Recently, the Postil had the opportunity to speak with Clare Ellis, author of The Blackening of Europe (which we’ve recently reviewed; and you can read an excerpt from it as well). Since the topic that she has thoroughly researched, multiculturalism and mass-immigration, is one that affects each and everyone living in the West, we thought it would be good to arrive at a deeper perspective that often comes through insights gained over the course of a conversation. We think you will enjoy this interview; especially poignant is the story of her hard-won PhD. Dr. Ellis is a thoughtful and learned scholar, and it has been a great honor to speak with her.
The Postil (TP): Welcome to the Postil. We are so glad and honored to have you join us. Your recent book is the first in a multi-volume study entitled, intriguingly, The Blackening of Europe, which deals with multiculturalism and mass-immigration. But first, please tell us a little about your background.
Clare Ellis (CE): I was born in Aberdeen, Scotland and moved around quite a bit as a child, from Manchester, Sherborne, and London in England to Elgin and Glasgow in Scotland. I also lived on and off in Saudi Arabia for about eight years as my father worked as a doctor in the capital city, Riyadh, and so I was blessed with also visiting other Middle Eastern countries. In my early twenties I relocated from London, England to Vancouver, Canada and after a few years decided to move to the east coast, to Saint John, New Brunswick and it is here that I finally put down my roots. This is also where I began my journey into academia, beginning with philosophy, you know, the big questions.
I was awarded my BA degree with two majors, one in philosophy (first class honours) and the other in sociology. I then pursued a Master in Interdisciplinary Studies (MIDST). I was fascinated with the trajectory of ancient to modern philosophy and the idea of progress, so I researched the history of the idea as set out by many outstanding Western philosophers, from the ancient Greeks to the 20th century. At that time, I was employed by the university as a teaching assistant and research assistant for several different professors in philosophy and sociology and received quite a few scholarships and awards. I was awarded my MIDST degree in 2011, with a thesis titled: The Idea of Progress and the Agonistic Ethos of Western Man.
I dove straight into my PhD, also interdisciplinary (PHIDST) with the thesis topic: Modernity and Multiculturalism. I wanted to understand why European civilization, the West, was undergoing massive transformations from multiculturalism and mass-immigration, and why criticisms of these processes were taboo. It took several years and many setbacks, but I was awarded my PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies in December of 2017, with a dissertation titled: A Critique of Cosmopolitan Integration in the European Union: Demographic and Political Decline of Native Europeans.
TP: Your books are based on your PhD dissertation at the University of Brunswick. How did you manage to juggle the politics of academia (hell-bent progressivism) and still finish your research and get your doctorate? It must have been quite the feat!
CE: It was a hard battle, difficult to navigate from the start. Other than Dr. Ricardo Duchesne, finding academics that would take my research seriously was extremely difficult at UNB; all the professors I approached outright rejected my thesis proposal. I had to look to other universities in different provinces (Nova Scotia, Acadia University, Dr. Diemo Landgraf and Ontario, Ottawa University, Dr. Janice Fiamengo) to find professors who were open-minded enough to understand that my research was important and who would be willing to come on board as members of the advisory committee. That took about a year or so. And there was a great deal of ideological bias and closed-mindedness in the classrooms, particularly the promotion and adoration of Critical Theory, radical feminism, and the innate guilt of Europeans as a monolithic racial group, which could not be questioned without the threat of disciplinary action and the spiteful lowering of grades. I was discriminated against, silenced, and intimidated by professors in class for speaking out and challenging their biases.
One time, during class, I had a very awkward staring contest with Thom Workman, the chair of the political science department at UNB Fredericton at the time, because I disagreed with his views on feminism and he wanted to shut my alternative views down. Workman also told me directly that he, along with other academics at UNB, were actively rooting out people with alternative views and interests in so-called taboo subjects. At another time, a radical leftist professor, Robert Whitney, who was teaching students in a mandatory political science class that White people were responsible for inventing slavery and racism, which I questioned, told me I should just quit my research and leave the university.
And then there was the administration. So many obstacles were thrown my way to either prevent me from obtaining my degree or to lengthen the time it took, which was very costly and time-consuming. This included being granted absolutely no scholarships or awards. But that was the least of my problems. The admin took four months to submit the grades of my comprehensive exams as well as four months to set the date for my proposal exam. They also shut down my UNB account for over three months so I could not access my emails and UNB resources like journal articles. Many times I waited weeks on end for the assistant dean of interdisciplinary studies (IDST), Mary Mckenna, to answer email inquiries. At one crucial period, after hearing nothing for several weeks, I spoke with the dean of graduate studies on the telephone, Drew Rendall, who then proceeded to claim I could be accused of violating the UNB constitution for asking the administrative authorities questions about procedure and progress regarding my dissertation and was advised to not contact the assistant dean of IDST at all!
