our political elite class has tried, and is now failing, to keep whites ignorant of the demographic transformation of America and the cultural transformation that is its inevitable result.
Immigration is not, of course, the only racially charged issue in American political life. The clear racial antagonism underlying the debates over affirmative action, multiculturalism, and bilingualism can also stir up white indignation. However, these other issues have failed to lead to white racial consciousness because the conservative establishment has obfuscated their nature. Conservatives have defused racial conflict around these issues by treating racial conflict itself as a noxious atavism. The problem, in the establishment’s view, is not that whites refuse to fight and win racial conflicts; rather, it is that minority groups persist in seeking their own interests. By insisting on racial preferences and multiculturalism, the argument goes, minorities prevent America from achieving the egalitarian, color-blind Utopia that is the natural state of man.
The immigration debate, however, unavoidably raises questions of racial power. This fact explains why our political elite class has historically assiduously ignored the obvious demographic transformation of America. The media, the educational establishment, Big Religion, politicians, bureaucrats, and the not-for-profit foundations go to great lengths to keep white Americans from pondering their demographic future, or indeed, their everyday safety at the hands of nonwhites.
Buchanan
An early voice for our side.
Up until 2001, the strategy worked. Even though illegal immigration was occurring at unprecedented levels in 2000, there was little conservative anger at George Bush’s plans for amnesty during his first presidential campaign. Immigration took a back seat to Social Security reform, tax cuts, and education in that election, and Pat Buchanan failed to garner even 500,000 votes.
The key event in the shift in white consciousness was 9/11. The World Trade Center attacks confronted whites with the hostility of non-white populations in their midst. The coverage of radical Islam that resulted from the attacks deepened the sense of threat, as did investigations into the scandalous failure of immigration authorities to keep dangerous people out of the country.
The Minuteman Project, despite its present-day internal turmoil and avowed racially neutral approach, nevertheless also helped to raise awareness of our broken borders. That it took ordinary citizens with lawn chairs, binoculars and walky-talkies to “do the job our own government won’t” was a vivid illustration of the failure to enforce the law. The fact that the Minutemen were attacked and vilified by President Bush only brought greater attention to their cause.
Likewise, the huge rallies last summer of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens in cities across the country forced whites into awareness of how rapidly America was changing. The rallies, to a large extent, backfired on their organizers. The sea of Mexican flags at the rallies, and the desecration of the American flag at the hands of some protesters, left a lasting impression on white America. “Diversity” was not the peaceful mutual enrichment of the races that it had been billed to be. Rather, diversity seemed to be leading to a struggle for racial dominance, and the American government did not seem to be fighting on the right side. The fact that hundreds of thousands of illegals could flood our streets while the law did nothing outraged many white Americans who were previously unmotivated on the issue, with talk radio as a barometer.
The American awakening was aided by a new breed of conservative commentators who made immigration their central focus. Michelle Malkin’s detailed investigations of the ineptitude of immigration law enforcement and Hispanic nationalism were crucial, as were Heather MacDonald’s reports on immigrant crime and social dysfunction. Lou Dobbs cast illegal immigration as part of the “War on the Middle Class” waged by business seeking cheap labor.
Today, the issue of immigration is the overriding concern of conservatives. Compare the beginnings of the 2008 presidential campaign with that of 2000. John McCain’s long advocacy of amnesty has already damaged his campaign, probably beyond repair. Mitt Romney’s outspoken rejection of the immigration bill has, by contrast, bolstered his campaign. Rudy Giuliani, though pro-amnesty in the past, has denounced the current bill. These politicians are responding to the increasingly well-organized mass of American whites who are willing to telephone congressmen, complain on talk show programs, and post messages on website forums by the millions urging that the tide of non-white immigration be stopped.
A Minuteman
Doing the job his government wouldn’t.
Poll numbers reveal that restrictionist sentiments are not confined to a radical minority, but are broadly shared. It is well known that a large majority of Americans oppose the current bill. A Rasmussen poll found only 26 percent of Americans supported the bill, while 48 percent opposed it. Moreover, the poll made it clear that all of the attention devoted to illegal immigration has led to a reaction against legal immigration as well. Steve Sailer, working with the polling data collected by Rasmussen, found that 73 percent of whites, 81 percent of blacks, and 57 percent of other races rated immigration reduction as “very important.” When asked whether legalizing the status of illegal aliens is very important, only 27 percent of whites agreed, along with 28 percent of blacks and 47 percent of others.
A detailed poll on attitudes towards immigration conducted by Phyllis Schlafly’s conservative Eagle Forum found that 70 percent of whites thought too many legal immigrants were allowed into the country each year, along with 84 percent of blacks, and 61 percent of other races.
