Societies that know where they have been have some chance of knowing where they are going. Today’s narrative is that the West began in the sixties; the object is to make you forget history. Progressivism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when you can’t remember any alternative. It is because the West no longer considers the past important that it has lost its survival instinct.
The prog (progressive) was not raised to think of himself as a continuation of anything else, and thus he has no identity to maintain or defend. For the prog, the West is the enemy. Or, to be more precise, you and I are his enemy.
As a white liberal supremacist, he imagines that change is everywhere: it is not just the West that is changing, but the entire world. If the world is diverse and against “white oppression,” then he had better want to be diverse and against white oppression, too. In his arrogance, he assumes Others are incapable of oppression. He takes it for granted that the West is the center of the universe, and feels he ought to become “global” just like the rest of the world.
But “globalism” means something different to different peoples. To the Westerner it means a money-culture without identity—current Anglo-American society. For Other societies, it simply means building national power by exporting manufactured goods.
Ethnocentricity continues to define the world and history: China and Japan, the second and third most powerful economies after the U. S., are racially homogenous. They can cherry-pick those aspects of Western modernity which suit them. They do not have to overhaul their entire identity by admitting everything Western simply because “mechanization” and “specialization” no longer exist, as Marshal McLueless (McLuhan) believed. Their growing GDP is not due to any grassroots movement for a consumer lifestyle, still less to any belief that “diversity is our strength,” but rather is a reaction by patriotic elitists to the West’s intrusive power. China constantly reminds its students and citizens “Never to Forget 100 Years of National Humiliation.” They maintain their own identity in opposition to Others regardless of how much “interaction” there is or how much information passes between themselves and the West. The whole point of building national power and cultivating the sciences, as they see it, is to avoid finding themselves on the wrong end of gunboat diplomacy again, i.e., overcoming their previous “humiliation” at the hands of the West.
In other words, for the Other, technological change is a means of preventing other sorts of change. Their identities suffered when they lacked power. The whole point of building wealth for them is to increase their power in the service of their identity – private happiness is at best a by-product. When things are uncertain, caution (traditionalism) is the better course.
The West, with its superabundance of power, has been trying to change its identity. The West never experiences uncertainty. The mid-century New York intellectuals, e.g., certainly didn’t. As Eric P. Kaufman writes of in The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America, they saw the West as a play-ground of impermanent populations of workers and consumers: like a business, not a permanent identity. Sticking to one identity would get in the way of “freedom” and “building bridges.”
It is remarkable how little knowledge we are actually gaining about Others. If you don’t know who you are, how can you know who anybody else is? Western man, the “multiculturalist,” is entirely ignorant of the world outside his own. Chinese, Burmese, Siamese—what’s the difference? If the West had a strong identity, it would recognize the identities of others, too.
People all over the world may use mobile phones, but they are not changing culturally in the same way as the West. The West opens itself to the world and insists that its system is the best model which the rest of the world should accept, yet we are willing to alter ourselves in any way suggested by technology.
Gender Studies group having a “lively discussion” about “human rights violations, sexism, racism, homophobia, and poverty” in the world.
If the prog hasn’t awakened to the party always being at “our” house—i.e., that the Others we are so anxious to include don’t wish to include us back—it is because his ideology sees everything through the lens of his counter-cultural crusade against young straight white males. Whether it is fair doesn’t really matter. The breaking down of barriers between cultures, as Marshal McLueless says, occurs only within Politico-Rectopia, not globally. There must be some way to employ Suzy who got an MA in Pluralism Studies without her having to go overseas and give up her comfortable house. Why study an ethnic group over there when you can just bring them here? If this seems rather one-sided, the Taker (older generations of whites) may have some vague idea that someday the Other will reciprocate, but it will make no practical difference to him either way.
The only barriers being broken down are yours. Globalization is about “us” accommodating them, not them accommodating “us.” Just because we buy computers from Taiwan and the Taiwanese like to eat KFC once in a while does not mean that the two cultures have anything in common. And incidentally, having a bucket of fried chicken once a month is not the same thing as being dependant on a foreign country for all of your high-tech manufactured goods. The Taiwanese understand this, even if we don’t.
The importation of Others is not meant to increase your knowledge; it is designed to make you more “tolerant” by washing away any identity or confidence you may have had. The West’s rulers know that the man who accepts everything will fall for anything; that is the reason for his inculcation of “tolerance.”
Since Western ideology promises tolerance, Western man “loses face” (as an Asian would say) by being intolerant. This is why Justin Trudumb would rather cuddle Panda bears at the zoo than bring up an unpleasant subject such as the Tiananmen massacre. He wins the approval of the Chinese, doesn’t rock the boat, and saves face. The Chinese are very aware of this and use it to their advantage. That’s what Panda Diplomacy is about. A Chinese, on the other hand, only loses face when he is seen to have made a mistake.