My problems with the administration did not end there. The School of Graduate Studies (SGS) took almost five months to find internal examiners for the final oral exam (it usually takes 2-3 weeks) and delayed my final exam by almost a year (my dissertation was completed in early January 2017 but my oral exam did not occur until December 2017). In order to accommodate UNBs inability to find internal examiners from UNB I was told to alter my dissertation, which I refused to do, and they even requested that I provide a copy of my dissertation to a “potential” internal examiner so they could read it and then decide whether they wanted to be on the examining committee or not, which I also refused to do as only those nominated and accepted as an internal examiner can have a copy of the dissertation.
SGS did eventually find two UNB emeritus professors but they were not from my disciplines of research, instead they were in the fields of forestry (Ian Methven) and ethics (Will van den Hoonaard). Compared to the three other examiners who had expertise in my subject area (Duchesne, Fiamengo, and an external examiner, Dr. Dario Fernandez-Morera from Northwestern University, USA) and who thought the scholarship I exhibited in my dissertation was excellent and only needed minor changes, Methven (forestry) outright rejected my dissertation and Hoonaard (ethics), called for substantial revisions. Despite not even having read my dissertation, both McKenna and Randall, who were not examining board members and were meant to be neutral in their views, sided with Methven and Hoonard (minority vote) against the other three (majority vote) in their negative critique of my work.
Without consultation with all members of the examining board and without requesting a reply from the minority members specifying why they dissented from the majority decision, which are procedural requirements, McKenna and Rendall demanded I revise my work, in terms of length (by half) as well as radically altering my scholarly analysis and conclusions. This was fiercely contested by myself, my supervisor, and my advisory committee, who thought these demands were ideologically driven; it essentially ended in a standoff between the two groups. Only after several exchanges, the submission of objections by the minority members, and references to rights and UNBs own guidelines, handbooks, and mandates from myself and the majority side, was there a resolution. That meant I could proceed with the final exam, which was not without its issues either.
The admin changed the exam room several times, and again right before the exam, and put-up posters for the exam directing people to the old rooms. The final room did not have the technology required for an online connection with Dr. Fiamengo in Ottawa. As such, it was very difficult for myself and the audience to hear what Dr. Fiamengo had to say as the sound quality was just from the speakers of a laptop, and she was interrupted and cut-off several times. Not only did many left-wing professors show up in the audience many of them also jeered at me during the question period. Methven, sitting at the front, continuously rolled his eyes at me whenever I responded to a question he asked. One professor, Chris Doran, was so hostile to my research that he sneered at me while he accused me of “inventing” the term indigenous Europeans because Europeans were not yet minorities in their own countries from a colonizing force. But I persevered, kept calm, knew my rights, argued my case, and was finally shaking hands with the administration and awarded my doctorate.
TP: Do you think higher education is still salvageable? Has the life of the mind now been broken by universities, when previously they nurtured it?
CE: Unless intellectual diversity is restored, as well as real critical thinking and research (not Critical Theory thinking), and debates striving towards the truth are allowed and become the norm, especially on topics that are currently considered too taboo for “real” intellectual inquiry, universities will continue to pump out brainwashed, politically correct minds that foster the decline of the West. I think it is very important that elementary and secondary education change too (removal of Critical Race Theory, radical Feminism, anti-Westernism, etc.) as that might reflect alterations in demand, in terms of knowledge sought, in higher education. I question if these crucial restorations and adjustments are possible now, as education and educators are so pervaded with the liberal-left mindset and alternative thinking of the so-called right is increasingly considered as thoroughly unacceptable.
TP: You have various other intellectual interests: social biology, political science, philosophy, sociology and history. Is there a thread that binds them all together?
CE: The rise and then the decline, both demographically and politically, of European peoples.
TP: What led you to begin researching mass-immigration into the West, a topic that forms the basis of The Blackening of Europe?
