I was checking out the latest on the hate front on the Southern Poverty Law Center website when I learned about a “novel” published in 1973 entitled “The Camp of the Saints,” by a Frenchmen named Jean Raspail. It is essentially the French version of the racist xenophobe’s nightmarish vision “The Turner Diaries”—except that it is even more vile. It portrays France being “invaded” by vast armada of mostly East Indians (yeah, it’s insane), and how all the whites are wiped-out because a few still cling to such evil things as Christian charity and human rights. Raspail was moved to write this book because, he says in the book’s introduction, that he feared for the survival of the white race when it was so vastly out-numbered in the world by the blacks, browns and yellows. This novel was a “parable” about what might happen if western nations allowed the presence of dark-skinned, sexually voracious subhumanoids in any quantity. Raspail was quoted in 1982 as claiming that "the proliferation of other races dooms our race, my race, to extinction in the century to come, if we hold fast to our present moral principles." The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that while the book “was widely reviled in Europe, its translation in English was greeted with excited reviews like the one in The Wall Street Journal that said the book had moments ‘of appalling power and occasionally a terrible beauty.’”
Here are some examples of the “terrible beauty” of the book, courtesy of an SPLCenter reseacher who had to foul his or her hands with it:
“[As the refugee fleet arrives on French shores, a noble old professor kills a fellow white who is depicted as having sold out his race and civilization. Afterwards, as he celebrates the killing, the professor reflects on the loss of white pride.] The old professor understood. That scorn of a people for other races, the knowledge that one's own is best, the triumphant joy at feeling oneself to be part of humanity's finest — none of that had ever filled these [white] youngsters' brains, or at least so little that the monstrous cancer [of compassion for other races] implanted in the Western conscience had quashed it in no time at all.”
“[At one point, a French town, faced with the threat of diseased foreigners, issues an edict requiring Arabs to get a certificate of health before using its public swimming pools.] Retaliation took many forms. ... A hundred nice French girls, teaching school in Algeria, were suddenly hauled into the hospital and spread on the stirrups to be plumbed and explored by a squad of medical student commandos, whipped up to a frenzy. Two of them died as a result... .”
“[The book repeatedly characterizes non-whites as sexual carnivores, as in this scene aboard the refugee fleet that is heading for Europe.] But in time, very slowly, the flesh [aboard the ships] began to seethe. ... Perhaps it was the heat... Most of all, the natural drive of a people who never found sex to be sin. ... [E]verywhere, a mass of hands and mouths, of phalluses and rumps. ... Young boys, passed from hand to hand. Young girls, barely ripe ... waking to the silent play of eager lips. ... Men with women, men with men, women with women, men with children... . And so, in a welter of dung and debauch — and hope as well — the Last Chance Armada pushed on toward the West.”
“[As the Third World slaughter of whites picks up speed, the book describes a scene in a pig-processing plant in which a black man slaughters his white boss after being asked to kill pigs more quickly.] "Sure 'nough boss," one red-spattered black said, "we can sure 'nough do one more at least..." The white man felt no more pain than any of the other pigs on the line. Stunned, hoisted, slaughtered. ... [Hung from a hook, the murdered boss' body] caused ... no special disgust [among the black workers]. They had seen such things before, after all. At market, in the Congo.”
“[As the novel nears its end, Lydie, depicted as a traitor to her white race, becomes a sexual plaything for the dark-skinned refugees who have now seized power.] Lydie ... died in Nice, in a whorehouse for Hindus... . At the time, each refugee quarter had its stock of white women, all free for the taking. (One of the new regime's laws, in fact. In order to "demythify" white women, as they put it.) ... [In the end, Lydie, along with other white female sex slaves, is confined by the "Hindus" to their] ‘White Female Practice and Experimentation Center.’”
“[The novel ends where it began, with the arrival of the refugee fleet in France.] [F]irst to land were the monsters, the grotesque little beggars from the streets of Calcutta. As they groveled through the wet sand like a pack of basset hounds, or a herd of clumsy seals exploring an unfamiliar shore, with their snorts and grunts of joy, they looked like an army of little green men from some remote planet. ... Yes, the country [France] would suit them fine. No question.”
