DEMOGRAPHY IS DESTINY
(Auguste Comte)
Recently I gave a seminar to a London think tank on the underlying reasons for the different attitudes of the elites and electors to such issues as the EU and immigration.
In the course of this, I said that the EU was interested in moving people around the EU in the same way as Hitler and Stalin did in their regimes. This rather commonplace observation was greeted by an embarrassed hush and stiffening of intellectual muscles of the sort which, even now, accompanies gatherings of intelligent Eurosceptics, if, as Alan Clark once said, “one goes too far”.
There seems to be an analysis comfort zone in which Hitler and Stalin and other tyrants are regarded as running policy-free regimes while the EU is regarded as part of the democratic liberal world, if deformed. The fact is that the tyrants and the EU are both political constructs and act on that dynamic. Hitler and Stalin, of course, used mass murder on some occasions to enforce their demographic plans but their policy goals were built on Russian, Austrian and German predecessors, if not exactly the same, and, of course, carried out much more barbarously.
What is of interest is that the EU, as a rising political power, naturally takes an interest in the demographic make-up of its population, because demography is the ultimate determinant of the political order.
The long-term goal of the EU policy is quite clear: a uniform European political order and the generation of Homo Europeanus with a loyalty to that order, even though residual national loyalties and cultural differences will be tolerated. You can keep your pint of beer or the mile but real power has moved away from the ordinary elector and from national politicians.
All rising political powers throughout history have taken an interest in the demographic make-up of their people; who lives where and under what political order. It is an inherent part of obtaining and retaining a political order.
The Romans famously settled demobilised legionaries with land holdings in frontier areas to stiffen their defences. One of the great modern exponents was the British Empire. Why does the good Eurosceptic think there were plantations of Protestants in Ireland? Why were the French Acadians moved to Louisiana after 1763? Why were British settlers installed in the Eastern Cape in the 1820s? The latter was to check the spread of Afrikaner power. One must also not forget the reasons for settling Australia.
At the same time, the rising political powers in Eastern Europe constructed the new political order with a demographically transformed population.
In the eighteenth century the Austrian empire was busy settling its ‘military frontier’ in Croatia with loyal Catholics while the Russian Empire was filling up the lands conquered from the Muslim Khans with ethnic Russians. In the nineteenth century the pace of Russian and Christian Balkan expansion pushed back the Ottomans from a large part of Eastern Europe. Indeed, Muslims at that time, did not wish to live outside Muslim states and, encouraged by politicians like Gladstone with his demand that the Turks “clear out” of the Balkans “bag and baggage”, there was a part-voluntary, part-compulsory removal of Muslims.
China’s policy in Tibet and Sinkiang in modern times follows the precedents of the European empires. The long-term perspective is not about Chinese methods or the mistreatment of the Tibetans but that there is a policy of extending political control, backed up by demographic transformation in the settling of the Han people in the region. Unnoticed by the world, there is a similar flow of Indian nationals from the Ganges valley into the immense tribal areas of North Eastern India – nor has this been without conflict in Mizoram, Nagaland and Manipur.
The biggest demographic reorganisation in recent times was, of course, the mass movements carried out by the Allies at the end of the Second World War, the last gasp of Wilsonian and Lloyd Georgian national identity politics in Europe where national states were encouraged to have nationally homogenous populations.
In this case, the national identity basis of the nation state required demographic change, as outlined by Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, 15th December 1944:
“The transference of several millions of people would have to be affected from the east to the west or the north, and the expulsion of the Germans, because that is what is proposed – the total expulsion of the Germans – from the areas to be acquired by Poland in the west and the north. For expulsion is the method which, so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting.”
He then commended the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey after 1923.
The Potsdam Declaration stated, “The three governments recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken. They agree any transfers that take place should be affected in an orderly and humane manner.”. In fact, it is thought that at least hundreds of thousands of Germans died in carrying out this policy – a policy of removing all Germans, not those who were considered hostile. Of course, many Germans had, indeed, committed crimes in these countries but, despite later rowing back by the Western democracies, it is a fact that this mass expulsion was widely welcomed and no politician in Britain dissented from any party over the 1944-1946 period.
So the policy of achieving political control or a political order by moving people around has a long history and is one envisaged by all expanding powers.
