When I was a young man in Europe there was a vogue for what was called “invasion literature.” Several underground science fiction epics explored what would happen if the unthinkable occurred and there were mass invasions of Europe and America. It turn this gave rise to the survivalist stories of the '70s, and translated to Hollywood with end of the world and survivor epics from the Poseidon Adventure on up (or perhaps on down).
Suppose State Socialism were run by a crazed computer? Suppose Blacks revolted? Or bureaucrats invaded from within, culling the herd with chilling efficiency? Suppose Red Russia invaded America—and America welcomed it? Suppose the Intellectuals rebelled and started snuffing out corrupt politicians? Suppose Whites fought back? Suppose we are missing something and this is all an ideological invasion created by polarities in people’s character playing out over centuries? Suppose all turned out OK and people took a weakened if triumphant West at its word, and emigrated from the wretched socialism and religious despotisms created by Western diplomacy en masse to more prosperous climes?
Student Underground
Thus 16 year olds devoured and discussed such books as This Perfect Day, State of Siege, Triage and A Clockwork Orange, Vandenberg, Trio, The Turner Diaries, The Wanting Seed, and The Camp of the Saints—many translated on-the-spot from their native languages in group readings at 2 AM by students who had set aside their Homer or the tear-jerking “message” novels of the day.
Many of these books were by Americans and Brits, but one, The Camp of the Saints, was by a Continental, detailed an immigration invasion, and stuck in everyone’s mind. I recall heated debates that it couldn’t happen, that it could, that it was racist, that it was realist, that only socialism and government could solve the problem, that socialism and government were the problem.
In subsequent years the book has gone underground, to be resurrected by racist loonies—and people soberly concerned about how to mediate the clash of cultures, and even if Europeans will survive as a culture. Some years ago I met an ex-Soviet planner who assured me that it was read avidly in Russia by those convinced that it spoke to those who thought after Capitalism the real enemy was Islam—an enemy hard to fight because fanatical, oddly liberal in many areas and offering a conservative polygamist vision not seen in Europe for Millennia. Russia feared being overwhelmed by internal Islam, and remembered bitterly its suffering under Islamic invaders and the sad Fall of Constantinople as if it were yesterday. And after Islam, the burgeoning and untutored masses of Asia and Africa.
The book was even banned in a Swiss school.
What in a book could create such reaction from Lausanne to Moscow, from Madrid to West Berlin—and cause the book to be almost banned in France?
The book tells a simple story. One day, people fed up with the regimes in Africa and Asia begin simply boarding vessels from large ships to rowboats and head for Europe and America. Focused primarily on Europe for dramatic reasons, it details how governments committed to support socialism and collectivism and the increasing coercive power they bring are unable to either cut it or wield it as people vote with their feet. Paralyzed by political slogans of guilt, egalitarianism, and tax money everywhere but the taxpayer’s pocket, a new barbarian invasion begins.
Now there is nothing far-fetched about this. All it takes is for the spread of secular ideas of freedom to get out of sync in third world countries with the West and it is inevitable. And the leaders of Europe and the US were not exactly trying to create Democracies a Jefferson could admire abroad. They were advocating Big Brother policies just as at home, except developing countries lacked the wealth and history to buffer them. It took very little to create simultaneously burgeoning population and starvation, armies of frustrated and mostly Marxist intellectuals convinced they should be leaders with no free enterprise creating anything to lead, and vast weapon arsenals handed to hick dictators whose idea of attaining political consensus was judicious use of the firing squad.
A Spanish View
The book particularly upset people on a subconscious level: Germans and French are continually annoyed when the Italians, Spanish, Greeks and Portuguese remind them of how they themselves were recently civilized and in the process almost extinguished civilization. French say the Pyrenees begins Africa, and the Spanish retort that north of it begins Mongolia. The book just hit below the belt for some. More: American Latin countries and their immigration policies (which so upsets many people here in the US) are viewed in Spain as a bulwark against the potential fall of the US into omnipotent government worse than anything seen in Latin America and also as a forward movement over the Pacific against China.
