Just for once, let me NOT write
about Trump - although, even today’s topic is prompted by what he stands for,
namely white supremacy.
White supremacists include Geert
Wilders and Steve King. The former is a Dutch nativist, a Dutch Trump, who
fortunately just lost an election in the Netherlands. King is an Iowa
congressman who recently said that “We
can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” This apes Breitbart News, Trump adviser Steve
Bannon, the KKK and all others in Europe, America and elsewhere who, under the guise of “nationalism,”
believe that the white race has a corner on human civilization.
Today, this white panic is
prompted in part by the fact that whites make up an ever smaller percentage of
the world’s population. There is panic at the prospect that people who are
white andChristian are increasingly
being replaced by people of color, people
who are Muslims, etc.
The French sociologist Auguste
Comte is credited with the phrase “Demography is Destiny.”
Today’s white supremacists interpret
this in racial terms. The way they see it: As race goes, so will power. If
whites lose their numerical majority to people of color, the latter will then
also rule over whites. It doesn’t help to point out that racial tribalism is no
more inevitable than, say, society pitting dark-haired people against blonds,
or brown-eyed against blue-eyed, or left-handed vs. right-handed.
But about one fact there can be
no doubt: Like it or not, whites WILL become a minority. The trend has been
under way for several generations. The
white European working and middle classes are simply not having as many babies
as other groups. This is called the Demographic Transition (I’ll
give a lecture on this in a future post).
For example, take the Bosnian
War of the 1990s: The (Christian) Serbs were not multiplying (very much), while
the Muslim Bosnians were. This led to a war which was essentially a turf
battle.
Same in Israel/Palestine: The
Palestinian population is growing so much more rapidly than the Jewish
population that the long-term survival of Israel as a Jewish state looks
increasingly untenable.
In some sense then, yes,
“demography IS destiny:” The turf eventually belongs to those who live there,
those who have the most babies.
So let’s look at the world and
see who has the most and the fewest babies. Table One lists all the countries
whose population is experiencing an annual growth of zero or LESS. The world’s
total population is growing by about 1.1% per year, or nearly 100 million
people.
Table One: 28
Countries of the World Whose Population is Either Stagnant or Declining.
(List of Countries by Population)
(List of Countries by Population)
Countries
|
Number
|
Region
|
Growth Rate (%)
|
Russia, Ukraine, Poland,
Romania, Czech Rep., Hungary, Belarus, Serbia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Moldova,
Georgia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia,
|
16
|
Eastern Europe; Former
Communist world
|
-0.7 - 0 %
|
Japan
|
1
|
Asia
|
-0.2 %
|
Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece,
Portugal, Andorra:
|
6
|
Western Europe
|
-1.9 - 0 %
|
Cuba, Puerto Rico, Martinique,
Bermuda, St. Helena, Ascension & Trist.
|
5
|
Caribbean or Atlantic islands
|
-0.6 - 0 %
|
As Table One clearly shows, the main area of the world’s population decline is Eastern Europe, or formerly communist countries (16 countries). In addition, 6 countries of Western Europe (or formerly non-communist) are also in decline, as are 5 Caribbean island countries (or Atlantic Ocean islands). The other lone major country that is losing population is Japan.
In contrast, Table Two
lists the countries whose populations are experiencing rapid annual growth of 2.5% or more.
Table
Two: 33
Countries Experiencing Population Growth of 2.5% or More
Countries
|
Number
|
Region
|
Growth Rate (%)
|
Nigeria, Ethiopia, Democratic
Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, Angola, Madagascar,
Cameroon. Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Malawi, Zambia, Senegal, Chad, Guinea, South
Sudan, Burundi, Benin, Somalia, Togo, Congo, Liberia, Gambia, Equatorial
Guinea
|
27
|
Sub-Saharan Africa
|
2.5 - 4.1 %
|
Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine,
Oman, Kuwait, Qatar
|
6
|
Middle East and South Asia
|
2.6 - 3.1 %
|
Table Two indicates that the
vast majority of the countries with the most rapid population growth are
African (27). The remaining 6 countries are
Muslim countries in the Middle East and in South-Central Asia
(Afghanistan).
Analysis:
Let me make the following
points, in relation to some currently widespread concerns - and errors:
1. How does America stack up?
Fine. Our population’s annual growth
rate is a healthy but not excessive .07%. This translates to 2.3 million more
Americans each year, which is economically and environmentally sustainable and
desirable.
2. How about Western
Europe? By and large, that region is
also okay, as the populations of the
United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Scandinavia are still growing by half a
percentage point annually. This, too, is both sustainable and desirable.
3. The case of Russia: We hear a
lot about Russia these days. Trump allegedly colluded with Putin, Russia
meddled in our election, etc. The Cold War’s bogeyman is back.
Whatever bad things Russia
(and/or Trump) may have done, let’s keep in mind that that country is
economically and demographically weak and in great trouble. Its economy is
smaller than that of South Korea, or one fourteenth the size of the US; its
population is declining, now to less than half ours. Russia hardly represents
an existential threat to the United States.
4. In our “alarmist” times, we often get riled
up by the media and by politicians, to the effect that we “are in demographic
trouble.” American ideologues like to say that Europe is in big trouble, and
Europeans prefer to magnify America’s
alleged problems.
Much of the conversation centers
around immigration and refugees, and the (racist) fear that the Western world
is being flooded by Arabs and other Muslims (Europe) and/or by other people of
color (America).
But here is the thing: after all
is said and done, these much-feared population movements remain insignificant
in their impact on demographic trends: There are today about 60 million
displaced persons in the world. While this may be a record, it still does not
alter the fundamental population growth rates in the various regions of the
world.
Here and there, immigrants play
a (minor) role in making up for a low birth rate (e.g. in the German labor
force), but by and large, the birth rate remains BY FAR the key factor in demographic trends
EVERYWHERE.
Not only is the role of migration
negligible in this regard, but so are
Malthus’s Horsemen of the Apocalypse:
The 18th-century English scholar
who was first to famously alert us to the
perils of overpopulation posited
that only famine, disease and war could
stop mankind from overpopulating and destroying the world.
So far, the horses of the
Apocalypse are not even making a dent:
Africa’s population continues to explode, even though half of its countries are experiencing non-stop war,
starvation, genocide and epidemics. The epicenter of the Ebola epidemic was
Liberia, internecine warfare and genocide are nearly chronic in South Sudan, Congo, Somalia and elsewhere,
AIDS remains out of control throughout much of the continent, Boko Haram
remains undefeated in Nigeria, Rwanda-Burundi lost a million people in the 1994
genocide, yet every one of these countries
is on the list of extremely rapid
population growth (See Table Two).
And equally prominent on that
list are other countries where civil war
and other forms of carnage are raging -
notably Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine.
Amazingly, one might have to put Malthusianism in reverse!
In some cases, absolute numbers are more
meaningful than percentages, because of some countries’ enormous size:
China and India are still adding
more people to the world BY FAR than
anyone else: China’s population is growing by 6.3 million each year, and
India’s by an astounding 16 million. This is not sustainable, certainly not for India, still one of the world’s poorest
countries.
Conclusion:
In sum, two things:
1. If you want to understand the
world’s demographic trends, you need to focus primarily on birthrates, not on
migration rates, which barely make a difference in the big picture.
2. White people, get used to
it: You ARE going to be the minority, whether you like it or not.
Globally, this is already the case. And you know what? It doesn’t matter one
damn bit. leave comment here
© Tom Kando 2017;All Rights Reserved
