‘Camp of The Saints’ Seen Mirrored In Pope’s Message

Pope Francis is urging America to throw open her borders to thousands of impoverished migrants, in part to atone for the “sins” of the colonial era.

“We must not repeat the sins and the errors of the past. We must resolve now to live as nobly and as justly as possible,” he declared before a joint session of Congress. “Thousands of persons are led to travel north in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones, in search of greater opportunities…We must not be taken aback by their numbers.”

The call was not entirely unexpected.

“America Atone,” read The Drudge Report’s banner story upon the Pope’s arrival to the White House a day before his historic Congressional address.

The headline linked to a Bloomberg piece entitled, “Obama to Bask In Pope’s Aura, But Francis Wants Economic Justice.” The article predicted the Pope would aim to “exploit” his “moral authority” to “pressure his host” nation on issues including mass immigration and wealth redistribution.

Indeed, as the Pope addressed the nation today it is clear that the immigration issue has hit a boiling point. Headlines blare:

European Migrant Crisis: Austria, Germany Near Tipping Point… As Europe Grasps For Answers, More Migrants Flood Its Border… Pope Francis Urges Congress To Embrace Migrants… Western and UN Aid Falling Far Short… Five More Fleets On The Way, From Africa, India and Asia… Refugee Fleet Is Headed For Europe, For France…

The last three headlines, however, are ripped not from today’s papers, but from the pages of a controversial 1973 French novel by Jean Raspail, which many say has predicted with shocking accuracy the events unfolding today.

The novel, which has been translated into English, is entitled Camp of the Saints, and posits that the liberalism of the West would cause Western nations to throw open their doors to so many migrants that it would spell the doom of liberal society itself. Raspail’s thesis, quite simply, is that liberalism is inadequate to defend liberalism.

All around the world, events seem to be lining up with the predictions of the book. The novel features a new pope, born in Latin American, who is “in tune with the times, congenial to the press” who preaches “universal love” and calls on the Western world to open its borders to the world’s migrants. Now, as in the novel, prominent political officials are urging on ever larger waves; secular and religious leaders hold hands to pressure blue collar citizens to drop their resistance; media elites and celebrities zealously cheer the opportunity that the migrants provide to atone for the alleged sins of the West— for the chance to rebalance the wealth and power of the world by allowing poor migrants from failed states to rush in to claim its treasures.

Raspail argues that the inability of the Western conscience to erect walls, to “put her foot down,” to turn people away, will lead to the undoing of Western civilization itself.

As the world’s eyes turn to the U.S. arrival of the pope, many conservatives are arguing that Jean Raspail’s book has perhaps come to life.

As Pat Buchanan recently wrote

Will the West endure, or disappear by the century’s end as another lost civilization? Mass immigration, if it continues, will be more decisive in deciding the fate of the West than Islamist terrorism… Does Europe have the toughness to seal its borders and send back the intruders? Or is Europe so morally paralyzed it has become what Jean Raspail mocked in “The Camp of the Saints”?

The Hudson Institute’s John Fonte told Breitbart News:

It is not surprising that the confused response by European elites to today’s mass migration from the developing world has triggered new interest in Jean Raspail’s 1973 dystopian novel “Camp of the Saints,” in which feckless Western leaders are unable to respond to a fictitious mass migration from what was then called the “Third World.”

The novel begins with the Belgian government’s announcement that it is ending its Indian child adoption policy, originally instituted to aid overpopulated India. The program had to be shut down due to an influx of applicants: “babes by the hundreds of hundreds, all ripe for adoption, [their mothers] pushing up to the brink [of the Belgian Consulate gate], to take the giant leap to [Western] paradise.”

Shortly after the program is terminated, millions of impoverished men, women and children board a fleet headed to the West.

The majority of the novel takes place around Easter as the French government decides how to respond to the “unprecedented incursion”: whether to throw open its borders and receive the fleet, or defend their nation from the coming invaders. France’s response stands to dictate that of the rest of the Western World:

“With France the Enlightened glad to grovel on her knees, no government now will dare sign its name to the genocidal deed” of fighting off the helpless horde.

Throughout the book, Raspail is constantly grasping for an “explanation” as to what sparked the Third World incursion, and what has caused the West to thrown down her arms and thrown open her doors.

Raspail suggests that overly-generous immigration policies are, in part, to blame. This is not dissimilar to Republicans’ recent push for amnesty, which government data shows played a substantial role in encouraging the 2014 border surge of alien youths.

“Once we had opened the door and shown how weak we are, others would come. Then more, and more. In fact, it’s already beginning,” Raspail wrote.

However, Raspail ultimately concludes that generous immigration policies are merely a symptom of a greater force at play. Raspail argues that the West has become enslaved to what he terms as the “Beast” that is Western consciousness, which bears the heavy weight of its guilt and feels it must atone for its alleged sins.

