Good stuff, Ed. It illuminates a feature of the contemporary Western mind that I have been pondering; namely, an extension of the Good Samaritan rule whereby inaction becomes tantamount to being a knowing accessory to the underlying crime.
Somehow, not taking in Syrian refugees is the same thing as being a Baathist tyrant. Not aiding Ukraine is somehow the same thing as helping Putin. Not affirming one's "gender identity" is the moral equivalent of bigotry, etc.
All nations, not just Western, owe their citizens a duty to maintain a sense of social trust and stability. The current progressive ideology, shaped in part and trapped by the prison of history, ignores this reality.
A civil war is bruing in Britian, it's the look on some people's faces and it's occasionally suggested by some people if you drop hints, no look of disgust or repulsion to the idea just a simple, 'yeah, most likely.'
The idiots in Westminster will reap what they have sown in now, no getting out of it.
Wishful thinking, I fear. I have seen the same looks on people's faces since I was young and that was quite a while ago. Dissatisfaction with Westminster is also nothing new.
I have a tendency to see things in the light of the last person I read or watched or listened to and today that happens to be Ed Dutton. Consequently, at this moment, I believe that western civilisation is doomed, mainly due to a steady decline in IQ, and will only cling on in tiny pockets in eastern Europe, which will ultimately birth a new civilisation. Like him, I don't foresee a mass uprising of dispossessed westerners against the elites. Perhaps if I started reading the Guardian on a daily basis I would begin to feel better about the current direction of our society.
Yeah Dutton has shaped my views of the situation too. He can be pretty wacky but once you get past the eccentricity he is... pretty much right. This is very good, especially the second half about the census results and how he interprets them: https://www.bitchute.com/video/cjKYpnCv4ar8/
The most optimistic thing I have to say about my own place in this situation is that analogized to Rome we are in the fourth century AD, the 300s, and the West won't get to the fall of the Western Roman Empire type stuff until the 22nd century, when I'll be long gone.
Also, IMHO the West was mortally wounded by the World Wards, especially the second one, and just hasn't completely bled out yet. It will bleed out, eventually, as there's no recovering from something like the Holocaust and World War II. But it's already over. Eastern Europe might survive.
Mr. K Kerrick do you subscribe to Dutton's Substack? He's on here now at jollyheretic.com.
I suspect the decline is far more progressed than people assume given the young European population is already in a state of irreversible collapse. This is both a cause and a contributor to a looming sovereign debt crisis that can only be resolved by us getting far poorer. Politicians are resented because at some level it is known there is now no solution to this. I'm remined of the Ernest Hemingway point that you bankrupt gradually and then all at once.
I seem to be the only person nowadays who doesn't know the timeline of the Fall of Rome. How has it suddenly come about that so many people are au fait with ancient Roman history? It's a nice development but one that has passed me by.
When you're as eccentric and talk as fast as Ed then you can slip some things past the listener. However, yesterday I heard him say something which did stick in my craw a little. He said that Michael Persinger, the creator of the God Helmet, was a brilliant man and the only reason Richard Dawkins didn't feel much while wearing this helmet is because he's dead inside. Well, maybe. Or maybe the researchers who failed to replicate Persinger's findings were onto something. Ed is able to slip things passed you in the same way comedians do. Still, as long as 95% of what he says is probably right I don't care.
Not sure that I agree that the West is a dead man walking, having been killed around 1945 but still not realising it. Surely eastern Europe was more badly crippled than the west? And surely they carry as much Holocaust guilt as we do?
Do they? They seem to be less inclined to import the third world just because if you don't you're literally Hitler. They also seem uninterested in importing American identity politics.
What I meant is that they SHOULD feel at least as much guilt as the Brits or the Americans. After all, it wasn't us who helped ship Jews off to concentration camps, though we did little to stop it.
But you're right, these countries clearly don't feel obliged to invite the whole of the Third World to go and live with them. But what makes you think this is all because of WWII? It could simply be that Eastern Bloc countries were very poor and who wants to emigrate to a poor country? Also they have no history of slavery or colonialism to feel guilty about. And it could still happen that Poland etc. will follow the west's lead in this mad experiment in mass migration. If they do, will that also be because of the war and the Holocaust? There seem to me to be any number of reasons why the west seems is falling apart and WWII wouldn't have occurred to me as being the primary reason.
I agree. It's always worth becoming tougher, more resilient, less precious, able to live on just a turnip and some water, regardless of whether or not a civil war comes or things collapse. I may even start to wear a haircloth shirt, just for the hell of it.
