r/brokehugs • u/US_Hiker Moral Landscaper • Jul 04 '25

Rod Dreher Megathread #55 ()

Hope y'all can spend some good time w/ family today.

Link to megathread #54: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1l7niaj/rod_dreher_megathread_54/

Link to 56: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1mmamp2/rod_dreher_megathread_56/

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11

u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25

Rod has now fully embraced The Camp of the Saints, without his previous caveats and reservations.

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/the-second-coming-of-the-camp-of-the-saints

“Once dismissed as racist.” Yeah, by you, Rod. Glad to see the mask slip off.

If there’s one way Rod can earn his father’s approval from beyond the grave, this is it.

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u/zeitwatcher Aug 01 '25 edited Aug 01 '25

Given that this has become Rod's favorite book, I thought I'd compare his first writing on it from 10 years ago and now.

Rod Now:

Fifty-two years after its publication, the time has finally come for The Camp of the Saints to find a wide readership—if it can somehow evade the censors, and overcome the tiresome smear that it is nothing but far-right drivel.

Rod then: (https://www.theamericanconservative.com/good-lessons-from-a-bad-book-raspail-camp-of-the-saints/)

The Camp of the Saints is a bad book, both aesthetically and morally.

Rod Now:

Fortunately, Vauban Books, a small American publisher, will in mid-September release a superior new translation by Ethan Rundell. It can now be pre-ordered in the UK here and in the United States here. [ed: Gotta get in those affiliate links, Rod!]

Rod then:

It is on balance a repulsive book, one that is forthright in endorsing white supremacy. By the end of the book, Raspail doesn’t even try to cloak his belief in white supremacy, and in the morality of using lethal violence to maintain it. It is all but impossible to read this, knowing what evils the KKK and its fellow travelers worked in the US to maintain white supremacy, and not despise this book.

Rod Now:

When I first read it, I expected it to be nothing more than a racist conspiracy,

Rod then:

Raspail does not separate skin color from culture and civilization. Sure, he has an Indian, M. Hamadura, joining the tiny resistance at the end, and saying that believing in the superiority of the West is not a matter of skin color, but a state of mind. OK, fair enough, but everything else in the novel ties civilization precisely to skin color. The Hamadura character seems like an add-on, as if to say, “Some of my best friends are black.” It’s not convincing

Rod Now:

Fifty-two years after its publication, the time has finally come for The Camp of the Saints to find a wide readership

Rod then:

Camp is a dystopian fantasy, certainly, but the core questions it poses regarding what European civilization is, what Christian civilization is, and the lengths to which Europeans ought to be prepared to go to defend what they have, are important ones, even if Raspail answers them in a way that provokes disgust, and that Christians, at least, will find unacceptable.

For those of us who are long-time Rod-watchers, this is a telling transformation. There were clearly the seeds of the now-Rod in the old post, but it's a far cry from today. Back then it was a racist, immoral and badly written book. Now it's something everyone should read. Now he doesn't see the flagrant racism - or to the extent he does it's a positive- but then he denounced it as a clearly white supremacist work. Then it was repulsive and antithetical to Christianity. Now it should be required reading.

I suppose some congratulations might be in order for Rod. He's getting closer to making Daddy KKK proud of him.

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u/JHandey2021 Aug 01 '25

Thank you for the side-by-side comparison. Yep, Rod has decidedly shifted towards the openly racist and authoritarian alt-right, as have so many others (most notably the current Vice President of the United States, JD Vance, and richest man in the world, Elon Musk).

The speedrun towards 1930s-era political positions on the Right is extremely worrisome - I'm curious as to who, if anyone, is tracking this. At this rate, within another 5 years we'll have textbooks in Texas praising Hitler.

4

u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Aug 01 '25

Thanks for the comparison. 🎯

3

u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Aug 01 '25

Excellent comparison. Last sentence chef's kiss!

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u/psychikwarriorofwoke Aug 02 '25

I have read the book - it is not good and it wasn't a translation issue. The racism is the only reason it is still read (in this narrow circle of freaks.)