CE: There is no definitive point in time that I can remember. What I can say, is that my interest in large scale immigration into Europe partly stemmed as a natural development from my MA thesis on the history of the idea of progress, and also from my experience with travelling, as well as the most pressing topics of current affairs. In terms of my prior and ongoing research, I came to understand Enlightenment liberalism as giving rise, or allowing for, the development in the twentieth century of more radical ideologies, such as cultural Marxism. Everyone seemed to be talking and teaching about multiculturalism and diversity, increasingly so, and how they were goods in themselves. But were they and in what way? Why was diversity in the sovereign nations of Europe presented as inevitable, progressive, and modern by academia, political elites, and legacy media? Although cosmopolitanism, diversity, and universalism were there as kernels in ancient Greek philosophy, and informed much of the history of Western thought, I realized multiculturalism vastly differed from these earlier ideas and could only be understood in the context of mass-immigration.
TP: The subtitle of Volume 1 of The Blackening of Europe is Ideologies & International Developments; and you tell the fascinating story of how two particular ideologies came to dominate in the West, namely, multiculturalism and mass immigration—so much so that the West is now defined by both. Why has the West become so masochistic? Or perhaps suicidal?
CE: Is it a willing suicide? Meaning is it undertaken purposefully by the European peoples themselves and not just by the elites that are meant to represent them? A majority of Europeans have opposed mass-immigration and multiculturalism since their inception, but their voices have been stigmatised and ignored by their so-called leaders for decades and are increasingly being replaced by politically correct “diversity is strength” Europeans and by ethnocentric non-European voices. In this sense, Europeans, in general, are not willingly self-harming as a people; it is their elites, as well as foreign interests, that are primarily responsible for the tragedy.
The dissolution of the West is due to a complex combination of factors. A long-standing idea that can be found in the West since at least the beginning of the 20th century has been the notion that nations defined by particular homogenous ethnic groups (ethnonationalism) are a leading cause behind the constant wars that defined relations between distinct European nations for centuries. It was understood that wars could be averted by actively ridding Western countries of their specific ethno-national identities and creating a new form of collective or common European identity, a European or cosmopolitical patriotism. This was an important development in terms of European political thought at the time in the sense that leading thinkers (mostly cosmopolitanists) viewed the unification of Europe, a Pan-Europe or a United States of Europe, as a necessary step towards the federation of the world in perpetual peace – a project that would divide the world into a sort of international balance of powers, with Europe as one geopolitical bloc or world power (along with a Mediterranean integration project called Eurafrica) among four others: the British Commonwealth, Pan-America, Eastern Asia, and the Soviet Union.
After the horrors of WWII European denationalization (and unification) became a central aspect of European progress and quickly became entrenched by the so-called guilt-complex of a strong ethno-national European identity (it became associated with Nazism and anti-Semitism) and the anti-national and anti-European ideologies of Fabianism and Cultural Marxism, which, backed by wealthy capitalists, infiltrated the educational, social, and political systems of Western nations so to align them with the dictates of socialism. Non-European immigration also began after WWII. At first it was in terms of temporary migrant labourers to help with the postwar rebuilding of Europe, but, because of new human rights laws (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948), many of these guest workers opted to settle in Europe and brought over their family members, a practice that has now come to be known in various forms as marriage migration, family reunification, chain migration, or human rights migration, which essentially defines mass-immigration into the West today.
As anti-national and anti-European ideologies have abounded in the European media and educational systems, non-European migrant populations and ethnic enclaves have also proliferated in Europe, and multiculturalism has become the centerpiece of European narratives as a response to ethnic minority group demands for recognition and special rights.
To add to these developments, the 1970s OPEC oil crisis led to the establishment of the Euro-Arab Dialogue, a multilateral forum that aimed to strengthen financial, technical, political, and cultural co-operation between the European Economic Community (EEC) and the twenty Arab League states (and the Arab-Muslim world). This dialogue, which has been amended and supported by many joint declarations and meetings, the formation of new alliances and cooperative organisations, and the drawing of fresh legal documents, has favoured Muslim migrants as a primary source of non-European labour power (and since, fertility power) and has introduced, facilitated, and promoted Islam, including political Islam, in Western European nations. In effect, it has created a new integration model that some have dubbed Eurabia.
All of these developments – human rights-based immigration and ethnic minority multiculturalism, the Euro-Arab Dialogue and its offshoots and promotion of Islam and Muslim migrants, Cultural Marxism and other anti-European ideologies, denationalization, and cosmopolitical patriotism – emasculate European nations and peoples and strip them of their sovereign powers. They also directly connect to the demographic and political decline of Europeans.
TP: Part One of Volume 1 deals with a man name Count Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi. Tell us a little about him.