The Third World, Raspail writes, “see[s] right through you… They know how weak your [convictions] are, they know you’ve given in. You can thank yourselves for that… The one thing your struggle for their souls has left them is the knowledge that the West—your West—is rich. To them, you’re the symbols of abundance. By your presence alone, they see that it does exist somewhere, and they see that your conscience hurts you for keeping it all to yourselves.”

Raspail continues, “After all your help—all the seeds, and drugs and technology—they found it so much simpler just to say, ‘Here’s my son, here’s my daughter. Taken them. Take me. Take us all to your country.’ And the idea caught on. You thought it was fine. You encouraged it, organized it. But now it’s too big, now it’s out of your hands. It’s a flood. A deluge. And it’s out of control.”

No amount of immigration will ever make a dent in the global poverty. However, the facts, in Raspail’s vision, simply do not matter— the West is ruled by emotion and its guilt. The West, Raspail argues, is powerless against the powerless—entirely proselytized by the refugee’s apparent desperation and helplessness.

As the defenseless horde cries: “You see here before you our women, our children, our peasants, helpless and unprotected, your brothers and sisters, here to open your eyes, to show you the truth. Soon we’ll stat to cross the river. Please don’t shoot. We have no arms. We’re just poor, humble folk trying to make our way…”

Raspail writes that the fleet’s, “only arms are weakness, misery, a faculty for inspiring pity, and its strength as a symbol in the eyes of the world. A symbol of revenge.”

The book also suggests that many of the new arrivals will see some of the fineries of the West— elaborate wooden doors, rustic chests, silver cutlery bearing “some maternal ancestors’ initials,” tablecloths, pillow slips and fine linen— in a far more utilitarian light.

“Your world doesn’t mean a thing. They won’t even try to understand it… they’ll build a fire with your big wooden door… all your things will lose their meaning.”

To the Western conscience, the refugees “whose race, religion, language, and culture are different from [its] own” (set to arrive symbolically on Easter) represents an opportunity to “cleanse and redeem the capitalist West!”

As such, Raspail declares, it is, “to the blare of justice, Jericho’s worm-eaten walls will come tumbling…”

The religious community plays a vital role in the West’s demise. Religious figures—“bleeding hearts puking out gospels galore”—encourage the incursion. A global ecumenism receiving a new gospel of  “a world reborn, one race, one religion, no more exploitation of man by man, death to Western imperialism, universal love and brotherhood, and a thousand other goodies of the same confection.”

No one plays so central a role as the Papal figure in the book who bears several surprising similarities to Pope Francis.

In the book, the fictional Pope, who hails from Latin America, represents a “new-style church.” The Cardinals chose him as a symbol “for the universal church”.

The media relishes every opportunity to describe the humble and wealth-eschewing pope, “living on a can of sardines, eating with a plain tin fork, in a makeshift kitchenette up under the Vatican eaves… What a fine front-page story!” Raspail writes.

When Western leaders confront the pope and warn him that his fanaticism for redistributing wealth would hurt many members of his flock, he passionately replies that, “poverty is all there is worth sharing.” Whenever global crisis demanded it, the pope would sell his tiara and his Cadillac, which “morally… only proved how rich he really was, like some maharaja disposed by official decree.”

Similarly, today’s media has found itself in a love affair with the “people’s pope.” Just this week, CNN fawned: “A master of symbolism, Francis quickly dispensed with the fancy red slippers that popes wore. He moved into a small apartment in the Vatican and put the papal Mercedes in the garage, favoring a 20-year-old Renault with 190,000 miles on it.”

Bloomberg writes of the Pope’s visit to the U.S.: “In one small symbol, Francis chose a humble Fiat 500L to travel from Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, where his plane landed, to the Vatican envoy’s residence in the city. The compact car was dwarfed in his motorcade by the Secret Service’s hulking sport utility vehicles.”

In Raspail’s dystopia, upon the news that the fleet’s arrival was close at hand, the fictional Pope ordered “all objects of value still contained in the palaces and museum to the Vatican to be placed on immediate sale, with the proceeds going entirely to aid and settle the Ganges refugees once they have landed.” His Holiness is described as kneeling before a, “Brazilian crucifix with a figure of Christ that looks like Saint Che himself.”

The fictional pope then sent out a communiqué urging the West to open up its hearts and its borders to the coming migrants:

We beseech our brethren in Jesus Christ to open their hearts, souls, and worldly wealth to all these poor unfortunates whom God has sent knocking at our doors. There is no road save charity for a Christian to follow. And charity is no vain word. Nor can it be divided, or meted out little by little. It is all, or it is nothing. Now, at last, the hour is upon us…The hour when all of us must answer the call of that universal love for which Our Lord died on the cross, and in whose name He rose from the dead.

In an address before Congress today, Pope Francis delivered a similar message— calling on Americans to pay for the “sins” of the colonial era by opening up their borders to the world’s migrants:

We must not repeat the sins and the errors of the past. We must resolve now to live as nobly and as justly as possible… Our world is facing a refugee crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Second World War… On this continent, too, thousands of persons are led to travel north in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones, in search of greater opportunities… We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation. To respond in a way which is always humane, just and fraternal. We need to avoid a common temptation nowadays: to discard whatever proves troublesome. Let us remember the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Each year, the United States already voluntarily admits one million or more foreign nationals on green cards, one million foreign workers, refugees and dependents, and half a million foreign youths sought by college administrators.