I was curious about something, and sure enough, Amazon sells this book too. It received mostly “positive” reviews, although judging from the fact that it is only the 23,000th most popular book in sales, the 83 people who reviewed the book are probably the only ones who bought it. What I find fascinating about the reviews of these hate screeds is that people who are uncritical of their premise tend to be viewed as more “helpful” than those with a more critical and reasoned approach—in fact, the latter is apparently viewed as “unhelpful” simply because they refuse to take paranoid racialist fantasies at face value. Non-whites have no “secret plan” to take over the Western World just so they can rape all the white women (now you know why I am no feminist sympathizer), they just want to fit-in and live—that is, if whites not inclined to do so will accept the fact that they are actually human beings just like they are, and treat them that way. Non-whites don’t have an problem with assimilating and advancing—whites of the "rational discrimination" variety do, because of their sense of racial “privilege.”
The “popularity” of books of this nature in this country are easily translated into the racist fantasies the “natives” have in regard to “Mexicans.” I occasionally listen to the radio program “Coast-to-Coast,” not because I want to be “informed,” but because I want to be entertained. The show specializes in conspiracy theories and the paranormal, and Art Bell once admitted that 50 percent of it was “bullshit.” With George Noory at the helm, 90 percent of it is bullshit, but at least most of it is entertaining bullshit; on rare occasions, such as on environmental issues, intelligent conversation might actually take place. But once Noory detours into the political and social realms, in combination with the fantasies and conspiracy theories his guests offer as fact, right-wing extremism is very much in evidence.
Last night, Noory had on couple of guests exposing the horrible “truth” about Mexican immigrants, gangs, drugs, violence etc. etc. etc. Only when called-out by a few callers on their racism did they backtrack and say they were not suggesting that ALL Mexican immigrants were violent criminals. One thing that was clear was that the illegal immigration was only a “Mexican” problem for these paranoids. One caller noted that he lived in the North East, and all he saw were these Russian illegal immigrants who were engaged in drugs, money-laundering, car theft and prostitutions (sort of like the Italian mafia); he also noted that Russian mob influence in the country was very strong; frankly, I personally have wondered why the media or law enforcement never investigated the possible Russian mob connections of the murderer of Bill Cosby’s son. The caller also noted that he lived in neighborhood peppered with street signs in Russian, and sometimes he had a hard time figuring out where he was, One of Noory’s guests admitted that the Russian mob did have a presence in the U.S., but was a story for another time.
Perhaps that time was never on his mind to begin with, because the next caller wondered why he was only talking about Mexicans, and the guest became angry and proceeded to erupt with a string of what he termed “facts”: 85 percent of all illegal immigrants were Mexican, and there were 12 to 14 million of them. It’s almost all a Mexican problem, that’s why he doesn’t talk about other illegals. He went on to further inflate that number to 20 million, allegedly costing the country $346 billion every year. Before long, after Noory suggested (to his credit, perhaps concerned about being labeled a racist himself) that we ought to throw out all the criminals and grant the people who are here working hard a path to citizenship, the guest revealed his true motive by declaring the fear that “Mexicans” might form the greater part of a non-white majority by 2050. We needed to secure the boarder before we even think about immigration reform, he continued. But as Janet Napolitano has noted, the anti-immigration forces’ definition of what “secure borders” means is a moving target.
A friendlier caller suggested that people who opposed the Arizona law were “heartless” because they didn’t “understand” the “suffering” that (white) Arizonans were feeling. Naturally, there was no mention of the fact that the “suffering” that Arizonans were feeling is largely to due to the heartless and incompetent Republican ruling party in the state with their foolish yearly tax cutting policies, and the failure to diversify the economy, which had largely “grown” from the influx of retirees looking for fine weather, and who otherwise contributed little to the economy. Illegal immigrants in fact filled a labor void in the country until the real estate collapse hurt construction.