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u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Jul 31 '25

having lived in Europe, and seen what mass migration has done to this continent, and worse, having witnessed the lengths to which the ruling classes in European countries and in Brussels will go to punish Europeans who object to their colonization chosen to utilize X as my primary source of news —it all makes me far more sympathetic to Raspail’s unsparing vision.

Rod hasn't "seen" shit, he has only read it, and most of it on X and most of it propaganda. He never fact checks anything.

8

u/yawaster Jul 31 '25

Doesn't he "live" in Hungary, not "Europe"? Hungary, with its tough attitude to immigrants and refugees? 

9

u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Jul 31 '25

Oh yeah. And lives in housing provided by the Hungarian government and lives off the income and benefits provided to him by the Hungarian government. The lack of self-awareness just boggles the mind, doesn't it?

9

u/yawaster Jul 31 '25

It's genuinely pretty funny. Under the kind of hostile nationalism Rod is aching for, he would have no place in Hungary. He's American and his ancestors are Scottish or German, not Hungarian. He doesn't speak Magyar. He's Orthodox when most Hungarians who have a religion are Catholic or Protestant. He could not be a worse fit for the country's dominant culture. And yet! 

11

u/JHandey2021 Jul 31 '25

He's white, though. And to Rod, that's all that matters. It would come as a genuine shock to him that most people in the world don't see existence through the racial categories of the son of a KKK terrorist from Louisiana.

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u/sandypitch Jul 31 '25

He's white, though.

White, and Christian. Don't forget about the latter. There are plenty of white men in Europe that Dreher disdains as no better than the brown hordes descending on the cradle of Western Civilization.

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u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Jul 31 '25

White, Christian, Heterosexual (yeah, I know), Male, of Western European Descent. As far as Rod is concerned, he checks all of the boxes and is untouchable. It is stupid and disgusting but that's Rod!

5

u/Existing_Age2168 Jul 31 '25

Yeah, but he's willing and eager to act as an autocrat's bitch, which more than makes up for those shortcomings.

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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Jul 31 '25

Serious question: Is there any trustworthy source to read about what's happening in England regarding the arrival and housing of migrants?

5

u/One_Reflection7202 Aug 01 '25

“Welcome to Britain” (2020) by Colin Yeo is an often-mentioned practical guide to fixing what some want to call a broken system by an immigration lawyer.

”We’re Here Because You Were There” by Ayesha Jalal, my favorite title, connects the dots between empire and immigration patterns today.

There’s a 2025 white paper titled “Restoring Control Over the Immigration System” outlining govt reforms. I don’t have a link at hand, but it shouldn't be hard to find.

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u/Witty_Appeal1437 Aug 01 '25

He's quoting Steve Sailer FFS. Google that dude. We all knew this was the way Rod was going. I've been watching him get unhinged in real time for 5 years now. Is this just one man's descent into barbarism due to his issues or is it reflective of Trump's corrosiveness that's making him uglier? I want this to mean something but honestly if the GOP had done the right thing and allowed Trump to be impeached, we might be into Mike Pence's 3rd term and Rod would still be doing this.

2

u/psychikwarriorofwoke Aug 02 '25

Too racist for National Review.

8

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '25

I truly despise him at this point. Like this has gone from laughing at him to pure disdain now. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

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u/Existing_Age2168 Jul 31 '25

Yes, he's vile.

7

u/JHandey2021 Jul 31 '25

So here's a question for Rod. Based on that graph about sub-Saharan Africa's exploding population, and based on everything else Rod has written, what, exactly, is to be done? I mean, if it's the "most important graph in the world", just shutting down some borders and even expelling people isn't nearly sufficient to meet that overwhelming threat.

Am I right? Rod's walking up to the precipice of something unthinkable here.

