The attack on the mosques, like Anders Breivik’s murderous rampage in idyllic Norway, happened in New Zealand, ironically rated in 2017 the safest country in the world after Iceland. It’s a sad reminder that no place is exempt from ethnic conflict. Et in Arcadia ego sum, whether Arcadia is Africa, Burma, or Western China. Wherever populations mix under pressure there’s the potential for volatility. As a New York Times article reminded its readers in 2014, the Rwandan massacre had its roots in the population policies of European governments.
In 1884, 130 years ago, European powers gathered in Berlin for a conference under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck that historians depict as setting the rules for the scramble for Africa among outside powers that soon fractured it into a jigsaw of new nations.
… the impact of this colonial cartography lingers in profound sensitivities at the legacy of the outsiders’ incursions into a continent that did not invite them to define its frontiers or impose their definitions of nationhood.
If tribal patchworks were the legacy of 19th-century European imperialism, then multicultural populations are the consequence of the global world. Economic advantage demands them but there are dangers lurking in those arrangements.
For example, the inclusion of the Muslim parts of Mindanao into the predominantly Christian Philippines under the Treaty of Paris caused mischief beginning with the U.S. vs Moro Wars that continues to this day. After the Muslim insurrection in the early 1970s, the mayhem became chronic, with gangs shooting up mosques, rebels kidnapping school children, and warlords killing journalists en masse. The latest chapter, the Battle of Marawi, had hardly ended before the NYT was warning that Mindanao may be the next stronghold of ISIS. It’s now a conflict whose end no one knows.
But ethnic conflict in the Third World is a dog-bites-man story. What is new about the New Zealand attack is that the terrible plague of tribal score-settling and grievance mongering is now in the West. Not that the West is a stranger to ethnic conflict: the Holocaust, Generalplan Ost, Holodomor, and Polish and Armenian genocides are bywords in themselves. But it was widely assumed that WW2 had seen these off (until Bosnia) and the risks of multiculturalism and mass immigration could be mitigated by immunosuppressive strategies like political correctness and demographic replacement, of which the EU project is a textbook example.
Yet events since 2016 indicate that this strategy is failing despite the suppressants. Pressure from the root causes — whether European colonialism, Islamic slave trading, 9/11, the War on Terror, multiculturalism, populism — are burning through the medication. The old devils are on the loose and the problem is what to do now. One option is to deliver even higher doses of political correctness and demographic replacement. But perhaps the absolute worst thing politicians can do is respond by collecting guns, imposing hate speech restrictions, and announcing open borders. In the current atmosphere of distrust toward authority, such actions can destroy the only asset a state faced with ethnic conflict has: the public belief that it is above the fray and won’t sell anyone out. That quantity can itself run out and therein lies the danger.
All public policy can do is buy the time necessary for the human magic — or poison — to run its course. There is no quick media fix — and no internet patch for human networks that need to come to consensus personally, not virtually. The decisive terrain in the looming clash will be a human landscape that changes but slowly. Demography and immigration will become hotly contested areas of public policy and even success will take generations. But success, while possible, is by no means guaranteed. Sometimes events take on a life of their own.
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Books:
The Meaning Revolution: The Power of Transcendent Leadership, by Fred Kofman. Kofman argues that our most deep-seated and unspoken anxiety stems from our fear that our life is being wasted — that the end of life will overtake us when our song is still unsung. Material incentives account for perhaps 15 percent of employees’ motivation at work. The other 85 percent is driven by a need to belong, a feeling that what we do day in and day out makes a difference, and that how we spend our time on earth serves a larger purpose beyond just ourselves.
Democracy: A Case Study, by David Moss. Through nineteen case studies, Harvard Business School professor David Moss delivers not only a first-rate history of the United States but also reveals that the nation has often thrived on conflict. Each case presents readers with a pivotal moment in U.S. history, asks them to weigh the choices and consequences, wrestle with momentous decisions, and come to their own conclusions. The reader comes away from this engaging book with a new appreciation of the country’s extraordinary resilience.
The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy’s Finest Hour, by James D. Hornfischer. A must-read.
The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, by Kevin Kelly. Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives can be understood as the result of a few long-term, accelerating forces already in motion. These deep trends – interacting, cognifying, flowing, screening, accessing, sharing, filtering, remixing, tracking, and questioning — will completely revolutionize the way we buy, work, learn, and communicate with each other. By understanding and embracing them, says Kelly, it will be easier for us to navigate these changes in ways that will benefit us. For those who seek guidance on where their business, industry, or life is heading – what to invent, where to work, what to invest in, how to better reach customers, and what to begin to put in place – this book is indispensable.
For a list of books most frequently purchased by readers, visit my homepage.
Did you know that you can purchase some of these books and pamphlets by Richard Fernandez and share them with your friends? They will receive a link in their email and it will automatically give them access to a Kindle reader on their smartphone, computer or even as a web-readable document.
The War of the Words, Understanding the crisis of the early 21st century in terms of information corruption in the financial, security and political spheres
Rebranding Christianity, or why the truth shall make you free
The Three Conjectures, reflections on terrorism and the nuclear age
Storming the Castle, why government should get small
No Way In at Amazon Kindle. Fiction. A flight into peril, flashbacks to underground action.
Storm Over the South China Sea, how China is restarting history in the Pacific.
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