How the WASP lost his way - a review of Fraser's The WASP Question

The Independent Australian: 

The WASP Question: An essay on the biocultural evolution, present predicament and future prospects of the invisible race by Andrew Fraser.  ISBN 978-1-907166-29-7. Arktos Media (Arktos £20, Amazon $30). According to Fraser, WASPs have lost their collective soul. They accept prejudice against themselves and suffer from their own Anglophobia and ethnomasochism. Fraser traces out the history of how this has come about. Review by Robert Hughes.

The term WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants), a slightly derogatory term that dates back to the 1950s, has come to be accepted by the people it describes. For that matter Anglo-Saxons have come to accept and absorb prejudice against themselves, (Anglophobia, as Fraser refers to it) even to the point of holding their ancestors responsible for monstrous crimes against humanity.

Proud Anglo-Saxon patriots are few in number and political pariahs. Much better-off are the “organization men’ and ‘liberated’ women denounce and despise any explicit expression of in-group solidarity among their kith and kin. In age of diversity WASPs have lost their collective soul and have become the invisible race.

Considering how much Anglo-Saxons have contributed to the world this is a pretty strange situation. To seek the origins of this Fraser takes a historical perspective going back to days of ancient Germanic tribes and early Anglo-Saxon England. these tribes had a habit of killing non-performing leaders, some, perhaps unfortunately not practiced today.*

While the Anglo-Saxons were not Christians when they first settled in Britain, by 697 the ‘Angelcynns’ or English race had been converted and had their own archbishop in Canterbury. Within 100 years of conversion, the founding tribes had fused into into a single nation within a single church. The church appears to have fostered a sense of spiritual unity and a vision common ethnocultural identity among all the Anglo-Saxons.

Fraser continues the history of the Anglo-Saxons, including the Norman conquest of 1066 and the struggle between church and state. William the Conquerer and his immediate successors rejected papal claims to supremacy over the church in England. Under the reign of Stephen (1154AD) however the papal party mad substantial gains in power. Nevertheless in later years Henry VIII installed himself as Supreme Head of the Church of England.

After the English Civil War and the ascendency of the Puritan Oliver Cromwell there was a rejection of the past-oriented folk religion of their germanic ancestors. The puritans refused to recognize the established Church of England as the symbol of unity. This was a blow to established tradition.

Further pulling apart the compact and cohesive Anglo Protestant civilization and the abrupt rise of homo americanus. Civic patriotism, according to Fraser, cannot be sustained in multiracial societies. Added to the corrosive influence of ethnic heterogeneity is the hedonistic consumerism of the welfare state and its dependence on the cornucopian myth of endless growth and development. Multiculturalism and the worship of the other run concurrently with the worship of Mammon and the sovereign state.

WASPs according to Fraser are trusting souls and hence can be easily exploited by false promises. Nowadays Asians and other Third world migrants daily swear allegiance to Anglo-Saxon civic cultures that are really at odds with their own traditions and folkways. The more genetically distant immigrants are from the host population, the less capable they will be of building or sustaining the economic and social conditions characteristic of Anglo-Saxon societies.

In the postmodern game of identity politics Fraser contender that Negros and Jews have out-played WASPs, who suffer from their own Anglophobia and ethnomasochism.

Fraser, obviously not a republican, puts as one of his remedies for the WASP malaise, the institution of a Patriot King. Such a person, supported by a new natural aristocracy of public men, could reawaken the spirit of freedom. he and his subjects would demand the autonomy of Anglo-Saxon institutions Fraser sees other reforms as necessary to revive Anglo-Saxons including supporting the family and returning to a form of household suffrage. He notes that the institution of universal suffrage facilitated the replacement of the Anglo-Saxon people with a population of atomized, deracinated people.

Fraser makes  a lot of valid points, but it is difficult to be optimistic about about his ideas being put into into effect. He is definitely right about one thing - the worst enemy of Anglo-Saxons is themselves.

"Anglo-Saxon Australia is dead. This isn’t the kind of society we are.”

Frank Salter on former PM Malcolm Fraser's support for multiculturalism and his antipathy toward traditional Anglo-Celtic Australia:

Consider Fraser’s book published in 2003 Common Ground: Issues that Should Bind and not Divide Us (Camberwell, Victoria: Penguin).

Fraser criticizes the Howard Government's policy of tight border controls against refugees and asylum seekers (p. 250). Fraser interprets popular support for Howard’s policies as evidence for his view that Australia's ethnic transformation had to be a top-down affair. He derogates democratic politics regarding immigration. Such sensitive policy is best left to elites, he implies.

