Sunday, June 16, 2013

Challenging Amnesty

I went to the Eltham library yesterday and I was surprised to find that Amnesty International had a large stall there with banners and literature promoting the boat people cause.

It's so rare to get a chance to talk things through with open borders people that I took the opportunity to engage them in a discussion. There were two women, an older, very warm-hearted Anglo woman and a younger, well-spoken Persian woman from Iran.

I told them that I opposed the current refugee system because it took people from very different ethnicities and put them all together in Australian cities which would make it impossible for any group to keep their own tradition and culture going. There would be a melting pot in which no particular culture would survive. A better alternative would be for the wealthier nations to contribute to a fund which would be used to settle refugees in whatever country was closest both ethnically and in living standards to the country the refugees were coming from.

The Anglo woman was receptive to these arguments. She told me she had noticed that the Somalis she worked with in Melbourne seemed to be culturally dislocated here. But the Persian woman disagreed. She said she had no problem with all the cultures and peoples of the world merging together. I asked her if she really had no problem with people living only as individuals rather than belonging to a particular culture and people and she replied that it would be OK as long as everyone obeyed the law.

Now, that's an easier position to take if you belong to an ethnic group, like the Iranian Persians, which is growing quickly rather than facing decline. If you're in this position, the idea of losing your own tradition won't seem as real.

But here's another problem with the position taken by the Persian woman. At the same time that she was making these arguments to me she was distributing a pamphlet called "No place like homelands". It was about the importance of Aborigines having their own homelands in which they could retain their own traditions and culture rather than having to assimilate into the mainstream.

Here are some quotes from the pamphlet:
"Living on homelands allows Aboriginal people to ... raise their families within their traditional culture ... Having a strong connection to culture, family and land allow Aboriginal Peoples to have more control over the lives... language and culture can be passed down to future generations."

The pamphlet also quotes an Aboriginal woman who complains that without a homeland Aborigines will "lose our identity".

So Amnesty wants different things for white Australians and Aboriginal Australians. Aborigines need a homeland, an identity and a traditional culture. But, according to Amnesty, white Australians don't need the same things. Apparently we are so different we can just accept life in a melting pot of different cultures, rather than preserving one of our own.

25 comments:

  1. In Australia, people will say white people don't have the rights of a native people, such as a homeland and the preservation of their culture, because we are invaders (that guilt goes on the whites alone) and immigrants, not natives.

    That is not the reason. It's because we are white.

    It's been an issue in the United Kingdom for Parliament to deny that the native British peoples - who have been there since the retreat of the glaciers - are native peoples, with the rights of native peoples. Because if they were, there would be serious legal issues. With native peoples, you can't just say, we'll do anything that makes economic sense, because the natives have rights that count in international fora.

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  2. "Now, that's an easier position to take if you belong to an ethnic group, like the Iranian Persians, which is growing quickly rather than facing decline. If you're in this position, the idea of losing your own tradition won't seem as real."

    Persia for the Persians, Australia for everybody.

    Africa for the Africans, Asia for the Asians, white countries for everybody.

    What's yours is ours; what's mine's my own.

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  3. Iranian official fertility rates are low, though - supposedly 1.86 TFR - https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ir.html - though they also have a 1.2% annual growth rate.
    I suspect the middle-class fertility is extremely low while poor and rural areas still have high fertility, but it's not like the Lebanese Shia, Palstinians, Somalis or other extremely high fertility groups.

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  4. Amnesty International are of course strongly cultural-Marxist and as such are keen on wiping out white populations, so unlimited immigration to Australia is to be expected.

    Re the Anglo woman, I have noticed that Somalis are so appalling that even very left-wing whites will criticise them.

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  5. Amnesty International notoriously got its start in the early 1960s by vilifying ... well, have a guess. Soviet Communists? Chinese Communists? North Vietnamese Communists? Congolese Communists? Nah, that would have been too much like hard work. To maintain the pretence of fairness AI did make a few passing complaints in its beginning stages about Rumania, but the AI idea of serious thought was to engage in endless hysterical, kick-'em-in-the-genitals attacks on ... the Catholic Portuguese empire of Dr. Salazar:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/1961/may/28/fromthearchive.theguardian

    How absolutely typical that a parochial statist like John Dewey should have been reverently quoted from the start of AI's mission.