(1) The British left who push for open borders are not at all sympathetic of Israel. This does not square with the holocaust shaping their world view.
(2) The US is generally very disinterested in things beyond its borders, and prevaricated (especially so Democrats) about getting into the war, despite mounting evidence. Also, the US left seems so obsessed with African slavery as to have no band width for anything else. Although the treatment of American Indians is sometimes tacked on, but very much as a half hearted afterthought.
(3) Related to (1), the history of Jews is not one of victimhood but one of self reliance and overcoming. These are not things the left likes. There is no perma-victim to justify the left’s existence.
(4) That said, Jews were hugely influential on 20th C US culture, and the impact of the holocaust would have been expressed and incorporated, thereby, far more than if that had not been the case.
(5) I suspect some left leaning people are highly emotional, and struggle with the hard case, to the exclusion of the bigger picture. For example, the horrific images of Aylan Kurdi would touch anyone, but one’s feelings about that are not a realistic basis for policy.
(6) And there are many on the left who simply hate/think very poorly of the existing order. For them immigration is simply a great way to bring it all down.
Agree with much of this, but I think you underestimate the deep impact the Holocaust has on the liberal mindset, notwithstanding Leftist criticism of Israel.
The Holocaust story and images have made the Western liberal extremely vulnerable to emotional blackmail, making the "Never Again" mantra have misplaced application in our discourse.
Combine this with the Selma envy of younger American liberals, and you get open borders, the equity regime, and transgenderism.
It's entirely gut feel but for me it boils down to Israel (and Jews) being successful in "western terms" and the left being unable bear that. Also, the left can only really blame Germany for the holocaust, whereas African slavery has more reach as virtually all can be implicated. The past three years since GF seem to support this to some extent. I can think of no other cause which electrifies the left to this extent. Why that is the case is fascinating. If Wakanda were real, would the left's view of Africans as sacred victim diminish
I think the Holocaust was just so much much worse than slavery. Worse even than transatlantic slavery, which was horrific and monstrous, and definitely worse than the pre-industrial slavery found in Africa and all around the world.
Totally agree with the sacred victim idea, it's a running theme through the culture wars.
Of course the Holocaust was worse than slavery, but Jews are now "white" and therefore no longer a sacred race. There is not one logical human being who would choose being a Polish Jew in 1942 over being a slave. Monticello or Dachau? Anyone who chooses the latter is doing so because of the emotional obsession we now have with slavery and black victimhood.
Slavery was a horror show, but the institution was not designed to eradicate an entire people. The Holocaust was literally that--an attempt to liquidate an entire people and its culture.
I grew up in a Northeastern city with a large Jewish population. One of my childhood friends was a Jewish girl whose father had been one of the lucky ones who made it out of Germany in 1938; but his brother did not and died in the camps. My friend was a Reform Jew and while very secular, she was still very into being Jewish. When Trump was elected she had a bit of a freak out - every day posting on Facebook how Trump’s immigration policy was Exactly The Same as what caused her uncle’s death in Auschwitz, and building the wall was basically being Hitler. In fact she was so upset about Trump that she emigrated to Israel...which, last time I checked, actually has a wall.
I'm sure you're right that many pro-refugee advocates see things in such terms. I feel equally sure that many who are pro-open borders for other reasons (economic, ideological) are quite happy to use such historical examples to shut down meaningful disagreement about limitations on current accommodation. Certainly the treaties entered into after the War have now become blockers to enacting any kind of border control at all, even though the world has totally changed. We appear to have lurched from an instinctive culture of miserliness about such things to a total abnegation of national interest. I think that's decadent rather than admirable, but it's not going to change now. If even 'post-Fascist' Meloni is content to see immigration at the current levels, then there's clearly no will from any governing class to do anything about it.
Italy has a pool of mothers close to a third of 50 years ago. It also has a TFR or close to one, meaning that pool will half every 25- 30 years. To some extent everything else is noise.
Had Italy continued on a path at or close to replacement value, immigration would not be an issue.
I don't think immigration is an answer to Italy's demographics. The answer would have been to take the issue seriously when it first became apparent 50 years. Year on year exponential decay is the ultimate slippery slope and that it was allowed to happen, without efforts to arrest, will likely be the policy decision/non decision that ends Europe. It is an astonishing state of affairs. And now, as if to add insult to injury, the weight of the state is thrown behind things like covid and net zero. One could weep.
It's worth recalling that the Evian Conference took place in a year in which the Great Depression went into a double dip in the US. Unemployment in the states, which had gone below 15% in 1937 surged to nearly 20% the next year in what is sometimes called the "recession in the depression."
