I’ve about the book in numerous places, and now I get to read 70s French paranoia about hordes of Hindus for free on my computer. Hat tip a commenter in a Reason Hit & Run thread on the bloggingheads diavlog between Shikha Dalmia and Mark Krikorian. Amidst the scrum, Unqualified Offering’s thoreau questions Dalmia’s credibility based on her argument that Hummers are better for the environment than Priuses. Or is it Priusi? I highlighted the reactions Chip Smith (of the Hoover Hog) and Michael Gilson de Lemos had to the book here. Steve Sailer compared Raspail’s book to Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (which, along with every other cyberpunk book, I have not read) here.
August 19, 2008
August 20, 2008 at 12:45 am
I tried reading it in paper form (i.e. I had to pay for it). Not worth the time, in my estimation; it’s more of a rant than a novel, really. Plus, the innundation of France by the “Hindu hordes” seems a bit duplicitous in a childish way. Anyway, maybe some day I’ll get around to trying to finish it.
August 20, 2008 at 1:32 am
Camp is so easily dismissed by calling Raspail a pervert. I think Houellebecq figured out the secret to writing indestructible rightwing novels – you make a self-insert protagonist and then give him a pornographic sex scene every few chapters. You can be Pat Buchanan in between and all you get is glory criticism like Updike saying you’re too nasty.
August 20, 2008 at 5:22 am
In the above context, it would be Prii.
August 20, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I often have wondered why its makers chose the name “Prius” for an automobile.
In Latin the word means before, previously, or formerly. It reminds us of the legal phrase “nisi prius” and of prions, the cause of mad cow disease. None of these associations seem particularly well suited to the promotion of automobile sales.
August 21, 2008 at 4:14 am
I cannot bring myself to read Raspail for now, but with the skyscrapers going up in Dubai, Mumbai and Shanghai it seems a little dated. The future is something other than the end of civilization via a low-IQ high-entropy cliodynamic heat death in which the Rest swamps the West.
August 26, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Having seen the French Banlieux burn, Raspail was right. He just picked Indians instead of Muslims. Given the rise of Eurabia, he was probably an optimist.
http://nycright.blogspot.com/2005/11/europe-is-burning-this-ramadan.html
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/011243.html
August 27, 2008 at 12:09 am
Still haven’t gotten around to reading it, but I do know that in the end America is supposed to get far worse than it was in the 60s and 70s as does France, so I can’t completely agree with RonL. I also can’t completely agree with Mitchell Porter, as I think he’s looking at too short a term. I remember posting a link about trouble in Dubai before, but it was a while ago and I can’t quite remember. To me Darwinism ensures something like the Return of Patriarchy, I just hope it happens after I’m not around any more.
August 31, 2008 at 7:20 pm
RonL, alternatively, he picked France instead of Britain. Africans in his day were as incapable of feeding themselves as ever, so he didn’t see a doubling of their population in the offing and their consequent move north, so, yes, I’d call him an optimist.
Well, Europe recovered from one Black Death so perhaps it will survive another, this time more literal, one; what we should not do, under any circumstances, however, is attempt to prevent it occurring in the first place — that would be intolerably racist.
August 31, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Europe recovered from one Black Death so perhaps it will survive another, this time more literal
Har har.
I don’t think most European immigrants are sub-Saharan Africans. There tend to be more South Asians, Turks, North Africans and I think even Indonesians. There are a sizable number of black Caribbeans in England, but I think they’re outweighed by South Asians.