multiculturalism – Page 2

Self-segregation trumps imposed multiculturalism

Ilana Mercer on multiculturalism, political correctness, and more

FLORIDA, January 28, 2013 — Ilana Mercer is a rarity.

Originality is rare in punditry these days. Every time a new narrative-of-the-day arrives, we take refuge in groupthink rather than thinking for ourselves. Not Mercer.

Originally from South Africa, she moved to Israel after authorities pressured her anti-apartheid father. Today, Mercer is one of America’s leading paleolibertarian voices. She not only has a prominent column for World Net Daily, but is the author of Into The Cannibal’s Pot, a book about what has happened to her home country over the years.

Mercer shares her views about topics ranging from political polarization to race relations.
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Joseph F. Cotto: This seems like one of the most polarized eras in American politics. Why do you think that our country’s political atmosphere has become so divisive?

Ilana Mercer: I think you are correct in your assessment regarding the unparalleled polarization of American society. Have you noticed how commentators on both sides of received political wisdom attempt to diminish the fact you articulate by referring to America’s fractious history? Nevertheless, this is a complex issue that is hard to answer briefly. I’ll try. In the introduction to F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom,” economist Milton Friedman underscores this important point: “The argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument. The argument for individualism is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument.”

Underway today in the USA is a monumental clash between individualism and collectivism; between the forces of reason and reality, against force and coercion. The “philosophical” differences between the Republikeynesians, on the one hand, and the Democrats, on the other, are insignificant. The first believe individual rights should be carefully calibrated by central planners; the latter believe these natural rights can be overridden.

There is also a cultural dimension to these irreparable divisions. We are today, thanks to social engineering, a deracinated and divided society. We are no longer what John Jay termed “a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and custom.” There can be no unity without community. The glue of togetherness is gone, replaced by a flimsy, fluid, and thoroughly fake unity peddled by politicians. “Ideas” they call it. On the one day, it’s a crusade for democracy; on the next, it’s a war against racism.

Cotto: From foreign terrorism to domestic riots, we live in an increasingly challenging world. In order to face it, America must have a sufficient national security policy. What would you say that this should entail?

Mercer: It depends on your definition of “a sufficient national security policy.” If it means protecting borders and people not our own—which is how both Republicans and Democrats conceive of “national security—”then, no, we disagree on what is a “sufficient national security policy.” US foreign policy operates upon the premise that American men and matériel should be capable of reaching and controlling all corners of the world. I’ve opposed this foreign policy folly as long as I’ve been writing. (And in particular, in Jan. 16, 2004, I pointed out that, “Inviting an invasion by foreigners and instigating one against them are two sides of the same neoconservative coin.”)

Republicans profess to understand why the Welfare State cannot bring prosperity. Why don’t they get that the Warfare State, which operates on the same principles and by the same principals, cannot bring security? Remember, the military, the ostensible vehicle for national security, is government. The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government.

The quest for ultimate security has given us Police State USA, the TSA, and wars that have bankrupted us. Bankruptcy is inimical to national security. We won’t be too secure if China quits funding the federal behemoth. Or if the Moody’s credit-rating agency downgrades U.S. Treasuries to junk bond status, befitting the banana republic we are becoming.

A rational, constitutional “national security,” guided by the principles of limited government, would involve a defense of America’s borders alone, a well-armed citizenry, strong secessionist, states’-rights movements, and the end to an immigration policy that has turned our country into a mass of hostile, competing factions.

Cotto: Multiculturalism is spreading rapidly across the Western world. This has led not only to cultural barriers, but tremendous religious and ethnic conflicts. What are your views on the subject?

Mercer: Multiculturalism as practiced in the West amounts to top-down, centrally enforced and managed integration. Show me a historical precedent where forced integration has worked. As it works across the Anglo-American and European spheres, one group (the founding, historical majority) is forced by self-anointed and elected elites, on pain of public and professional ostracism, to submerge its history, heroes, customs, culture, language, and pander to militant minorities, who’ve been acculturated by the same elites in identity-politics warfare.