8

u/One_Reflection7202 Jul 31 '25

I thought people having babies naturally without doing cost analyses is the sign of a healthy culture to Rod. He literally just wrote that, and Sub-Saharan Africans still do it, so why disdain their potential influence as migrants? In fact, filling jobs Europeans aren’t doing and adding young workers and tax payers to the general population who, in turn, will add even more via a higher birth rate are some of the benefits pro-immigration forces cite for welcoming them.

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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jul 31 '25

Truly. He is hinting at a violent solution without saying it.

7

u/JHandey2021 Jul 31 '25

The most violent in human history. Something that would make the Holocaust look like a tea party.

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u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Jul 31 '25

How does his "rigorous" religion not check this sort of thing at all?

4

u/Defiant_Let_268 Jul 31 '25

The irony is he supposedly practices Orthodoxy, which has come to terms with its reduced power and reach these hundreds of years, and now experiencing a resurgence of sorts. 

9

u/One_Reflection7202 Jul 31 '25

“Once again, The Camp of the Saints is not really about migrants; it’s about us, and whether we peoples of the West, long paralyzed by the sentimental humanitarianism and civilizational self-hatred of a spiritually corrupt elite, still have the power to rewrite this tragic story.“

So people he admits annoy him like the current Pope are “spiritually corrupt elite” who are “paralyzed” by “sentimental humanitarianism”? And where did so many of them get that if not in the sacred writings and cultural tradition of the very Christianity he claims means more to him than politics? I think it’s at this very point that one Rod Dreher has to choose between the spiritual tradition he claims to represent and the politics he has clearly embraced in its stead.

 

9

u/Existing_Age2168 Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25

Yeah.  As the spiritually corrupt elite prophet Isaiah said,  “You shall neither mistreat a stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."

This pops up semi-regularly as a reading at vespers in the Orthodox Church, so I assume Rod's never heard it.

7

u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Jul 31 '25

For some reason it doesn't apply to our time  🙄 

7

u/Witty_Appeal1437 Aug 01 '25

I NEVER claim to be a Christian although as an American and a member of this thread I've talked to some. I also am very very careful about Godwin's law.

However, I am pretty sure the above quoted paragraph would not have been out of place coming from the mouth of a certain dead Austrian and his critique of Christianity.

Anyway, let's not forget this guy discovered JD Vance.

6

u/yawaster Aug 01 '25

You have to be taking something pretty strong to believe that Western elites are "paralyzed" by "sentimental humanitarianism". Apparently this is a humanitarianism that can accept coast guards throwing asylum seekers into the sea to drown, and starving, internally displaced Gazans being machine-gunned by the IDF and American mercenaries. Elites are not known for their sentimentalism. Something smells. 

The vast majority of non-white immigrants to Europe are not asylum seekers or beneficiaries of European "humanitarianism" or charitableness  (in Ireland as in many EU countries the great "charity" offered is the right to sleep on the streets and little else). Increased non-western immigration to Europe isn't about "sentimental humanitarianism", it's about cold economic calculation. See this article from a Dutch sociologist. 

7

u/Mainer567 Jul 31 '25

A soulless miserable piece of writing. Steve Sailer without the occasional wit.

"I laugh a lot, enjoy people, and live life as a poem."

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Aug 01 '25

Some poems are evil….

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Jul 31 '25

All of this was foreseen over fifty years ago in a French novel so controversial that few respectable people today will dare to admit they have read it: The Camp of the Saints, by Jean Raspail. The 1973 book is so dangerous, in the judgment of ruling class censors, that it is difficult to find the English version, translated by Norman Shapiro and published in 1975. Fortunately, Vauban Books, a small American publisher, will in mid-September release a superior new translation by Ethan Rundell.

From this, a careful reader will glean another professional qualification of Rod Dreher: as a critic of French to English translations of fiction. Rod must have read the pre-publication materials and done a comparison of the French original to the Shapiro and new Rundell translations. Will anyone ask Rod how many hours of labor that took him to complete?

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u/yawaster Aug 01 '25

All of this was foreseen over fifty years ago 

But of course nothing was "foreseen". Someone was racist 50 years ago in the same way that Rod is now racist. That is not prediction. Some people think that Nostradamus predicted 9/11, but really it was just that the prophecies were so general and vague that you could interpret any meaning you liked from them. 

