Början på ett mediakrig om mångkulturen?

It’s always problematic to discuss anything questioning the demographic transformations sweeping the West. It’s easy and politically acceptable to celebrate diversity, and even gleefully to anticipate the permanent political ascendancy of the global Left in Western democracies, as the demographic character of the electorate inevitably shifts as a result of mass immigration. But to ask whether or not this shift is desirable invites accusations of racism, xenophobia, and white nationalism. It even invites accusations that to open this discussion is to encourage extremist violence.

Given these stigmatizing constraints, the only reason to bother exploring the potential downside of “diversity” is that behind the term “diversity” is possibly the most unexamined, voluntary, abrupt and profound transformation of a civilization in the history of humanity. And what if suppressing this discussion, pretending nothing of consequence is happening, and censoring voices of caution is actually what encourages extremism and violence?

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Camus is reacting against globalism as an economic nationalist and as a cultural preservationist. He claims that what he calls a “Davos-cracy” has deemed cultures secondary to having a critical mass of consumers, and that it considers all humans interchangeable. The phrase he’s selected to drive his point home, and repeated throughout his book, is “Undifferentiated Human Matter,” or UHM.

In an extended explanatory passage, he writes:

”Faux, simili, imitation, ersatz, simulacrum, copies, counterfeiting, fakes, forgeries, lures, mimics, are the key words of modern human experience. Stone masonry is being replaced by ferroconcrete, concrete by plaster, marble by chip aggregate, timber by PVC, town and countryside by the universal suburb, earth by cement and tar….literature by journalism, journalism by information, news by fake news, truth by fallacy, last name by first name, last name and first name by pseudonyms….history by ideology, the destiny of nations by plain politics, politics by economics, economics by finance, the experience of looking and living by sociology, sorrow by statistics, residents by tourists, natives by non-natives, Europeans by Africans….peoples by other peoples and communities, humanity by post-humanity, humanism by transhumanism, man by Undifferentiated Human Matter.”

What Camus is defending is more than preserving an indigenous ethnic majority in his country. He is defending, as he puts it, “an order, a prosperity, a sense of generosity in terms of social benefits and safety nets, the sound functioning of institutions which have been achieved through centuries of nurturing efforts, trials and tribulations, cultural transmission, inheritance, sacrifices and revolutions. What makes countries, continents, cultures and civilizations what they are, what we admire or regret, are the people and the elites who have fashioned them….man is not, or not quite yet, some undifferentiated matter that one can spread indiscriminately, like peanut butter or Nutella, anywhere on the surface of the Earth.”

Rejecting most conventional terms, Camus has built his own nomenclature around what he believes are fundamental mega-trends that are not adequately described with existing vocabulary or commonly understood polarities: liberalism vs conservatism, globalism vs nationalism, capitalism vs socialism. Instead, he has come up with the ideology of “replacism,” with three protagonists, “the replacists, who want to change the people and civilization, which they call multiculturalism, the replacers, mostly from Africa and very often Muslims, and the replacees, the indigenous population, whose existence is frequently denied.” He then divides the “replacees” into two groups, the consenting replacees, and the unwilling replacees.

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As he puts it, “France and Europe are much more colonized by Africa, these days, than they ever colonized it themselves.” His point is that the Europeans imposed a military, administrative and economic occupation on its overseas territories, but “this type of colonialism, developed in a political framework, is much easier to end—all that is required is for the conqueror’s army to withdraw.” What is happening in France today is what Camus refers to as “settler colonialism,” which is far more difficult to undo, if not impossible.

If the immigrant vs native French interactions Camus writes about are typical—“making life impossible or an unbearable ordeal to the indigenous people….through aggressive gazes, overbearing posturing to force passers-by down from the sidewalk….the creation in the citizenry of a general feeling of fear, insecurity, dispossession and estrangement…. unprecedented forms of hyper-violence up to full-blown terrorist acts and massacres….which in the process secure under their rule additional chunks of territory for themselves”—then eventual integration may be very unlikely, and his characterization of mass migration as a foreign occupation may be more descriptive.

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Camus marvels at the fact that contemporary Western Civilization is the first in history to be lenient “towards those who want its eradication while it relentlessly persecutes those who would put up efforts to defend it and work for its salvation.”