As a libertarian, I believe that the right to include or exclude; associate with or dissociate from, is inherent in the right of private property. Private property is a civilizing institution. How better to keep the peace than to respect the right of free private-property owners to keep their distance (or not)—to hire, fire, and, generally, associate at will? This foundation of civil society is being dismantled for the sake of militant multiculturalism and policed pluralism

Cotto: Political correctness has brought many changes to American public discourse. How do you regard its legacy?

Mercer: As I write in “Into the Cannibal’s Pot,” “PC is the law of rule — mob rule — as opposed to the rule of law. Political correctness is tyranny euphemized. In fiction, the Orwellian Ministry of Truth is a reified entity. In reality, there isn’t one concrete ministry that decides how the nation thinks — there are many such entities. America’s many Ministries of Truth include the education system, most churches, the self-anointed ‘intellectuals,’ the ruling duopoly and their attendant TV bobbleheads. They issue countless edicts. This ‘dark art of rule’ demands obedience.

“Choose to disobey, and you risk public shame, libel, and loss of livelihood. Sometimes The Ministries of Truth will lunge for your property in the form of a law suit. Canada’s Ministries have a special Kangaroo Court in which they judge Un-PC speech (mainly), and from which traditional legal defenses have been barred. Examples of such expunged defenses: an appeal to truth and the lack of intent to harm. This self-inflicted tyranny, so typical of Western societies, plays a role in collapsing our societies.”
Cotto: Much to our country’s detriment, race relations appear to have soured during recent years. Some might say that this is rooted in generational poverty, while others would blame an increasing number of culture clashes. What is your take on this dilemma?

Mercer: I would probably dispute the thing you finesse or define as “race relations.” There are presumably many good relationships between fair-minded individuals—black, white, brown, etc. I have those. I am sure you do too. But, as for “race relations” in the collective sense, these consist in whites, as a group, accepting that all blacks have an eternal claim against them—for no other reason than that they are white. For ever after, whites have accepted that they are destined to be roped into the Sisyphean struggle to appease the unappeasable. Or so African Americans repeatedly tell them. White liberals, the vast majority of Obama’s base, lap up the libel of a racist America. The same curvature of the spine afflicts the “conservative” priesthood. Sane individuals reject this Mark of Cain; as they should a false accusation of hate they don’t harbor; hate The Other harbors.

Numbers from The Bureau of Justice Statistics confirm that white-on-black hate crimes are practically (and certainly statistically) non-existent. These are manufactured myths. Young, white, and poor: Now this is the group that is more likely than any other age group to be well represented among the reported victims of hate crimes. A significantly higher percentage of victims of violent racial hatred say their attackers were black.” “Nine out of 10 of them identify their race as the reason blacks targeted them.” Now tell me who’s doing the hating?

Originally published by the Washington Times Communities

Norway has to decide on Breivik’s sanity

As the trial of Anders Behring Breivik comes to an end, Norway is just starting to shape its future as a nation no longer isolated by its great wealth from a troubled outside world.

Survivors of Breivik’s massacre are waiting for Friday when an Oslo court passes judgment on the anti-Muslim gunman, hoping to return to something like the lives they led before he slaughtered 77 people last year.

Norwegian society, however, must still balance its liberal and conservative traditions exposed by Breivik’s 10-week trial as it decides how to deal with security and intelligence surveillance, gun controls and rising immigration.

“We are no longer so naive to believe that Norway is the best country in the world,” said Mette Yvonne Larsen, one of the three lawyers in court representing victims of Breivik’s attack on July 22, 2011. “It has made us understand we are a part of international society. We cannot solve problems by ourselves.”

For survivors such as Khamshajiny Gunaratnam, the most pressing need is to hear the verdict after a trial that went into every detail of Breivik’s bomb attack in Oslo that killed eight, and his shooting dead on Utoeya island of 69 people, mostly teenagers.

“After Aug 24, we can be done with it,” Gunaratnam told Reuters.

With what witnesses described as a “joyous battle cry”, Breivik arrived at the island youth camp of the ruling Labour Party dressed as a policeman. He regarded his victims, the youngest of whom was 14, as brainwashed “cultural Marxists” whose support for Muslim immigration threatened Norwegian ethnic purity.

