The Greatest Division In Contemporary American Life

The West as a whole is in a civilization-threatening crisis, but the nature of the crisis differs depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re on.

In America, the enemy looks like this. Source

In Unherd, British historian Andrew Hussey quotes Frenchman Driss Ghali, who is of Moroccan descent and a Muslim [bold mine]:

Ghali’s claims are as striking as his background. The French Republic, he says, has been slowly fractured, corroded in gradients by social change which threatens its very existence. The most significant of these changes has been the growth of its banlieues into something like mini-cities, with their own codes, cultures and languages. They are usually at odds with mainstream France and the Republic, which in the form of the police is seen as an intrusive, oppressive presence (sometimes the word “colonialist” is used in provocation).

For all the loose language bandied about in the past few years, there is as yet no civil war in France, though Ghali does not rule it out. But there is, he says, a permanent stand-off between those who believe in France as an ideal of civilisation, and those who have no interest in such abstractions, and even violently oppose them. This, Ghali argues, is probably the greatest division in contemporary French life.

I often highlight the differences between the situation in Europe with that of America. The West as a whole is in a civilization-threatening crisis, but the nature of the crisis differs depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re on. In the U.S., as well as Canada, the problem is growing anarchy, racial tensions, and a system which has been so subverted, nothing it does makes any sense to the common person.

In France, the problem is a literal civilizational clash. But there’s also something deeper that goes beyond the West versus the Third World. It’s not a religious conflict; the West, especially in Europe, is highly secularized. Rather, the divide, as Andrew Hussey explains in his book The French Intifada, is a clash between “Colonizers” and the “Colonized.” You probably hear these terms far more today than any other.

America was born from colonialism, but was never a colonial empire itself, not to the extent Britain and France were. Still, the colonial history means that America was founded in tragedy. The difference is that even those opposed to America’s founding believe the country can be saved; as long as all vestiges of colonialism and anything pre-Year Zero, whenever that might’ve been, are completely erased, and America is transformed into the multicultural, multiracial democratic utopia it was always meant to be.

In France, it’s not even that. According to Ghali and Hussey, one side thinks the country shouldn’t only be completely destroyed, but conquered by Third World foreigners in the process. Similar stories are playing out throughout the rest of the continent. This is what Ghali describes as the “greatest division in contemporary French life:” does France even deserve to exist any longer?

In the U.S., the question is, “Whose country is this? If it doesn’t belong to everyone, it belongs to no one!” Hence, you have the cosmopolitan, multicultural democratic Left saying their demands ought to be met in order to save the country. They’re willing to allow the Red-White-and-Blue to continue flying as long as it’s under their terms. Liberals don’t say they hate America; they hate Americans, they hate American history. They love what America could become, if only they had control of everything.

There are those who believe America can be made better by destroying and completely redefining its identity. Then there are those who not only want to preserve that identity, they also believe America’s greatness is reserved not for the whole world, but for Americans. This is the greatest division in contemporary American life.

Then again, there are Black Americans, whose French equivalent are the Arabs. Black Americans, as a group, don’t believe in America as a people, a place, or even an idea. It’s just something which owes them a lot. Black Americans share many of the same attitudes towards America as the Arabs do of France. In fact, a reader once referred to how Blacks have behaved since the 1960s as their own “intifada” of sorts.

The difference is that Blacks are 13 percent of the population and are placated by a powerful political party, still run mostly by Whites. Blacks dominate culture in the U.S. in ways Arabs and Africans don’t. But it does suggest that even if the Left were to emerge victorious in some future civil war, they’d then be left holding the bag on what to do with Blacks.

In that sense, America’s problems are far more complicated. Long after immigration ceases to be a major issue, long after the Fourth Turning has played out and we establish who gets to define what America is and who it’s for, it’ll still be dealing with the problem of the Black community for generations to come. This, not immigration, is the real problem with no solution. In many ways, immigration is downstream of the Black problem in America.

Wherever you live, it’s important to understand: the other side doesn’t want the same things you want. This is what makes them the enemy. The reason why common ground is so hard to find is because each side’s gain is the other side’s loss. I mentioned in my last column that even when it comes to crime, an issue that once seemed to hold potential for common ground, the Left couldn’t help but take a dig at the Right, as though the Left discovered for the first time that enforcing the law was the answer. In an environment such as this, there’s no way to bridge the divide. The other side is committed to your defeat. In places like France, the other side is committed to your total annihilation.