Given this, it's hard to believe FDR could've summoned the political will in the US to do anything about accepting refugees even if he was inclined to do so. Where would they find work in a country where one of out five adults was unemployed?
The Democratic Party was the more immigrant friendly party at the time. The New Deal coalition included those many Jewish and Catholic immigrants that were afterwards excluded by the 1924 Immigration Bill. But it was an impossible sell during the Great Depression to argue that the US should reopen its gates to allow in refugees.
It is difficult to think with wisdom and clarity within one's time. For one's time always has a way of warping one's thinking. In the meeting you well recount, leaders were close to clueless about the danger to Jews. Today, leaders are clueless (or don't care) about the harm the mass migrations are doing to the West.
17 June, 1940: Home Intelligence found mood of ‘gloomy apprehension’ which was most common in ‘the middle classes and women’, with working-class men most confident of British victory.
In allt the debates about immigration, people have been very ready to accuse their opponents of wickedness.
But there has only been one real villain in the debate, and that is the Conservative Party - by which I don't mean the ordinary backbenchers or members, but those Tories with influence and nous.
Since 2010 at least, the Tories have been stringing the public along by pretending to hear their concerns, pretending to be about to tackle and reduce immigration - but never doing so.
Instead, in recent years the Tories have handed out immigrant visas even more liberally than Labour did.
Of course the Tory leadership never had any intention of reducing immigration ! Their Busines and Financial backers wouldn't want them to.
In other words, the Tories are guilty of criminal fraud and deception.
Which are evil in anyone's money, whatever beliefs about immigration they hold.
An excellent essay, tapping into the tug of war between recognizing a sense of equality with all other humans and the fellowship in our humanity, versus wanting to protect and preserve your own cultural niche with the knowledge that significant migration will forever change that culture. Both are strong human needs, and are often contradictory.
I tend to justify my dislike of mass immigration with scientific-sounding arguments like, 'There's already a housing crisis...Diversity leads to a reduction in social capital etc. etc. Yet if there were a huge natural disaster in Japan tomorrow I would say, 'Let's take in all 125 million of them!' whereas I'd rather not take in a single Traveller family. I'm guessing that Guardian readers feel the same way about African and Middle Eastern men, and indeed the whole world (perhaps minus white people), as I do about the Japanese. So though I can understand the compassion of Guardian readers - which reminds me of Christianity's blanket injunction to love ALL men -, I find I really don't love all men. I only love a few...plus the Japanese.
It will be interesting to see (the gods being good, of course) whether the mythic influences of WW2 wain as the generations that can remember it and the aftermath pass on. Even growing up in the 80s, 'The War' still cast a long shadow, from grandparents recollections to the endless war movies repeated on TV.
Yet, as the 21st century matures, the distance for newer generations will seem as far away in time as the Napoleonic Wars did to our late 20th century minds. Can it still exert the same power and serve as the foundation of the new moral order?
The prosperous liberals who have led the pro-immigration cause have so far been unaffected by immigration.
But with Britain running out of accommodation for migrants, and with students being turfed out of their promised residences to make way for migrants, things are beginning to change.
But it will be too late to save the prosperous liberals, Brits of any race or class or Britain itself.
All will be crucified by chaos, poverty and mass-homelessness, perhaps compulsory billeting.
Perhaps that's what Christianity demands. I only hope we're all prepared for it.
Whether Jesus would answer the question "What would Jesus do ?" by being very liberal on immigration, I don't honestly know.
I wish we'd taken 100,000s of Jewish refugees in 1938. I think you're right that this is what has established our world view, which has led to utterly insane levels of immigration, which no major party has made any effort to control, for the 20 odd years since Blair came to power. This immigration has probably been a good thing for the immigrants, and has led to London evolving into a truly global city, which at least makes it a very easy place for a new arrival to fit in. In terms of identity, it seems to me that British can act as a broad and non-ethnic label, like Roman once did, we are all British Citizens (formerly subjects). Whereas English should be reserved for people who are actually ethnically English. Which implies that you don't have to be English to play for the England football team. (These are the circles my brain moves in).
The same Colombians did not save the Basques from Franco or the actual Luffwaffe bombs-despite the fact that Basque business sense and skill brought industry to their continent. Neither did Devalera import Basque or Slovak widows and maids to find matches for the Batchelors of Connaught. Rhodesia turned away Polish RAF veterans. History doesn't strike me as a prison because remembering is as it (always was an active choice)
A Dane at work mentioned that all Danish kids go to Aushwitz before their schooling finishes. I found that baffling. I am not saying don't teach the holocaust, or anything like that.