"[A]ny of the political parties could have played politics with immigration policies [during Australia's post-WWII immigration program]. If Australians had been asked to vote on a major immigration program only seven years after the world Depression, when thousands of ex-servicemen were waiting to be demobilised, they would have voted against the program and Australia would have been the poorer. If one had asked the people of Melbourne whether they wanted Melbourne to become the largest Greek city outside of Greece, they would have said 'No' with a resounding majority. Now that it has happened, Melbourne is proud of the fact and Australia is much better off as a consequence of that migration."

Fraser argues that the same would have applied to Indo-Chinese immigration in the 1970s and 1980s. "But the political parties were united in the policy and Australians accepted the policy as right for the nation" (p. 250). That is not true. Australians have never been given the chance to vote for an established party that opposes mass Third World immigration. For the entire period of which Fraser speaks, from the 1940s until the 1980s, opinion polls consistently showed popular unease with non-British and then non-European immigration.

The scholarship of Mark Lopez confirms Fraser’s coldness towards Anglo Australians. (The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics 1945-1975. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000.) Following are some relevant facts documented by Lopez based on interviews with Fraser and other leading figures and archival research.

The public had no idea of Fraser's conversion to multiculturalism (in 1973), and he was widely viewed as one of the more conservative Liberal Party leaders. Fraser remarked two decades later, without remorse, “Anglo-Saxon Australia is dead. This isn’t the kind of society we are” (quoted by Lopez 2000, p. 440). This is a remarkably detached statement considering that Fraser was perceived to be of Anglo identity himself, that Anglo Australians constituted an overwhelming majority of the nation as late as 1970. Certainly in 1950 most Australians had a firm identity as a British nation. The Australian nation was founded and built by Anglo-Celts from the initial landing by Captain Arthur Phillip at Botany Bay in 1788, a century of exploring and settling an often harsh continent, through Federation in 1901, the First World War and Gallipoli, and the Second World War in the Pacific and North Africa. What is remarkable is the lack of regret from someone who grew up in that original nation and was one of its privileged sons. Fraser treats traditional Australia as if it were somehow improper, something needing correction. It is a decidedly superior position, and one taken towards his own people. That requires explanation.

One interesting feature of Fraser’s disparaging remarks about Anglo Australia in the late 1990s is his openness, in contrast to his previous reticence. Lopez points out that the multicultural movement had always been secretive, had always mistrusted the Australian people, had always relied on infiltrating committees and agencies to surreptitiously advance its policies. Lopez writes:

“The source of the shift towards multiculturalism in public policy was not parliamentarians, vulnerable at elections, but the influence exerted by multiculturalists from positions in the Immigration Advisory Council (IAC), the Migrant Task Force Committees, the Immigration Department’s Integration Branch, non-government organisations like ACOSS, or through lobbying relevant Government ministers. . . . The multiculturalists could potentially maintain their degree of influence as long as they maintained their strategic presence in these committees and agencies” (Lopez, Origins of Multiculturalism, p. 337).

This is further evidence, proof really, that the ethnic diversification of Australia was imposed from above, that it was not a popular throwing off of the country’s traditional identity. It was accompanied by hostility towards Australia as it had always been and how it had previously chosen to remain in its popular restrictive immigration policies, first legislated by state parliaments and after federation in 1901 in the first act of the Federal Parliament.

Original article


See also:

Salter on Fraser, Part One

Frank Salter on Malcolm Fraser

Political ethologist Frank Salter on former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser's support for multiculturalism and his intense hostility towards Australia's Anglo-Celtic majority:

Malcolm Fraser, one of Australia’s longest serving prime ministers (1975-1983) was recently quoted talking about the origins of the multicultural policies his government initiated, in The Australian newspaper on 21 May 2009, “Death of a leader of cultural revolution Jerzy Jubrzycki”.

Mr. Fraser agreed with Prof. Zubrzycki, the intellectual father of multiculturalism in Australia, that the country was a “narrow, Anglo-Saxon society . . . up to, if you like, the Second World War." "[Prof. Zubrzycki] believed passionately that people should be treated as equal, and that being a good Australian didn't require people to give up their country of origin." "John Howard didn't like the word multiculturalism . . . But you've only got to walk down any street in Melbourne and Sydney to know that it's already too late - we are, in fact, a multicultural society.”

These remarks summarize Mr. Fraser’s support for multiculturalism over the years. They indicate an unsympathetic attitude towards Anglo Australia and a revealing use of the multiculturalism concept.

