Article by Phillip Carl Salzman in "PJMedia":
How do societies and cultures end? What causes the death of societies and cultures? It is not always the obvious threats.
Today
we are struggling with the coronavirus which has unfortunately sickened
many and killed some Americans. The deaths are tragic, but so are the
many Americans who die annually from the flu, from cancer, and from auto
and industrial accidents. The death rate from the coronavirus will be
low, far below any existential threat to American demography.
In
order to fight and contain the expansion of the virus, we have
suspended much of the American economy. That has led to a major loss of
jobs, a serious threat to business, and destructive pressure on
individuals and families, leading in some cases to abuse, breakdowns,
and suicides. But the economy has been put on hold, not destroyed, and
financial support from the government will go some way toward preserving
jobs and companies, as well as individual and family budgets. It seems
likely that the economy will rebound, probably fairly quickly, even with
some displacement. Our economy and our country will not be destroyed.
Here
is the critical fact: the death of societies and cultures is usually
suicide. Members of the society lose faith in its institutions, reject
its cultural values, demonize their fellow citizens, enthusiastically
entertain foreign ideologies, and open their doors to foreign
adversaries. This is particularly devastating when elites turn against
the society’s institutions and culture. The initial result is social
conflict, loss of confidence, and eventually civil war and or foreign
invasion.
The example of Sweden illustrates cultural self-hate well. In 2010, Mona Ingeborg Sahlin, the leader at that time of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, told a
gathering of the Turkish youth organization Euroturk: "I cannot figure
out what Swedish culture is. I think that's what makes many Swedes
jealous of immigrant groups. You [immigrants] have a culture, an
identity, a history, something that brings you together. And what do we
have? We have Midsummer's Eve and such silly things."
In October 2015, Ingrid Lomfors, head of the Swedish governmental "Forum for Living History," later told a group officials, "There is no native Swedish culture."
In December 2015, Former Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, president of the European Council in 2009, gave an interview to TV4 ahead
of his departure from the leadership of the Moderate Party, in which he
asked rhetorically: "Is this a country that is owned by those who have
lived here for three or four generations or is Sweden what people who
come here in mid-life makes it to be?... For me it is obvious that it
should be the latter and that it is a stronger and better society if it
may be open... Swedes are uninteresting as an ethnic group."
So
Swedish elites have opened the country’s borders to floods of
“refugees” from across the Middle East and Africa. The refugees see
Swedes as “infidels” and Swedish girls as existing for “the pleasure of
Muslim men.” Sweden has thus experienced an explosion of crime: “honor” killings, forced marriages, violent gang swarming, bombing, gang rapes, antisemitic hate crimes, most perpetrated
by immigrants and children of immigrants. Sweden’s elite have dealt
with this crisis by refusing to identify perpetrators. The old Sweden is
disappearing, and the Swedish elite appears pleased.
Not to be outdone, in November 2015, the newly sworn-in Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, gave an interview to the New York Times,
and published a month later, in which he said: "There is no core
identity, no mainstream in Canada. There are shared values -- openness,
respect, compassion, willingness to work hard, to be there for each
other, to search for equality and justice. Those qualities are what make
us the first postnational state.”
Trudeau followed up by opening the borders to illegal immigrants crossing from the United States, then sending the Canadian army to build shelters for the immigrants! Earlier, Trudeau had opened Canada to Syrian Muslim refugees, but not the Yazidi victims of Sunni Muslim ISIS. Under political and public pressure, Trudeau finally admitted
some Yazidi refugees. Because of the American continental buffer to the
south, but no thanks to multicultural Trudeau, Canada has escaped the
great waves of illegal immigrant invasion.
Far
more serious than opening Canada’s borders beyond the vast legal
immigration that makes Canada the world’s per capita immigrant host, has
been Trudeau’s determined effort to destroy
Canada’s strongest industry, the energy industry, and to undermine
Canada’s most prosperous province, Alberta, the province that for
decades has transferred vast sums of money to Canada’s poorer provinces.
Trudeau does not much like Canada or Canadians, wishing to transform
Canada into a woke, multicultural paradise. Trudeau, like members of the
Swedish elite, suffers from Oikophobia,
hatred of one’s own culture. What he has succeeded in turning Canada
into, for example by allowing environmental extremists to blockade
highways and railroads, is a shambles.
The Swedes and
Canadians are small players in a world largely dominated by the United
States. In Oikophobia, as in much else, America leads the world. I would
estimate that, in 2020, America is about 75% gone. American culture has
been swept aside by “woke social justice” ideology, a neo-marxist
framing of American society in terms of identity class conflict.
