Monday, May 04, 2009
Fear of a black Europe posted by Richard Seymour
It's a constant theme of the neoconservatives, as well as their less sophisticated Atlanticist cohorts this side of the water, that Europe is becoming a cesspool of moral dissipation, a place where the premium of 'tolerance' leaves formerly robust societies open to "Islamification" (a term avidly taken up by the European far right). Just as they griped that European popular opposition to American warmaking really expressed impotence, as well as a certain amount of ingratitude for the free protection provided by American military might, so they have in recent years been known to cavil about immigration and the value-pluralism it supposedly promotes. There must be some reason why Europeans aren't up for all this blood-letting after all. The latest instantiation of this trend is a long, bewildered and paranoid rant by the Weekly Standard and FT columnist, Christopher Caldwell (excerpted, rather typically, here).Hardly an uneducated Nazi streetfighter, this aftermath of a Harvard education is certainly doing a lot of the BNP's work for it. The disconcerting lack of coherence in the argument is more than made up for the the persistence with which the author complains about white victimhood. The string of anecdotes, some of them stupid and inaccurate, others flimsy beyond belief, are almost like the sort of vaguely solemn reflections one indulges in to delay climax (which is roughly what he's doing: putting off the moment when he finally gets to the point that the white man has been had by a bunch of wiley foreigners). His observations are held together by nothing more substantial than the sense that Europe is caving in to a bunch of Kurdish, Palestinian, Algerian, black, gay, politically correct, antifascist weirdos who persecute racists, Holocaust-deniers, Christians and those obstinate nationalists who wave flags and sing sentimental songs about the fatherland. I am quite certain that Caldwell is not the kind of racist who favours ethnic purity, or anything that might stink of the sort of ideology held by America's opponents. After all, having a few black people around, provided they are 'moderate', is a matter of decorum for such people. It is just that he is as beholden to the current geopolitical logic, and its civilizational rationalisations, as most of his fellow outpatients.
Labels: 'war on terror', civilisation, clash of civilisations, fascism, immigration, islam, islamophobia, racism