Gunaratnam, aged 24, escaped the massacre by jumping into icy lake waters and swimming for her life. She survived because Breivik was busy shooting her friends in the head at point blank range, presuming she would drown.

SANE OR INSANE?

The verdict itself is not about Breivik’s guilt but whether, as prosecutors say, he is insane.

If Breivik is declared sane, his maximum sentence is 21 years, although this can be extended if he is seen as a danger to society. If declared insane, he faces indefinite mental care under lock and key.

The 33-year-old well-to-do son of a former diplomat is jailed in a three-room cell. He has a computer in one room, a treadmill to keep fit in another, access to TV and newspapers and is allowed a daily stroll in the fresh air outside.

Whatever the verdict, Breivik will probably spend the rest of his life in similar conditions, underscoring what some Norwegians regard as an excessive civility in the face of the cold-blooded killings.

Lawyers for the survivors say some do not care about the verdict while others would prefer Breivik be declared sane, meaning he takes responsibility for his actions.

Breivik himself wants to be ruled sane and his attack considered a political statement rather than an act of lunacy. He has said an insanity verdict would be “a fate worse than death” and that he would appeal it, prolonging the survivors’ ordeal.

A COUNTRY APART

Beyond the survivors’ personal feelings, the country of five million people faces difficult decisions following its worst massacre since World War Two.

Norway’s huge oil wealth has long set it apart from other nations. It has prospered outside the European Union, and its economy is expected to grow more than three percent this year while many European neighbors are stuck in recession.

Likewise, its strong political and legal systems mean it has avoided the corruption that afflicts many other oil producers.

With more than $600 billion in reserves from its oil fund, pristine forests and a welfare system that is the envy of the world, Norway has often looked haughtily at the rest of Europe.

However, some Norwegians now believe their country must draw on the experience of other nations to debate issues such as immigration as the oil wealth attracts large numbers of foreign workers.

These are being discussed more openly after the killings by Breivik, who believed the government’s immigration policies were adulterating Norwegian blood and leading to war with Muslims.

“We know now that Norway can be a source of terrorism … it has led us to just start talking about what kind of society we want,” said Geir Lippestad, Breivik’s lawyer. “What to do about right-wing fundamentalists, access to internet sites by extreme groups. We have just started the discussion.”

“Norway is more aware of racism now, of the issues of multiculturalism. Hopefully, we can start a process that Norway can open up more for the rest of the world,” he told Reuters.

NORWAY TRIES TO STAY THE SAME

On the face of it little has changed since the killings. The foreign ministry has new road blocks on its nearby street and a security check has been set up at the prime minister’s office. But government ministers still walk around without bodyguards and you can drive right up to the parliament building.

After the massacre, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg stressed that Norway would make no gut reactions that would infringe on its tradition of open democracy.

When prosecution lawyers shook hands with Breivik at the start of the trial, this civility sent a deliberate message that he would not force changes on the Norwegian way of life.

In some ways they succeeded. Opinion polls show more Norwegians accept multiculturalism – policies designed to accommodate differing communities – as the immigrants flock in.

Norway’s population grew 1.3 percent last year, one of the fastest rates in Europe, and net immigration accounted for 71 percent of that growth. While immigrants arrived from all round the world, 70 percent of them came from Europe.

“People are more aware of the danger of anti-Muslim rhetoric. We are more aware that some ideas can become very dangerous,” said Larsen.

But Norwegians’ civility is being tested already. A 500-page official report last week into the attacks found a host of mishaps and mistakes by police and intelligence services allowed Breivik to carry on the attacks unimpeded.

Norway’s police chief resigned after the report and the intelligence service are pressing for more surveillance powers.

Stoltenberg, who drew widespead praise for his measured and dignified leadership after the attack, is now under pressure to resign following the report. The conservative opposition has gone on the offensive before parliamentary elections next year.

The report also touched on a subject at the heart of Norway – wide gun ownership in a country where hunting is a national pastime, a legacy of Cold War defense preparations and Norway’s strong rural culture.

