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Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: Naiveté Royale 2015 vs. Rivers of Blood 1968


The extent to which [radicalisation] is happening is … alarming … And particularly in a country like ours where you know the values we hold dear. You think that the people who have come here, born here, go to school here, would imbibe those values and outlooks.
- Prince Charles in a BBC interview last month

We have a sarcastic riposte in Dutch when someone indicates that s/he has finally twigged to something already widely known – “the child is waking up”. It seems a highly appropriate rejoinder to the prince’s naïve utterances so I’ll just call him ‘Charlie’ from here on.

Let me explain a thing or two to you, Charlie. Being born in Sheffield doesn’t make someone British any more than being born in Shanghai makes them Chinese. Neither do attitudes and values seep into someone by some process of cultural osmosis. Being British (or French, Dutch, whatever) is about one’s heritage. No, it’s not in the DNA, but it is about a process of evolution, albeit cultural rather than biological. The process may be a slow one taking centuries or a fast one requiring only a couple of generations, but it has to happen for someone to ‘belong’ – a good word for it is ‘assimilation’.

Unfortunately, many in the immigrant communities, including second-generation new-comers, haven’t assimilated. This applies particularly to those with Muslim backgrounds. Many insist on the right to apply their own laws and have set up a court system in the UK for that purpose. They won’t eat our meat, because they’ll only eat the flesh of an animal slaughtered in the cruel way approved by their religion, and we bend the rules to let them do that. Some send their daughters overseas to get genitally mutilated and/or as brides for some bloke they’ve never met, while some of their sons run ‘grooming rings’ to entice very young girls from other communities into engaging in premature sex. They don’t believe in freedom of expression and kick up a fuss (in some instances a violent fuss) when we offend their religious sensibilities by depicting certain personages in cartoon form, even if the depiction is innocuous. Many of these characters don’t just not share our outlook on life and liberty, they actually abhor our world view and indeed detest just about everything we stand for. A recent BBC survey of British Muslims found that 20% “believe Western liberal society can never be compatible with Islam” and that 11% sympathise with militant Islamism. So what do you mean by “imbibing those values and outlooks”, Charlie? Wake up, boy!

Where there is no assimilation, there is self-segregation, and with it the emergence of the ‘state within a state’ which sees the people of the host nation made to feel unwelcome in certain parts of their own country. ‘No go areas’ for Whites in major cities are a prime example. Let’s just call it ‘Occupied Territory’. Don’t complain about it, though, because you’ll be called a racist.

Compare Charlie’s babble with Enoch Powell’s words in what was widely dubbed the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech back in1968:

Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population …

… There could be no grosser misconception of the realities than is entertained by those who vociferously demand legislation as they call it ‘against discrimination’ … They have got it exactly and diametrically wrong. The discrimination and the deprivation, the sense of alarm and of resentment, lies not with the immigrant population but with those among whom they have come and are still coming. … While, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and opportunities eagerly sought, the impact upon the existing population was very different. For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country …

… Now we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population … As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood."

That speech is definitely on Charlie’s homework list. Now where do we go from here? There is already plenty of prattle about it all being our fault. We haven’t bent over backwards enough for them, so they have the pip with us and go to Syria to join ISIS or blow away or stab to death someone on the street. There’s even a ‘human rights’ crowd (CAGE) telling us it’s all our fault Mohammed Emwazi a.k.a. Jihadi John – whom their spokesman described as an “extremely kind, gentle, beautiful young man” – became ISIS’s chief executioner because the intelligence services wanted a chat with him after he tried to get to Somalia to join up with al-Shaabab. Oh well, no doubt more favouritism/reverse discrimination, and of course telling the security services to not keep tabs on them, will be advocated to rectify all that and make them “imbibe our values”. Yeah, right.

But attitudes are hardening, with countries toying with various options from locking up returnees to stripping them of their nationality and refusing them re-entry. At the same time, the inward flow continues unabated. (If you want to make a killing, invest in the people-smuggling business – sink some money into an old rust-bucket which will be abandoned by the crew at sea, or conveniently go under en route – I can put you onto some no-questions-asked brokers in Benghazi.)