As far as the rest of those “facts” are concerned, at least we know from where that xenophobe Lou Dobbs got his. The latest credible studies estimate that there are 10.8 millions illegals in the country, maybe less since the economic downturn. According to a Pew Foundation study, 75 percent are from Latin America. Half of those are from Mexico (about 4.5 million) and most of the rest are from Central America, the scene of brutal right-wing murder regimes supported by the U.S. over the decades.
The only intelligent point made was that the “war on drugs” was an abject failure, and the need to begin depoliticizing the issue. Decriminalization would stop much if not all of the violence associated with the drug trade, but it was suggested—perhaps rightly—that governments and banks do not wish to end the lucrative off-the-books money-laundering trade. And while I agree that we have to stop illegal immigration, that cannot be done without a comprehensive strategy that includes stabilizing and backing policies that end economic inequities in Latin America (rather than backing right-wing regimes that hoard all a nation’s wealth), and instituting an intelligent and less onerous work visa program that makes it less likely for migrant workers to overstay in the country. The fact that the U.S. prefers to fly in thousands of immigrant workers from Asia and Africa instead of granting work visas to long-time laborers forced off the job on farms shows that it really is about being anti-Latino.
Returning to Noory’s guests and their unsubstantiated assertions, the numerous myths passed on as “facts” by even the mainstream media in regard to illegal immigration merely poisons in the public mind concerning any thought to addressing the issues that have led to the “problem.” The infamous claim by Dobbs concerning the “deadly import” of 7,000 cases of leprosy first originated with a nativist named Madeleine Cosman, who also claimed that “most” Latino men molest white girls under 12 years of age (that must be why every time I walk past a white parent with a 4-year-old daughter, they wake-up as if out of trance and speedily race away to insure that the kid is safely out of “harm’s way”). There are also studies by credible sources (like university researchers, not people enlarging their “beliefs”) who dispute the various commonly-held theories such as undocumented workers “steal” jobs that would otherwise have gone to natives, depress wages, and cost a “fortune” in social programs without contributing a dime. A University of Texas study, for example, showed that there is a net profit made in state coffers made from illegal immigrants in the state. A recent article in Newsweek also disputed the commonly-held notion that illegal immigrants are a drain on the economy and public services, and a researcher named Francine Lipman at the Chapman University law school in California (hardly a name brand but ranked as having the 17th best tax law program in the country by U.S. News and World Report) found that
“Undocumented immigrants living in the United States are subject to the same income tax laws as documented immigrants and U.S. citizens. However, because of their status most unauthorized workers pay a higher effective tax rate than similarly situated documented or U.S. citizens. Yet, these workers and their families use fewer government services than similarly situated documented immigrants or U.S. citizens. Moreover, unauthorized workers have been denied remedies by the U.S. Supreme Court under the National Labor Relations Act and may be challenged to receive protection under wage and hour, anti-discrimination and workers' compensation laws. As a result, undocumented immigrants provide a fiscal windfall and may be the most fiscally beneficial of all immigrants.”
Disputing the theory that all “Mexican” immigrants are violent criminals, The SPLCenter quoted Robert J. Sampson, chairman of Harvard's sociology department. In a 2005 article in The American Journal of Health, Sampson found that “the rate of violence among Mexican Americans was significantly lower than among non-Latino white and black Americans.” Other studies appear to demonstrate that “second- and third-generation immigrants are significantly more criminal than their parents, suggesting that U.S. culture somehow eventually produces more, not less, criminality among its citizens.” Given the fact that 50 percent of all illegal immigrants who are incarcerated are imprisoned strictly on immigration charges, this suggests that criminality and violence among first-generation Latino immigrants (legal or not) is far lower than is commonly held, yet is an image perpetuated by the media—blatantly and without any hint of context.
And yet the racist misinformation continues, and people choose to believe it, because all they have is their “belief” based solely on prejudice and stereotypes. The fight goes on, and on, and on, endlessly it would seem.
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