Liberty, Nationalism and Patriotism
I listened with interest to the first two videos[1][2] in the recent series “Chris Tame from Beyond the Grave,” in which Chris discusses immigration. David McDonagh’s dissenting view[3] I also found most interesting.
Unfortunately, there are no transcripts of the videos. So, for the first one, I’ll copy the notes I made on it. “Chris likens immigration to an invasion. The invaders are not acclimatized to, or may even be hostile to, liberal (American readers: libertarian) values and liberal civilization. They might – or might not – assimilate quickly if this was a free market society; but it isn’t. He concludes by describing this immigration as an act of ‘national murder.’” For the second video, I hope David won’t mind me quoting his summary: “Chris says the national state has been justified and he says mass immigration will lead to totalitarianism, to a low wage economy, that mass immigration is not free anyway as we have the welfare state, that it is more like an invasion than mere immigration, as the newcomers are hostile to British culture, that the ruling class has organised this to cow the native workers on low wages and that despotism will be the result.”
I confess I didn’t know until now that Chris near the end of his life had taken such a strong nationalist and anti-immigration stance. At the time he made the video (late 2005) there had indeed, in the previous year or so, been the start of a huge influx of immigrants into the UK. But a high proportion of immigrants at that time were Polish. Maybe some of these Poles, having only recently been freed from communism, were in a sense not acclimatized to liberal values. But at least going by the Polish people I know both here and in Poland, I don’t think the accusation that they are hostile to liberal civilization stands up to scrutiny.
As to Muslims, Chris may perhaps have been on somewhat firmer ground, with the terrorist attacks of July 2005 still fresh in people’s memories at the time. (Since I started writing this, further atrocities have happened in Brussels, which also may well prove to have been the work of Muslims). But I still think it’s wrong to cast aspersions on all Muslims just because some Muslims behave badly. Granted, Islam isn’t a very nice religion. But then, as anyone who has ever read the bible cover to cover will know, Christianity isn’t very nice either.
