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European Restlessness and Dynamism

Harari has much good to say about empire in general and about the European colonial empires in particular: “Modern science flourished in and thanks to European empires” (316). This is a point Harari repeatedly drives home: only Europe had the values and institutions necessary to kick-start the positive feedback loop of science, empire, and capital which could create the modern world as we know it.

Harari’s analysis of Western dynamism is entirely congruent with Prof. Ricardo Duchesne’s The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, particularly in his emphasis on the psychological factors behind European dynamism. Harari:

Both scientist and conqueror began by admitting ignorance — they both said, “I don’t know what’s out there.” They both felt compelled to go out and make new discoveries. And they both hoped the new knowledge thus acquired would make them masters of the world. (317)

Harari also reflects Duchesne’s perspective in his observation that non-Europeans, such as the Turks, Persians, Indians, and Chinese, showed little interest in exploration or in creatively exploiting technological breakthroughs. The Chinese for instance for centuries used gunpowder only for fire-crackers (293, 377). Harari says of the massive treasure ships of the Chinese admiral Zheng He, which explored the Indian Ocean during the fifteenth century:

The Zheng He expeditions proved that Europe did not enjoy an outstanding technological edge. What made Europeans exceptional was their unparalleled and insatiable ambition to explore and conquer. (324)

The expansionist aggression of the West is an inescapable expression of its roots in aristocratic men who are free and therefore headstrong and ambitious, sure of themselves, easily offended, and unwilling to accept quiet subservience. (The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, 481)

Harari notes, as does Duchesne, that non-Europeans were typically ignorant of their own history and culture, and that it was European imperialists who pioneered historical scholarship in India, Persia, and elsewhere. Harari recognizes the atrocities committed by European empires, while noting that such violence is the norm across the world and that there is no such thing as a sinless, non-violent human civilization (228). Harari repeatedly equates the imperial and scientific drives to conquer: “For the modern European conqueror, like the modern European scientist, plunging into the unknown was exhilarating” (328). Read more

A sense of betrayal seems to lie just behind today’s political discourse—a feeling of being left behind, a suspicion that those at the top, in media, corporations, politics, academia, and finance, have motives and goals at odds with those of the broader population. Put simply, Americans of all backgrounds fear and loathe a hostile elite. Political memes like “the Deep State,” “the 1%,” “Drain the Swamp,” “the Davos Set,” and “Masters of the Universe” each capture this feeling of alienation, suspicion, and helplessness.

Historically speaking, class rivalry is hardly unusual. But a political situation in which a ruling elite is actively hostile towards the population it governs is quite rare, but not without precedent.

With conservatives, the immigration question brings these feelings of betrayal to the surface, perhaps in their most pronounced form. The popularity of the chant “Build The Wall!” reveals this. “The Wall” is tacitly understood, by those who resonate with it, as a means of re-gaining control over their communities and country. In turn, both liberals and those who could properly described as political and social elites view “The Wall” as far more than a barrier to illegal entry: it is an attack on their values, if not a direct attack on them.

More than any other issue, the immigration question represents a yawning gap between elite and popular opinion, between the Republican establishment and its White voting base. If U.S. immigration policy since 1965—beginning with the Hart-Celler Act of that year—had ever been presented honestly, as leading directly to minority status for Whites by the mid-21st century, and if White people could vote on this basis while they were still some 85-90 percent of the country, it might never have passed. In a very real sense, this policy is illegitimate and we should view its effect in changing the demographic balance of the country as illegitimate. As I have argued based on the historical evidence, U.S. immigration policy stemming from the 1965 sea change is the result of the activism of an ascendant Jewish elite that now holds a dominant position in our culture—dominant in the sense that they are able to severely punish those who dissent from this project of racial replacement by, for example, slanting media coverage and threatening loss of job, and it is able to significantly reward those who go along with it—everyone who has any aspirations to public life understands what can and cannot be said, and great careers await those who go along with the system.^[1] This change in the demographic balance of the country was accomplished by promulgating a new “science” of race, stemming ultimately from Franz Boas and his protégés and entrenched in the top academic institutions, by founding and funding lobbying groups and positive media coverage.

The second component of this onslaught is that so many Whites are enthusiastically engaged in this project. They understand the reward-punishment choices and go along with them. Furthermore, many Whites are genuinely motivated by feelings of guilt and a desire to be virtuous—a virtue defined by incessant propaganda emanating from elite universities and media and facilitated by a science of race and by invidious, politically and ethnically motivated historical accounts of the history of White America. Others are motivated by misguided, suicidal dedication to “principles”—especially the individualist inheritance of Constitutional government, individual liberty, etc.

The theme here is the same—betrayal by a hostile elite and complicity of many of our own people targeting a vulnerable population which they hold in contempt. Read more