When Britain's liberal conscience and God Emperor of Centrist Dad Podcasts Gary Lineker said the government's rhetoric on migrants was like 1930s Germany, smarter people than me pointed out it was actually closer to Britain's attitude to Jewish refugees of the era.
History is indeed a prison - a kind of mental gulag, wherein we eat the thin gruel of received wisdom, kept 'safe' from the inconvenient truths that lie outside its sheer and spotless walls.
Had England simply made peace with our fellow Germanics, when the opportunity presented itself, rather than pursue the insanity of further conflict (with half a million German civilians incinerated in the holocaust of Allied bombing raids), while saving the worst despotism in history from its deserved destruction, then the mass shootings of Jews in Eastern Europe might have been averted, and the Madagascar plan implemented.
Instead, we fought an unnecessary war, and pursued the total defeat that resulted in famine, medical shortages, and a typhus epidemic that killed millions of concentration camp inmates.
Today, hostility towards the mass immigration of refugees derives from the noted negative impact they have on their new host societies. Perhaps an analogous reality explains the delegates' reticence in 1938?
So if the UK had made peace with Germany in 1940, they’d have invaded the Soviet Union, but this time without murdering Jews on a massive scale? Really? How do you know?
I don't know. It's a counterfactual. We can only think in terms of probabilities. Most likely Himmler would still have shot a lot of Jews along with the many Russians and Poles who were similarly slaughtered. But the total number who died would, I think, have been in the tens of thousands. Britain could have had peace with Hitler, but made the deal conditional on fulfillment of the Madagascar plan (in which our merchant navy could have actively assisted). Or, considering the active Nazi support for Jewish Palestine in the 1930s (60% of all investment from 1933-1939), we could have just promoted the Zionist migration (instead of preventing it).
Of course, Barbarossa stemmed in part from Germany's insecure position (cut off from export markets, in need of resources (specifically petroleum)). It was more about the Baku oilfields, and less about lebensraum. This position would have been wholly altered by peace with the Allies (and, specifically, an end to the international embargo on German trade).
I suppose it depends on whom you read. People say similar things (wrongly) about Putin today. Perhaps the same was true in 1940.
In short, the narrative of crazed totalitarians seeking world domination seems a little hystrionic, neurotic, and, frankly, semitic. The alternative (ethno-nationalist authoritarians pursuing economic autarky and territorial integrity) is a more realistic appraisal of events.
Of course, it is the former, and not the latter, that forms the foundation of our modern mythos, so you're more likely to believe it.
there was simply no way we could have made peace with Nazi Germany. the only way to have prevented war was to have killed Hitler when it was still possible, or act aggressively enough that the Germans did. But for historical reasons that wasn't possible.
Why could we not have made peace with Nazi Germany, when Hitler repeatedly sought an alliance with the British Empire (an institution he openly admired, as part of his general appreciation for Anglo-Saxons, who he considered fellow Teutonics), allowed the escape of our forces from Dunkirk, and refused to bomb Britain until repeated provocations finally forced his hand?
Just look at what the Nazis actually DID in the real world, rather than what might have been. Or are you saying ‘we made them do it’, so somehow they were not fully responsible for their evil actions?
So you think we (we being the British, not just the English) could have gambled on letting the Nazis: create their empire in the East, which would have involved murdering millions; totally dominate Continental Europe; and then trust their word that they’d be nice to us from such a powerful position?
We, who were free to call ourselves 'English' as a catch-all for the UK until the post-war cultural changes forced us to redefine ourselves, could have maintained our Empire overseas (as Hitler proposed) and allowed Germany and the Soviets to either fight it out or make peace. It wasn't our responsibility. As for what the Nazis would have done, their treatment of the Slovaks and Czechs is quite instructive.
I think they were responsible for their evil actions, just as the British, a few decades before, were responsible for our actions when we starved half of all Boer children to death in order to win a predatory war. Such is history.
Good stuff, Ed. It illuminates a feature of the contemporary Western mind that I have been pondering; namely, an extension of the Good Samaritan rule whereby inaction becomes tantamount to being a knowing accessory to the underlying crime.
Somehow, not taking in Syrian refugees is the same thing as being a Baathist tyrant. Not aiding Ukraine is somehow the same thing as helping Putin. Not affirming one's "gender identity" is the moral equivalent of bigotry, etc.
All nations, not just Western, owe their citizens a duty to maintain a sense of social trust and stability. The current progressive ideology, shaped in part and trapped by the prison of history, ignores this reality.
