-SOME BACKGROUND:
As you watch or read reports about the tens of thousands of refugees from Africa and The Middle East pouring into Europe, you will no doubt have come across a reference to the novel, The Camp Of The Saints.
It is a novel, originally published in the 1970’s by French author Jean Raspail, that tells the story of the Fall of Western Civilization, not after an invasion by armies and/or the dropping of weapons of mass destruction, but by a ‘peaceful’ invasion by the Third World in decrepit, rusting ships.
While focusing specifically on the reaction in France to the progress of ‘The Last Chance Armada’ as it slowly makes it’s way to the shores of Europe and other First World nations, the novel maintains a general focus on the reaction throughout the whole of The West to the horde’s journey to ‘the land of milk and honey’ to claim their part of it.
Bottom Line: The nations and peoples of Western Civilization decide to mount no resistance. Some in the First World have lost the will to defend themselves and some [the Left, as you might imagine] think the invasion a good thing, that The West deserves to be overrun by those it has ‘oppressed’ for centuries.
Many of the latter plan celebrations and some even go down to the shores to welcome the hordes. They welcome committees are either ignored by the invaders or trampled to death under their bare feet or are raped and killed by them. In the cities of The West, the un-assimilated foreigners and other minorities riot and move in to ‘share’ the condos, apartments, and houses of the Westerners.
Thus, Western Civilization falls with just a pathetic whimper.
This is a very general explanation of the plot of The Camp Of The Saints.
As you might expect, the Left [and even a few weak-willed people on the Right, such as Linda Chavez] have denounced the book as Raaaaacist!
It is a page turner that is truly hard to put down.
The book has, over the decades since it’s publication, also frightened many of us because the way events play out, the way the leaders of The West and their citizens react all seem to ring so true.
Little Ol’ Raaaaacist Me highly recommends the novel.
-EUROPE TODAY:
The Leaders of Europe are acting just like their fictional counterparts did. The ring has become a siren of alarm.
They’re doing nothing to stop this invasion and preparing to accept the hordes as permanent residents.
Mark Steyn has been one of the few people who has been warning of this for years.
One of his latest posts, where he quotes from columns he’s written in previous years, is a must-read. Two highlights:
…I’ve been saying the same stuff since 9/11, and at book length in America Alone, and the question has always remained the same — whether the west can muster the will to turn away from the suicidal delusions of multiculturalism. To judge from the appalling stance of Angela Merkel (which I discussed last week on the radio with both Glenn Beck and Hugh Hewitt), the answer remains a resounding no.
And…
Oh, but they’re refugees! From the Syrian civil war!
According to the United Nations, 49 per cent are non-Syrian. As to whether they’re refugees, well, usually, refugees flees as families. Yet here, from those UN statistics, is he breakdown of those “refugees”:
13 per cent children
12 per cent women
75 per cent men
That’s not the demographic distribution of fleeing refugees, but of an invading army.
Do take the time to click here and read it all.
Of course, one could argue that the tsunami that is now happening in Europe has been happening here since last year.
I’ll have more on this invasion story in the coming days.
-WHAT IS ‘THE CAMP OF THE SAINTS’?
Mark and I have had a bit of a gentleman’s disagreement over this:
~In my interview with Hugh Hewitt, I was a little surprised to find that mein host was apparently unaware of The Camp of the Saints:
HH: I don’t know the novel, Mark. What is it?
MS: It’s Jean Raspail. It’s called the Camp of the Saints, and the saints are the refugees basically from Africa and other parts of the developing world that wash up on the French coast – the Cote d’Azur – on the topless beaches of southern France, and the French intellectual class and political class have no idea what to do about it. They can no longer muster the argument to defend the integrity of French soil, and in the end it ends with the government collapsing and the saints just swarming ashore from the beaches and taking over France.
Bob Belvedere, who knows the novel so well and loves it so much he’s named his website after it, writes to correct me:
Actually, ‘the camp of the saints’ is located in the village on the French Coast where the Old Professor lives and where the last, true Westerners gather over the course of the story’s unfolding, where these ‘relics’ make their last stand, knowing full-well that they shall perish in the effort:
‘Next day, at lunch, Romégas added two more settings. Then the source of the reinforcements dried up for good, and the Western World numbered twenty, period.’ [Chapter Forty-Nine]
I had always understood that M Raspail had intended the title in a double sense. The invaders are sanctified by the political, media and academic class — as they are today and as we saw very vividly in the global media prostrations before the martyrdom of the Syrian child. Only in the ruins of civilization do we understand that the true saints are those last surviving members of “the Western World”. But I haven’t read the book since the spring of 2002, and Mr Belvedere reminds us of the title’s origin:
And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison, and will go forth and deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, and will gather them together for the battle; the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up over the breadth of the earth and encompassed the camp of the saints, and the beloved city. [Revelation, 20:7-9, as translated in the novel]
Which one of us suffers from False Consciousness I leave up to you…wait a minute!…I forgot that we’re not Bolshes.
-Now a Dispatch from THE Camp Of The Saints…
While the old man sat there, eating and drinking, savoring swallow after swallow, he set his eyes wandering over the spacious room. A time-consuming task, since his glance stopped to linger on everything it touched, and since every confrontation was a new act of love. Now and then his eyes would fill with tears, but they were tears of joy. Each object in this house proclaimed the dignity of those who had lived here—their discretion, their propriety, their reserve, their taste for those solid traditions that one generation can pass on to the next, so long as it still takes pride in itself. And the old man’s soul was in everything, too. In the fine old bindings, the rustic benches, the Virgin carved in wood, the big cane chairs, the hexagonal tiles, the beams in the ceiling, the ivory crucifix with its sprig of dried boxwood, and a hundred other things as well … It’s man’s things that really define him, far more than the play of ideas; which is why the Western World had come to lose its self-respect, and why it was clogging the highways at that very moment, fleeing north in droves, no doubt vaguely aware that it was already doomed, done in by its over-secretion, as it were, of ugly monstrosities no longer worth defending. Could that, perhaps, have been one explanation? …
At eleven o’clock that night an announcer on the national chain read a new communiqué:
“Government sources note with some dismay the mass exodus of population currently under way throughout the south. While they view this movement with concern, they do not feel justified in advising against it, given the unprecedented nature of the situation. Army and police have been put on maximum alert to help maintain order, and to see to it that the migration does not interfere with the flow of essential military materiel en route from the north. A state of emergency has been declared in the four departments bordering the coast, under the command of the undersecretary, Monsieur Jean Perret, personal representative of the President of the Republic. The army will make every effort to protect all property left behind, insofar as its other duties permit. Government sources confirm that the President of the Republic will address the nation at midnight, tonight, with a message of grave concern …”
And again, that was all. In a world long exposed to verbal frenzy, such terseness was most impressive. “Do windbags always die without a word?” the professor mused. Then he picked out a book, poured himself a drink, lit up his pipe, and waited for midnight … [Chapter Three]
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