‘Great replacement’ is simple maths

Renaud Camus, the author of the ‘great replacement’ theory has been barred from Britain because the Home Office says his presence “was not considered to be conducive to the public good”.

This raises serious concerns about freedom of speech, specifically because the government dislikes things Camus says and writes. After all, only permitting speech we like requires no special commitment. It’s only when we wince at everything someone says that our belief in fundamental liberties comes under scrutiny.

Mr Camus and his supporters are trying to reverse the injunction, even though it’s legally unappealable. “I anticipate that we are going to be getting an immigration lawyer on the case,” said Lord Young, a Tory peer.

Lord Young made it clear that he is siding with Mr Camus’s cause not just out of disinterested devotion to freedom but also for pecuniary reasons: “We’re trying to secure a trade deal with the United States, and the United States have flagged up that one of the conditions of the deal will be that we make a better fist of defending free speech.”

If Lord Young et al. simply wish to turn this into a test case against infringement of free speech, best of luck to them. They are going to need it because such a case is unwinnable when someone like Camus is involved.

However, Lord Young may generate much publicity, perhaps with the ulterior motive of proving to Trump that the cause of civil liberties isn’t a complete write-off in the UK. If that softens Trump’s heart enough to give Britain a favourable trade deal, I’ll be the first to cheer. Yet I’m not holding my breath.

But if Lord Young seriously wants to greet Mr Camus at the St Pancras Eurostar terminal, I’d suggest he is going about it the wrong way. He should follow the example of the feminist and lesbian activists who forced the Supreme Court to ban transsexuals from women’s lavatories. (Our dear NHS is ignoring that ruling, by the way.)

Had the same campaign been launched by conservative groups, religious groups or especially religious conservative groups, it would have been soundly defeated. Subversive causes can only be beaten by other subversive causes, not by any appeal to sanity.

Now, Mr Camus did invent the Great Replacement theory that claims that a “global elite”, aka “the deep state”, has hatched a fiendish plot to replace white Europeans with off-white arrivals and their progeny.

You don’t need me to tell you that rational arguments, no matter how solidly supported by demographic data, in favour of that theory will never win the day. Too many people will feel called upon to express indignation, real or put on.

But Mr Camus has an ace up his sleeve, or in his trousers if you’d rather. In addition to inventing and propagating that theory, he is an LGBT activist. Need I say more?

Rather than banging on about freedom of speech, Lord Young should simply claim that the Home Office’s injunction proves it’s institutionally homophobic. Should he do that, Mr Camus will be on his way to Gare du Nord as fast as a taxi can carry him.

As for the theory that enraged the Home Office so much, it has two parts. The first part is an unassailable empirical observation supported by reams of statistical data and simple arithmetic. The second part is explaining the nature of such observable facts, and there disagreements are possible.  

The first part brings back the memories of my boyhood tortures at school where I had to struggle with problems of a swimming pool with two pipes, one in-flowing, the other out-flowing. If the first pipe pumps water in faster than the second one pumps it out, the pool will overflow. If it’s the other way around, the pool will run dry.

To use a grown-up example, if we simultaneously pour gin from one bottle and tonic from another and the second bottle is tipped at a greater angle, sooner or later we’ll end up with a glass of neat tonic, and what good is that for anybody?

In 2024 the net migration, mostly Muslim, to the UK was 728,000, the better part of three-quarters of a million. Add to this the higher birthrate among the immigrant population, intermarriages and growing reluctance on the part of white Britons to procreate, certainly while the Labour government is still around, and you’ll see that Mr Camus is on to something.

He has another good thing going for him: he and I were born on the same day, although he a year earlier. We are both quintessential Leos and, as a minority, must stick together. That’s why I’m so happy to acknowledge that Mr Camus has a point, in this half of his theory at any rate.

Moreover, I’ll even agree that this demographic displacement is no good thing. The issue doesn’t have much to do with race, although for purely aesthetic reasons, and also for old times’ sake, one wouldn’t like to see most Britons being the colour of Starbucks coffee, first latte and eventually espresso.

However, the real problem isn’t racial but cultural. And I believe that culture is transmitted by nurture, not nature. Only this morning I played mixed doubles with an Englishwoman of an unmistakably Indian origin. And yet in every aspect of behaviour, social response and humour she was as English as our opponents, and in language more so.

I’m sure that, chromatic differences apart, her children are indistinguishable from their playmates whose London origins go back many generations. If all immigrants were like my partner, I wouldn’t see the ‘great replacement’ as a huge problem. But they aren’t, which is why I do.

There exists much irrefutable evidence that our growing Muslim population doesn’t adapt to Western culture, nor wishes to. Many children born in places like Leicester, Bradford or Leeds don’t even realise that Britain isn’t an Islamic country – they go to Muslim schools, read Muslim papers and books, watch Muslim TV, speak their parents’ language at home, hardly ever come in contact with English children or, in their neighbourhoods, even English grown-ups.

If this is the kind of people that indigenous Britons are being replaced with, then our cultural and civilisational future is bleak. Arithmetic proves it, it’s those two damned pipes again.

The second part of Mr Camus’s theory isn’t maths but sheer conjecture, and it’s unconvincing conjecture. He sees this development as a result of a dastardly plot concocted by some evildoers dead-set on taking over the world.

There are some evildoers involved and they may indeed have such far-reaching desires. But the existence of a conspiracy presupposes an unlikely feat of organisation.

Thousands of them, many thousands really, would have had to come together, create a tightly knit group bound by a vow of silence, decide who is responsible for what, establish a chain of command and means of communication, procure financing and technical support, set up concealment procedures.

Somehow I don’t see that happening. For me, the cock-up theory of history is more believable than any conspiracy theory, and stupid people far outnumber evil ones.

One characteristic of stupid people is their susceptibility to half-baked simplistic explanations of life. Like bad chess players who can only calculate one move ahead, they are receptive to any bien pensant slogans promising future bliss provided they get rid of annoying obstacles in their way.

You know, things like traditional social order, institutions developed over centuries, religion, laws that go back to generations of just and sage men. Get rid of such iniquities and paradise on earth awaits. When hearing this, many people can’t foresee the long-term consequences of such radicalism – and neither can those who preach it to them.

They may be brighter than their audience but not by much, not enough to be able to control the destructive animus they feel in their viscera. Generally speaking, such rabble-rousers are either young or else older chronologically but not mentally and emotionally. We all have off-the-wall notions when very young, but some people never get to outgrow them – this regardless of how many academic degrees they boast.

Then again, and this is not a defensible thought but merely a lifelong observation. One doesn’t have to be a madman, a racist or generally a nasty bit of work to see some merit in the great replacement theory. But devoting a great part of one’s life to such musings does betoken some mental disorder or at least a foul disposition.

Hence, moving from an argumentum ad rem to an argumentum ad hominem, I’m sure I wouldn’t like to spend even five minutes in Mr Camus’s company. But barring him from Britain means denying the pleasure of his company to those who do find his company pleasant.

So Lord Young is right, and I wish him success, which I doubt he’ll achieve. But there’s no harm in trying.