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This two-fold colonization, orchestrated by the very rich and implemented by the very poor, is part of the destruction of culture that began before the mass migrations. As he writes, “no people that knows its own classics would accept numbly and without balking to be thrown into the dustbins of history . . . this numbness had to be created.” Here and elsewhere, Camus is not talking about a conspiracy, but rather “powerful mechanisms” created by the combination of ideals and interests. The main ideal; equality. The main interests: “normalization, standardization, similarity, sameness.”

What Camus calls a “powerful mechanism” can indeed explain the rise of globalism without resorting to conspiracy theories. For global investors and multinational corporations to achieve maximum growth and profit, the prerequisites are standardization, free trade, open movement of people and capital, and a growing mass of consumers in every economic zone—dependent, destitute, it doesn’t matter. But to justify this, to make it a virtue, even a populist cause, the ideology of equality and anti-racism are in-turn prerequisites.

This erasure of high culture, this popular contempt for a cultivated class that might perpetuate reverence for traditions and greatness, this devolution, suits the ideology of the anti-racists. But it is useful as well to global commercial and financial interests. In an irony of history, Lenin’s useful idiots, the leftist movements in Western nations, are now serving not the international communists, but global capital.

It isn’t just France, of course, where traditional culture and proud national histories are being deconstructed and disparaged by the Left. In the name of anti-racism, the history of Western Civilization is now being taught in America, increasingly, from elementary school through graduate school, as an unending saga of oppression and exploitation. In the name of equality, SAT scores, and even grades, are being dispensed with in schools and universities, double standards are established based on racial quotas in academia and business, because race does not exist, yet all races are equal. All this paves the way for an erasure of peoples, the replacement of culture and identity with undifferentiated human matter.

Men USA har upplevt ekonomisk omvandling förr utan så svårartade politiska konsekvenser. Det är något mer än ekonomi som har hänt. Kanske handlar det mer om demografi och etnicitet.

Alla samhällen och miljöer längs vägen har vit traditionell amerikansk befolkning. Den amerikanska mångkulturen finns inte här, den är ett storstadsfenomen. Fattigdomen och utslagningen är ett dramatiskt fall nedåt för vita. Här var det tveklöst bättre förr. Fram till 1990-talet kunde man efter highschool få jobb med sjukförsäkring, man kunde bilda familj, mammorna hade råd att vara hemma under småbarnsåren.
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Den världen är förlorad. Gruvorna är stängda, industriskorstenarna håller andan, bilarna har elektronisk direktinsprutning, ingen behöver kunskaper om förgasarnålar och fördelardosor och i den mån någon behöver ett hus masstillverkas det långt bort.

Men det finns en aspekt av den gamla världen som är kvar och som känns starkare. Man kanske kan kalla det för identitet, lika tydlig som svårfångad.
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Männen talar med en kraftfull djup och vacker engelska, ett helt annat språk jämfört med kuststädernas svansande och självutplånande dialekter.
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De är helt klart beväpnade och varnar vänligt för vädret. Regn i natt. Is i morgon. Radiostationerna spelar bara country. Restaurangerna serverar inga grönsaker. De har noll förtroende för att socialt progressiva politiker ska göra något för deras situation men hopp om att business ska göra det. De är som ett annat folk jämfört med storstadsfolken.

När president Trump twittrar eller talar i TV på kvällarna riktar han sig återkommande just till männen här och han är en mästare på undertexter. Han är på deras sida, slåss varje dag för deras möjligheter och mot världens olika konkurrenter. Han vrider om armen på Mexiko som snott deras bilfabriker och skrämmer slag på kanadensarna som gynnat sina egna mjölkbönder och bråkar med kineserna som tillverkar varenda pryl uppe på Walmart. Han säger åt tyskarna att de är stora nog att ta hand om sitt eget försvar. Han vill ta hem trupperna.

Men han säger något mer. Han säger att de är de riktiga amerikanerna. Han säger att de kommer först och att han ska bygga en mur för att skydda dem och han hånar politiska konkurrenter som hejar på andra minoriteter.

Dialogen mellan presidenten och folk här ute gör något nytt och svårbeskrivligt med Amerika. Den gamla vita majoriteten håller på att bli en minoritet i USA och tappar rollen som majoritetskultur. Kanske är det så att delar av den därmed får samma känslor och behov som andra amerikanska minoriteter länge har haft: respekt, skydd, en egen kultur, egen musik, egen identitet och egen politisk representation. Trump är i så fall Obamas like men motsats, den första vita presidenten med en vit minoritet som bas som känner sig hotad. Och Trump är i så fall början på en lång och svår amerikansk konflikt.