It's obviously Christian in derivation. And it's worth remembering that the Roman soldiers who taunted Jesus on the Cross were probably Samaritans.
(sorry, that's very neopagan of me)
Until John Wayne stepped in
'Truly, this was the Son of God'
All the proof I needed. Until then, I was Thomas.
"More awe, John, we need more awe.."
There are 11000 people in Brasil who are trying to get reconition as Samaritans
wow didn't know that. Are they good?
Lol
A civil war is bruing in Britian, it's the look on some people's faces and it's occasionally suggested by some people if you drop hints, no look of disgust or repulsion to the idea just a simple, 'yeah, most likely.'
The idiots in Westminster will reap what they have sown in now, no getting out of it.
Wishful thinking, I fear. I have seen the same looks on people's faces since I was young and that was quite a while ago. Dissatisfaction with Westminster is also nothing new.
I have a tendency to see things in the light of the last person I read or watched or listened to and today that happens to be Ed Dutton. Consequently, at this moment, I believe that western civilisation is doomed, mainly due to a steady decline in IQ, and will only cling on in tiny pockets in eastern Europe, which will ultimately birth a new civilisation. Like him, I don't foresee a mass uprising of dispossessed westerners against the elites. Perhaps if I started reading the Guardian on a daily basis I would begin to feel better about the current direction of our society.
Yeah Dutton has shaped my views of the situation too. He can be pretty wacky but once you get past the eccentricity he is... pretty much right. This is very good, especially the second half about the census results and how he interprets them: https://www.bitchute.com/video/cjKYpnCv4ar8/
The most optimistic thing I have to say about my own place in this situation is that analogized to Rome we are in the fourth century AD, the 300s, and the West won't get to the fall of the Western Roman Empire type stuff until the 22nd century, when I'll be long gone.
Also, IMHO the West was mortally wounded by the World Wards, especially the second one, and just hasn't completely bled out yet. It will bleed out, eventually, as there's no recovering from something like the Holocaust and World War II. But it's already over. Eastern Europe might survive.
Mr. K Kerrick do you subscribe to Dutton's Substack? He's on here now at jollyheretic.com.
I suspect the decline is far more progressed than people assume given the young European population is already in a state of irreversible collapse. This is both a cause and a contributor to a looming sovereign debt crisis that can only be resolved by us getting far poorer. Politicians are resented because at some level it is known there is now no solution to this. I'm remined of the Ernest Hemingway point that you bankrupt gradually and then all at once.
I seem to be the only person nowadays who doesn't know the timeline of the Fall of Rome. How has it suddenly come about that so many people are au fait with ancient Roman history? It's a nice development but one that has passed me by.
When you're as eccentric and talk as fast as Ed then you can slip some things past the listener. However, yesterday I heard him say something which did stick in my craw a little. He said that Michael Persinger, the creator of the God Helmet, was a brilliant man and the only reason Richard Dawkins didn't feel much while wearing this helmet is because he's dead inside. Well, maybe. Or maybe the researchers who failed to replicate Persinger's findings were onto something. Ed is able to slip things passed you in the same way comedians do. Still, as long as 95% of what he says is probably right I don't care.
Not sure that I agree that the West is a dead man walking, having been killed around 1945 but still not realising it. Surely eastern Europe was more badly crippled than the west? And surely they carry as much Holocaust guilt as we do?
Do they? They seem to be less inclined to import the third world just because if you don't you're literally Hitler. They also seem uninterested in importing American identity politics.
What I meant is that they SHOULD feel at least as much guilt as the Brits or the Americans. After all, it wasn't us who helped ship Jews off to concentration camps, though we did little to stop it.
But you're right, these countries clearly don't feel obliged to invite the whole of the Third World to go and live with them. But what makes you think this is all because of WWII? It could simply be that Eastern Bloc countries were very poor and who wants to emigrate to a poor country? Also they have no history of slavery or colonialism to feel guilty about. And it could still happen that Poland etc. will follow the west's lead in this mad experiment in mass migration. If they do, will that also be because of the war and the Holocaust? There seem to me to be any number of reasons why the west seems is falling apart and WWII wouldn't have occurred to me as being the primary reason.
Maybe or maybe not, I'm still going to make sure I'm mentally prepared as best as I can be for it.
I agree. It's always worth becoming tougher, more resilient, less precious, able to live on just a turnip and some water, regardless of whether or not a civil war comes or things collapse. I may even start to wear a haircloth shirt, just for the hell of it.
Very interesting. But a few quibbles:
(1) The British left who push for open borders are not at all sympathetic of Israel. This does not square with the holocaust shaping their world view.