But the commission’s proposal to ban semi-automatic weapons – the kind that Breivik bought easily – may founder on opposition from many of Norway’s conservative voters for whom gun ownership, like in the United States, is a right.

Some critics of the government say Norway is also unprepared for its role in the outside world, saying its presence in the NATO-led force in Afghanistan, for example, could make it a target for further attacks.

All these debates need to be settled after the Breivik verdict. “Perhaps it was necessary to have a year of mourning,” Brent Aadal, political scientist at the Institute for Social Research. “Now we have to move forward and respond to real challenges.” – Reuters

Norway killer Breivik refuses to recognize court

(Reuters) – The Norwegian militant who massacred 77 people last summer gave a clenched-fist salute, smirked at the court and said he acted to defend his country against Muslims on the first day of a trial that threatens to turn into a “circus” showcasing his far-right views.

Anders Behring Breivik, 33, has admitted setting off a car bomb that killed eight people at government headquarters in Oslo last July, then killing 69 in a shooting spree at a summer youth camp on an island organized by the ruling Labour Party.

The real question of the trial will be whether Breivik will be declared insane or criminal. While he risks staying behind bars for the rest of his life, the high school dropout has said being labeled insane would be a “fate worse than death”.

Wearing a suit and loose tie, Breivik entered the court in handcuffs, which were taken off just before he was seated. He smirked several times as the cuffs were removed, put his right fist on his heart then extended his hand in salute.

“I do not recognize the Norwegian courts. You have received your mandate from political parties which support multiculturalism,” Breivik told the court after refusing to stand when judges entered the courtroom. “

“I acknowledge the acts but not criminal guilt as I claim self defense,” he added, seated in front of a bullet-proof glass wall.

Occasionally suppressing a yawn and sipping water, he stared down at the indictment papers, following without visible emotion a laundry list of his killings as the prosecutor read out each one. Some details were so graphic that Norwegian television bleeped out descriptions of the massacres.

The trial is scheduled to last 10 weeks and has raised fears that it could reopen wounds in Norway, a country that prides itself on its tolerant and peaceful society.

The “lone wolf” killer intends to say he was defending Norway against multiculturalism and Islam. He says the attacks were intended as punishment of “traitors” whose pro-immigration policies were adulterating Norwegian blood.

More than 200 people took seats in the specially built Oslo courtroom while about 700 attack survivors and family members of victims watched on closed-circuit video around the country.

“Today the trial starts, and it will be a tough time for many,” survivor Vegard Groeslie Wennesland, 28, said outside the courtroom. “Last time I saw him in person he was shooting my friends.”

“PANIC AND MORTAL FEAR”

Some Norwegians fear Breivik will succeed in making the trial, with about 800 journalists on hand, a platform for his anti-immigrant ideas. His defense team has called 29 witnesses to shed light on his world view. Norway’s legal system gives defendants wide leeway to defend themselves as they wish, but judges can trim the witness list.

Breivik’s proposed witnesses include Mullah Krekar, the Kurdish founder of Islamist group Ansar al-Islam, who was recently jailed in Norway for making death threats, and “Fjordman”, a right-wing blogger who influenced Breivik.

Breivik is scheduled to testify for about a week, starting on Tuesday.

Breivik had been living with his mother in Oslo preparing for the attacks before renting a farm in order to make a fertilizer bomb.

Last July 22, he set off the bomb in the centre of Oslo before heading to the youth camp on Utoeya island in a lake 40 km (25 miles) outside the capital, gunning down his victims while police took more than an hour to get to the massacre site in the chaos following the blast.

Disguised as a police officer, Breivik managed to lure some of his victims out of hiding saying help had arrived. Other victims jumped into a lake, where he shot at them in the water.

Reading out the indictment, prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh spoke of the “panic and mortal fear in children, youths and adults” trapped on the island.

The prosecutors painted an image of a Breivik obsessed with the “World of Warcraft” computer game, prompting the judge to ask whether the game was violent. Breivik broke into a smile when the image of his online character was displayed.

“Your arrest will mark the initiation of the propaganda phase,” he wrote in a manual for future attackers, part of a 1,500-page manifesto he posted online. “Your trial offers you a stage to the world.”