In principle it can be fair to criticize a society for being narrow. It is true that in 1945 Australian cities lacked cultural amenities and that our diet was due for a change. But we were still developing the continent, having begun from scratch in 1788. In that time we had built towns and cities and had one of the most productive economies in the world. Our British heritage made us one of the world’s few liberal democracies. We had a flourishing culture, from opera to popular. That’s quite an achievement in only 157 years.

However, Mr. Fraser goes beyond alleging narrowness. His words imply criticism of Australia’s core ethnicity. Our narrowness consisted of our Anglo-Celtic ethnicity. In other words, being of British ethnicity was a disability. The country was too Anglo-Celtic.

In addition Mr. Fraser’s comments reveal some of his notions about just what multiculturalism is. He links anti-Anglo prejudice to the formation of multicultural doctrine: it was Jerzy Zubrzycki’s reaction to “narrow, Anglo-Saxon society”. How to interpret this other than that Australia was too Anglo for Professor Zubrzycki’s taste? Mr. Fraser clearly shares this taste. Note that in the 1950s when Prof. Zubrzycki arrived from Poland Australia was overwhelmingly Anglo-Celtic because non-British immigration had only begun in earnest in 1949. Australia’s ethnicity was a local variant of British ethnicity. Most felt that way. We had just participated in a second world war entered into to defend mother England.

Mr. Fraser also expresses the aspect of multiculturalism that emphasises civil rights—that people from different cultures should be treated equally. But he again goes further with his remark that one can observe that Australia is multicultural by strolling around Melbourne and Sydney. What he is saying is that multiculturalism is the same as ethnic diversity. But cannot a society achieve perfect multiculturalism by tolerating or celebrating the ethnic cultures of all its citizens whatever their proportion of the population? Mr. Fraser implies otherwise: Australia is more successfully multi-cultural the more diverse it becomes. Hence the slap at John Howard: “it’s already too late”. This confirms the suspicion that for multiculturalists traditional Australians were always the “other”, always the antagonistic group to be combated. Especially this second kind of multiculturalism is compatible with minority chauvinism and an aggressive attitude towards Anglo-Celtic Australians.

The two faces of multiculturalism—the original rights-based type and the pro-diversity type—have very different implications for immigration policy. Rights-based multiculturalism is compatible with selective immigration. Logically, a government might simultaneously promote respect for the right of all citizens to express their ethnic identities and yet defend the group interests of the majority ethny by emphasizing immigration from Britain and other European-derived societies. That would be democratic. A pro-multicultural government might adopt a similar immigration policy for different reasons—to protect national cohesion and guarantee the long-term viability of multiculturalism.

Obviously this is not how multiculturalism has operated. It has always been linked to mass Third World immigration, confirming the interpretation of Mr. Fraser as treating Anglo-Celtic Australians as adversaries.

What remains unexplained is why someone like Mr. Fraser, ostensibly a conservative Anglo, should treat his own people so distantly. Why the hostility?

Original article

"Why the hostility?" Good question. Why is it that elites in not only Australia, but throughout the Western world, so loathe their own people to the point where they actively seek to replace them through mass Third World immigration?


See also:

"The Misguided Advocates of Open Borders" - Salter's 2010 Quadrant article on the poor quality of analysis behind Australia's abandonment of traditional assimilationist immigration policies.

Stuart Macintyre: Anglophobe

Stuart Macintyre is a historian and former communist known for being one of the prime protagonists in the so-called "History Wars" here in Australia. He is also the chap that Kevin Rudd has decided should help write our national history curriculum for schools from the first year of school through to Year 12.

Unsurprisingly, Macintyre is one of those leftists who views Australian history since British settlement as little more than an appalling legacy of racism and genocide. Indeed, he is one of the leading proponents of this view. In his opinion, the sooner evil Anglo-Australia is relegated to the dustbin of history, the better. As this article points out:

Macintyre also harbours a deep distaste for this country’s British heritage. In the concluding chapter of A Concise History of Australia (1999), he is comforted by the prediction that, just as the Romans were displaced in Britain, Aborigines and Asians will eventually supplant the colonisers of British descent in Australia. Just as the only remnant of the Roman empire in Britain is “a thin slice of the island’s multi-layered past”, so too will the British colonisation be overlaid by the culture and practices of other peoples.

Personally, I'd like to know how someone with such strong biases was ever deemed the best choice to write the national history curriculum for a people and nation he so obviously loathes.