All over Europe, political parties that want to get serious about doing something about the underlying issues of out-of-control immigration and anti-assimilationist multiculturalism policies are on the rise – among them the Front National in France, the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs in Austria, the Partij van de Vrijheid in Holland, the BNP in Britain. Many of the European parties have been doing well in elections, but they won’t get into positions of real power in a hurry as the established parties won’t go into coalition with them, and that’s curtains in the context of a system where governments are by necessity coalitions. Denying a party that has won more votes than most other parties access to power isn’t very democratic, but that doesn’t seem to matter in this instance because they’re, um,  ‘racists’ after all. Yeah, right.

Well, here’s one such ‘racist’s’ advice to immigrant communities, and I know I speak for many:

  • Living in my country is a privilege, not a right. We owe you nothing.
  • I and my people [should] have the same right of self-determination as any people anywhere, and we accordingly [should] have the right to determine who can live among us by the criteria that we choose to set.
  • You have to contribute to the economic and social well-being of our country. If you’re going to be a drain on our resources, we won’t have you. Again, we owe you nothing.
  • If you come and live in our country, you uphold our fundamental values, live according to our laws, and abide by our behavioural norms. If you don’t like these conditions, bugger off back to where you came from or to some country where they run things the way you want. (Speaking of which, property prices in Mosul are quite low at the moment…… better hurry!)
  • If you take up arms against us, or aid and abet those who do so be it at home or abroad, depending on the circumstances you’ll be tried for treason and/or be stripped of all your rights in our country including its nationality.
The predictable howls of ‘xenophobia’ and ‘racism’ from certain quarters notwithstanding, the mood is certainly swinging in that direction. The Aussies appear to be leading the way, if Tony Abbott’s speech on national security on the 23rd of last month is anything to go by:

For too long, we have given those who might be a threat to our country the benefit of the doubt. The perpetrator [of the Martin Place outrage] was given the benefit of the doubt when he applied for a visa. He was given the benefit of the doubt for residency and citizenship. He was given the benefit of the doubt at Centrelink. He was given the benefit of the doubt when he applied for legal aid. And in the courts, there has been bail when there should have been jail…

If Immigration and Border Protection faces a choice to let in or keep out people with security questions over them – we should choose to keep them out… Australian citizenship is an extraordinary privilege that should involve a solemn and lifelong commitment to Australia … Those who come here must be as open and accepting of their adopted country as we are of them… No-one should live in our country while denying our values and rejecting the very idea of a free and open society.

European politicians take note!

Barend Vlaardingerbroek BSc (Auckland), BA, BEdSt (Queensland), DipCommonLaw, PGDipLaws (London), MAppSc (Curtin), PhD (Otago), is associate professor of education at the American University of Beirut and a regular contributor to Breaking Views on geopolitical and social issues. Feedback welcome at bv00@aub.edu.lb

4 comments:

paul scott said...

Barend,
It seems clear by your comments and reference to Prince Charles, that you have not assimilated properly to the colony, and I recommend retraining.
Charles says ... '"particularly in a country like ours where you know the values we hold dear. You[would]
think that the people who have come here, born here, go to school here, would imbibe those values and outlooks... "

Well until a few months ago, I thought just that. I thought that when I lived in Australia I was slowly converting, and similar in Turkey, Spain a little, but not so much Morocco.
If you read Paul Buchanan [Kiwipolitico] you will see that as recently as a few weeks age he was telling us that Islam terrorism was a lone wolf thing ,and should be handled by Police. I asked him if he had ever talked to the Gore Police.

Your article general I agree 100%, another one of your fine pieces. Will the death of ISIS, be the start of a reinforced Iran.?
Thank God Netenyahu got the stage in USA yesterday, a plus for an otherwise apparently idiotic US President.

Anonymous said...

It’s about time NZers stood up to question the “diversity” that has been foisted upon us for several decades by our cultural elite. This is part of a deliberately subversive attack, throughout the Western world, on Judeo-Christian values and national cohesion.

Those behind it are not nationalists, but internationalists. As they correctly surmise, if nobody can agree on a common set of values, nobody will unite against the imposition of global socialism when the time comes.

