Peter Brimelow writes: Like Steve Sailer, I kind of like Ron Unz, despite his propensity for Paul Gigot-type childishness like calling critics of immigration policy "anti-immigrant." (And me quote-unquote "respectable." What is that supposed to mean?)

This is an extract from his enormous post on Steve Sailer's confidential Human Biodiversity email group. Ron is defending himself against Steve's point that his policies are implicitly anti-black by arguing that immigration reform won't win black votes either. Note his inability to distinguish between facts and values, very typical of immigration enthusiast mystagogues.

[Ron Unz:]

[VERY LARGE snip]

…For example, I would characterize Peter Brimelow as America's most prominent "respectable" white nationalist intellectual, and his 1995 anti-immigration book Alien Nation has enormous impact in that movement. The book repeatedly claims that "Race and ethnicity are destiny in American politics." Furthermore, Brimelow suggests that despite multiculturalist claims to the contrary, America began as a white nation, since although blacks made up 20% of the population, they were nearly all slaves, couldn't become citizens, and had no political rights; as late as 1950, he claims Americans considered America to be "the racial hegemony of white Americans." I suspect that these quite inflammatory sentiments and policies, described with clear approval, would not win many black votes.

[Peter Brimelow reply:] List members who flinched at this great tide of Unzprose can count themselves lucky: Ron talks like this too!

To deal with his paragraph on me:

1] "race..is destiny in American politics" - i.e. in the U.S., voting is more importantly determined by ethnicity than class. This is simply a fact - not, as Ron seems to think, a "sentiment" or a "policy."

2] "America began as a white nation" - again, this is simply a fact. The 1790 Naturalization Act required applicants to be "free white persons." In other words, the view that the U.S. was founded as a "proposition nation" that anyone could join without regard to origin is a myth.

3] "as late as 1950, he claims Americans considered America to be "the racial hegemony of white Americans..."" This is Ron's rather perverse way of reporting my comment that this curious phrase, which began circulating in the early 90s, would have had no meaning four decades earlier, when the U.S. was 90% white. In those days, that *was* the nation.

4] I don't know that I described these facts "with clear approval." But it certainly appears they provoke Ron's visceral *disapproval*. Hence, presumably, his determination to America as it existed in 1965.

I do think that any political party representing the ethnic majority will have a problem attracting ethnic minorities, who are inevitably alienated to some degree...like Ron. But if you have the ethnic majority, why worry?

April 20, 2000