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  6. Mark@
    Viewing Australia from a great distance, my impression is that many aborigines find it very difficult to function in a modern society, perhaps owing to low average intelligence, high susceptibility to alcoholism, or some other factor we have yet to identify. Is this correct? If it is, a "homeland" would really be an asylum or reservation for a dysfunctional culture. It may be fun to tease open-boarder fanatics about their inconsistencies when it comes to cultural preservation, but we should never start thinking that we want a homeland simply so that we can transmit archaic "traditions" to our children.

    In a sane world, we would not have to make any argument at all, since the burden of proof would lie with the open-border fanatics, but our world is, needless to say, insane. So I would ground my arguments in the demonstrable increase in conflict, and decline in trust, in multicultural societies. Shared tradition help to reduce conflict and enhance trust, but traditions are a means to these ends, not ends in themselves.

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  7. JMSmith,

    The situation with the Aborigines is complicated.

    On the one hand, if Aborigines move into the cities they intermarry readily and so lose a distinct existence.

    On the other hand, they are prone to welfare dependency, drug use and violence in remote communities.

    Right-liberals tend to push the assimilationist policy of shifting Aborigines into the larger towns. Left-liberals are happier with the welfare dependent remote community solution.

    We don't have the power to put a policy of our own into practice. But if we did I think it would be for Aborigines to have their own consolidated communities, but to withdraw welfarism and to insist on a degree of adaptation to the routines of modern life.

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  8. People can go on debating these things indefinitely without making the slightest bit of difference to the way things work in the real world.

    This article talks of cultures, but is culture really a euphemism for race?

    Do white, Western peoples in the postmodern secular age even have a culture that they can truly call their own?

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  9. "Do white, Western peoples in the postmodern secular age even have a culture that they can truly call their own?"

    Yes. But most don't know it. It's a combination of what people ordinarily do, and things which we've forgotten but can reclaim.

    I (quite seriously) advocate creating a territory(ies) within Aust which are subject to limited (or no) administration from the Federal Govt. I worked with numerous indigenous people for a few years and it was readily apparent that the main obstacle for them is powerlessness. I mean this in the sense that they don't have the responsibility for building their future - the Aust govts do that. They need their own land and their own chance to succeed or fail. Cynically, I believe they would fail if they attempted to emulate contemporary western cultural norms. I also know it would never get off the ground because most Aust indigenous people hate their neighbouring groups. They band together to get the goodies, but as soon as one group gets power, they distribute the biccies to their kinfolk.

    So, ironically, by the power of liberal anti-racism equalitarianism and indigenous incivility they will fail further. These idiots in govt think that by throwing money and 'education' at people that it will civilise them, and they are genuinely confused that it fails so badly. The problem: now that they've set up the welfare system for the indigenous peoples to get their snouts into, they can't take it away without being 'racist' and 'heartless'. Because we all know, the most heartless thing you can do for an addict is take away their drugs.

    TLDR versino: by not risking the chance of success, indigenous Australians are doomed to failure. Sad, really.

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  10. "but is culture really a euphemism for race?"

    Yes, in the sense that genetics influences behaviour/predilections.

    No, in the sense that it's not fatalistic. Australia, Canada and the USA were all founded from the same genetic stock. All are similar, yet profoundly different due to environment and starting conditions.

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  11. Anon (23:51),

    I usually talk in terms of "ethnies" as these are the historic, larger communities we belong to.

    And there is no magic cure to put things right. There is a need for organisation; for political clarity; and for the development of alternative media amongst other things.

    They are all important. We need to make sure that we don't continue along the path of finding creative reasons not to pursue them.

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  12. Mark,

    While you're here I must take the time to recommend this link to you about Scotland where I live:

    http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2013/06/11/a-nail-in-the-coffin-of-the-british-state/

    This is an article by a far-left Marxist feminist woman who is in favour of Scottish independence. She's exactly the kind of author you like to criticise. Would you do an analysis of this article if you find the time?