In closing out this section, look at what self-appointed “Keeper of Expertise” Neil deGrasse Tyson said recently:

Our secular Democracy implicitly grants religious freedoms to all. A good thing. But if you’re Christian and want to vote into law tenets of Christianity, you open the possibility of a different religious majority in the future out-voting you, instituting their laws instead.

Someone tell him about Britain - though officially a religious state, it’s absolutely not in function. Christianity is something of persecuted religion, in fact, and no politician dares to make it a component of governance. By contrast, despite only making up six percent on the population, Muslims have become the single most powerful religious bloc in the country. Tell Tyson about France, too - a secular state with Muslims making up 13 percent of the population.

And yet:

The experts, for all they know, always seem behind the curve.

Fight For Your Country, Little Nazi!

Look at how a German magazine is suggesting the country do to get young Germans to serve in the military:

The irony: Germany has imported thousands upon thousands of fighting-age foreign males, many of them from war-torn countries, and some of them may even be war veterans themselves. Yet the demand is for young German men and women to be conscripted so the country can wage war? It’s in fact a well-documented phenomenon: when the calling for fresh meat for the grinder of war, recruiting ads in the West almost invariably portray Whites, males specifically. But Germany is a super-progressive country, so they won’t offend women by leaving them out, would they?

The article is only available in German and is paywalled, so I’ll just have to trust that the Remix take on it is accurate:

The article, entitled “Others no longer defend us? Then we must do it ourselves!” claims that “the USA no longer wants to protect Germany. This brings a bitter realization: Our unbearable complacency must end.”

The problem, of course, is that young Germans don’t want to fight for their country, for one reason or another:

Of course, the “New Germany” does not exactly have people lining up to fight for it, and that is a real problem for the establishment. Much of the conservative youth no longer see a Germany they would lay down their lives for, and in fact, the “New Germany” openly despises these AfD-voting youths, and maybe even sending them to the front would solve this “problem.”

Meanwhile, the left-wing youth is coddled and mostly pacifist. This “Spiegel/Stern left” may like the idea of soldiers going off to fight on their behalf, but they don’t actually want to do the fighting themselves. The old notions of “honor” and “heroes” have been widely mocked and denigrated by the German elite, which Stern acknowledges,

So, who will fight?

Well, in the end, there doesn’t have to be a “reason” for conscription. Youths in Germany, just as in Ukraine, will be forced to the front for the likes of Stern’s editorial staff when push comes to shove, but it’s a nice thought for these journalists that these youths will at least think they have something worth dying for.

As they so often do, the defenders of the West’s cosmopolitan regimes try having it both ways: they want the benefits of nationhood, which includes patriotic young people stepping forth to defend all they know and love, but also don’t want them to be too patriotic, effectively:

So, what should they die for? Stern addresses this problem, as the very atomized and multicultural society it promotes reduces the will for Germans to die face down in some trench at the frontline.

The magazine writes, “Taking all of this into account, Germany faces a tremendous challenge. We must dare to embrace more ‘heroism’ – and less hedonism. More communal commitment and less responsibility-avoiding individualism. And be careful not to lose sight of what we want to defend: freedom and diversity. If the pendulum swings too far toward individualization, we become defenseless. If the focus is too strongly on defense, the ghosts of the past are awakened, keyword ‘national community.’ It’s important to find the balance.”

See, Stern doesn’t want right-wing people who love their country fighting a patriotic war at the front. This could lead to people voting for the AfD, and then… Hitler will come back. This is the logic of Der Spiegel, Stern, and many others.

They instead want iPhone-wielding hipsters who love diversity dying in the trenches. These iPhone-wielding youths should be at the front to defend guys like Gerwien so they can go to Vietnamese restaurants, attend book readings from African authors, and enjoy art installations from Brazilian LGBT activists.

German youth should die for all the above, not for the “German people,” or the “German flag,” or “hearth and home” or any of that other fascist nonsense that typically united nations and led men to lay down their lives for each other and their families.

Stern also appears relatively sure this youth will indeed be dying as well, saying they “will have to take up arms at some point.”

“At the very latest, when conscription comes into effect, ‘they’ (the Bundeswehr) will be all of us – even if only because our children and grandchildren will have to take up arms at some point,” writes Stern. “This raises the question: What are we prepared to fight for and, when push comes to shove, to die for? The fact that we are being asked to answer for the first time in decades is the true ‘turning point.’”