CE: The Austrian-Hungarian-Japanese Coudenhove-Kalergi was a central figure in European unification and is considered a leading architect behind the present European Union we know today, forming the Pan-European Union (PEU) in 1946, the European Parliamentary Union (EPU) in 1947, and influencing the formation of the European Council in 1949.
He was a cosmopolitan geopolitician and staunch anti-nationalist, wrote many books on European unification, such as Pan-Europa (1923) and Practical Idealism: Nobility–Technique–Pacifism (1925), coined the term “Eurafrica” (1929), envisioned a new European and a mixed race of human beings in the future (racial engineering), and thought the new Europe would be led by a spiritual Jewish aristocracy. He tirelessly thought that European unification was central to the eventual formation of a federation of federations in the world that would stave off major wars and promote an eternal global peace. He brought together thousands of leading elites in this regard. Today the European Prize Coudenhove-Kalergi is awarded to personalities who are recognized as promoting unification and peace in Europe.
TP: You point out that Coudenhove-Kalergi was heavily funded by bankers and the wealthy elite. What attraction did his ideas have for these moneyed classes?
CE: Before World War II, many European and American elites were in support of a united Europe to combat threats to Western civilization posed by Soviet Union communism and German national socialism. A federated Europe meant a strong economic and political unit that could boost prosperity (through free trade and the joint exploitation of the resources of African colonies), quell intra-European hostilities (“solve” the European and German “Questions”), and provide defense against Bolshevik conquest. European unification also meant that Europe could develop a strong Atlantic brotherhood with North America to collectively defend Western civilization as a whole against external threats (prior to NATO) and a be a necessary step towards a new world order – a world federation of federations. Some Europeans also supported the union of Europe because they viewed America, not just the USSR, as a danger to Europe. As the USA was a united bloc with a strong economy it was imperative that the politically divided European nations unite and develop a strong economy to combat American influence and become a dominant world power in par with the other two world powers.
After WWII, many Western elites were under the influence of Fabianism, cosmopolitanism, and cultural Marxism and many international institutes formed, such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and NATO, effectively establishing a new global order based on notions of a Western “peace.” European federation was now within the framework of the United Nations and NATO and was endorsed by elites in terms of the promise of the eventual formation of a world government. For many supporters, the problems and dangers posed by German nationalism (fear of a fourth Reich) and Russian communism (world revolution) remained a priority and could only be solved now through American assisted European unification. As a result, America directly influenced European political integration through the Harvard Committee of Experts and by providing both covert and overt financial aid, such as through the American Committee on a United Europe, the Marshall Plan, and the Eurafrica project. At the time, this latter project was important for American elites because it would enable international trade of the raw materials necessary for economic prosperity as outlined in the Atlantic Charter, the basis of the United Nations.
TP: Part Two looks at cosmopolitanism. Tell us a little about Jürgen Habermas in this context.
CE: Habermas is a very influential critical cosmopolitanist, a product of the Frankfurt School, and a key player in the continuing drive to dissolve European ethnonational identities. Through large-scale transnational immigration he envisions Europe as gradually becoming a universal nation populated by peoples having cosmopolitan identities and world citizenship. For him, immigration is a tool to ethnically mix European populations and undermine the connection of ethnic Europeans to their political, cultural, and national identities and institutions. Essentially, these identities and institutions that have traditionally determined European nations and peoples must be re-engineered to reflect a new ethno-pluralism generated by mass-immigration i.e. a cosmopolitan constitutional identity not based on indigenous European ethnic groups.
TP: Canada has played a leading role in defining and then implementing both multiculturalism and mass immigration. And Justin Trudeau has famously defined the country as a “post-nation.” Why did Canada become the “poster-child” for denationalization? And what is William Kymlicka’s role in all this?
CE: The role of Canadian William Kymlicka in terms of his theory of multiculturalism is certainly very definitive for most, if not all European-based countries. To paraphrase Hugh Donald Forbes, multiculturalism is an experiment that seeks to overcome national and ethnic conflict by the purposeful ethnic mixing of homogenous European nations by immigration thereby separating the nation (the people, ethnic Europeans) from the state (the political apparatus) and paving the way to world government. Multiculturalism is part of a series of steps—”the long march through the institutions”—to radically alter Western civilization from within as advocated by the Frankfurt School and other subversive socialist organisations.
