HuffPo along with other leftist news sources ran some articles last week that essentially presented the following "argument":
>The Camp Of The Saints (Raspail, 1973) is a racist book. >Steve Bannon likes The Camp Of The Saints >Steve Bannon is in the Trump Administration >Steve Bannon is racist >The Trump administration is racist
This "argument" was put forward without a strong definition for what racism is. So I decided to read The Camp Of The Saints, to determine not if it was racist by my own definition of racism, but rather to set aside any notion of racism and simply investigate the novel. The novel, being a work of fiction, is clearly counter factual by definition, but does it seem to suggest policy or individual actions that are morally wrong? Can we even coherently discuss the moral status of a piece of fiction, and if so, how?
I haven't finished the Novel yet, so I'll be bumping the thread with passages I find interesting.
>Like that silver fork, for example, with the well-worn prongs, and some maternal ancestor’s initials, now rubbed almost smooth. A curious object, really, when you think that the Western World invented it for propriety’s sake, though a third of the human race still grubs up its food with its fingers. And the crystal, always set out in a row of four, so utterly useless. Well, why not? Why do without glasses, like boors Why stop setting them out, simply because the Brazilian backwood was dying of thirst, or because India was gulping down typhus with every swallow of muck from its dried-up wells? Let the cuckhold come pound at the door with their threats of revenge. There’s no sharing in love. The rest of the world can go hang. They don’t even exist. So what if those thousands were all on the march, cuckolded out of the pleasures of life? All the better! … And so, the professor set out the four glasses, lined them up in a row.
>Spontaneous though they may seem, mass movements seldom occur without a certain degree of manipulation. That being the case, one is quick to picture a kind of almighty conductor, a great manipulator in chief, pulling thousands of strings the world over, and aided here and there by gifted soloists. Nothing could be further from the truth. What happens is that, in this world of warped senses, certain creatures of outstanding mind—for good or ill—begin to stir, to look for a way to fight off uncertainty, a way to escape from a human condition whose age-old persistence they refuse to accept. Unsure of what lies beyond, they plunge headlong all the same, in a wild flight into the future, burning their bridges of sober reflection behind them. Each one pulls the strings to the lobes of his brain. But here, precisely, is today’s great mystery: all of those strings, independent of each other, are nonetheless bound up together, and stem from one selfsame current of thought. The world is controlled, so it seems, not by a single specific conductor, but by a new apocalyptic beast, a kind of anonymous, omnipresent monster, and one that, in some primordial time, must have vowed to destroy the Western World. The beast has no set plan. It seizes whatever occasions arise. The crowd massed along the Ganges was merely the latest, and doubtless the one with the richest potential.
The (((Beast))) is an interesting motif of Raspail's novel. I find it one of the more intriguing elements. I for one do not buy into the notion that the Jews are somehow to fault for the anti-west pressure, but at the same time I don't buy into Raspail's understanding that the (((Beast))) just kind of emerges naturally.
Jace Gutierrez
Define racism please, and then construct an argument utilizing your definition that supports your statement.
>Australia is a free country, and its press releases aren’t censored. In no time the news had circled the globe. In the sickest of the Western nations, it crackled through the air like a racist manifesto, to a caustic accompaniment of slur and aspersion. It was clear to the beast that the battle had at last been joined. In London, Paris, Washington, Rome, The Hague, great mobs of young people, shaggy but well behaved, laid peaceful siege to the Australian embassies, with rhythmic chants of “Ra-cists Fas-cists We’re-All-from-the-Ganges- Now!”
Jose Adams
>The ones who truly love their traditions don’t take them too seriously. They march to get their heads shot off with a joke on their lips. And the reason is that they know they’re going to die for something intangible, something sprung from their fancy, half humor, half humbug. Or perhaps it’s a little more subtle. Perhaps hidden away in their fancy is that pride of the blueblood, who refuses to look foolish by fighting for an idea, and so he cloaks it with bugle calls that tug at the heart, with empty mottoes and useless gold trim, and allows himself the supreme delight of giving his life for an utter masquerade. That’s something the Left has never understood, and that’s why its contempt is so heavy with hate. When it spits on the flag, or tries to piss out the eternal flame, when it hoots at the old farts loping by in their berets, or yells “Women’s Lib!” outside the church, at an old-fashioned wedding (to cite just some basic examples), it does so in such a grim, serious manner—like such “pompous assholes,” as the Left would put it, if only it could judge. The true Right is never so grim. That’s why the Left hates its guts, the way a hangman must hate the victim who laughs and jokes on his way to the gallows.
This passage reminds me of what MILO said when I saw him speak. There is a certain pessimism of the left that is in contrast with an almost melancholy optimism that the right seems to hold on to.
Anthony Perez
>Leader of Ganges migrants is a literal shit eater with a mutant on his shoulders. >Indians shown having wild orgies on board their ships, with semen dripping from every piece of skin >Arabs contaminate a pool with STDs >Minorities are in cahoots to overthrow the west
Its kind a more sophisticated Turner diaries. Beautifully written, but let's not kid ourselves.