In a recent letter seen by the Norwegian newspaper VG, Breivik said: “The court case looks like it will be a circus … it is an absolutely unique opportunity to explain the idea of (the manifesto) to the world.”

An initial psychiatric evaluation concluded that Breivik was criminally insane while a second, completed in the past week, found no evidence of psychosis. Resolving this conflict could be the five-judge panel’s major decision.

If found sane, Breivik faces a maximum 21-year sentence but could be held indefinitely if he is considered a continuing danger. If declared insane, he would be held in a psychiatric institution indefinitely with periodic reviews.

The courthouse, accessible through airport-style security, was barricaded by TV trucks as 200 media organizations have descended on Oslo, home of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The courtroom, the country’s biggest, can seat just over a tenth of the journalists, victims and relatives wishing to attend, so closed-circuit viewing rooms have been set up nearby and in 17 other courthouses around Norway.

The trial will also examine Breivik’s initial claim that he was part of an organization of “Knights Templar” with similar views. Police said evidence now points to solitary attacks by Breivik after years of radicalization.

Lone wolf attackers have become an increasing security risk worldwide, with U.S. President Barack Obama last year saying they now pose a greater danger than large, coordinated actions.

South Africa, a bigger version of Zimbabwe

The multicultural dream that the US and Britain foresaw in South Africa is simply not going to happen. In fact, it is not even being realised in their own countries, backed up by huge globalised economies.

If things continue like now, South Africa will become a bigger version of Zimbabwe. Most whites will leave, the infrastructure will collapse and a few expats will keep the mines going. Probably incoming Chinese and Indians will acquire some remaining assets on the cheap and still squeeze the last few rands out of what used to be the greatest republic ever on the African continent.

However, every dark cloud has a silver lining, as they say. The way I see it, we are in this mess as a result of outside intervention, Soviet for sure, but to a far greater extent from Britain and the US. If it were not for Father Trevor Huddleston, Anthony Sampson, the American Black Caucus, Ted Kennedy and a few others, this country by now would have been a world power. We had the technology, the know-how and the drive to create something extraordinary in Southern Africa, but we had leaders that went from mediocre to bad to treasonous. De Klerk had no right to turn the army over to the ANC and abolish Afrikaner sovereignty for which our women and children had died in the camps and for which the women of the Great Trek had been prepared to “walk barefoot over the Drakensberg”.

Therefore the economic crisis in the Anglo-Saxon countries is to our benefit. It lessens the chances of further and even more catastrophic intervention in SA. Many Afrikaners fear Britain and America more than they fear the ANC, because ultimately the Anglo-Saxon powers might intervene to prop up an ANC government if ever conditions had to become so intolerable that an Afrikaner revolt or rebellion would be a matter of survival.

The other positive aspect is the revolution in technology and communications. We may not have a volkstaat or own republic yet, but we have the internet. While American ideas such as affirmative action and the moral superiority of blacks led to our downfall a short while ago, Facebook, Google and YouTube are rearming us. Even if we lose our last schools and churches, as well as the remaining suburbs or farming areas that are recognisably Afrikaans, we will still be able to associate on Facebook and Twitter, on Skype and so on.

The Afrikaner identity has been a subject of much debate. Often academics and journalists have been hostile to us, claiming that we simply “do not exist” or otherwise have been legislated out of the way by the ANC government. I am vaguely contemplating a short book on Afrikaner history in English for our potential friends in America and elsewhere that are curious about us. The title I am toying with is: “The orphans of the West”. We were more or less abandoned by the West even though we fought on the Allied side in two world wars and in Korea.

Like every orphan, we will have to reconcile ourselves with the reality of that abandonment and forge a new future for ourselves on some part of South African soil.

Some of the idiots who devised the current system have said: “South Africa’s identity is our constitution.” As if a flawed document like that could ever represent an identity. Frenchman Jean Raspail, author of the dystopian novel on immigration, The Camp of the Saints, coined a very useful simile. He spoke of the newcomers inhabiting a Western shell like the hermit crab. The ANC and its hangers-on, including the white Left in this country, are but hermit crabs enjoying their new home, made in our government buildings – but which they did not create.