Americans pay attention to particular emotion-laden cases and disregard the normal cases. Following the Tiananmen massacre, the US government worked to have dissident Fang Lizhi released from the U.S. embassy in China; when their wish was granted, they declared victory and resumed trade with China—exactly what the Chinese wanted. Deng Xiaoping agreed to Fang’s release and exile only if trade were resumed. On the one hand, we have a face-saving, emotionally gratifying public spectacle; and on the other, the far more important but largely unnoticed delinking of trade from human rights (with the backing of hundreds of U.S. companies). As China expert James Mann would put it, not jettisoning human rights requirements would not only be bad for business: it might offend the Chinese.
The white liberal supremacist maintains that the future will witness universal convergence toward the Western “globalist” system; in the words of Dan Quayle, “It’s time for the human race to enter the solar system.” But the Chinese aren’t interested in the human race. And they are getting their way because they understand “us” better than “we” understand them. They know that for us it is more important to make a moral point than to win.
If the prog knew any better, he might say that the Other is “stuck in history.” He doesn’t, of course, because he doesn’t know this, and even if he did, he would be afraid to say so for fear of offending someone.
For him, history began at Woodstock, a pivotal event that ushered in a new age of freedom and good will, washing away all that came before it. For Others, such an event is barely a footnote. The mantra of progressive logic, “If it feels good, do it.” Each event is just one new link in a chain towards a new world. If the Vietnam War was wrong, and maybe it was, there should now also be free sex and full-scale immigration from the four corners of the earth. History looks back, progress looks forward.
From the prog’s point of view, this is an age of “Nowism,” and no study of history is required. His “historians” do not even wish to study the last 50 to 100 years, the period of greatest change. As Ricardo Duchesne makes clear in Canada In Decay, the prog is purposely not remembering. As far as he is concerned, “we” have always been multicultural and a “land of immigrants.”
The West’s “universalism” is, paradoxically, peculiar to itself. Elsewhere there was no Cultural “Revolution,” Enlightenment, or Woman’s Lib. The non-Western world continues in the traditionalist way the West did before World War II. The West decided to follow McLueless’s teaching that everything before WWII is garbage. “Emerging” countries continue to acquire technology and improve the quality of life of their citizens, building state power without abandoning their identity. “The Rest” are better defined as particular, realistic, pragmatic, nationalistic, and “far-right:” geared towards maintaining identity rather than destroying it in the name of a kindergarten ideology of universalism and “multiculturalism.” What is considered “far-right” and “racist” for a white person, is normal in most of the world, even for the young.
The recent immigrant is able to shape-shift between two identities: one as a part of the “multicultural” society, and the other in connection with his previous history. He has a home country to return to; you do not. It is unnecessary for him to abandon his history in order to “join” the West and enjoy its high standard of living. He stands up for his “rights” atop where your culture used to carry on its distinct existence. What’s his is his, and what’s yours is his as well.
As sure as the sun rises, political correctness will not survive: ideology never does. History will continue. Leges humanae nascuntur, vivunt, et moriunter (the laws of man are born, live and die). When the West loses power, its languor, apathy, and forgetfulness will produce a clash with other nations which retain all the strength that comes with having a history and an identity. Brace yourself for the chaos to come, when history returns and there is no longer anything holding “your” people together. Prepare to be shipped off to some war, like the 2,000 untrained, unprepared Canadian soldiers sent to their fate only three weeks before the Battle of Hong Kong, because “their” government suddenly woke up to the “surprise” of Japanese invasion. Sent against a battle-hardened enemy who had been fighting in China for many years, 554 of these white men were killed by war’s end. The Canadian government simply threw away their lives. Change seems sudden and shocking when you have forgotten history.
Did you ever notice how you might walk past a building year after year, but when it gets demolished you cannot even remember what was there? Assume that what is here today will be gone tomorrow, including your culture, your race, and even the physical landscape.
Mayfair Hotel, Kitchener, demolished to make way for immigrant housing.
Some of the strongest attachments are those of heart and home, blood and soil, the things that remain when security and trinkets are gone, the things that distinguish you from everyone else: your history. But in our time, land and family homes passed down through the generations must lose their sentimental value so they can be sold to international clients. Anything to which you feel any kind of emotional attachment is certain not to last: better to let it all go.
If you can forget the past and remain ignorant of the world and its cultures, you’ll do fine. You can know as much as you want about the history of rock ’n roll, but not the history of nations. You will be just the type of malleable citizen, shopper, and worker the prog is interested in producing.
As a member of the West, you would do well to neglect anything that gives us a unique identity. Your world may be diverse, but you are not. You are not needed for anything, since Others can be imported to do anything better. The sooner you can forget that the West was ever the model Others looked to, the better.
If you favour the older, genuine Western identity, you are a threat to the prog and his future. Don’t expect White History month any time soon. Don’t expect any celebration of the people who invented and built just about everything, and conquered the land you live on. History and knowledge have been dumped by the wayside in order to make way for the new West.
An alternative to having no historical memory is to have a distorted conception of history. You could watch the History Channel and learn that the British fought WWII to save the Jews, give up their Empire, and create a multicultural world. Or you can worship Lincoln as a man who thought blacks were the same as whites. Be careful, however, because eventually the prog will go from airbrushing out Churchill’s cigar to getting rid of him completely. He was, after all, a white supremacist who wanted to keep the Empire.
Author