Gabriel Young
The Left is humorless because real humour relies on difference, on discrimination. How can a gray faceless equal mass be funny? The Left is only funny when they are being hypocritical and mocking inequalities despite their beliefs.
Ryder Peterson
You're evading the charge. Define racism, or at least define some item that you can morally condemn, then attach it to the novel.
Is Raspail's focus on the cultural sexuality of India really so misplaced as to be something we could call problematic? Even if it wasn't factual, which it is, the novel is fiction. Is there something morally wrong with fiction? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kama_Sutra
>“But Colonel,” Perret interrupted, “the real enemy is in front of you, out on those boats. It’s not that gang of loudmouths behind you!” “Oh, you think so, monsieur?” the colonel objected. “I can see you’ve never done much fighting. In war, the real enemy is always behind the lines. Never in front of you, never among you. Always at your back.
Bumping with hi res images
Joseph Parker
The left interact with reality only to the extent that they can use the things they find there to bolster their narrative with. The content of the book, its prescience or the reasons Bannon actually likes it are completely alien and unknowable to them.
Dylan Murphy
Give me a break. They are shown as subhumans. Human locust. You are blind or (more accurately) dishonest if you do not accept this.
Indians having orgies on a feces burning boat led by a shit eating mutant and his deformed offspring coming to destroy the west is not racist to you? The liberals are right. That IS racist. Own it.
Owen Parker
>To be honest, we have to admit, however, that the crimes committed that night, for the most part, had no needless cruelty or malice about them, no excess of subtle finesse, but seemed part of the natural order of things. One might have feared that this was to be the first wave of a fierce, brewing storm. Instead, it was the one last visible tremor in an underground upheaval. And it quickly subsided, since the country had drowned in its waters long since. Besides, one thing is sure. Even if Western-style law had survived, with its weighty decisions about justice as we knew it, the courts would have judged each one of these crimes as quite defensible on social grounds, going through the motions—for appearance’s sake—and handing down suspended sentences, or light ones at most.
Brayden Thompson
You still haven't defined racism.
To me it seems like a fictional hyperbolization of of a rather realistic picture. Admittedly I haven't been to a single square meter of the Indian subcontinent, but I believe that as evidenced by my link to the Kama Sutra, and the articles on cow dung "industry" in India, sex and shit are rather unique items in India's cultural lexicon.
Also the turd eater isn't a mutant. Did you read the book? He is characterized as tall and of healthy build. I strongly disagree with your analysis that the Indians are shown as subhuman, in fact at think that conception is entirely at odds with Raspail's intent. To me it seems that Raspail intends to show the Indians as humans entirely, just humans of a different race, and in clear competitive contrast with the humans of the western races.
Would you consider the notion of inequality between races (as measured by any number of metrics) a workable definition of racism?
Kevin Smith
>If they wanted to catch their breath on the line, or settle their nerves—or just stop for a moment and muse on their distant palm grove, or the big muddy river running its course between grasslands and dunes—they would rush the prescribed moves through, then loll over the conclusion, as if they hadn’t finished, daydreaming without letting on, hand resting on the tool in question, pretending to work. And during those precious moments, they would cast quick glances among themselves, fraternal glances that bespoke the same loathing of the clockers’ steady pace, as much a rejection of the new religion as a need to rest. But the clockers were always there watching. No room, after all, for two cults at once. And they would speed up the rhythm, or divide the jobs to make them simpler and quicker. When you’re manufacturing cars, it’s no good to dream of exotic palm groves, or of kneeling down nightly in prayer, facing Mecca. And so, when the redemptive myth of the Ganges burst onto the scene, it was toward those million messiahs that all hopes secretly turned. This became quite clear at about the time of the São Tomé affair, when the armada had reached the height of fashion, and the famous slogan “We’re all from the Ganges now” was dished up for every political and philosophical cause. Huge demonstration, but rather short-lived. Some eighty thousand workers, massed by their motionless assembly lines, shouting two slogans that seemed, on the face of it, wholly unrelated: “Get-the-Clockers-Off-Our-Backs, We’re-All-From-the- Ganges-Now!”
Ethan Nelson
>Can we discuss the moral status of a piece of fiction. Yes, place it in the context of the society it was written and then examine the purpose of its writing. IE Camp was a warning of what might be the end the West.
The fairest and I would say most common definition of racism would be: >"1. Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior."
Liberals have changed (Or are trying to) the definition of racism so they can simply everything related to whites or Western self-preservation as racist, it doesn't matter if the content is actually racist (see below). Huffington Post have almost certainly classified Camp as "racist" because it is a defense of the West.
