The following post was written by a guest contributor, Alex J. Rendell (the first ever guest post at this site!)
If, for example, the problem was “white people,” then all white nations would be undergoing replacement. And yet this is clearly not the case. Likewise for economic modernity (not all first world nations), Christianity (not all Christian nations), colonialism (not all/only former empires), Die Juden (not all/only nations with a prominent Jewish diaspora), and so forth.
The one risk factor that *does* seem to account for practically all the evidence is this: the Hajnal Line, which separates Western Europe (centered on the North Sea coast) from the rest of Eurasia. With very few (and not particularly problematic) exceptions, it is fair to say that all and only countries north and west of this line (together with their offshoots in the New World) are undergoing replacement migration.
 |
| Hajnal line |
What is it that makes this region so unique? What accounts for the fact that, as a friend of mine once put it, the average Greek communist is a thousand times more “racist” than even the most right-wing Sweden Democrat?
To answer this, we first need to draw a distinction within the concept of demographic replacement. All peoples, everywhere, have always experienced demographic replacement: as one generation retires from the workforce, another steps forward to take its place; as one generation grows old and dies, another is born and flourishes.
Under conditions of economic modernity, however, this organic process of self-replacement is no longer occurring (one might call it “The Great Non-Replacement”): all first world countries (including the Jewish diaspora) are affected, and TFR statistics reflect as much.
What is special about the West is that this process of self-replacement is not only not occurring (as is also the case in Eastern Europe and Asia), but has in fact been rejected in favour of “other-replacement,” i.e., the replacement of retirees not by their own children and grandchildren, but by immigrants to whom they are unrelated.
How are we to explain this? Well, the Hajnal Line describes a pattern of marriage and family life characterised above all by what one might call “voluntary associationism”: the belief that free association among relative strangers is or should be the bedrock of life in society. Indeed, for Northwest Europeans, marriage itself has been construed primarily as a social contract entered into on a voluntary (uncoerced) basis by a comparatively unrelated (no cousin marriage) bride and groom, one that normatively gives rise to a neolocal household, detached and separate from both sets of parents.
This emphasis on voluntary association is, of course, completely legitimate, and has led to a great flourishing of civil society in the West. Churches, clubs, guilds, etc. existing for the mutual benefit and support of their members: these are all good things. Moreover, it is certainly superior to a situation in which association is coerced, i.e., in which people are locked into a straightjacket of relationships appointed not for their benefit, but for that of another, and frequently at their expense. One can see here the origins of the characteristic Western emphasis on freedom and individualism, over and against what one might (somewhat uncharitably) call Oriental despotism and collectivism.
This brings us to the great rallying-cry of Western modernity: autonomy (the King of Virtues)! And to the great bugbear of Western modernity: heteronomy (the Queen of Sins)! With the advent (curiously enough, in England) of nominalism and voluntarism during the Late Middle Ages, the locus of valuation was transferred from Being to volition: things were no longer seen as Good (and therefore as valuable) simply in and of themselves, but only insofar as they were (autonomously) chosen. This hypervalorisation of the voluntary (“freedom of indifference”) is what ultimately has led to the reductio ad absurdum of consent-based morality (anything goes, no matter how objectively bad, as long as it is freely willed by all stakeholders).
What does this have to do with the Great Replacement? Well, as I see it, this hypervalorisation of the voluntary has been accompanied by an equally radical devalorisation of the involuntary, which, when applied to the realm of association, has led to the unchosen bonds of kinship being viewed (in contrast to the chosen bonds of friendship and civil society) as of at least questionable value, if not actually bad: “You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family” is the sort of quip that only makes sense on this kind of social/relational voluntarism.
Initially, this seems to have taken the form of “colour-blindness” with respect to kin: one ought not to (publicly) discriminate in favour of people who simply happen to be related to you (taboos against nepotism and other forms of clannish behaviour), but should treat all socio-economic actors fairly, impartially, as individuals, on the basis of their merits, and without respect of persons. It is surely no accident that Libertarianism has been, and remains, an almost exclusively Anglo phenomenon: a fact which to this day forms the basis of liberal nationalism.
Later on, this “blindness with respect to kin” was extended by New World powers to include “blindness with respect to ethny”: anyone could be an American (or Australian, under the WAP), as long as he was a “free white man of good character.” Non-whites were still, at this point, excluded on the grounds that they were too clannish, too untrustworthy to be capable of living in a society built around the free association of individuals, but replacement migration now had a foot very much in the door.
