01/04/2019
[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com.]
The phrase "White Supremacist" seems to have settled in among Social Justice Warriors as the favorite term of obloquy for those of us who won’t clap along with the Progressive liturgy. I guess the word "racist" was just worn out from over-use.
"White Supremacist" is of course just totalitarian cuss-talk, like "counter-revolutionary" or "enemy of the people." You're not supposed to think about the meaning of the words. You're just supposed to flip into Two Minutes Hate mode.
I get asked rather often whether I am a White Supremacist. Somewhat more often than that I get accused of being one. When I probe the questioner or accuser, it generally turns out they have looked me up on SJWikipedia. In the entry about me there the Wikifolk quote [January 4, 2019] from my musings in May 2012 about what people with opinions like mine, and VDARE’s, should call ourselves.
I mused: "I actually think 'White Supremacist' is not bad semantically." I pointed out how desperate the wretched of the Earth are to get into white-run countries any way they can. Taking "white-run" to be a “synonym for "white supremacist," that means that White Supremacy is terrifically popular with nonwhites.
However, a few sentences later, I rejected the term:
We should not let our enemies dictate vocabulary to us … In any case, the Whatever Right contains many separatists — who, far from wanting to lord it over nonwhites, just want to get away from them.
No, "White Supremacist" really won’t do.
In other words I considered the term as a possible self-descriptor, then I rejected it.
Of course, Commiepedia doesn’t tell you I rejected it.
In the end, I favored the term "Dissident Right" instead.
(I have, in fact, just this week, through the offices of a kind friend, acquired title to the internet domain name dissidentright.com, although I haven’t yet figured out what to do with it. Suggestions will be gratefully received).
So no, I’m not a supremacist of any kind. I don’t want to lord it over any other race or ethny; I just want to be left alone, and not see the country I live in swamped by millions of hard-to-assimilate foreigners.
I can’t see what’s wrong with any of that. Although of course I understand that nothing could be further from the minds of our ruling ideologues than leaving people alone.
But here’s a thought experiment. Of all possible supremacies — White Supremacy, Black Supremacy, East Asian Supremacy, Male Supremacy, Ashkenazi Supremacy, Hetero Supremacy…of all the supremacies you can come up with, is there any that I’m somewhat favorably disposed to?
I’m picking my words carefully here. As I said, my preference is to be left alone. I don’t want to be bossed around, and I don’t want to boss anyone else around. In all honesty, though, there are bound to be some supremacies that fall more gently on my ear than others.
But all right, I'll 'fess up. If I were a supremacist of any kind — which, once again, I’m really not! — I'd be an Anglo-Saxon Supremacist.
Let me enlarge on that. I’m looking at this survey from just over a year ago, a worldwide survey done by the Gallup organization, of how many people want to go live in another country, and which country they most want to move to.
The report lists the top 22 "desired destinations."[Which countries do migrants want to move to?, by Charlotte Edmond, World Economic Forum, November 22, 2017] The U.S.A. is of course number one. Canada is number three, the U.K. number four. Australia is number six. New Zealand, somewhat to my surprise, is at number seventeen, in between Russia and China. That’s likely just ignorance, though. New Zealand’s a small, quiet, out-of-the-way place; much of the world’s population, I’m sure, has never heard of it.
New Zealand notwithstanding, that’s a pretty impressive showing for what John O’sullivan has called the Anglosphere.
Surveying the world across the past century or so, in fact, I think a fair-minded person would have to say that a human being’s best shot at liberty, political stability, and modest middle-class prosperity has been in the Anglosphere. So the preferences recorded in the Gallup poll reflect worldwide awareness of that.
You can of course point to some blots, but many fewer in the Anglosphere than elsewhere. I'll give you the Amritsar massacre if you give me Stalin’s Ukraine Famine, … and so on.
Political stability? France is on its fifth republic since 1789, with a couple of empires and a monarchy in there, too. Germany…the less said the better. The current constitution of China dates from 1982. It’s their fourth since the commies took over in 1949. Russia, Italy, Spain, … you get the idea.
So let’s hear it for the Anglosphere!
In this context I’m encouraged to see the rise of the CANZUK movement. That’s "CANZUK" in all capitals. It stands for "Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the U.K." The idea, which seems to be a spin-off from the Brexit debate, is for free trade and freedom of movement between the CANZUK nations.
The promoters of CANZUK — which by the way has a Facebook group — insist firmly that they do not want political union or a common currency. They only want free trade and free immigration among themselves.
It’s not a new idea. I remember in the early 1970s, when Britain was negotiating to enter the European Union, that some similar arrangement was put forward by people opposed to entry.
Back then, though, with the British Empire still bright in the collective memory, a CANZUK-style alliance carried too much a flavor of imperial nostalgia. It was old, fuddy-duddy, geezerish — promoted by florid, white-mustached retired Indian Army colonels living in old manor houses with tiger-skin rugs. The EU, at that time still called the Common Market, was new — shiny, spiffy, up-to-date, modern, cool!
Now, forty years on, things look quite different. The retired Indian Army types are dead and forgotten. The British Empire is one with Nineveh and Tyre. The EU is seen plainly as the Franco-German bankers' racket it always was. This could be the CANZUK moment.
The document I’m mainly drawing on here was posted at quora.com in August 2018 by Philip Yip, who describes himself as Administrator for the CANZUK Facebook Group. [Why don’t the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK form an Anglosphere union?, Quora.com, August 25, 2018] Yip, I note in passing, is a Cantonese surname, so presumably Philip Yip is of Hong Kong Chinese descent — mildly interesting by itself in this context.
You naturally find yourself thinking: What about the U.S.A.? Could we get included in this free trade, free movement, English-speaking alliance? Could CANZUK become CANZUKUS?
Americans seem to respond positively to the idea. Quote from Mr. Yip: "I have seen on the likes of Reddit many Americans portray a great interest and enthusiasm for CANZUK."
There are problems, though. Healthcare, for example. For free movement of people within the alliance you need reciprocity in healthcare coverage. Our healthcare system, although considerably socialized, is much less socialized than those of the CANZUK countries.
Another negative I think, although Mr. Yip doesn’t mention it, is the suspicion among the CANZUK peoples that, given the population and resources of the U.S.A. by comparison with theirs, the U.S.A. would be too dominant in the alliance and start setting the rules and overriding the interests of the others.
Our population is two and a half times the four CANZUK countries combined. We'd be the bear at the CANZUKUS picnic.
Also, alas, you have to wonder whether Britain, maybe Britain and Canada both, are now sunk too deep in multiculturalism for the thing to work.
Does New Zealand, for example, really want an inflow of British Muslim rape gangs or black British drug dealers?
For all that, the CANZUK alliance is an interesting idea. I’m curious to see if it goes anywhere. Probably that will depend on this year’s Brexit result. I shall keep tabs and report back.
John Derbyshire writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him.) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He has had two books published by VDARE.com com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT II: ESSAYS 2013.
For years he’s been podcasting at Radio Derb, now available at VDARE.com for no charge. His writings are archived at JohnDerbyshire.com.
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