One might infer a sense of actual racist superiority from the paragraph you first quoted (Equating the Indians with animals could be interpreted dehumanizing) or from what the other poster posted. Personally, I haven't even read the book so I'm not going a decisive judgement on it
Easton Fisher
>Then things calmed down and returned to normal, though the unions, surprised by the spontaneous uprising, had tried to keep the movement going so that they could take it over. Failing that, they settled for adopting the strange Manichaean battle cry that pitted Ganges refugees and clockers against each other as symbols of the eternal struggle between Good and Evil; the cry that they shouted through this plant and that, just to show that they were still a force to be reckoned with, in spite of the social tranquility decreed by the beast to lull world opinion to sleep. And days went by. Until that night, when one of the time gobblers, chosen among the most ruthless of the lot, was trussed up like a sausage and laid on a piece of sheet metal en route to the body assembly, with a sign in Arabic around his neck: “For now the thousand years are ended.” When the massive drop hammer fell against the metal to stamp it into shape, the clocker was nothing but a puddle of blood, quickly dried in the heat. A great roar went up and the assembly line stopped, as thousands of Arabs, next to their machines, fell prostrate toward Mecca, and gave thanks to Allah. The “underdogs” had had their scapegoat, and that was that. There were no other crimes in Javel that night. They needed only one, and everyone understood it. If we want to pursue the historical facts a bit further, here too—again, just for the record—we might point out that cars are still coming off the lines at the Javel plant, though they’re awfully expensive and terribly scarce. They’re reserved, first choice, for the officials of the new regime. To buy one himself, a worker in one of those people-run plants would have to pay ten times what he makes in a year. A pleasure he can ill afford. (He can take consolation, however, in using our public conveyances, chaotic and decrepit, or in joining the rest of the ill-shod pedestrians thronging the streets.)
Hmm, Islam and Socialism, 1973
Dominic White
Racism:
>the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.
>Indians as humans entirely, just humans of a different race, and in clear competitive contrast with the humans of the western races.
Tyler Cruz
are you mad he's quoting from the book and youre rabbidly repeating "RACISM RACISM" Guess which one has stronger supporting evidence you fucking faggot
Jackson Baker
Silly leaf. I read the book. Don't speak of things you don't understand.
Julian Mitchell
> Yes, place it in the context of the society it was written and then examine the purpose of its writing. IE Camp was a warning of what might be the end the West.
So if the intent is amoral, then the fiction is amoral?
I've considered this dictionary definition of racism before. Prejudice as defined by further google searches seems to hinge upon unreasonableness and or falseness of the preconceived racial notion in question. It is clear to me that if racism simply relies on the falsehood or unreasonableness of a racial notion, then The Camp Of The Saints is only racist in that it is a piece of fiction. Can we morally condemn the racist elements of Camp, when the intention of the novel's unreasonable and false racial characterizations might be morally permissible or even obligatory?
If we consider the second part of our dictionary definition, racism being any sort of racial discrimination, then it seems we've opened an entire can of worms. Affirmative action seems clearly racist, and furthermore if we attach moral impermissibility to racism, we are left with an over bearing moral conception where we might not even be able to open our eyes, or bring justice to fleeing perpetrators of crimes in the event that the only describing characteristic of the criminal is the color of his or her skin?
If a perception of moral superiority is indeed a definition of racism, we need not engage in circular arguments assuming the moral status of such a perception based off of its definition equivalence with racism, rather we should sit down and seriously consider: Is it morally wrong to perceive a race as superior to another (as measured by some number of metrics).
Is it morally wrong to identify the fact that east africans are superior runners as compared to ethnic native Guatemalans?
Sebastian Reyes
Like dragging a child to go brush their teeth, I've finally convinced you to put forward a proposed definition of racism: >The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.
Could you please elaborate why you find "The belief that all members of each race posses characteristics or abilities specific to that race" to be a morally reprehensible belief? Under what ethical theory can you establish such a belief's moral wrongness?
>I read the book Except your wrongly interpreted the dung eater as a mutant, when Raspail clearly describes him otherwise.
If you read the book, I would love to hear your take on what happens to Dio and his wife at the hotel.
Joshua Watson
>That wasn’t the kind of thing one wrote those days, nor will it ever be again. The pure of conscience, on the other hand, roared out a mighty chorus. Endless variations, in every key, on the famous theme: “No dogs, no niggers.” (Hyperbole, to be sure. That wasn’t it at all.) What the owner of the Café Odéon had said at the time was this: >“I’ve been running the Café Odéon for almost a year and a half. It’s kind of a bar and ice cream parlor combined. Most of my trade are Africans and West Indians. Anyway, on December twenty-seventh, while I’m out of town, two tough guys go over to this other table and crush out their cigarettes. Right on the table, I mean. So the help kick them out. The next day a lady complains that some character is trying to give her a hard time. One of the waiters—the name doesn’t matter—goes over and tries to straighten him out. He gets roughed up so bad, he winds up in the hospital. When I get back, a week later, I put my foot down. Don’t serve any troublemakers, I tell them. Well, that’s when they start giving me the business. Frankly, I can’t take any more. It’s a losing game. I’d rather close up …” >And he added, without thinking, leaving himself open to the usual epithets and insults: “How do you like that? Calling me a racist! Me, a Jew, who fought against the Nazis, tooth and nail!”
The last part tickles my Jewish sensibilities.
Gavin Hughes
Not him, but I disagree with you. Their actions are not because they are Indian, or whatever, their actions in context are because they are Other. Asserting racism because noting difference between Self and Other is identical to asserting sexism because noting she has a pair of tits, and I do not.
The protagonist is, I think, evil. Yet his evil comes not from his undoubted racism and that racism doesn't make the book racist any more than it makes Twain's Tom Sawyer book racist