If this is what they believe, they shouldn’t expect anyone to fight, not with any enthusiasm. What liberals don’t understand is that humans don’t fight for abstract principles or ideas, not naturally. Yes, humans have fought and died over ideology - communism and fascism comes foremost to mind - but a tremendous amount of brainwashing and browbeating has to occur for this to happen. It’s fascinating that a country which experienced the worst that communism and fascism had to offer and is deathly afraid of Hitler’s resurrection expects its youths to die not for home and people, but for an ideology. History repeats itself.

If diversity is a meaningless concept, one not killing and dying over, freedom in a German context is even less so. There’s not much, not in any meaningful sense, in Germany. It’s a country where people are prosecuted and jailed for speech, where the punishment for Germans defying the official narrative is harsher than it is for immigrants and racial minorities who commit truly brutal crimes. I don’t know how anybody would want to fight for a social order like that. But maybe that’s why conscription is necessary: because nobody would. Freedom and diversity come for free, after all. At least, that’s what they used to believe.

I asked my young friend in Germany what they thought about it all. Consider it a minority opinion if you wish, but my friend isn’t interested in fighting and dying for Germany’s so-called “diversity.” That said, they did say Germany’s military is such bad shape, so conscription may be part of an attempt to bolster the ranks. Russia is a distant threat to the U.S., but not to Germany. As a land-locked country, foreign invasion by a strong military power is more real of a threat to them and cannot be neglected by national leadership.

Still, it’s amazing that German institutions couldn’t come up with a better reason to argue in favor of conscription than defending “freedom and diversity.” It means about as much as defending communism or fascism, at this point. Then again, the West exists in a hyper-ideological time, so the institutions, who’ve been at the forefront of it, cannot imagine making any other kind of appeal, even the ones which have worked in the past.

Remix closes with a warning:

As Remix News reported in the past, the Ukrainian army has had something the German army did not, which was a patriotic, hardcore, right-wing element that was willing to “die for Ukraine.” Not all of these soldiers were neo-Nazis, but many certainly were. A huge number of these soldiers are already dead, and the war may be coming to an end. Ironically, Ukraine may end up more like Germany in the end with the death of these soldiers, as calls by Ukrainian business leaders to accept the mass importation of migrants to replace the soldiers lost are becoming more of a mainstream idea.

It’s a fact: nationalists make the best warriors. Not in a civic nationalist sense, either. Those who fight the hardest believe they’re fighting for something tangible: their loved ones, their home, their land. Unfortunately, such people are also pariahs in the West, currently, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Societies often discover the hard way: once you get rid of the “bigots,” you’ll find nobody really wants to kill or be killed over your grand designs and stupid ideas.

Unless you threaten them into doing so, of course. Sounds a bit fascist, no?

California Dreams Were Actually Nightmares In The ‘90s

When you think of 1990s California, what images come to mind? I’m going to guess they’re mostly all pleasant ones. Most of us likely remember it as the best time to be in the Golden State, maybe the last time it was worth living in.

That might’ve been the case in places like the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, or Orange County. But in Los Angeles, the state’s “franchise” city? It was anything but. It’s a perfect example of how fading memories and nostalgic impulses make us forget how things actually were.

On his Substack, Scott Greer explained how California, in the 1990s, was the battleground of America’s culture wars, including how White backlash was a very potent force back in those days:

The ‘90s were a tumultuous decade. While conservatives now look upon the Bill Clinton era as the new 1950s, America was no Mayberry. California illustrated this fact. Crime was horrible, especially in the early part of the decade. There were over a thousand murders in Los Angeles in 1992. By comparison, there were just 327 homicides in the City of Angels in 2023. Gangs ruled entire neighborhoods and their exploits were celebrated in the burgeoning “gangsta rap” genre. Smog covered much of Southern California. Illegal immigrants were pouring in by the tens of thousands. Entire communities were being transformed overnight by legal and illegal immigrants. Race relations were at a boiling point and spilled over into real-world violence. There was also plenty of cultural degeneracy for Californians to experience in media and in real life. Gritty films such as Falling Down captured the state’s tumultuous mood.