(2) The US is generally very disinterested in things beyond its borders, and prevaricated (especially so Democrats) about getting into the war, despite mounting evidence. Also, the US left seems so obsessed with African slavery as to have no band width for anything else. Although the treatment of American Indians is sometimes tacked on, but very much as a half hearted afterthought.
(3) Related to (1), the history of Jews is not one of victimhood but one of self reliance and overcoming. These are not things the left likes. There is no perma-victim to justify the left’s existence.
(4) That said, Jews were hugely influential on 20th C US culture, and the impact of the holocaust would have been expressed and incorporated, thereby, far more than if that had not been the case.
(5) I suspect some left leaning people are highly emotional, and struggle with the hard case, to the exclusion of the bigger picture. For example, the horrific images of Aylan Kurdi would touch anyone, but one’s feelings about that are not a realistic basis for policy.
(6) And there are many on the left who simply hate/think very poorly of the existing order. For them immigration is simply a great way to bring it all down.
I think with regards to 1, the Left sees Israel as both a colonial state and also an endorsement of nationalism.
That's exactly it. Israel has come to represent something other than the Holocaust, even if the two are inseparable.
Agree with much of this, but I think you underestimate the deep impact the Holocaust has on the liberal mindset, notwithstanding Leftist criticism of Israel.
The Holocaust story and images have made the Western liberal extremely vulnerable to emotional blackmail, making the "Never Again" mantra have misplaced application in our discourse.
Combine this with the Selma envy of younger American liberals, and you get open borders, the equity regime, and transgenderism.
It's entirely gut feel but for me it boils down to Israel (and Jews) being successful in "western terms" and the left being unable bear that. Also, the left can only really blame Germany for the holocaust, whereas African slavery has more reach as virtually all can be implicated. The past three years since GF seem to support this to some extent. I can think of no other cause which electrifies the left to this extent. Why that is the case is fascinating. If Wakanda were real, would the left's view of Africans as sacred victim diminish
I think the Holocaust was just so much much worse than slavery. Worse even than transatlantic slavery, which was horrific and monstrous, and definitely worse than the pre-industrial slavery found in Africa and all around the world.
Totally agree with the sacred victim idea, it's a running theme through the culture wars.
Of course the Holocaust was worse than slavery, but Jews are now "white" and therefore no longer a sacred race. There is not one logical human being who would choose being a Polish Jew in 1942 over being a slave. Monticello or Dachau? Anyone who chooses the latter is doing so because of the emotional obsession we now have with slavery and black victimhood.
Slavery was a horror show, but the institution was not designed to eradicate an entire people. The Holocaust was literally that--an attempt to liquidate an entire people and its culture.
yeah, hence Dianne Abbot's absurd equation of Jim Crow-era South.
I grew up in a Northeastern city with a large Jewish population. One of my childhood friends was a Jewish girl whose father had been one of the lucky ones who made it out of Germany in 1938; but his brother did not and died in the camps. My friend was a Reform Jew and while very secular, she was still very into being Jewish. When Trump was elected she had a bit of a freak out - every day posting on Facebook how Trump’s immigration policy was Exactly The Same as what caused her uncle’s death in Auschwitz, and building the wall was basically being Hitler. In fact she was so upset about Trump that she emigrated to Israel...which, last time I checked, actually has a wall.
I'm sure you're right that many pro-refugee advocates see things in such terms. I feel equally sure that many who are pro-open borders for other reasons (economic, ideological) are quite happy to use such historical examples to shut down meaningful disagreement about limitations on current accommodation. Certainly the treaties entered into after the War have now become blockers to enacting any kind of border control at all, even though the world has totally changed. We appear to have lurched from an instinctive culture of miserliness about such things to a total abnegation of national interest. I think that's decadent rather than admirable, but it's not going to change now. If even 'post-Fascist' Meloni is content to see immigration at the current levels, then there's clearly no will from any governing class to do anything about it.
Italy has a pool of mothers close to a third of 50 years ago. It also has a TFR or close to one, meaning that pool will half every 25- 30 years. To some extent everything else is noise.
Had Italy continued on a path at or close to replacement value, immigration would not be an issue.