There is a very interesting – and moving – short story by Hennie Aucamp called “Die uitsettingsbevel” – The eviction order. In it he also refers to language, of being at home in one’s own language. We have been served our eviction order, that we are no longer welcome here, but ultimately we carry that home with us in the form of our language, culture and tradition.

Many people claim that the Afrikaans tradition is almost dead, like a plant starved of water and nutrients. However, our identity is not defined by one document such as the SA constitution, but by many. It is the narrative of especially the twentieth century, culminating in the 1960s where Afrikaners for a brief few years had a sense of a “republic found again”. In French it sounds even better, slightly Proustian, as “la république retrouvée”. It was an almost utopian time before the calumny, the hypocritical boycotts, the posturing and barely disguised local ethnic hatred of Afrikaners started. Communism, the classless society or liberalism never mobilised any black South Africans, but the phrase “kill a Boer” sung by Mandela, Malema and others sure did.

Possibly there no longer exists an Afrikaner nation, given the intense social engineering of the last decade or two. I am not so pessimistic, however. And then an Afrikaner archive is still extant. That archive represents the sum total of 350 years of Herculean effort and pioneering struggle, of tragic deaths at the hand of black tribes or British soldiers, as well as our enormous literary, legal, theological, philosophical and musical output of the twentieth century.

It is inevitable that that archive, unless the ANC manages to destroy it beforehand, which is a distinct possibility, will be digitized and will ultimately end up on the internet: searchable, overwhelming and alive. When that happens, the Afrikaner nation will be reborn and the phoenix will rise from the ashes as it did after the murder of Retief and his men in early 1838, or after 1902 when Kitchener and Roberts had burnt the Transvaal and the Free State to the ground (including the churches). Even the anglicised children of the diaspora Afrikaners will be affected by it. At first they will read about their forebears in English, but perhaps the generation after them will be curious enough to start relearning Afrikaans, like the Jews relearned Hebrew, which will only be a mouse click away.

Defeat is a terrible thing and, like the American Southerners, we have been defeated twice, firstly militarily by Britain and secondly by that alliance of post-war leftism and black nationalism that cast us as villains and racists, the morally and physically expendable members of humanity about whom no one sheds any tears. Orphans.

On the other hand, the defeated have a way of reasserting themselves. Germany and Japan lost the Second World War, but prospered economically. Today Germany controls the pursestrings of Europe.

And make no mistake: South Africa is still us. The hermit crab never really belongs in his shell, and knows it.

One day the kingdom will be ours again, or at least part of it. The ANC and the rest of our ruling circus are just as strong as their backers. Yesterday it was the Soviet Union, Sweden, British Labour and the Anglican Church. Today it might be China, India and the Arab world. Tomorrow it might be Obama or Hillary Clinton’s America, with political correctness gone haywire.

My wife always maintains that we Afrikaners can go back to the land tomorrow. My grandmother lived alone on a farm in the Rustenburg district, completely self-sufficient. She never had black servants or workers and she only bought sugar and powdered milk from the shop. The rest she grew or reared with her bare hands, without electricity.

So we have this vast country all around us that will sustain us, no matter what. Social and economic collapse in South Africa poses no threat to us. It would only be a matter of concern for the UN, for the Anglo-American empire, for the EU, possibly China and India. To us such a collapse would represent one vast opportunity, like the country we found here when we had dragged our oxwagons over the Drakensberg: a wide and temperate realm, empty of people except for a few emaciated tribes here and there, no tropical diseases and teeming with wildlife.

However, the hermit crab people ensconced in our buildings, our barracks, our police stations and consuming our taxes do not have the inner strength to maintain their supposed hegemony. They depend on outside support and even the threat of exterior force to cow us into submission, to keep us subjugated by affirmative action, racial quotas and other measures. Their incessant propaganda broadcast night after night on the public television has an Orwellian air, that of mind control exercised by a paranoid ruling clique.

As someone said: “Nowhere else in the world has a majority ever sought refuge in an arsenal of legislation to protect itself from the competitive threat of a minority.” We are so few, and yet they are so afraid of us.

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