It was not long, however, before both liberal (ethnic) and racial nationalism came to be seen as unfair, arbitrary, and less than ideal: the requirement of ethnic/racial relatedness (not subject to choice) seemed to vitiate the voluntary character of the social order. As long as meritocratic norms were respected, why not have a society colourblind also to race (à la the Civil Rights Movement)? And, more to the point, why not a society built entirely around other-replacement (a voluntary phenomenon: migration)? After all, would not such a (civic nationalist) polity be superior to (or at least more consistently liberal than) one based on self-replacement (an involuntary phenomenon: birth)? The Great Replacement (“immigrants are the real Australians”) was now not only thinkable, but actual.
Moreover, at the same time that the involuntary ties of ethnicity and race were coming under attack, the equally involuntary ties of family life were also being deconstructed (feminism and the sexual revolution). Indeed, all three are really just variations on the same theme: the drama of natality, i.e., of birth (and of its prerequisite phenomenon: sexual difference), which, as Rémi Brague has pointed out, we do not, cannot, and could not even possibly choose, but which is always and everywhere chosen for us.
For a society that so over-valorises autonomy, the fact of our birth into a body (male or female), family, ethny, race, and even world not of our own choosing simply *is* a serious problem: the ultimate affront to liberal self-determination.
In short, the ideology of the Great Replacement (as also of feminism, and of many others besides) is that of the voluntary society (a phenomenon unique to Western Europe), now radicalised to an absurd extreme: whereas the Great Non-Replacement appears to be common to modernity as such (likely connected to a nominalist devalorisation of Being in general, and of human life in particular), only liberal modernity so devalorises involuntary association that demographic replacement through (voluntary) migration comes to be seen as superior (and preferable) to replacement through (involuntary) birth.
Our line of attack, therefore, is clear: revalorisation of the involuntary, whether of existence as such, or of sexual difference, or of family, ethnic, and racial ties. This can only possibly occur if the locus of valorisation is shifted away from volition and back onto Being: if existence, if the body, if family, ethny, and race are all viewed under the rubric not of agonistic imposition (and therefore as an affront to freedom), but of agapeic donation (and hence as conditions of the very possibility of freedom). In other words, we must come to see Creation once again as Gift.
I’d like to provide, if I may, a friendly critique. While the Hajnal line certainly provides a demarcation of where the phenomenon primarily occurs, I disagree that it provides an explanation in itself. There is the implication of an explanation — really two, the first being liberalism (which I agree with) and the second being that the cause of liberalism is Western Europeans (which I suppose I must agree with historically but cannot necessarily agree this was inherent).
ReplyDeleteIs it any accident that the Hajnal line ends where the Iron Curtain used to begin (with only the major exceptions of Greece and Finland)? I do not think so. It also may not be an accident that it aligns quite well with the division between Eastern and Western Christianity (which I would argue has more than a bit to do with the division between the Eastern and Western Roman Empire). As a minor point, the Hajnal line excludes Ireland, which is most definitely undergoing replacement.
I would also like to critique the implication that any replacement immigration policy arose as a result of some sort of “grassroots” process because of the common man’s belief in voluntarism. In all the major examples I am aware of (US, UK, Australia, Germany, etc.) these policies were imposed “top-down” by politicians who certainly never ran on the platform of implimenting replacement migration, and I’m not aware of any place where such a policy had widespread support before its implementation. Even nowadays where all places that have it are propagandized heavily to support it I would wager most people would support its abolition, or at least not oppose it with anything but lip service. The politicians themselves may have implemented it out of their own ideological belief, of course.
(1/2)
Tentatively, therefore, I’d like to put forward my own explanation for the phenomenon, not necessarily in opposition to the one given but as an extension of it. Replacement migration has been the intentional policy of a liberal empire whose bounds roughly align with that of the Hajnal line. Its history and origins are debateable but largely irrelevant for the purposes of the explanation because we can say for certain that this empire was extent at least by the 1870s in the US, where I think we can safely say the first inklings of “modern” replacement policy were implemented after the Civil War, with things like the 14th Amendment that justify so much unvoted-for policy up to today. By that time I think it’s fair to say that the US was already heavily in the grip of having whatever ethnic character it possessed destroyed, though there were blips of sentiment for a long time afterwards (I think of the Irish draft riots during the Civil War or the longstanding maintenance of a WASP elite in elite institutions up to WW2).
