by Thomas W. Chittum
201 pp American Eagle Publications, Show Low (Arizona) 1996. ISBN 0-929408-17-9
Thomas Chittum, a former rifleman in Vietnam, the Rhodesian Territorials, and the Croatian Army, has written something of an underground classic that predicts the devolution of an increasingly multicultural America into racial partition and bloody civil war.
The analysis is quite simple. Through immigration policy and “affirmative action” programs American governing elites are transforming the country from a generally democratic nation-state into a stratified multiethnic empire. For the elites the payoff is increased power, status and wealth as the transformation makes them increasingly immune to popular control. Nonetheless, the new arrangements will be unstable because multiethnic empires are always unstable. In the absence of common understandings and loyalties, they can be held together only by force, privilege, and a strategy of divide and rule.
Imperial America will be no different, and it will collapse when circumstances turn against it. The collapse will begin in the Southwest, where Chittum expects domination by Mexicans to lead, as in Mexico, to poverty, corruption and political violence. The whites will leave, and at some point in the next few decades the region, which will have become in substance part of Mexico, will attempt to secede, bringing on full-scale civil war. Once racial war has begun, it will spread to the Southeast, which by that time is likely to be majority black due to migration and the higher black birth rate, and then to the racially mixed Northeast. The fighting will be savage. By war’s end the United States will have become three new ethnically homogeneous nation-states, one white, one black and one Mexican, although there are hints that ethnic cleansing or outright genocide might alter that outcome, most likely in favor of the whites.
Chittum’s analysis is certainly provocative, and he supports it by a wealth of statistics, historical comparisons, military analysis, timetables and checklists. One could discuss such things in detail and praise some aspects of his discussion while finding fault with others, for example his expectation that criminal gangs are likely to become the nucleus of revolutionary armies. It seems more important to attend to the book as a whole, however, since it is its broad arguments and overall conclusions rather than specifics that most draw attention. This reviewer’s main objection to the book’s overall analysis is that it is too schematic and ignores important features of the situation. It underestimates empires and overestimates the current prospects for the nation-state. And it seems to transfer aspects of the situation in the former Yugoslavia directly to America, where conditions are quite different.
Not all empires are unstable. If an empire is established at the end of a time of troubles, when other possibilities have played themselves out, and its principle of rule seems better than anything else available, it can be very stable. The Roman Empire, which conquered a politically depleted Hellenistic world, ruled that world until the coming of Islam, and as an idea has lived on to the present. The Chinese empire, erected at the conclusion of the Warring States period in 221 B.C., made the Han people (named for the first stable imperial dynasty), and in substance is still with us.
The demographic transformation of the United States of America is less an event in the history of the American federal union than an aspect of a worldwide process, the dissolution of local sovereign polities and their integration into a new world order based on transnational bureaucracies and world markets. The fate of America cannot be considered apart from that process. Since the NWO is coming about through destruction of conditions favoring the existence of sovereign nation-states the United States may indeed fall apart at some point, but most likely not in the way Chittum suggests.
The NWO has arisen on the ruins created by devastating European wars and by the collapse of non-Western civilizations in the face of European ideas, power and wealth. Far from an arbitrary invention, it is the logical outcome of intellectual and social movements that have been sweeping all before them for centuries, and its fundamental principles or at least slogans have worldwide appeal. Everywhere “universal human rights” and “democracy” are names to conjure with. No one defends discrimination on grounds of religion, ethnicity, or sex. Safety, wealth and comfort have become the highest goals publicly conceivable. Consumer goods are king.
The principles behind the NWO are thus enormously powerful. Much of that power results from the weakening of other principles of social organization. In spite of its innate corruption, the NWO will remain as long as there is nothing to replace it, and it is very good at subverting possible competitors. The destruction of ethnicity, religion and sexual distinctions as recognized legitimate grounds for action is universally praised today as a victory over bigotry, and it leaves little upon which social order might be based other than bureaucracy and markets. Nor is the comprehensive victory of bureaucracy and markets merely ideological. That victory has been practically entrenched by disruption of such fundamental principles as family, faith and nation, a disruption sufficiently radical to make them increasingly incapable of grounding social order.