Feminist, race, and sexuality activists have pushed a narrative that
divides American society into white, male, heterosexual oppressors, on
the one hand, and, on the other, the oppressors’ female, black, and
LGBTQ++ victims. America is thus seen as inherently and entirely evil,
and must be rejected and replaced. The preferred means is to provide
special privileges and benefits for females, blacks, and LGBTQs.
“Woke
social justice” is an anti-American, anti-capitalist, internationalist,
and multicultural rejection of American culture and society. This
ideology is now totally dominant in all colleges and universities, where
social science and humanities disciplines have mostly abandoned their
traditional fields of study in favor of “social justice” victimology.
But it does not end there, for teachers are trained in radical faculties
of education, and teach “social justice” ideology throughout the school
system.
“Social justice” ideology is totally dominant in the mainstream and heritage media, notably in the Washington Post and the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC (and abroad as well, in the Canadian Broadcasting Company and the British Broadcasting Company). The New York Times has been hideously exemplary in its 1619 Project,
which argues that America was not founded on the basic of
Judeo-Christian human rights, on the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution, but on the basis of slavery. Slavery is the indelible sin
that progressives love to bludgeon America with, as if America invented
slavery, rather than it being a characteristic of all civilizations and
most societies, including African societies, up to the 19th century.
Progressives today reject the American Constitution on the grounds that
its authors were slave owners, and slavery thus becomes the tool to
discredit everything about America.
What exactly about America has been rejected by progressive “woke social justice”?
First,
national sovereignty is rejected in favor of international ties and
supranational organizations, such as the corrupt and ineffectual United
Nations, much beloved by the likes of American progressive politicians
and foreign leaders such as Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau.
Second, citizenship is rejected as an unearned privilege, to be corrected
by open borders and floods of illegal immigrants, spun as
“undocumented.” Joe Biden, presumptive nominee of the Democrat Party for
Democrat candidate for the Presidency, announced
that illegal immigrants are more American than American citizens.
Furthermore, as progressives view whites as racist oppressors, “social
justice” requires their replacement by black, brown, yellow, and red
non-whites, until the whites are in the minority and no longer have any
power.
Third, individuals no longer count as constituents of society. Individual achievement, merit, and potential are rejected
by progressives as “white male supremacy.” Today, only identity
categories count. What is important is statistical “representation” of
different categories based on percentage in the general population.
Under the guise of “diversity,” individual can no longer be considered
as individuals, but must be considered only as members of identity categories, and treated accordingly. Males, whites,
and heterosexuals must, in the name of “social justice,” be vilified,
demeaned, and excluded. (Oddly, East Asians have become personae non
grata because they are too successful, and thus honorary, or
dishonorable whites.)
Fourth,
capitalism is of course rejected because it is a cause of inequality.
That capitalism is responsible for the prosperity within which the
inequality exists, is no excuse for the radical levellers. The
increasing popularity of socialism among progressives, no doubt because socialism has been so successful historically (not), expresses their rejection of capitalism.
Fifth,
economic and political freedom are obstacles in progressives’ plans for
“social justice.” Equality of opportunity and economic freedom are
rejected by progressive advocates of “social justice” in favor of
equality of results, that is, absolute equality, which requires
government control of the economy. Progressives, like socialists and
communists, also have never been that fond of political freedom, but
prefer to control the results. We have seen the Democrat Party, and its
media and identity allies, reject the results of the last presidential
election because it was not the result they wanted, and launch a
“resistance,” both inside of Congress and out in the streets, to the
duly elected president. Rejecting the results of elections means the
rejection of democracy.
Six,
children are no longer wanted in America, which is currently unable to
replace its population. Feminists have disdained motherhood as
overemphasizing females’ biology and as obstructing economic
independence and occupational mobility. The highest progressive value is
killing babies in the womb, up to a million a year, ten million in a decade. Feminists and their progressive allies celebrate abortions and urge women to celebrate theirs. Killing babies has now been extended to infanticide,
the newest progressive initiative. Likewise, families are regarded by
feminists as the source of oppression for females, so say goodbye to
families as well.
With the
Democrat Party, all colleges and universities, the school system, and
the mainstream media all devoted to anti-American progressive values and
objectives, it is clear that America is 75% gone. Who is left to uphold
American society and culture and the values of freedom, opportunity,
prosperity, individual integrity, and family unity? We know that the
half of the American population in “flyover country” maintains American
values, even while the national elites on the coasts despise that
population, infamously characterized
by the Democrat Presidential Candidates Hillary Clinton as “the basket
of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic,
Islamaphobic—you name it.” The Republican Party, faced with a
pro-American candidate for president, retreated in part, while another
part fought against, so it is unlikely to be the cavalry coming to save
America. Do not bet against seeing the emergence of the United
Progressive States of Socialism.