1389, 843, And The Historical Illiteracy Of Immigration Enthusiasm

By Peter Brimelow

05/04/2008

Recently, Condoleezza Rice revealed a foolish failure to understand what the Battle of Kosovo means in Balkan politics:

"I mean after all, we're talking about something from 1389. 1389! It’s time to move forward. And Serbia needs to move forward. Kosovo needs to move forward."

"The War Nerd" (Gary Brecher) was suitably scathing about this ignorance in a woman who is, after all, U.S. Secretary of State.

Well, how about 843?

News is finally making it into the MSM that Silvio Berlusconi’s victory in the Italian elections was partly due to a patriotic reaction against immigration, especially in the north, where the quasi-secessionist Lega Nord made significant gains. Paul Belien has posted an excellent article on Takimag, noting not just the MSM’s reluctance to acknowledge the immigration issue’s power, but also that the intense spirit of local autonomy closely allied with patriotic immigration politics from Belgium to Rome is part of a political tradition tracing back to the Middle Frankish Kingdom, created when Charlemagne’s empire was partitioned by the Treaty of Verdun in 843.

Curiously, nearly twenty years ago, on the one occasion when I met my namesake, the then-retired British diplomat Lord Brimelow — no relation, I hasten to point out to those who remember his role in forcibly repatriating Cossacks and Yugoslavs to certain death after World War II — he was reading a book open at a map of the Treaty of Verdun’s results. He commented that it revealed fault lines still working in European politics.

What this means is that the effects of America’s post-1965 immigration disaster could well be felt for a thousand years. Immigration enthusiasts are historically illiterate — where they are not actually evil.

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