ReplyDeleteThe replacement migration policy we’re concerned about is undoubtedly a 20th century phenomenon, and I don’t think we can ignore that every place it occurred during that time was within the bounds of what was and is an American Empire in all but name, making it foreign rule basically for everyone in its bounds. One of the new alien elites were, of course, Jews who have been and continue to be major supporters and movers of liberal policy, but I think it’s also noteworthy that the non-Jewish co-sponsor of perhaps the most maligned replacement policy in history (the 1965 INA) was an Irishman. How many US major politicians of the 20th century were or considered themselves to be “heritage Americans”, descendants of the “ourselves and our posterity” the US Constitution so boldly declares? Very few, by my observation, especially by the time of the heights of these sorts of policies. My point in saying this is only to establish that everywhere under the rule of this empire, even in its purported “home” of the United States, was effectively under the rule of people alien to the native populace, and it used to be considered common sense that alien rulers would always have little regard for a native population. That fact alone might explain the replacement policies (as well as various material incentives, like undermining labor) but they were, in the end, elites of a liberal empire and committed liberals themselves, as the guest article notes. Liberal politicians and servants of a liberal empire; a surprise that they abolished anti-liberal policy where they ruled? The other major empire of the 20th century, the Soviet Empire, didn’t impose replacement policies on its subject peoples despite being similarly alien.
(2/3)
I suggest this as an amended explanation because it is more concrete and less abstract but also because its historical situation is traceable. The Hajnal line roughly aligns with the “first wave” of replacement migration (although I would argue there were two, first in the US and then in the periphery states like in Europe or Australia), but it doesn’t account for the situation today. The bounds of this “liberal empire” have expanded since Soviet collapse right up to the Russian border, and is it any accident that post-Soviet states like Poland or Ukraine are now experiencing “liberalization” policies? More relevantly, places like Poland, despite their very distinct and separate history from Western Europe, are now also experiencing pushes for replacement migration policies to be implemented, while states still outside the bounds of this empire (e.g. Belarus, Serbia) are not. Most tellingly, there are states wholly outside of and alien to Western Europe that are also having replacement policies pushed on them despite lack of native support, like Japan. Japan I don’t think in any way can be said to be part of the “Western European” mold, but it is most definitely part of the Empire. I would expect every place where the Empire rules to have such policies implemented, and be implemented in proportion to how strong the Empire’s rule is there and how able it is to endure such policies (which is, IMO, mostly a matter of wealth).
ReplyDeleteAs a final note I only ask this: just as we wouldn’t be surprised at a nominally independent but in truth Soviet-aligned state pushing a policy of atheism (part and parcel of the ruling communist ideology), should we really be surprised at a nominally independent but in truth American- (liberal-)aligned state pushing a policy of replacement? I don’t believe so.
(3/3)
Guest Ghast, thank you for this comment. There is certainly something, at least, in it. If you look at what happened in Australia, then the decision to ethnically replace Anglos was taken in cabinet meetings during WWII just when Australia was pivoting away from the UK and toward the US (after the fall of Singapore). The Govt understood that the decision would be unpopular - you only have to read the Australian soldiers' diaries of the time to understand that they were still ethnically self-conscious. The politician who did most to push the diversity plan (Arthur Calwell) had an Irish background, and did not see himself as part of the WASP elite. The plan was delayed by the shortage of shipping after the war, and it was the US Govt and the Catholic Church which pushed hard to implement things.
DeleteSo looking at it in terms of a "US Liberal Empire" and Australia being an "aligned state" there is certainly some evidence for this view, at least when it comes to the idea of something like a "final shove".
However, as you yourself point out, replacement migration began in the US in the second half of the nineteenth century, at a time when the US elite was still overwhelmingly WASP. Jewish intellectuals only became influential from the very late 1800s/early 1900s - and they did so in alignment with some of the liberal Protestant churches.
In Australia, Calwell had been pushing his diversity view since the 1930s, i.e. at a time before Australia was aligned to the US. He did so using liberal arguments that had dominated Australian politics since at least the 1870s and that had been pushed by a Scottish born newspaper owner, David Syme.
The decision to embrace diversity was made behind the scenes in the early 1940s by an inter-parliamentary committee which was made up of Anglo academics - economists and the like. They were technocrats, who saw things in terms of GDP & who did not believe that native birth rates were sufficient to meet targets.
I have to say, as well, that although the majority of ordinary Australians have opposed replacement, there is a large, educated, liberal, influential, inner urban class (both left and right liberal) who are fanatically attached to it. It has not been externally imposed on these Anglo-Australians at all.
