As I’ve cared for menagerie of pets and now have children, I’ve had plenty of direct experience with the idiom, “bite the hand that feeds you.” To be quite honest, I’ve done it myself. My purpose for rephrasing it in the title should be obvious. The way Western governments (particularly in Germany) have been behaving, especially in just the last year, has been hard to believe. Specifically, they have all really doubled down with immigration which has brought forth open reaction, mostly personified in Donald Trump’s continued rise. A rise that shows little sign of slowing despite Trump breaking every rule of “electability” that the assorted pundits, pollsters and political professionals had insisted was necessary for those humble folks that seek to serve the people.
I’ve been reading about demographics and race from the dark corners of the Internet for close to ten years now. The most mainstream these discussions had been until recently was from Mark Steyn’s ‘American Alone’ and follow-up ‘After America’ which both seem extraordinarily moderate with the benefit of hindsight and recent events. People are now openly talking about immigration in ways unimaginable just a few years ago.
Consider back in 2001 the controversial statement made by the former Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard:
“[W]e will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.”
This is a simple statement of sovereignty that should only be considered controversial if a leader of any nation should feel the need to state it at all. What is a nation if this isn’t true of one? Yet, this was controversial and remains so in polite Australian society. Only awful bigots like me find it reasonable, or at least this was the case until recently.
What really made me notice this change though came not from the right, but the left. Shortly after President Obama won re-election in 2012, I noticed leftists openly (and gleefully) talking about the way demographics were sending United States politics permanently left of centre. What they probably didn’t realise is that they were conceding what the shunned creatures of the alternative right had been arguing for years. What the few mainstream thinkers brave enough to think, had committed career suicide to say.
Demographics matter and yes, race matters.
Japan is Japan because it’s full of Japanese. Germany is Germany because it’s full of Germans. Nigeria is Nigeria because it’s full of Nigerians. There are as always exceptions such as the difference between North and South Korea, where the ethnicity is the same and the ideology radically different: a truly ghastly social experiment. But this is an exception and the only one that comes to mind off the top of my head.
To get back to the point of my writing this, what I don’t understand is how anyone can not seriously have noticed this. I wonder if people who would find what I have written so far appalling, really do find it appalling or are just reacting the way they should be expected to. I do remember when I thought like this though and I do think that most honestly haven’t or more likely won’t dare give it thought. I’m speaking generally of the educated middle-class. The lower-class folks tend to have a clear however inarticulate understanding of reality. As a short example, you may think Pauline Hanson is an idiot and I would agree she isn’t particularly bright, but she’s going to look a lot smarter – even prophetic, in a shorter time than you think.
The leadership of our nations though, I’m not so sure. I suspect that right up the top it is well known that demographics matter and are engineering things precisely because of that knowledge. This has definitely been the case in the UK, and given what leftists are openly saying now; quite a few of the true believers know it too.
But what puzzles me is they are smart enough to know this, are they not smart enough to know what kind of reaction may be sparked in response? If economic conditions deteriorate sufficiently (and they are deteriorating), these policies could spark vicious ethnic wars. Is this what they really want? Are those on the alternative right being duped? Or are the powers that be really desperately doubling down because this reaction was unexpected and they want to speed the process up?
The slow nibbling at the fingers of the Western people for the last fifty years have very suddenly become noticeable bites. One could be forgiven for not noticing or caring when someone else’s neighbourhood changed but now it’s really hard not to notice – whether you are directly affected or not. When I last went home, the local shopping mall looked the same but the customers were notably different. That’s just five or so years for that change. Since I visit infrequently and tend to notice these things anyway, I could be mistaken but I don’t think so.
I don’t have anything to summarise or really anything thoughtful to end on. Ultimately, there is very little I can do apart from notice and just noticing puts me in the minority. It’s all very troubling.