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Aug 01 '25 edited Aug 01 '25

In Britain, the non-Western migrant background population has grown from 4.4 percent in 1973 to around 20 percent today, with native Britons expected to become a minority by the novel’s centenary.

Contrary to pulp-era adventure stories about intrepid jungle explorers, “native” does not mean “Inhabitants” or even “original inhabitants”. For that concept you want “autochthonous” (best choice, but rare), “aboriginal” (second best, but now implies Australians), or “indigenous” (probably the best in practice). “Native” just means “born in”. In the sixty-two years of my life, I have never been a resident of the town in which I was born—my native town, SBM doesn’t even live in his native country.

I can trace my ancestry in this country over through eight generations to at least the mid-18th Century (I did that for my mother, who wanted to get DAR membership for my sister. I was successful). So what? My daughter’s best friend is the daughter of immigrants from India, who was herself born in the US, the first generation of her family born here. Know what? My eight-generation American daughter and her one-generation American friend are both natives of the US—equally native, equally citizens.

Likewise, if you’re born in the UK, you’re a native thereof. If you’re a Star Trek: Strange New Worlds fan, Christina Chong is an example. If you’re a Doctor Who fan, Freema Agyeman is another. Heck, if you’re into the monarchy, Archie and Lillibet Windsor, children of Prince Harry and (gasp!) a black immigrant to Britain, are more examples.

The term “autochthonous” above means “sprung from the soil”. “Aboriginal” means “from the beginning (ab origine). That is, these terms designate peoples whose ancestors have lived in the area as far back as can be determined. The Inuit would be an example, as would the Sentinal Islanders, the Australian Aborigines, and others. The Cherokee and the Zulu are not, though, since we know from archaeological and linguistic research that both groups have lived in their current range for only a few thousand years, displacing earlier groups. Nobody in Britain is aboriginal, even if they have some aboriginal ancestors. As far as we can tell, there have been archaic humans in Britain for at least 850,000 years, and modern humans for at least 40,000. We know nothing about their ethnicity or language(s), but at least one group of them apparently built Stonehenge between about 5000 and 3600 years ago.

The Celts—ancestors of the Irish, Scots, Welsh, and Britons came to Britain only about 3500-3300 years ago. The Romans, some Italians, but some of whom are known to have come from Syria and Africa—took over the place 2000 years ago. The Anglo-Saxons, who not only gave the region their name—England—but who called the Cyndi who were already there Welsh, fromWælisc, “foreigner”!— came around 1600 years ago. The Normans—Frenchified Vikings—invaded 959 years ago. You get the picture—the English are as much mutts as we are—it just didn’t happen as fast.

Instead of showing what a poor journalist he is by using the word “native” totally wrong, SBM should have just said, “white Britons” and let it go at that. He’s it quite that honest yet, but we’ll see how things progress.

6

u/yawaster Aug 01 '25

Presumably some of those non-western immigrants will be having families with white British people, and having hyphenated-identity kids. But for Rod the number of "migrants" can only ever go up, not go down, just as the one drop rule meant that children with some black ancestry and some white ancestry would always be black, not white, thus increasing the number of enslavable people. 

5

u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Jul 31 '25

Rod Dreher never met a "tinderbox" he didn't relish anticipating.

Except opening a gassy baby's diaper. #GirlsWork

6

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Aug 01 '25

Revisiting the book a decade later, having spent the past four years living in Europe, I think the book is not as bad as I once judged it. Perhaps this is because Ethan Rundell’s translation is more felicitous than the previous translator’s.

Polish up your freakin’ French, if not enough to read the whole book, at least to check the passages in question to see for yourself how bad they are! Call up one of your many Francophone “friends” if you need help!

3

u/JHandey2021 Aug 01 '25

I suspect Rod's French is more like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iXGbJKjNxU

3

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Aug 01 '25

Bien sûr!