It is significant that blacks are even more likely to be opposed to high levels of immigration than whites. This attitude clearly stems not from any great love for white America, but because blacks are the native racial group that is most directly in competition with immigrants.
While most poll questions show whites’ views on immigration are in line with those of other Americans, there is some evidence of white radicalism on the issue of deportation. No less than 42 percent of whites in the Eagle Forum poll said they strongly supported deporting America’s 12 million illegal aliens, and 25 percent somewhat supported it. A majority of black and other race voters felt the same way, although the numbers were lower, with 57 percent and 58 percent respectively supporting deportation. That so many people, and especially white Americans, would tell a pollster they support deportation is very significant in this politically correct age when saying the wrong thing can cost someone his job. Sentiment in favor of mass deportation may be even higher than the poll numbers indicate; after all, four percent of whites answered “not sure” on this question.
The poll also found that Protestants were tougher on immigration issues than Catholics, Evangelicals, and those of other affiliations. Married people and those with children were more likely to support deportation and immigration reduction than the single and childless. As far as income level goes, the only consistent difference was that the wealthy were more sympathetic to immigration than the poor and the middle class. For example, 66 percent of those earning less than $100,000 per year supported deportation, but only 51 percent of those earning more did. This split is consistent with the thesis of “The Ideology of the Professionals,” the last column on The Inverted World, which argued that anti-ethnocentric bias was the basis of the identity of America’s wealthy, professional class.
Although polling shows sizeable majorities of white Americans want less immigration (and even sizeable majorities of nonwhites), politicians will only respond to problems that generate voter intensity. While the average white wants less immigration, he also wants less government, less regulation, and less taxation. Generally, however, whites do not feel passionate about any of these issues. However, both polls reveal that immigration does evoke intense feelings. In cases where the polls gauged intensity of sentiment, respondents were more likely to express strong than moderate support of immigration restriction.
Conservatives and Immigration
As whites have become more aware of the threat of racial conflict and the growing non-white underclass, they have dragged their so-called “leaders” in the conservative movement towards a harder line. Before 9/11, immigration restrictionism was not a central conservative issue. Some of the giants of the conservative movement, such as Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, Russell Kirk, and so forth, showed little awareness the issue was brewing during their days. Outlets like the Rush Limbaugh Show, Human Events, the Heritage Foundation, and the Fox News Channel, went on year in and year out without ever talking about the increasingly obvious demographic transformation of America. Perhaps they avoided the issue in an attempt not to antagonize donors in the business community. Only a few conservatives like Pat Buchanan and Michael Savage made immigration a central concern in the 1980s and 90s, and were ostracized by the Republican establishment for doing so.
After 9/11, the new breed of mainstream conservative immigration critics like Malkin, Mac Donald, and Dobbs arose, and their message has proved so powerful and popular that their viewpoint has now become dominant among the conservative commentariat.
Peggy Noonan
Peggy Noonan surprised us.
Indeed, the debate surrounding the last two attempts to pass an amnesty bill saw the emergence a new restrictionist consensus among conservative commentators. Many who used to support Bush down the line have broken bitterly with him. A good example is Peggy Noonan, the former Reagan speech-writer whose column appears the Wall Street Journal, hardly an organ of populist radicalism. Noonan was one of the most ardent of Bush-boosters during his first term. In 2003, she dubbed him “President Backbone” and spoke of him in terms reserved for great presidents: “George W. Bush is an American of the big and real America. He believes in it all—in the vision of the founders, in the meaning of freedom, in the founding and enduring ideas of our country… . America appears to have a President worthy of its people.” Although Noonan never seems to have praised amnesty in her columns, she never criticized Bush’s immigration policy during his 2000 campaign and first term, and was generally favorable to Hispanic outreach.
In the succeeding years, Noonan’s attitude toward Bush progressed from euphoria, to sympathetic criticism, to active disappointment, and finally to resolute enmity. There were many causes of the progression—doubts about the conduct of the Iraq War, and disapproval of Harriet Miers and excessive federal spending—but clearly, the overriding one was amnesty. Noonan began criticizing the President on amnesty in 2005 and has devoted three of her last four columns to the issue. Her savage rejection of Bush is evident in passages like the following:
Naturally I hope the new immigration bill fails. It is less a bill than a big dirty ball of mischief, malfeasance and mendacity, with a touch of class malice, and it’s being pushed by a White House that is at once cynical and inept. The bill’s Capitol Hill supporters have a great vain popinjay’s pride in their own higher compassion. They are inclusive and you’re not, you cur, you gun-totin’ truckdriver’s-hat-wearin’ yahoo. It’s all so complex, and you’d understand this if you weren’t sort of dumb.