In the end the NWO can not succeed because it demands an impossible transformation of human nature. A man who has gotten altogether beyond what is now called bigotry, who no longer cares about family, inherited loyalties, or ties of sex and blood, is no longer a man as men have always been understood. It is very unlikely that he will find a principle of cohesion with his fellows capable of replacing those he has rejected, and a society dominated by such men is therefore doomed. However, the remedy is likely to require more far-reaching changes in the way life is carried on than separation of existing ethnic groups so that each can carry on much as it was.
America is not Yugoslavia, and whites, blacks and Hispanics are not Serbs, Croats and Bosnians. One difference is that the American peoples differ greatly in their ability to carry out large and difficult tasks like organizing a new nation and fighting a war in its defense, so much so that organized warfare among them is quite unlikely. Another is that Yugoslavia was constructed as a state within living memory out of ancient peoples. In contrast, whites and Hispanics in America are ethnic conglomerates who achieve whatever unity they have through their relation to the American political order. Abolish the United States and there would be WASPs, Poles, rednecks, Jews, Cuban whites, Peruvian Indians, whatever, but something as broad as “whiteness” wouldn’t carry much weight. Further, the identity of American blacks is hopelessly intertwined with their position as the troubled minority perpetually entitled to make demands on others. For them to declare independence would require an improbable act of self-transformation. Mexicans alone constitute a substantial national group with an independent identity, but Mexican-Americans are unlikely to want independence any more than Puerto Ricans do. Mexico, after all, is what they left, and for good reasons; why should they want in effect to return to Mexico when our ruling elites will be happy to grant them favors as part of their campaign to abolish any distinctive American identity?
Whatever disorders may arise, the Civil War Two Chittum describes seems quite unlikely. What then does the future hold? Rather than ethnic secession, most likely it will bring continued blurring of identity, including blurring of such American identities as white, black and Hispanic. The immediate outcome is likely to be continued strengthening of the NWO as other social formations weaken or dissolve. The ultimate outcome, however, will be growth of more substantive and enduring forms of connectedness to replace a NWO that will have become non-functional and broad ethnic categories with too little distinctiveness to be sustaining. The exact form and timing of the changes is unpredictable, but they are likely to involve both ethnicity and religion, and include quite radical changes in forms of life. Those dissatisfied with the present order of things should therefore not expect a cataclysm to sweep it away anytime soon, and must be prepared for a long and difficult struggle, with no guarantee for any particular outcome.
A slightly edited version of the preceding review appeared in issue 21 of The Scorpion.
The New American Disorder
I hadn’t seen this when I wrote my recent blog post called Civil War II. Your review, written more than two years ago, makes an interesting supplement.
Like you, I do not expect a new civil war based on the neat racial/ethnic partition that Chittum foresees. Civil disturbance, including violence, is quite likely, but the categories will not be so simple, because there is too much division within all the groups. Many white people deeply believe in multiculturalism enforced by group preferences; blacks are split between those who believe themselves to be stakeholders in the United States (at least as an economic system) and those who do not — and of the latter, few are “militant” any longer and most simply want to preserve and extend various entitlements.
As for Mexican illegal immigrants, it’s doubtful that most want to actually annex the Southwest to Mexico, which would probably be politically unfeasible no matter how much the demographics shift in their favor. The most pressing disconnect caused by mass immigration is not political but cultural. The Mexicans who cross the border are almost exclusively mestizo (ethnically mixed, but largely Indian) and have a different set of traditions and values than European-derived Americans.
No, Civil War II will likely not be along Balkan lines: there will be a clear majority and a clear minority. The minority will be from what remains of the once dominant English-Scottish-Irish population, plus a few ethnic Slavs such as Poles and perhaps some Asians, although I would expect most Asians to avoid the struggle as much as possible but ultimately side with the majority. And the majority will be the sum of all the ethnic so-called minorities covered by the term “multi-culturalism.”