Most thinkers about the future of Europe are more concerned about the mass transfer of Muslim people into Europe than about terrorist threats. Terrorism is a nuisance but only could become a potential major threat if extended into the areas of a chemical or nuclear attack. But the steady build-up of a minority clearly at odds with its host culture, is far more significant and far more intractable to the national identity political order in the long run. This is, of course, not a problem when seen through EU eyes. Any weakening of national identity is a necessary sacrifice.
The main instrument to achieve the EU’s political goal is the ‘free movement of people’, a phrase usually enunciated with misty-eyes by Europhiles and whose benefits have been uncritically accepted by Eurosceptics.
The idea of free movement of persons surfaced in the Treaty of Rome as a means to allow EU-native workers to work outside their native EU countries. It has now been massively extended, not only by conferring ‘rights’ on intra-EU movement but also by widening the beneficiaries to include free movement to start businesses anywhere, free movement and, indeed, EU subsidies, to students while other students can move to the UK, for example, to study at the British taxpayers’ expense and by making it impossible to remove criminal EU citizens to their home countries.
But the number of these movements is still quite small in relation to the total EU population.
The EU believes that those EU nationals who work or study in their non-native country are most supportive of the EU political order and the more of them the better. A new idea has now taken hold among EU policy makers which is that immigrants from outside the EU will become especial supporters of the EU ideas as they will have no conflicting national loyalty. So Barroso is now proposing an intake of twenty million workers (plus dependants) with the right to ‘circular migration’, that is to move freely from one EU country to another.
If the nations of the EU are not changing into Homo Europeanus fast enough, ready-made imports will accelerate the process.
Changes in demography followed and reinforced a political order whether it was in the British Empire, the massive changes in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century as well as the more contemporary expulsion of the Germans after 1945 and current Chinese policy in Tibet.
Demography is destiny and, if it is your firm intention to establish a political order, you need a demographic policy. In fact, the lack of any demographic policy, whether of immigration or of emigration, by the current British political elite which sees demographic destiny as less important than ‘human rights’ and the pressure of business for lower wages validates the contention that they have surrendered real political power to a new political order.
The EU is following in the footsteps of all its predecessors and no maidenly aversion of Eurosceptic eyes will stop this.
FUTURUS/24 April 2008
In the course of this, I said that the EU was interested in moving people around the EU in the same way as Hitler and Stalin did in their regimes. This rather commonplace observation was greeted by an embarrassed hush and stiffening of intellectual muscles of the sort which, even now, accompanies gatherings of intelligent Eurosceptics, if, as Alan Clark once said, “one goes too far”.
There seems to be an analysis comfort zone in which Hitler and Stalin and other tyrants are regarded as running policy-free regimes while the EU is regarded as part of the democratic liberal world, if deformed. The fact is that the tyrants and the EU are both political constructs and act on that dynamic. Hitler and Stalin, of course, used mass murder on some occasions to enforce their demographic plans but their policy goals were built on Russian, Austrian and German predecessors, if not exactly the same, and, of course, carried out much more barbarously.
What is of interest is that the EU, as a rising political power, naturally takes an interest in the demographic make-up of its population, because demography is the ultimate determinant of the political order.
The long-term goal of the EU policy is quite clear: a uniform European political order and the generation of Homo Europeanus with a loyalty to that order, even though residual national loyalties and cultural differences will be tolerated. You can keep your pint of beer or the mile but real power has moved away from the ordinary elector and from national politicians.
All rising political powers throughout history have taken an interest in the demographic make-up of their people; who lives where and under what political order. It is an inherent part of obtaining and retaining a political order.
The Romans famously settled demobilised legionaries with land holdings in frontier areas to stiffen their defences. One of the great modern exponents was the British Empire. Why does the good Eurosceptic think there were plantations of Protestants in Ireland? Why were the French Acadians moved to Louisiana after 1763? Why were British settlers installed in the Eastern Cape in the 1820s? The latter was to check the spread of Afrikaner power. One must also not forget the reasons for settling Australia.
At the same time, the rising political powers in Eastern Europe constructed the new political order with a demographically transformed population.