Their agenda is to collapse the nation state into a global multiculture, then argue since we are all one world demographically, we should also be one world politically. Along the way, they intend to rub the noses of Westerners in their allegedly “white racist” past. Everyone must be made to wear the hair shirt.

There are two models of multiculturalism.

The first is often called the “melting pot.” Here, the public square is occupied by a single culture to which everyone broadly subscribes. Immigrants are expected to assimilate into that public culture, but remain free to privately express their cultures of origin as long as they do so lawfully.

For example, my ex-wife moved to New Zealand from the Philippines around 14 years ago when I was 11 years old. She married a New Zealander, and is now equally at home in both cultures. This was certainly not the case when she arrived here. Although we retain strong social and cultural links to the local Filipino community, these connections are not in any way segregationist.

Anonymous said...

The number of Muslims living in New Zealand, as in other Western countries, is increasing rapidly, not just from immigration, but because Muslim families are reproducing almost three times faster than Westerners. Current birth rates mean that in a few decades, Muslims will swamp the West demographically. That’s why Islam is the world’s fastest-growing religion, not because hordes of non-Muslims are converting to it.
Humility need be only temporarily adopted until it is no longer necessary. Then we will get the real agenda that has been held back. Following Muhammad’s example, Islam preaches peace only until it is sufficiently established to impose itself through terrorism and force.

As we have seen in Europe (and closer to home, Australia), as soon as there are enough Muslims to begin talking each other into flexing their muscles, that country experiences problems. Anywhere Islam attains critical mass it becomes a bully subjecting unbelievers to radical demands, violence and terrorism.

Growing numbers of radical young Muslims throughout the West want to set up self-ruling enclaves within their host countries where Sharia law would supersede the law of the land. Since Muslims already comprise around 45 percent of the populations of cities like Rotterdam and Copenhagen, these demands are not to be taken lightly.

Sina warns: “Once the Muslim population becomes a majority or even a near-majority within any nation, they no longer will have to accept, nor seek compromise, in upholding human rights of non-Muslims or in maintaining equality with the non-Muslim population. At that point, once they have achieved political dominance and secured power, they would be expected to move quickly to terminate all freedoms. Non-Muslim citizens, living in their own native countries would be relegated to second-class citizens, or worse, be persecuted …”

Our mechanisms of majoritarian democracy, religious pluralism and tolerance will one day be used against us. Is that what we want for our country?

Few neutral observers would disagree that Western Judeo-Christian culture, with its separation of church and state, representative democracy, and legal recognition of the rights of women, gays and minorities, is demonstrably superior to Islamic culture.

Contrary to received dogma from our cultural elite, it is not racist to point this out. Christianity and Islam are both religions with followers drawn from every race on earth. Racism is not the issue here. The issue is what the faiths teach, and how their followers carry out the teachings.

Those who already live in a country have an absolute right to say how much “diversity” is enough and to expect migrants to assimilate. Without being called ugly names.

Let’s have this debate.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek said...

Thank you all for your comments. Let's just be careful to not bring religion into it at all - making it sound like a 'Christian West vs. Muslim East' matter actually plays into the Islamists' hands. It's also quite wrong as people like yours truly have been working hard for centuries to ensure that religion is totally removed from governance. There is no such thing as 'Christian law' as there is no Christian equivalent of the Sharia. The rub for a Muslim is that to be a Muslim means accepting Sharia as a divinely revealed law whereas the Western approach to law is that of a secular undertaking subject to the vagaries of changing societal attitudes and norms. 'Secular law' is something Christian believers can accept (many embrace it wholeheartedly) but a committed Muslim has great problems with. Now of course the Sharia is not consistent between Muslim jurisdictions - for one thing the Sunni and Shia versions differ significantly - so the Sharia is not as 'absolute' as some Muslims claim. Muslim countries get around this by allowing sectarian communities to apply their own versions in civil matters. This keeps society fragmented along sectarian lines and that is not something we want in Western countries. So forget about 'Judaeo-Christian values' and all that guff - what it comes down to is the acceptance of secular law as one of the core Western values. If a Muslim applicant for immigration can't swear allegiance to secular law, s/he should not be allowed offered citizenship.
Barend Vlaardingerbroek