U.S. Army (Historical Image Archive) via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND
There are many things to mourn about the rise of Donald Trump. One such thing is the cover he is providing for even respectable conservatives to air racist ideas. A case in point is the revival of interest in a sick dystopia called the Camp of Saints penned by a French writer Jean Raspail in 1975. A perennial cult classic among white supremacist groups, this book, in recent months has been hailed as "prescient" by conservative outfits such as American Conservative and The Federalist.
The book's central purpose is to show how liberalism has weakened France's resolve to defend its racial/cultural purity, I note in my column at The Week. It creates a scenario in which a flotilla of a million leprous, lecherous Indian's arrives at the French Rivera seeking refuge. But instead of slaughtering them all as Raspail would have wanted, France welcomes them with open arms and gets obliterated by the sheer demographic onslaught.
But the book's problem is not only that it sets up a denouement so cartoonish that even Mad Max writers would cringe. It is that The Camp of the Saints is spectacularly wrong at nearly every level.
Go here to read how.
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