Greer goes on to cite the Rodney King and O.J. Simpson cases as two infamous examples, both out of Los Angeles, of just how central the city and its state were on the bleeding edge of America’s political divide at the time. The country as a whole was nowhere near as divided as it is today, but what California went through in the ‘90s foreshadowed much of what was to come in the 2010s, into the 2020s, for all of America.

Greer explains how White backlash manifested during this era:

But whites weren’t mere spectators to these happenings. They were pushing to save their state from racial chaos. The state passed three measures that sought to make it a better place for white Americans to live. But they all proved too little, too late. In 1994, the state overwhelmingly voted in favor of Proposition 187. The measure called for a crackdown on illegal immigrants and, if properly implemented, would make California inhospitable to such lawbreakers. The law would’ve barred public services (such as schools and hospitals) to illegals and mandated more citizenship screening. Nearly 60 percent of Californians voted for it and Governor Pete Wilson won another term off supporting it. But it was never to be enforced. A federal court dismissed the will of the people and struck it down. The illegals kept on pouring in.

Greer’s bottom line is that demographic change is the biggest reason why the state’s politics transformed so drastically in the ‘90s, becoming the far-left stronghold it is today:

White Californians voted for these proposals. But without whites as a majority, all these victories were insufficient to reserve the state’s trajectory. California is no longer a battlefield in the culture war–it’s completely in the Left’s hands. High crime, lower quality of life, and other ills just encourage the sensible to leave. The elements that shaped the cultural turmoil in the ‘90s are now very different. The “white supremacist” LAPD is now nearly 50 percent Hispanic. Simi Valley, the white enclave that acquitted the Rodney King officers, is barely majority white now. Many of the black neighborhoods that rioted in ‘92 are now majority Hispanic.

There are important lessons to learn from this. California stands as a stark rebuttal to those who think things getting worse will make whites wake up. There is no real opposition to the state’s dystopian drift. Most of the sensible whites left the state. White flight is usually the response when ordinary people have no realistic alternatives. Middle-class whites aren’t going to become suburban guerrillas if the state government turns into one-party rule.

Everything Greer says here is verifiable. Furthermore, the state today is roughly even in terms the percentage of Hispanic/Latinos and Whites. But as recently as a quarter-century ago, well within the living memories of most readers, California was still around 60 percent White. In Los Angeles, the shift happened much sooner, with Whites leaving the city in droves following the tumult of the 1960s, but even then, the City of Angels was still quite “purple,” politically, having a Republican mayor as recently as 2001.

In many ways, the fact that Whites could just pack up and leave was a good thing and should be recognized as such. As I’ve been saying quite often as of late, separation is what prevents conflicts. Imagine if California was its own country and leaving the state either wasn’t an option or not quite as convenient: what do you think it would look like today? You have to provide pressure relief valves of some kind. This is something far too many Americans, leftists especially, don’t understand. There’s no use in shaming people into staying if they don’t want to.

Read all of Greer’s column; like most of his writings, it’s concise and to the point, an excellent retrospective on a time and place since forgotten. It also brought to mind something Dr. Samuel Huntington said in Who Are We? 20 years ago.

He wrote:

The actual and prospective continuing loss in power, status, and numbers by any social, ethnic, racial, or economic group almost always leads to efforts by that group to stop or reverse those losses. In 1961 in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the population was 43 percent Serb and 26 percent Muslim. In 1991 it was 31 percent Serb and 44 percent Muslim. The Serbs reacted with ethnic cleansing. In 1990 the population of California was 57 percent white and 26 percent Hispanic. In 2040 it is predicted to be 31 percent white and 48 percent Hispanic. The probability that, in this comparable situation, California whites will react like Bosnia Serbs is about zero. The probability that they will not react at all is also about zero. Indeed, that reaction has already begun with the overwhelming referenda votes against benefits for illegal immigrants, affirmative action, and bilingual education, and the movement of whites out of the state. As the racial balance continues to shift and more Hispanics become citizens and politically active, white groups may look for other means of protecting their interests.

20 years later, we can safely conclude that Whites reacted by, as Greer said, simply leaving, either for different parts of the state or for other parts of the country. But what about the Whites who choose to remain? Surely, they’re not all going to leave? Probably not. So what are they going to do?

My take is this: Whites who remain in California are either likely satisfied with the status quo, are dissatisfied, but have made their peace with it, or moving simply isn’t an option. However, as long as state borders remain open, there will always be a way to relieve any built up pressure. I speak critically of migration in these spaces, but it’s not always a bad thing. Migration causes conflicts, but they can prevent them, also.