Although Noonan’s anger is particularly intense, the same sentiment about Bush is evident in many other writers who used to ardently defend him, including Laura Ingraham, Cal Thomas, and Mark Steyn.
Noonan’s writing reveals another interesting aspect of the progression of conservative opinion on immigration: the pundits are not merely rejecting amnesty, but have started opposing the very principle of mass immigration. Although Noonan pays deference to the nation of immigrants rhetoric that has always been fundamental to her beliefs, she comes out in favor of an immigration moratorium:
We should close the border, pause, absorb what we have, and set ourselves to “patriating” the newcomers who are here. The young of AmeriCorps might help teach them English. Those reaching retirement age, who happen to be the last people in America who were taught and know American history, could help them learn the story of our country. We could, as a nation, set our minds to this.
As novel as this sort of proposal is in mainstream conservative writing, Noonan shows no recognition of the horror that mass immigration could potentially visit upon America. However, there are glimpses even of that in the writing of Ann Coulter, who has always shown white nationalist impulses. In “Bush’s America: Roach Motel,” Coulter recognizes the full danger of racial conflict in a white minority America:
In 1960, whites were 90 percent of the country. The Census Bureau recently estimated that whites already account for less than two-thirds of the population and will be a minority by 2050. Other estimates put that day much sooner.
One may assume the new majority will not be such compassionate overlords as the white majority has been. If this sort of drastic change were legally imposed on any group other than white Americans, it would be called genocide. Yet whites are called racists merely for mentioning the fact current immigration law is intentionally designed to reduce their percentage in the population.
Coulter’s makes oblique, but unmistakable, reference to biological racial differences and their effects culture:
If liberals think Iraqis are genetically incapable of pulling off even the most rudimentary form of democracy, why do they believe 50 million Mexicans will magically become good Americans, imbued in the nation’s history and culture, upon crossing the Rio Grande? Maybe we should dunk Iraqis in the Rio and see what happens.
Ann Coulter
She has clear white nationalist sympathies.
Coulter is no fringe writer. Though controversial, she is an icon whose columns are read by millions. That Americans would respond to such a clear appeal to racial self-interest speaks volumes.
It is also worth noting that the career of neoconservative Hispanic Linda Chavez is finally taking a long overdue corrective. For years, she was somehow able to pass within the conservative movement as a “reasonable voice” on Hispanic issues. However, her attacks on immigration restrictionists as racists were liberal boilerplate.
This changed after her last column, in which she called amnesty’s opponents “a tiny group of angry, frightened and prejudiced loudmouths backed by political opportunists who exploit them.” Chavez’s attempt to discredit the immigration reform movement through the cliché of the angry, ignorant white racist cut no ice whatsoever among conservatives. As Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review Online’s Corner said, “That anyone who disagrees with her about immigration policy is a racist is all that Chavez seems to have learned from her years of work on the issue. I will never trust her judgment again.” It appears that among conservatives at least, the charge of racism has been defanged when it comes to immigration.
Ponnuru’s response reveals the enduring weakness of the new restrictionist consensus, however, as does the very name of the person who wrote it. Race realists will agree with Chavez that the race is central to the immigration debate, despite their abhorrence of her anti-white, pro-La Raza interpretation of race. Moreover, race realists believe that immigration must be opposed from a specifically pro-white perspective that an Indian commentator is unlikely ever to understand.
However, immigration reform is a big issue that will require a large and politically centrist coalition to bring about. In the near term at least, the most good will be done by commentators and activists who use non-racial arguments. Dan Stein, president of the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform offers a good example of such coalition-building. He takes Linda Chavez on at National Review Online here:
Chavez seems no different than the Southern Poverty Law Center — she is an enemy of intellectual freedom trying to control debate and discussion through intimidation. The immigration issue is complex and emotional, and it is ill-served by ad hominem namecalling.
Furthermore, the new conservative restrictionism, while couched in egalitarian terms, is like a cocoon in which the chrysalis of realism slowly matures. Although the new conservatives reject the idea of innate racial differences and superficially oppose white racial solidarity, their commentary on minority social dysfunction, the betrayal of the American majority by the government, and anti-American immigrant nationalism buttresses the position of race realists and creates an atmosphere in which we can thrive.
The opponents of illegal immigration also give race realists an example to emulate. The new restrictionist consensus began with the activism of a small base. Is it too farfetched to hope that a base of activists could inculcate in Americans a deeper awareness of the reality of race?
Finally, on a personal note, I am amazed at how easy it now is to be outspokenly critical of immigration among white people, even those I have only just met. For a long time, we knew the polls were in our favor, but people would still not feel comfortable speaking openly about the issue. All that has changed. The open borders advocates are finally on the defensive. The battle is now joined.
Sam Raymond is a writer and attorney.
Topic: America Awakes (Read 2105 times)