Anthropology Free-For-All Politics

The Urge To Call You Names

October 7, 2026 by David 52 Comments

Further to recent rumblings about progressive racial agonising and the fashionable rush to denounce, this caught my eye:

For those without X accounts:

The problem here is that liberals demand a conceptual coupling that isn’t required and at least in my own case doesn’t exist. I’m not uncomfortable around non-white people. I find most of the individuals I meet from diverse backgrounds to be perfectly nice, kind, interesting, etc.

But I’m also not concealing that I would aim immigration policy at preventing further demographic change.

Immigration policy is not individual relations. How you should treat the individuals you meet and what we should do at the border involve non-overlapping magisteria, so to speak.

There’s nothing further for me to come out and say, nothing about which I need be more honest.

Such are the travails of dealing with people who can only engage with objections to massive, indiscriminate immigration, and its predictable social effects, in terms of some presumed racial animus. Which can then, of course, be seized upon and denounced in order to elevate one’s own status.

And so – to add a European perspective – if you have visible reservations about this kind of social trajectory, or the prospect of periodic eruptions of lively tribal antagonism, or simply regarding everyday courtesies that can no longer be assumed, then, in their minds, conveniently, this can only be because you dislike people lacking in pallor. No other possibilities being permitted.

As I said here, regarding the evaporation of bus-queue proprieties:

Quite a lot of people who don’t much care about the skin tone of those doing the pushing and jostling, but who do think that politeness and queuing are good things, things that a society shouldn’t lose, are, by many progressives, pushed into the category of Incorrigible Bigot, as invalid by default.

As if the grievance, the stated issue – “queuing means the old, small, and weak are treated fairly” – could only be about the pigmentation of the players, not their actual behaviour, to which attention has been drawn.

And from the same post, this anecdote seems apposite:

Some years ago, for reasons that escape me, I was distractedly listening to BBC Radio 4’s Loose Ends – a sort of whimsical revue of chat, music, and substandard stand-up. The generic left-leaning comedian of the week was pleased by the taboos surrounding immigration and multiculturalism. Lots of code words were used – “Sun-reader,” and so forth – so that the disdain for working-class people and their fears wouldn’t be too overt.

The gist of the comedian’s punch line was, “Isn’t it hilarious that people who have concerns about mass immigration and failures to assimilate – the rapid and estranging transformation of their neighbourhoods – now have to be quiet because otherwise they’ll be called racists and possibly lose their jobs. Ha! We won!”

This triumphal non-joke – and it was blatantly triumphal – was deemed incredibly funny, or at least ideologically congenial, and much mannered clapping ensued. Of course, this was aired shortly before the uncovering of events in Rotherham and elsewhere, and before our immensely vibrant age of Congolese machete gangs.

And so, if that nice Mrs Wilson, the old dear two doors down, can no longer get on a bus, and dreads waiting for a bus because of the Third World scuffle that now ensues, and if she no longer feels she can complain about this without being thought racist, then this is totally fine, apparently. Indeed, it’s a basis for triumphal smugness by BBC comedians and BBC studio audiences.

A not dissimilar dynamic.

Update, via the comments:

Readers may recall BBC broadcaster Dan Snow, who, during the tribal riots of 2024, seemed determined not to comprehend the realities unfolding in front of his eyes. Namely, that when you place incompatible cultures with vividly conflicting values in very close proximity, such that they compete for resources and prevailing social norms, the results can be unsavoury and volatile.

Mr Snow denounced even the suggestion that such conflicts might arise as “stunningly racist.”

The obstinacy in this matter, the determination not to perceive the obvious, can be quite remarkable. I’d forgotten, for instance, about LBC presenter James O’Brien, who was gushingly moved on air by the mass invasion of Ceuta, though not in ways that seem sane.

Needless to say, the rate at which new arrivals wash up on our shores, and the ratios of newcomers to natives in any given area, are matters of some importance. This is before we even address the types of newcomers, their basic compatibility, and the need for some discernment.

We’ve touched on this before:

One of the consequences of massive, indiscriminate immigration – equivalent to the entire population of Sheffield, every year – is that it radically alters the general mood of those on whom this demographic transformation is being imposed.

One might, for instance, aspire to the role of gracious host, as it were, of making newcomers feel welcome. But this ideal presupposes an immigration policy that is limited and selective, and in which newcomers have good reason to feel lucky – and grateful.

The graciousness of the locals, the ideal, depends on the notion that the host country is regarded as something special, a desirable thing, something worthy of respect.

But massive, indiscriminate immigration undermines that ideal.

If seemingly anyone can walk in and demand goodies, any ill-mannered flotsam of the world, and if they can do so with no discernible sense of gratitude, and with no apparent regard for the norms and values of the host society, as if they were unimportant, then the indigenous population may feel they have little reason to be gracious.

Indeed, being gracious may be something of a struggle.

I realise that even the idea that the locals might dare to think in such terms – of being the gracious host – is, for some, anathema, a basis for tutting and scolding. But the sense that the value of one’s society – one’s home – is being pissed away, sold off cheap, is not a promising basis for coexistence.

And there’s a big difference in wanting to make a manageable number of newcomers feel welcome – an ideal that requires certain conditions, a certain care in immigration policy, one we do not see – and feeling swamped and displaced by some kind of demographic terraforming.

A phenomenon discussed recently.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.




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