If this sounds odd to US ears, in Spanish minds Spain’s Legionnaires stiffened the Franks and saved Rome from Chinese and Hungarian invaders on its very soil in the Battle of the Catalunia Plains, and then pushed back Islam and massive African armies (thought to have come from Nigeria) from the middle of France and on to Vienna culminating in Lepanto.
Many in Spain remember how its knights fell with its erstwhile Hungarian adversaries and then allies at Mohi Plain before the Mongols. Spanish readers of Camp were proud of Spain’s relatively laid back border policy—which in contrast to the US makes entry easy and bases citizenship on family, but kicks people out at the slightest misbehavior—and wondered what would happen if the Arabs started marching north again—with Nigerians again not far behind.
Tell many Spaniards Northern Europe is going soft and next thing you know they’ll all be wearing Mao suits instead of Flamenco and they’re all ears. Unsurprisingly, Camp was a bigger hit than reflected in sales figures in Spain, being read to aghast mass audiences in theaters, villages, churches, and schools.
Conversely, US readers could only smile at Latins discomfited by waves of illegal immigrants. We’ll never have to worry about blowback from the Arabs or the whosis on our shores, why no siree.
The book was dismissed as fantasy. These things were childish nightmares. Socialism overcame all class consciousness and cultural difference. Islamic Socialists were our friends. Recently I mentioned to someone that this book was widely read by teenagers then. Only racist fantasy, I was assured. Never happened.
Abre los Ojos
Well, it is happening. Spain has announced that it has organized a multinational naval patrol under its leadership within the EU to halt what officials now admit has been a growing invasion of Boat People. Vessels from several nations, including Italy, Portugal, France and even an increasingly nervous Britain in "Operation Ulysses" are using the latest detection equipment to form an electronic barrier in moving rectangles some six by eighty miles wide. Co-ordinate Operations "Rio" and "Visa" will involve others such as Greece. The operation was being kept without much publicity until it was discovered by the staff of a Spanish Senator last year—and only now, months later, is it appearing in even normally tell-all papers in the English speaking press such as the UK Telegraph.[1]
Spain, unlike Europe, has no historical complexes on its cultural integrity, if not superiority. When an Arab diplomat recently said Muslims should think about reoccupying Cordoba, Spanish radio callers retorted that maybe the Spanish husbands should get busy with the wives so the next generation will see Spaniards engulf Cairo.
Most of Europe lacks this Spanish panache, and is willing apparently to pretend this is all somehow a Spanish matter while Spanish naval vessels discreetly patrol, I am told, the French Rivera, where some of the most dramatic incidents in the Camp of the Saints occur—the difference being the contemporary Spanish are for the moment showing some sort of decisiveness, lacking in the novel.
Now I’m not saying this is all good; I’m not saying this is all bad. I’m saying once again a manageable situation is becoming something out of a Science Fiction novel thanks to Our Wizards in the Capital—now, it seems, of every Western country.
For thirty years we were piously told by government academics and journalist supporters that it was all impossible and anyone who thought different or even raised the question of how the Cold War was creating a post-Cold War series of government monsters and cultural paralysis was a hate-monger —and possible racist if they even read That Awful Book, so close your eyes.
As the Spanish saying goes, Abre los Ojos—open your eyes already. And see that suddenly, out of the blue, deny though it has been denied, there it is.
Reference
1. El Dia, October 24, 2002 ‘Spain will co-ordinate European control of immigration at ports and by sea’ http://www.eldia.es/2002-10-24/vivir/vivir2.htm
But see also January 29, 2003, Daily Telegraph, "EU Fleet is Launched to Head off Immigrants" (login at http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?&_DARGS=%2Fcore%2FlowerHeaderBarFrag.jhtml.)
Michael Gilson De Lemos ("MG") is on the National Committee of the US Libertarian Party, and also co-ordinates the Libertarian International Organization. Retired as a Fortune 100 management consultant, he is working on books on management and libertarian philosophy. His email address is gilsondelemos@msn.com.
Other Works by Michael Gilson De Lemos
from The Laissez Faire Electronic Times, Vol 2, No 9, March 3, 2003