Egocentric Whites?

In White Nation Lebanese Australian Ghassan Hage argues that Australian whites have an unrealistic Anglo-centric attitude to immigration and they should wake up and accept the reality that regulating immigration is beyond their control.

Hage argues that both white nationalists and white multiculturalists are “worrying” over an issue over which they have no control. According to Hage, non-white immigration is inevitable and that political multiculturalism is driven not by white liberals, as One Nation voters assume, but by the enterprising efforts of non-white immigrants themselves.

Hence it is egocentric of whites to presume that can control immigration (for better or worse). Public opinions polls on immigration, in Hage’s view, are a “laughable” anachronism because they wrongly assume that the country as a whole is still interested in the opinions of white Australians after decades of non-white immigration and integration.

However, a strong case can be made that Ghassan Hage’s, White Nation (published in 1998), is itself a laughable anachronism. Like many on the left, Hage glosses over the important issue of different degrees of integration among different groups of non-whites.

Since Hage only discusses successful not white immigrant groups such as East Asians, he can portray working class white Australians as over-privileged losers, daydreaming about the past while depicting non-white immigrants as competent realists working towards the future.

However, not all immigrant groups are successful self-starters who have gained social and economic power through their own efforts. France, is currently dealing with the embarrassing problem of a large (and growing) non-white minority that is proving incapable of fending for itself and integrating into the French economy.

The continuing challanges Australia faces in trying to integrate its indigenous people also highlights the fact that cultural integration is not inevitable, and that some non-white groups can indeed become a burden for other ethnic groups

Hage also blurs the distinction between Anglocentrism and Eurocentrism. This allows him to suggest that because Anglocentrism is on the wane, Eurocentrism in Australia is also dead and buried. Most of the successful post war integration though, which Hage refers to in One Nation has been non -Anglo Celtic white immigration.

Non-white immigration in Australia only became significant in the 1970s and for the time being at least, whites are still clearly in the majority. Multiculturalists who refer to the United States and Australia as “cultural melting pots” are referring to the successful assimilation of non-British Europeans and Jews in the period from 1900-1965.

Since significant non-white immigration has only been occurring for a few decades, the verdict is still out on whether whites have the ability to manage it.

Another factor that is completely overlooked by Hage is the possibility that different ethnic groups may team up with whites to influence immigration patters. In New Zealand for example, the centre-right National party is attracting significant East Asian support, while the centre-left Labour party has a growing support base among Polynesians and South Asians. Such ethnic power play could work to strengthen or weaken white power in the political process.

From a rights perspective Hage implies that whites do not a mandate to try to regulate immigration for their own benefit. The fact that he should mention this when he has already stated that non-white immigration is “inevitable” is not only bemusing, but it also leaves an ethical vacuum in which no one has a right to say who should and shouldn’t become a citizen.

A major problem in countries with liberal immigration policies is economic inequality. If, as Hage seems to suggest, recent immigrants themselves should have a greater say over immigration policy, then the Australian welfare state is likely to become overburdened and the cheap land/ expensive labour arrangement which had been the cornerstone of Australian economic equality could be decisively undermined.

Given that unrestricted immigration could potentially turn egalitarian Australia into something closer to a “libertarian aristocracy” like Brazil, it is no wonder that working class white Australians are concerned with losing control over the immigration process, even if Hage is right to conclude that their power to influence the process is at present fairly limited.

Hage tries to reassure Australian whites that although they have no power to influence immigration, non-white immigrants are “rational” people who won’t want to destroy the country’s prosperity by irresponsibly flooding into the country and undermining Australia’s high quality of life.

However, immigrants from impoverished countries are likely to have a much weaker definition of what constitutes a high quality of life than those from lightly populated developed states. Even those from developed East Asian countries are likely to have a different conception of the "good life" to most European Australians.

Hage argues that whites do have a right to defend their own culture, but only as an ethnic lobby group and not as a “white aristocracy” which claims to act in the best interests of the citizentry as a whole.

What Hage doesn’t seem to appreciate however, is that for the last 200 years, whites have been deliberating repressing the very sort of clannish self-interest, which he seems to promote. Part of the reason why whites have been so successful in this period is because of their aversion to such things as cousin marriage and political nepotism, which are still the norm in many parts of the world (hat tip to Steve Sailer).

Although there are some interesting aspects to Hage’s analysis, his liberal (and decidedly undemocratic) premises lead to only one workable type of solution- an expansive immigration policy with an authoritarian society and a libertarian economy. However, Hage is unwilling to come clean about the inevitable corruption, inequality and crime that goes with such a society.