John Derbyshire is among the most prominent and prolific of writers of the paleo or nationalist right.  I think of him as a Tory, and his writing as Swiftian.  Some readers of this magazine are likely regular readers of his online essays, a selection of which, all culled from the year 2013, have been reprinted in this book.  Two transcripts from his weekly radio show have been included as well, and several short pieces from The American Spectator.  The collection has been appropriately titled.  Mr. Derbyshire may never have been arrested for his writings, but he is excluded from reaching anyone who does not peruse such websites as Takimag and VDare.  American totalitarianism, as Christopher Dawson foresaw nearly 80 years ago, is of the soft variety.  You will not be imprisoned for your views, nor will you will be shot, but you will be denied employment, or (if a writer) a public forum.  Like a patient carrying a contagious disease, you will be isolated, lest you infect your neighbor.  John Derbyshire—articulate, informed, well read—is under quarantine.  The left has cultural hegemony now, and it does not tolerate dissent.

One of the questions raised by this highly readable collection (one that our author, regrettably, does not ask) is how to deduce the proper proportion among stupidity, cowardice, and villainy behind the policies of the governing class on the national question.  Many readers are no doubt familiar with the late Sam Francis’s dichotomy between the Stupid Party (Republicans) and the Evil Party (Democrats).  After reading Derbyshire, however, I wonder whether a modification is in order.  The Republicans would seem to be even more cowardly than stupid, but perhaps evil, too, and the Democrats at least as stupid as they are evil.  After all, what is multiculturalism if not an idiot religion?

Derbyshire speculates that Western man is suffering from a kind of epistemological anosognosia, a neurological condition in which the patient has a disability, such as blindness, but does not know it.  In these cases, the bewildered mind, unable to comprehend it has lost its sight, is able to reconstruct a visual field from memory to substitute for the real one, no longer visible.  The patient is then surprised when he walks into a wall that seemed not to be there.  As an analogy, it’s a serviceable one, although T.S. Eliot’s “dissociation of sensibility” may be better.  Americans who work in what is sometimes called the “information sector” (politics, public relations, advertising, entertainment, journalism) would seem to have a full-blown case.  They seem impervious to reality.  America’s best days are ahead of us; we are making progress; we are winning the War on Terror (politicians).  Every social gathering is a multiracial one, and every white man has a black friend (advertising).  Muslims are a welcome addition to our culture; hardworking immigrants are growing our economy and making us more united; Islam is a religion of peace; only white men are racists (media).

Derbyshire is the doctor who enters the room and explains to the patient that he is actually blind, that what he believes he is seeing is really an illusion, a false picture of reality, and that if he persists in it he will end up in a hospital, or worse.  But what if the sufferer does not realize he has a problem?  Derbyshire is well aware of this possibility.  Indeed, he often expresses his frustration that he and other immigration patriots seem to be shouting at the wind.  He regularly asks, “Will people never learn?”

But what if many have learned, and it makes no difference because they have no power?  What if our “leaders” (I’m thinking now of House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell) are not craven fools but cunning traitors who know exactly what they are doing?  Are we really to believe that Barack Obama would have gone ahead with his executive amnesty if he had not received private assurances from these two that they would do nothing more than complain?  Did they not fund his amnesty, as well as the ObamaCare they promised to repeal?  And are Europeans really blind to the ruinous consequences of resettling millions of Africans and Arabs in their ancestral lands?  Europe’s problem is our problem: unrepresentative governments ruling without popular consent; ruling cliques that, like Macbeth, have gone too far down the road of treason to go back.  In short, we have a different problem from epistemological blindness, and posting endless essays debunking the lies of the left will not suffice to save our civilization.  I’m not sure Derbyshire understands that.

Multiculturalism is both a state religion and the ideology of the managerial class.  It is enforced by statute, by executive order, by administrative action, by judicial ruling.  It empowers bureaucrats, administrators, judges, social workers, lawyers, and ethnic activists.  It also enriches the moneyed oligarchy (by flooding the labor markets and expanding the pool of credit-fueled consumption).  Most important of all, by fragmenting and Balkanizing the population, it protects the corrupt rule of the Washington establishment.  How can the people rise up and overthrow their oppressors when there is no people, when the population is at one another’s throats?  Diversity is the ultimate guarantee against revolution.

Many who do not work for the government passionately believe in the supposed truths of this humanitarian creed.  They are the fanatics, the activists, the informers, the self-righteous commissars and persecutors of the left.  The press is full of them.  In fact, the media acts as an enforcement mechanism.  Derbyshire recognizes this but is unable to account for it.  I would argue that the explanation lies in the religious character of multiculturalism, its vital role in a post-Christian society as a substitute faith, an ersatz religion.

The book of Romans makes it plain that man is a religious being who knows, at some level, that there is a God to Whom everyone will have to answer.  It also teaches, as does virtually every other book of the Bible, that man is a rebellious and sinful creature who, apart from grace, wants no part of his Creator or His laws.  Hence mankind’s inveterate invention of false gods and seductive idols, and his especial hostility to the presence of the true religion.  This explains why leftists are averse to Christianity but not to Islam, even though the latter is the most intolerant and illiberal of all the world’s religions.  Christianity is a standing reminder of the claims of the True and Only God, while Islam is a cobelligerent in the revolt against His Lordship of Creation.

Then there is the emasculating power of social conformism, which leads to groupthink, and which motivates both the meek and the ambitious alike.  Many believe in multiculturalism because it is in their interest to believe it, or at least to pretend to, and we know that any pretense, if kept up long enough, can become a principle.  If repeating a lie is necessary to social safety and occupational success, most people will not only repeat it but believe it.  Of course, this does not mean that many people, if given the opportunity, will not act contrary to these professed beliefs, or will not cast them off as soon as the legal and social sanctions enforcing them are removed.

If this were not a formidable enough combination, growing segments of our population (racial minorities soon to become a collective majority) are wedded to multiculturalism for reasons of interest and identity.  Multiculturalism furnishes the ideological justification for mass immigration and for the privileged legal status foreigners and their children can expect to enjoy here (affirmative action, eligibility for government benefits).  And it both expresses and justifies the ressentiment that nonwhites feel toward whites.  Nietzsche used this term to designate the jealousy with which those who were inferior in some way (in beauty, physique, intellect, culture, status, rank, order) viewed those more richly endowed.  He saw liberalism, democracy, and socialism as political manifestations of ressentiment.  Multiculturalism is one, too.

Derbyshire correctly points to Lenin’s dictum—“Who?  Whom?”—as fundamental to the left-wing worldview.  This bifurcation of mankind into the oppressors and the oppressed (with leftists as the liberators, thereby entitled to rule) explains everything: the inconsistencies and contradictions of American foreign policy, the selective enforcement of the laws, and the double and triple standards of the news media.  “Dead white males” is more than a slogan; it’s a wish and a policy.

No one is going to be argued out of his emotional or practical investment in the visionary project of realizing a multiracial utopia by the printed or online word.  And that is true whether this project confers on one an undeserved and privileged legal status, gratifies jealousy and envy toward a more accomplished and gifted people, protects or promotes one’s career, increases corporate profits, or entrenches the corrupt rule of a base oligarchy.  Derbyshire’s writings are informative, illuminating, ironical, incendiary, but at this late hour we need something more—we need a miracle.  And a practical program.

 

[From the Dissident Right II: Essays 2013, by John Derbyshire (Litchfield, CT: VDare Foundation) 251 pp., $15.99]