How we mesh together these things, I have to mull over a little.
Guest Ghast, I might have mentioned also that the characteristically modern multiculturalist view was pioneered by an American WASP by the name of Randolph Bourne as early as 1916. See here and here. Bourne was clearly an intellectual type and not representative of his own social class, but it was his viewpoint that eventually triumphed and his intellectual influences were men like Wells, Dewey, Shaw and Nietzsche.
DeleteThat is fair enough. I was thinking of the removal of the WAP in the ‘70s in Australia’s case, but that was a mistake on my part and you are quite correct. The earlier policies had slipped my mind.
DeleteThat said, while I think we can both agree that there was a “US Empire” after WW2 owing to the collapse of the British Empire, I would tentatively suggest that there was something of an American-British synthesis prior, a merging that was only fully achieved after WW2 but which was still strong in the first half of the 20th century, most obviously represented in the highly-aligned foreign policy of the two during those times. (I recall that Stalin in private is alleged to have seen himself and the Soviet Union in general as being at war with the “Anglo-Saxons”, encompassing both the British Empire and the US). I would suggest this is the primary reason why the British Empire was more or less peacefully absorbed into the American Empire. It is unfortunately somewhat conspiratorial, but the shared financial and political influences is at least for the most part a matter of public record. Importantly I would suggest that this is the reason for similar replacement policy emerging at roughly the same time in both the British Empire and the US, seemingly especially the period 1870–1945.
I did not mean to suggest that there was no “native” component of support, only that this support would be present almost purely within elite sections intellectually and morally dominated by liberalism rather than being in any way “democratically organic” and arising from the common man. It has been discussed elsewhere (on this blog?) that these “native” liberal elites have more or less totally deracinated themselves and have very little compunction allying with alien elites to sell out “their own.” In the case of the US I put forward the example of Philip Hart as an alien Irishman sponsoring replacement policy, as in the US the founding stock had a very distinct sense of themselves as being Anglo-Saxon and the Irish have, to my view, always had a very strong sense of themselves as being distinct (especially in the case of late-arriving immigrants, as in Hart’s case). In Australia I would venture to guess that this was somewhat different, the Irish making up a strong component of the founding stock and therefore perhaps seeing themselves as less alien and more “natively Australian.” But that’s really neither here nor there given the native-alien elite synthesis.
The essential point of my argument is that rather than some sort of coinciding by chance of similar policy emerging in this or that location that these policies, where they have been implemented, can be traced back to the same concrete political influences, and that the extent of this “empire of influence” (if it is not a real empire) can be traced over time. In brief encompassing the US and British Empire originally, capturing much of Europe (and Japan) tentatively in WWI and firmly by WW2, and becoming much larger after 1989/91. Certainly in the 1870s both the US and Britain were liberal empires (perhaps even the same liberal empire, but I admit this is a nebulous concept in meaning and highly debatable) and for much the same reason, stemming as it were from the same root. I think the best place to look for falsification of my theory would be to find a replacement policy from outside the Anglophone world that has its origins as being purely, or at least primarily, native, but I’m not aware of any such example.
The people whom the devil fears becoming Catholic are where he seeks to make friends.
ReplyDeleteAlex, one aspect of your post I found interesting was the link between voluntary association & merit: "one ought not to (publicly) discriminate in favour of people who simply happen to be related to you (taboos against nepotism and other forms of clannish behaviour), but should treat all socio-economic actors fairly, impartially, as individuals, on the basis of their merits, and without respect of persons."
ReplyDeleteWhen you look back in history, this was an ongoing process that was perhaps not complete until the 1900s. Before then patronage and softer forms of nepotism were not uncommon in the English speaking countries. For instance, there was an influential American magazine in the late 1800s called The Century:
"The magazine championed several Progressive causes popular in its time. Among these were several civil service reforms including competitive examinations for public offices, which its writers saw as a way to promote good governance and reduce class privilege. Similarly, in 1894 Henry Cabot Lodge attacked the "un-American" practice of patronage."
Obviously, there are some good aspects of the shift toward merit. Its peak influence is already over, with all sorts of DEI requirements in hiring now - and with the immigration of groups who are already practising some degree of nepotism. I have to say, as well, that there are some on our side who passionately wish to return to an in-group preference.
I'm not sure to what extent a strict meritocracy depends on a "west of the Hajnal" line mindset.