For Kymlicka pluralistic cosmopolitanism in Canada displaces ethnonationalism with a multiplicity of ethnicities and is a model for the world to emulate. He and his colleague Kathryn Walker think “we should recognize the equal moral worth of all human beings by creating a single world political order united around a single common language and global culture.” They go on to say that “being Canadian” means “being a good citizen of the world,” or “being Canadian motivates being or becoming a cosmopolitan.” As such, the same theme continues to play out: dominant ethno-national European identities, whether in Europe, Canada, Australia etc. must be completely dissolved and replaced by ethnic pluralism, cosmopolitan citizenship, and a new world order. To clinch this transformation, one has to understand that Kymlicka’s theory of multiculturalism is really a theory of ethnic and national minority rights only, and not special rights for ethnic European majorities. Unlike ethnic minorities and immigrants, Europeans as a majority of the population in their own countries are not granted rights to preserve, enhance, or celebrate their unique identities, culture, and traditions; they are granted individual liberal rights only.
TP: And then there is the USA, which seems to sling cosmopolitanism about with missionary zeal. Do you see this role diminishing any time soon, or will it expand further, since it seems to inhabit both the Republicans and the Democrats?
CE: American might in terms of spreading liberal democracy/cosmopolitanism/globalism by military intervention and other measures is far from over, although the recent developments between the Ukraine, NATO, the EU, and Russia casts some doubt on their supremacy and continued expansion. Perhaps we will see a restructuring of the world order once again whereby America loses some of its influence as the sole global superpower, or at least finds itself as but one force in a balance of global powers, a multipolar world. History might provide some answers, especially the history of the rise and fall of civilizations and the theory of anacyclosis.
TP: How would you describe conservatism, and what role does it play in the spread of cosmopolitanism?
CE: The conservatism of today really should be understood as neoconservatism, and not traditional conservatism (paleo or classical conservatism), the latter of which has basic principles not found in the new conservatism – limits to knowledge and risk-aversion – as well as policies of non-intervention in foreign countries and deep suspicions of theoretical social experiments such as multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism. Neoconservatism has its roots in liberalism (the New York intellectuals), promotes globalist neoliberal economic policies, and believes that the “end of history” is liberal democracy, which must be spread throughout the world (enforced regime change) in order to achieve a lasting Western-style peace and preserve America as the number one global hegemon.
TP: Volume 1 has soundly laid the foundation of how we got here. What should we look forward to in Volumes 2 and 3?
CE: Volume II, subtitled Immigration, Islam, and the Migrant Crisis examines immigration into Europe and demonstrates, through statistical analysis, that net migration (which has been increasing since the 1990s) is the main source of population growth and most residency permits are granted to migrants for family reasons rather than employment. It is evident that since the 1960s immigration into Europe has been predominately from Muslim countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East; as such, this volume has a particular focus on Muslim demographics in five key European countries: Belgium, the UK, France, Sweden, and Germany.
It also discusses Muslim radicalism and the difference between violent, non-violent, and participationist Islamists and their channels and schemes of operation in Europe as well as the failure of European counter-radicalism strategies. In addition, this volume investigates and evaluates illegal and irregular immigration into the EU, specifically the 2015/2016 migrant crisis, the source countries of these migrants, the financial, security, and other costs incurred (including mass-sexual assaults and Islamist terrorist attacks), EU Asylum Law (Dublin Regulation), the EU-Turkey agreement, and the use of these migrants by elites to “solve” economic and demographic issues.
Volume III (tentative subtitle: Critical Views) first provides an in-depth analysis of the Eurabia thesis, which was introduced in Volume I. It then critically evaluates Muslim immigration, Islamism, multiculturalism, and Left-wing ideologies in the EU as presented by neoconservative authors Bat Ye’or, Melanie Phillips, and Bruce Bawer, while also refuting some of their central arguments. With reference to international legal definitions of terms such as self-determination, discrimination, persecution, genocide, and indigenous rights and in consultation of the works of several scholars in terms of ethnic conflict and multi-ethnic states, demographic engineering, migrants as weapons of war, demographic conquest and settlement, the homeland principle, the democratic principle of majority rule, and the notion of power tipping etc., we then embark on a critical evaluation of various aspects of the EU cosmopolitan project and its proponents. This includes: the notion that “diversity is destiny,” the enforced “mongrelisation” of European nations, the decoupling of ethnic Europeans from their political identity as advocated by Habermas et al, the neoconservative pressing for monoculturalism, the activities of George Soros and the Open Society Network, open-border leftism, anti-European Third Worldism, and Islamism in Europe.
TP: It has been a great pleasure speaking with you. Thank you for your time.
Featured image: “Burning city with Lot and the angel and Lot’s daughters,” anonymous, attributed to Daniel van Heil; ca. 17th century.
