Chicanonautica: In the Camp of Racism Porn

By Ernest Hogan

I believe in freedom, of speech, expression, and the press. I prefer cultural free-fire zones to safe places. I also believe that opposing viewpoints need to be aired and observed. 

And I know that racism is not stopped by banning certain words and images from polite society.

When I heard about Jean Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints (translated from the French by Norman R. Shapiro), Steve Bannon’s favorite book, I felt I had to read it.

So I downloaded it for free from Internet Archive. I wasn’t about to spend any money on what has been called an alt right Bible.

There are no surprises in The Camp of the Saints. In my years as a brown-skinned person not from the dominant culture, I’ve heard it all before. Sometimes it’s whispered behind my back, but often blurted out to my face with a shit-eating grin. These folks have been feeling more confident with a certain guy in the White House.

It’s vintage racism porn, originally published in 1973, and all the ideas were ancient back then. And now political correctness has added a pornographic erotic thrill for the target audience. Feelgood reading for Nazis.

The plot is simple: Ships full of refugees from India--the Ganges “armada”--go around the horn of Africa to Europe, land in France, the “wall of black flesh” in zombie apocalypse style (what is a zombie, but a human being stripped of human status?), overwhelms the subcontinent (Europe is about the same size as India), bringing about the end of Western Civilization. 

Could have made a good, Grand Guignol horror movie, but Jean Raspail is not a crude redneck with a taste for gore, but a respected, award-winning man of letters--a European intellectual! A flower of Western Civilization!

Instead of exciting scenes of battle against barbarian horde, we get a lot of talk--stream-of-consciousness rants about how Jesus was a white supremacist, black and brown people are animals, and about their turd-eating depravity . . . etc. There is more of this than anything going on. It gets pretty tedious, unless this sort of thing gets you off.

Because this is an attack on “mercy monger” liberalism (wasn’t Jesus a mercy monger?) as well as on non-whites, Europe does not fight back. The military can’t bring themselves to fight the “invaders.” The same with the police. The refugees literally get off the ships, walk in, take over, then start committing crimes . . .

There is also not much character development of any kind. It’s all grotesque caricature. As If the KKK took over Mad Magazine, only it’s not funny.

The scariest thing about it isn’t anything in the book, but how--especially in the last couple of years--we keep seeing this racist, fascist, Nazi thinking reflected in public policy.

Some are hailing Camp of the Saints as prophetic. Actually, pundits and politicians are exaggerating news images to resemble this apocalyptic vision. The migrant/asylum seeker caravans are worlds away from the Ganges “armada.”

I’m worried about the people who can enjoy such a book, but I’m not worried about the end of Western Civilization. That’s because good ol’ Western Civ died back in the twentieth century. Good riddance.

Let’s get on with the next thing.

Ernest Hogan is alive and well and living in Arizona, where he has learned a lot about racism.