It will be that minority of certain whites that will try to secede, not Mexicans or blacks. It is they who will feel most disfranchised, most discriminated against, most strangers in what they used to think was their country.
It’s hard to imagine that they can accomplish much for themselves in Civil War II, with what I have elsewhere called the Liberal Establishment arrayed against them. The one wild card is the U.S. military, many members of whom have roots in the new white minority, and in an extreme situation might decide that the country they signed up to protect and defend is not the new multi-culti America. If a large element of the military sides with the minority whites, they might hold the balance of power — but our longstanding ideal of civilian control of the military would be lost.
I hope Civil War II does not happen. It doesn’t need to happen, but a lot depends on whether the open borders advocates get their way this year. If they do, I’m afraid we will all have to start deciding which side we’re on.
Balkanization
Balkinization has already begun, and the economic and legal system of the US is perfectly suited to implement it, given that it’s rooted in private property. And, if it isn’t suited, then changes will be made to accommodate balkanization (as in Omaha, where the Nebraska state legislature has recently passed legislation to balkanize the public school system into three separate systems, one each for whites, blacks, and hispanics).
So long as the US has a system of private property, it will become increasingly balkanized and unequal. Steve Sailer has published several essays on 1. the way “diversity” increases inequality; and 2. the flight to the extra-suburbs by whites. The whites will run so long as land is available (either to the ex-burbs or to places like Utah), and when new land becomes scarce then enclosure, defensive measures (as in California), and conflict will ensue.
The “quality of life” will vary immensely from region to region, and will be based on economics and culture. The only remaining national culture will be that there is no culture.
First generation illegals are usually not a great problem in terms of conflict, as they are merely pleased to have escaped Mexico, et al. But second generation unassimilable immigrants (legal or illegal) are a very great problem, as Europe has discovered. Having been born in the US, and being US citizens, they are told they are “equal,” that multiculturalism is the ruling ideology and “includes” everyone, and that America is the land of endless opportunity in which everyone is entitled to the four-bedroom house and late-model automobile one sees on the television set. None of these promises materializes on the ground, at least not for the vast majority (there will be exceptions, of course). The reaction is resentment, blame, alienation, nihilism, and social disorder.
Has any nation yielded great benefit by importing a permanent underclass from a different culture?
Balkin’ at Balkanization
MD,
You are correct that the country is fragmenting along the lines you describe. The gist of my comment about Civil War Two was that I don’t see all these racial/ethnic enclaves spooling up into an all-against-all war. The subcultures will scrap endlessly about who gets the best federal subsidies, job quotas, and the like, but they are too denatured by generations of government discrimination in their favor and welfare dependency to be in fighting shape.
The only group that I can imagine seriously trying for secession — and it could well be de facto rather than legal secession, such as by concentrating in one part of the country while more or less detaching from the national government, like the French in Quebec — is whites, primarily of English/Scottish/Irish descent. If they do, though, it wouldn’t be surprising if the federal Hounds of Hell are unleashed on them in a First American Crusade.
Balkanization
I didn’t mean to suggest that any war would develop. I do, however, believe there will be plenty of conflict.
Violence will be local, and most violence will be among factions of the underclass, as for example conflicts between blacks and mestizos; the culture at large won’t care about this kind of violence, seeing it as a useful distraction for the underclass from their real problems which the larger culture will have no intention of addressing. There are other possible scenarios, for example if mestizos invade West Viginia and take jobs from poor whites there may very well be serious violence on a disorganized basis.
The federal government won’t permit any insurrection, and if any be contemplated or attempted the consequences will be Soviet.
I also don’t see any political secession either, and I agree that any attempt at a “redoubt,” as you describe, will unleash aggression.
As for wars, there will be plenty of foreign wars and rumors of war to engage the public imagination. They will be endless.