Also, it’s hard to believe now, but there’s going to be a limit to how far left the state can go before everyone, non-Whites included, start balking. The state is often referred to by its critics as “Commiefornia,” but remember: no communist state was ever established peacefully. If it ever becomes a far-left totalitarian state, a lot of awful things will have occurred, and we’ll know it. Remember that in last year’s election, despite voting for Kamala Harris, the state also voted in favor of tougher-on-crime policies, leading some liberals to pretend like they discovered law enforcement for the first time (in reality, they probably did).

As usual, my message is: whatever your expectations, temper them. As Samuel Huntington said, Whites aren’t going to rise up in arms and take back what’s theirs. React, they will, but likely in an innocuous manner, like packing up and moving away. As long as that remains an option, it’ll be taken. That’ll still leave many Whites to fend for themselves. Unless they manage to forge any kind of collective identity, which often seems less likely by the day, if the Austin Metcalf case is anything to go by, they’ll be at the mercy of whatever forces end up driving events.

In all likelihood, Whites will probably adopt an identity as “Americans,” which will inevitably include other races. Maybe it’s this multiracial, but still mostly-White faction that’ll stand against increasingly tribalistic members of other races.

Where In The West Will Civil War Start First?

Dr. David Betz keeps up his media tour, which can only be a good thing. He recently spoke with Brussels Signal, a Belgium-based program covering events in Europe. The most interesting part of this interview is when he’s asked which countries are most at risk of civil war breaking out.

Watch what he says. He takes his time getting to the point, but this is because he provides important context [video set to start]:

Betz cites the expectations gap - people being built up for a life which the country can no longer deliver - managed democracy - voting accomplishes nothing and elite preferences always prevail over popular sentiment - financial

As for which countries in the West are most at risk of civil war, Betz surprisingly says the U.S. was at the top of that list, until recently. He believes Trump’s election was something of a pressure relief valve, though he expects tensions to rise here in the New World again soon. As you might’ve guessed, he now ranks Britain at the top, with France right alongside it. France has likely been on this road longer than Britain has, but they’ve at least maintained something of a steady state for an extended time period, whereas tensions in Britain have spiked dramatically within the last year, making the risk more acute in the Isles. In fact, Betz considers Britain, France, and the U.S. to be all tied for the top spot, I presume in terms of civil war potentiality, even as urgency is greatest in Britain, with France not far behind. Consider the implication: three of the world’s most influential countries, the front end of Western civilization, to be at greatest risk of civil war.

Betz thinks Germany to be following closely behind the other three, though he concedes he knows less about the situation. I posed the question to my German friend, who said that civil war is a topic of conversation, thought not a popular one. I shared my thoughts on Germany earlier this year; I’d further say that if it is indeed second on the list, it’s actual risk is still much less than that of Britain or France, or even the U.S.

However, another big point Betz often makes is the social media contagion. Wherever the first civil war pops off, another will soon follow elsewhere. So it almost doesn’t matter where it starts first, because it’ll soon happen where you are, if you live in the West.

The crazy thing is, it might not even be an internal event which sparks the civil war. The diversity and multiculturalism of Western populations means foreigners have brought their wars with them from all over the world.

Rod Dreher

makes readers consider:

Here’s a thought for you: India and Pakistan are moving steadily towards a possible war, following the mass terror attack by Muslim separatists in Kashmir on Hindu vacationers. India has also suspended participation in a water-sharing treaty, a move that would be devastating to Pakistani agriculture. The Pakistanis have said cutting off their water would be regarded as an “act of war.”

Britain has very large Indian and Pakistani communities. If the two countries on the other side of the world go to war, might it come home to Britain’s streets? And might this be the kickoff event for wider unrest?

I’ve tended to imagine the coming civil war in the West to be akin to a massive prison riot. Everyone just turns on each other. The only way to survive is to join a faction. Some of us know, right now, which faction to join. Many more of us don’t, and have nary given it a thought. But pick one, we must. Nobody survives alone in prison.

Over to you. What do you think is the greatest division in American life today? Is Germany going to convince anyone to take up arms and die in war? What do you remember about California in the ‘90s, and what lessons does it hold for today? Where do you think the civil war of the West will first break out?

Talk about it in the comments section.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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