So why young Arab and African men, and not Venezuleans or Argentines? Why not Phillipina familes
I don't think immigration is an answer to Italy's demographics. The answer would have been to take the issue seriously when it first became apparent 50 years. Year on year exponential decay is the ultimate slippery slope and that it was allowed to happen, without efforts to arrest, will likely be the policy decision/non decision that ends Europe. It is an astonishing state of affairs. And now, as if to add insult to injury, the weight of the state is thrown behind things like covid and net zero. One could weep.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy
It's worth recalling that the Evian Conference took place in a year in which the Great Depression went into a double dip in the US. Unemployment in the states, which had gone below 15% in 1937 surged to nearly 20% the next year in what is sometimes called the "recession in the depression."
Given this, it's hard to believe FDR could've summoned the political will in the US to do anything about accepting refugees even if he was inclined to do so. Where would they find work in a country where one of out five adults was unemployed?
The Democratic Party was the more immigrant friendly party at the time. The New Deal coalition included those many Jewish and Catholic immigrants that were afterwards excluded by the 1924 Immigration Bill. But it was an impossible sell during the Great Depression to argue that the US should reopen its gates to allow in refugees.
It is difficult to think with wisdom and clarity within one's time. For one's time always has a way of warping one's thinking. In the meeting you well recount, leaders were close to clueless about the danger to Jews. Today, leaders are clueless (or don't care) about the harm the mass migrations are doing to the West.
More on how time warps our thinking:
https://markmarshall.substack.com/p/we-are-all-prisoners-of-time
17 June, 1940: Home Intelligence found mood of ‘gloomy apprehension’ which was most common in ‘the middle classes and women’, with working-class men most confident of British victory.
In allt the debates about immigration, people have been very ready to accuse their opponents of wickedness.
But there has only been one real villain in the debate, and that is the Conservative Party - by which I don't mean the ordinary backbenchers or members, but those Tories with influence and nous.
Since 2010 at least, the Tories have been stringing the public along by pretending to hear their concerns, pretending to be about to tackle and reduce immigration - but never doing so.
Instead, in recent years the Tories have handed out immigrant visas even more liberally than Labour did.
Of course the Tory leadership never had any intention of reducing immigration ! Their Busines and Financial backers wouldn't want them to.
In other words, the Tories are guilty of criminal fraud and deception.
Which are evil in anyone's money, whatever beliefs about immigration they hold.
An excellent essay, tapping into the tug of war between recognizing a sense of equality with all other humans and the fellowship in our humanity, versus wanting to protect and preserve your own cultural niche with the knowledge that significant migration will forever change that culture. Both are strong human needs, and are often contradictory.
thank you!
I tend to justify my dislike of mass immigration with scientific-sounding arguments like, 'There's already a housing crisis...Diversity leads to a reduction in social capital etc. etc. Yet if there were a huge natural disaster in Japan tomorrow I would say, 'Let's take in all 125 million of them!' whereas I'd rather not take in a single Traveller family. I'm guessing that Guardian readers feel the same way about African and Middle Eastern men, and indeed the whole world (perhaps minus white people), as I do about the Japanese. So though I can understand the compassion of Guardian readers - which reminds me of Christianity's blanket injunction to love ALL men -, I find I really don't love all men. I only love a few...plus the Japanese.
It will be interesting to see (the gods being good, of course) whether the mythic influences of WW2 wain as the generations that can remember it and the aftermath pass on. Even growing up in the 80s, 'The War' still cast a long shadow, from grandparents recollections to the endless war movies repeated on TV.
Yet, as the 21st century matures, the distance for newer generations will seem as far away in time as the Napoleonic Wars did to our late 20th century minds. Can it still exert the same power and serve as the foundation of the new moral order?
The prosperous liberals who have led the pro-immigration cause have so far been unaffected by immigration.
But with Britain running out of accommodation for migrants, and with students being turfed out of their promised residences to make way for migrants, things are beginning to change.
But it will be too late to save the prosperous liberals, Brits of any race or class or Britain itself.
All will be crucified by chaos, poverty and mass-homelessness, perhaps compulsory billeting.
Perhaps that's what Christianity demands. I only hope we're all prepared for it.
Whether Jesus would answer the question "What would Jesus do ?" by being very liberal on immigration, I don't honestly know.
I wish we'd taken 100,000s of Jewish refugees in 1938. I think you're right that this is what has established our world view, which has led to utterly insane levels of immigration, which no major party has made any effort to control, for the 20 odd years since Blair came to power. This immigration has probably been a good thing for the immigrants, and has led to London evolving into a truly global city, which at least makes it a very easy place for a new arrival to fit in. In terms of identity, it seems to me that British can act as a broad and non-ethnic label, like Roman once did, we are all British Citizens (formerly subjects). Whereas English should be reserved for people who are actually ethnically English. Which implies that you don't have to be English to play for the England football team. (These are the circles my brain moves in).
