About a month or so ago I was talking to someone at a social event and he mentioned The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail, I replied that while I had heard of the book I had never read it. In fact I had never even seen a copy. The next time we caught up he handed me his copy, so I began to read.
For those who don't know about the book it was published in French in 1973 and translated into English two years later. It is about a fleet that arrives off the coast of France filled with a million people from the Third World, in this case Indians. Which leads to the destruction of Western Civilization and the end of the White race. Of course it has been labeled racist and ridiculous, something that could never happen. Although after having read it it is hard not to be affected by it and to not notice that much of it has happened.
On the back of the book are some excerpts, this one shows the scale of the book:
"A stream of violent controversy will swirl around this book, since it takes on a whole cluster of polemical issues -- over-population, race, the Third World, and the character of liberal thought and sentiment."
There are three great themes in the book, 1. Race, 2. Liberalism and 3. the lose of confidence within the West. Most people, certainly most critics and detractors of the book, only notice Race but the others are also very important to the story. As the author puts it in his preface much of what he puts into characters mouths are things that had really been said. It it both a strength and a weakness of the book, it means that the ridiculous sounding is not so ridiculous unfortunately it also means that characters often don't speak so much as give speeches. Sometimes that works better in some places than it does in other places.
I would like to give two excerpts from the book itself, one short, the other long.
Most of the book is set in France, but this scene is in New York with an adviser speaking to the Mayor on the telephone and in it you can see the first and the third themes:
"And the wolf is tired of being a wolf, is that what your saying? Well, do like me, Jack. Have yourself another drink, and run your fingers up and down your wife's white skin, nice and slow, like something very precious. And wait. . . " (page 22)
This next scene is in the Belgian consulate in India before the fleet sets sail and he is addressing a group of Western Liberals who have set the events in motion:
"You know," the Consul went on, "there's a very old word that describes the kind of men you are. It's 'traitor.' That's all, your nothing new. There have been all kinds. We've had bishop traitors, knight traitors, general traitors, statesmen traitors, scholar traitors, and just plain traitors. It's a species the West abounds in, and it seems to get richer and richer the smaller it grows. Funny, you would think it would be the other way around. But the mind decays, the spirit warps. And the traitors keep coming. Since that day in 1522, the twelfth of October, when that noble knight, Andrea d'Amaral, your patron saint, threw open the gates of Rhodes to the Turks. . . Well, that's how it is, and no one can change it. I can't. I'm sure. But I can tell you this; I may be wrong about your results, but I find your actions beneath contempt. Gentlemen, your passports will not be renewed. That's the one official way I can still show you how I feel. And my Western colleagues are doing the same with any of their nationals involved."
One of the statues sat up. The one who had mused about the ocean. He was, in fact, the atheist philosopher known in the West by the name Ballan.
"Passports, countries, religions, ideals, races, borders, oceans . . . " Ballan shouted. "What bloody rubbish!" (page 31)
The book is best when it concerns the West, when it shows how Liberal piety works in theory and in practice. How it eats away at the centre until all that remains is a soft outer crust that looks much more solid than it really is. How it inverts the good in us and perverts it to evil, how humility is made into contempt, how cowardice is portrayed as heroism, how the high call of morality and ethics are made into the sirens call that leads to immorality and self destruction. How the claim that the individual is God leads to defeat for the individual and all he holds dear.
Race is not backed away from in the book, it is a very openly pro-White book. But having said that everything that happens in the book is the fault of Whites and the author does not hide that fact. He never states it, but he doesn't have to. It was Whites who created the technology for the Third World to come here, in the book the ships that make up the fleet. It is Whites who told the peoples of the Third World that we are all equal and that they have every right to live as we do. It was Whites who encouraged them to leave their homelands and invade the West. It was Whites who refused to stop the fleet even though it had multiple chances to do so. The West fell because Whites refused to defend it.
The Camp of the Saints is a tragedy, an important book and a wake up call.
Let us defend the West!
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