In the eighteenth century the Austrian empire was busy settling its ‘military frontier’ in Croatia with loyal Catholics while the Russian Empire was filling up the lands conquered from the Muslim Khans with ethnic Russians. In the nineteenth century the pace of Russian and Christian Balkan expansion pushed back the Ottomans from a large part of Eastern Europe. Indeed, Muslims at that time, did not wish to live outside Muslim states and, encouraged by politicians like Gladstone with his demand that the Turks “clear out” of the Balkans “bag and baggage”, there was a part-voluntary, part-compulsory removal of Muslims.
China’s policy in Tibet and Sinkiang in modern times follows the precedents of the European empires. The long-term perspective is not about Chinese methods or the mistreatment of the Tibetans but that there is a policy of extending political control, backed up by demographic transformation in the settling of the Han people in the region. Unnoticed by the world, there is a similar flow of Indian nationals from the Ganges valley into the immense tribal areas of North Eastern India – nor has this been without conflict in Mizoram, Nagaland and Manipur.
The biggest demographic reorganisation in recent times was, of course, the mass movements carried out by the Allies at the end of the Second World War, the last gasp of Wilsonian and Lloyd Georgian national identity politics in Europe where national states were encouraged to have nationally homogenous populations.
In this case, the national identity basis of the nation state required demographic change, as outlined by Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, 15th December 1944:
“The transference of several millions of people would have to be affected from the east to the west or the north, and the expulsion of the Germans, because that is what is proposed – the total expulsion of the Germans – from the areas to be acquired by Poland in the west and the north. For expulsion is the method which, so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting.”
He then commended the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey after 1923.
The Potsdam Declaration stated, “The three governments recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken. They agree any transfers that take place should be affected in an orderly and humane manner.”. In fact, it is thought that at least hundreds of thousands of Germans died in carrying out this policy – a policy of removing all Germans, not those who were considered hostile. Of course, many Germans had, indeed, committed crimes in these countries but, despite later rowing back by the Western democracies, it is a fact that this mass expulsion was widely welcomed and no politician in Britain dissented from any party over the 1944-1946 period.
So the policy of achieving political control or a political order by moving people around has a long history and is one envisaged by all expanding powers.
Most thinkers about the future of Europe are more concerned about the mass transfer of Muslim people into Europe than about terrorist threats. Terrorism is a nuisance but only could become a potential major threat if extended into the areas of a chemical or nuclear attack. But the steady build-up of a minority clearly at odds with its host culture, is far more significant and far more intractable to the national identity political order in the long run. This is, of course, not a problem when seen through EU eyes. Any weakening of national identity is a necessary sacrifice.
The main instrument to achieve the EU’s political goal is the ‘free movement of people’, a phrase usually enunciated with misty-eyes by Europhiles and whose benefits have been uncritically accepted by Eurosceptics.
The idea of free movement of persons surfaced in the Treaty of Rome as a means to allow EU-native workers to work outside their native EU countries. It has now been massively extended, not only by conferring ‘rights’ on intra-EU movement but also by widening the beneficiaries to include free movement to start businesses anywhere, free movement and, indeed, EU subsidies, to students while other students can move to the UK, for example, to study at the British taxpayers’ expense and by making it impossible to remove criminal EU citizens to their home countries.
But the number of these movements is still quite small in relation to the total EU population.
The EU believes that those EU nationals who work or study in their non-native country are most supportive of the EU political order and the more of them the better. A new idea has now taken hold among EU policy makers which is that immigrants from outside the EU will become especial supporters of the EU ideas as they will have no conflicting national loyalty. So Barroso is now proposing an intake of twenty million workers (plus dependants) with the right to ‘circular migration’, that is to move freely from one EU country to another.
If the nations of the EU are not changing into Homo Europeanus fast enough, ready-made imports will accelerate the process.
Changes in demography followed and reinforced a political order whether it was in the British Empire, the massive changes in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century as well as the more contemporary expulsion of the Germans after 1945 and current Chinese policy in Tibet.
Demography is destiny and, if it is your firm intention to establish a political order, you need a demographic policy. In fact, the lack of any demographic policy, whether of immigration or of emigration, by the current British political elite which sees demographic destiny as less important than ‘human rights’ and the pressure of business for lower wages validates the contention that they have surrendered real political power to a new political order.
The EU is following in the footsteps of all its predecessors and no maidenly aversion of Eurosceptic eyes will stop this.
FUTURUS/24 April 2008