The same Colombians did not save the Basques from Franco or the actual Luffwaffe bombs-despite the fact that Basque business sense and skill brought industry to their continent. Neither did Devalera import Basque or Slovak widows and maids to find matches for the Batchelors of Connaught. Rhodesia turned away Polish RAF veterans. History doesn't strike me as a prison because remembering is as it (always was an active choice)
A Dane at work mentioned that all Danish kids go to Aushwitz before their schooling finishes. I found that baffling. I am not saying don't teach the holocaust, or anything like that.
When is it maochism and not memory?
When Britain's liberal conscience and God Emperor of Centrist Dad Podcasts Gary Lineker said the government's rhetoric on migrants was like 1930s Germany, smarter people than me pointed out it was actually closer to Britain's attitude to Jewish refugees of the era.
History is indeed a prison - a kind of mental gulag, wherein we eat the thin gruel of received wisdom, kept 'safe' from the inconvenient truths that lie outside its sheer and spotless walls.
Had England simply made peace with our fellow Germanics, when the opportunity presented itself, rather than pursue the insanity of further conflict (with half a million German civilians incinerated in the holocaust of Allied bombing raids), while saving the worst despotism in history from its deserved destruction, then the mass shootings of Jews in Eastern Europe might have been averted, and the Madagascar plan implemented.
Instead, we fought an unnecessary war, and pursued the total defeat that resulted in famine, medical shortages, and a typhus epidemic that killed millions of concentration camp inmates.
Today, hostility towards the mass immigration of refugees derives from the noted negative impact they have on their new host societies. Perhaps an analogous reality explains the delegates' reticence in 1938?
So if the UK had made peace with Germany in 1940, they’d have invaded the Soviet Union, but this time without murdering Jews on a massive scale? Really? How do you know?
I don't know. It's a counterfactual. We can only think in terms of probabilities. Most likely Himmler would still have shot a lot of Jews along with the many Russians and Poles who were similarly slaughtered. But the total number who died would, I think, have been in the tens of thousands. Britain could have had peace with Hitler, but made the deal conditional on fulfillment of the Madagascar plan (in which our merchant navy could have actively assisted). Or, considering the active Nazi support for Jewish Palestine in the 1930s (60% of all investment from 1933-1939), we could have just promoted the Zionist migration (instead of preventing it).
Of course, Barbarossa stemmed in part from Germany's insecure position (cut off from export markets, in need of resources (specifically petroleum)). It was more about the Baku oilfields, and less about lebensraum. This position would have been wholly altered by peace with the Allies (and, specifically, an end to the international embargo on German trade).
Totally naive about the nature of Nazi Germany and it’s radical ideology. To have made peace with them would have been shameful.
I suppose it depends on whom you read. People say similar things (wrongly) about Putin today. Perhaps the same was true in 1940.
In short, the narrative of crazed totalitarians seeking world domination seems a little hystrionic, neurotic, and, frankly, semitic. The alternative (ethno-nationalist authoritarians pursuing economic autarky and territorial integrity) is a more realistic appraisal of events.
Of course, it is the former, and not the latter, that forms the foundation of our modern mythos, so you're more likely to believe it.
there was simply no way we could have made peace with Nazi Germany. the only way to have prevented war was to have killed Hitler when it was still possible, or act aggressively enough that the Germans did. But for historical reasons that wasn't possible.
Why could we not have made peace with Nazi Germany, when Hitler repeatedly sought an alliance with the British Empire (an institution he openly admired, as part of his general appreciation for Anglo-Saxons, who he considered fellow Teutonics), allowed the escape of our forces from Dunkirk, and refused to bomb Britain until repeated provocations finally forced his hand?
Just look at what the Nazis actually DID in the real world, rather than what might have been. Or are you saying ‘we made them do it’, so somehow they were not fully responsible for their evil actions?
So you think we (we being the British, not just the English) could have gambled on letting the Nazis: create their empire in the East, which would have involved murdering millions; totally dominate Continental Europe; and then trust their word that they’d be nice to us from such a powerful position?
We, who were free to call ourselves 'English' as a catch-all for the UK until the post-war cultural changes forced us to redefine ourselves, could have maintained our Empire overseas (as Hitler proposed) and allowed Germany and the Soviets to either fight it out or make peace. It wasn't our responsibility. As for what the Nazis would have done, their treatment of the Slovaks and Czechs is quite instructive.
I think they were responsible for their evil actions, just as the British, a few decades before, were responsible for our actions when we starved half of all Boer children to death in order to win a predatory war. Such is history.