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  13. Anon,

    Thanks for the link. I'll try, though now is a busy time for me workwise.

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  14. "Do white, Western peoples in the postmodern secular age even have a culture that they can truly call their own?"

    Absolutely. For example, I would never go to listen to a Chinese violinist or pianist play a Beethoven concerto. It's not because I don't like them but because I see Beethoven as European. How could a chinese man or even worse, a woman, understand Beethoven any more than an Australian could understand Peking Opera? For me it's a question of authenticity. Cultural elites would vehemently disagree but if i saw an Australian orchestra playing gamalan it would always be an Australian version of gamalan, not authentic gamalan. It's the same with non-westerners performing western cultural artifacts: it's just their culture.

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  15. oops. That last phrase was meant to be: it's just NOT their culture.

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  16. White culture is what you lose when the whites are driven out or blended out. It's the good stuff, the stuff that feels natural and lovable and good to whites, in art, language, manners, ethics, science and everything else.

    After a neighborhood is "integrated" so that the white people have to flee or be victimized, is it more or less likely to start up a Gilbert and Sullivan society?

    The poetry, after the whites are driven out - is it more likely to resemble the Beowulf epic, or rap?

    Will the diverse, non-white population produce artists like John William Waterhouse?

    Modern art and modern music are things that are imposed on us by an anti-white establishment and a wealthy non-white and anti-white market for prestige art - but that hasn't won real support in a hundred years. It has never become natural and loved in the way that the good stuff is. It's meant to go against our grain and turn us upside down and inside out, aesthetically. Michelangelo's St. Peter's Pieta is authentically white; Andres Serrano's Piss Christ is not.

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  17. "Do white, Western peoples in the postmodern secular age even have a culture that they can truly call their own?"

    I don't think questions like this should even be answered. They are that insulting to every white man, woman, child and ancestor before us.
    Still people should counter these culture/race-denial provocations at every opportunity.

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  18. Did my comment get deleted somehow.

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  19. I assume it is a blogger malfunction. Regardless thank you Mark for the oasis of sanity on the web.

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  20. Anon, thanks.

    And yes, sorry, blogger put the comment in the spam bin. I've restored it.

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  21. "But, according to Amnesty, white Australians don't need the same things. Apparently we are so different we can just accept life in a melting pot of different cultures, rather than preserving one of our own."

    According to the modern multicultural state, white Australians don't exist. They aren't considered a distinct group with their own cultural heritage.

    Frank Salter:

    "Anglo Australians are a subaltern ethnicity. They are second-class citizens, the only ethnic group subjected to gratuitous defamation and hostile interrogation in the quality media, academia and race-relations bureaucracy. The national question is obscured in political culture by fallout from a continuing culture war against the historical Australian nation. Many of the premises on which ethnic policy have been based since the 1970s are simply false, from the beneficence of diversity to the white monopoly of racism and the irrelevance of race. The elite media and strong elements of the professoriate assert that racial hatred in Australia is the product of Anglo-Celtic society. But in the same media and even in the Commission for Race Discrimination most ethnic disparagement is aimed at “homogenised white” people."

    Full article

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  22. RD
    You will find every western native group (as in European) in every country in the west is now subject to this.
    The English in the UK are being told they don't exist.
    The reason one i've heard coming from leftists is the UK has never had a native population (even though habitation has been as long as Australia)
    The same can be found in Sweden etc. The claim that White people anywhere are illegitimate entities.
    Still the contradiction is that these people who say this can still identify White people well enough to attack them.

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  23. Frank Salter on the corrosive effects of immigration-induced diversity and the asymmetry of multiculturalism:

    Humanitarian Costs of Western Multiculturalism

    An important ten minute presentation that basically sums up everything that is wrong with multiculturalism.

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  24. "Still the contradiction is that these people who say this can still identify White people well enough to attack them."

    Bingo. White people are simply not permitted to foster positive group identities. We are either responsible for all the evil in the world or otherwise don't exist at all.

    Whites feel that they have no right to assert themselves as the historic majorities in their own countries. Lacking the collective will to assert and protect their majority status, they have been rendered defenseless against mass Third World immigration and the demands of newly-arrived racial minorities.

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