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The Prophet as Leper
This book is so politically incorrect that I admire Amazon.com for actually carrying it. Written in the early 1970s, this book looks beyond the cold war to a North-South confrontation in which European civilization is unilaterally morally disarmed. The thesis is simple: suppose a million starving people from the Ganges actually took Western rhetoric of compassion, exploitation etc., to heart, and commandeered en masse, shipping, with the intention of moving to the shores of France? (Raspail, of course, is French.) Would anyone stop them?
The imagery employed is interesting. The title comes from Revelation, Chapter 20, and refers to the forces of evil laying seige to the camp of the saints, here meant to be the nations of the West. "The thousand years are over..." is chanted from Third World lips, harking to the millennial reign of Christ, as well as to the millennial domination of Europe over the globe. Raspail has the Vatican, World Council of Churches, and other organs of what he saw as Western liberal compassion try to feed the Armada, as it sails around the Cape. The bodies of their would-be benefactors are cast into the sea.
The characters who oppose, with violence, the Armada are named with names like Constantine Drasages and Luke Notaras, namesakes of the last Byzantine Emperor and Admiral. They are portrayed as villains in the media; one of the more thoughtful leftists, fashionably in support of opening up France's shores, but cynical enough to see the potential results, reflects on the parallels between Byzantium's fate and that of the West.
The author's point is that any who dare to say that 'white' civilization has a right to exist are branded racists and cast out of the pale of polite society. The narrative is set up as a flashback. The Armada is about to disgorge its human cargo in Provence as we begin. An old man, M. Calgues, awaits them, Mozart playing in the background, after setting what he expects to be his last supper among the living. From there, we go back to the beginning, in India, as a Western cleric preaches quasi-liberation theology to the masses. Along the way, as the news spreads over the world, we digress, looking at Manhattanites holing up in skyscrapers as the spectre of race riots beckon, and at Russian troops on the Manchurian border contemplating the human waves gathering to wash over them.
The central question of the book is this: will the West (including Russia - more properly, the North), when (not if) confronted with de facto occupation of national territories by Third World people, coming to live, but not to assimilate, use violence to save itself? Is there left in Euro-American civilization a will to live that is strong enough to pull a trigger? The stark question is answered in one of two possible ways by the concluding chapter. This astringent book, whether you agree with Raspail's views or not, demands thoughtful attention to the questions posed. How will we deal with population/immigration issues? Is our culture and way of life worth fighting for? -Lloyd A. Conway
http://www.amazon.com/Camp-Saints-Jean-Raspail/dp/1881780074
'The Camp of the Saints' was written so long ago that I was a Kennedy-McGovern liberal Democrat. Such a prophetic work. It is happening differently than it did in the book, as Raspail said at the time that it would happen differently. But if you look at today's rapid demographic changes: the United States heading toward becoming majority Latino, the amazingly fast morphing of London into 'Londonistan', Muslims burning parts of Paris, even Sweden now having black 'no-go' areas, where, for example, ambulances need armed protection, and, maybe above all, the 'soft-totalitarianism' of Political Correctness locking this whole ever worsening nightmare into place, above criticism in polite society. So that today we find ourselves to be seemingly hapless real-life characters playing various roles in 'The Camp of the Saints,' revised updated edition.
Also at Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Raspail
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