Census data shows that the foreign-born population in the U.S. hit a new record high of 42.4 million in July 2014. Although the United States houses only 5 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. takes in 20 percent of all the migrants worldwide. The United States has taken or 24 times more migrants than has the Pope’s home country of Argentina.

Scholars have explained that importing millions of migrants from failed countries with different values and customs will not raise standards of living, but will instead merely remake the West in the image of those failed countries.

As William F. Buckley explained in 2004: “If everybody in Nigeria and Ghana who wished to do so could enter into Italy, in due course life in Italy would cease to have any advantages over life in Nigeria and Ghana.”

Religion, however, is not the only Western institution that plays a role in the West’s demise— the media similarly serves as accomplice. Rather than report on objective facts, the media: both with its “opinion mongers” and “reporters all concerned more with rhetoric than truth,” are able to take their medium, “a tool meant for mass communication, twisted and warped it, and used it to bully the minds of the public.”

By refusing to report the objective facts, the media “softened up [public opinion] slowly little by little, for its ultimate, fatal surrender.”

In the novel, the media refuses to report stories about the Westerners murdered by the refugees; the media refuses to show unflattering, yet realistic pictures of the refugees; and it refuses to report on the combativeness of some of the refugees.

For instance, in the Raspail’s novel, when Western nations try to supply the refugee fleet with food and medicine, the refugees began promptly, “dumping everything into the water!”

“Sacks of rice passed down the line, from hand to hand, and plunged into the sea, one after another. Groups of men by the dozens… toppled them overboard one by one. And everything sank to the bottom, except the crates of medicines, lighter than the rest, bobbing along on the waves like a dotted line marking the wake of the fleet.”

Yet in Raspail’s novel, the media whitewashes the story, burying it with bizarre explanations and justifications for the combative behavior.

The media of today bears some resemblance to the media in Raspail’s dystopia. Earlier this month, establishment media similarly refused to cover footage that emerged of refugees throwing food and water onto train tracks and abusing police officers.

Instead the establishment media outlets decided to run with a different story, which better served their political agenda:

Police Throw Food At Refugees In Unsettling Video (The Huffington Post)

‘Inhumane’ police throw food at crowds of desperate refugees in Hungary (The Independent) 

Video shows refugees fed “like animals in pen” in Hungary camp (The Telegraph)

In Raspail’s novel, an Associated Press helicopter “bristling with telephoto and wide-angle lenses flew over [the fleet] some twenty times at different altitudes” and captures a “bloodcurdling photo, realistic beyond endurance,” of some of the arriving conquerors, yet the photo “was published a mere six times in all… [so] that public opinion for the most part didn’t even know it existed.”

In the novel, the media also covers up the deaths of several Westerners murdered by the refugees while on a mission to aide the migrants.

Similarly, while today’s media spent hours devoted to the tragic image of the Syrian boy washed up on the shores, it obscured basic facts about his story when they failed to fit into the media’s larger political narrative. Similarly, the media scant talks about how mass Muslim migration has resulted in an explosion of female genital mutilation in the United States; it does not talk about how our refugee programs have given rise to communities like Little Mogadishu—or Minneapolis, Minnesota— where government officials are struggling to stem the tide of Middle Easterners who have taken up arms with ISIS; and it covers up the countless American deaths that have occurred as a result unbridled immigration.

In 1982 year, ten years after the initial poor public reception of his book, Raspail writes, “as time went on a strange thing happened… this novel [seemed] to be developing a life of its own… I, the accursed writer, was transformed into a prophetic writer.

Indeed, the novel’s papal figure is not the only character who bears resemblance to many public figures today.

In Raspail’s vision, celebrity elites— exuberant about the incoming surge— throw bacchanalian bashes to celebrate and raise funds for the fleets’ arrival. They even coin a slogan to indicate their solidarity with their global brothers: “The famous slogan ‘We’re all from the Ganges now’ was dished up for every political and philosophical cause,” Raspail writes.

This is remarkably similar to the response of today’s celebrities. Just this week, celebrities of various ethnic backgrounds put out song intended to combat to Donald Trump’s pledge to defend national sovereignty— the song is entitled “We’re All Mexicans.”

There’s even a Glenn Beck character. Radio host Glenn Beck made headlines recently by telling his audience to raise money so that they could circumvent U.S. immigration law and import some of the refugees on their own:

“I asked if my audience could raise $10 million before Christmas to bring the Christians in from Syria… We will vet them ourselves. We have former CIA people that are going over and they’re vetting everybody right now. We can save more people by Christmas than Oscar Schindler saved.”

In Raspail’s world, radio host Leo Beon, “idol of the airwaves, toast of every living room in France” similarly asks his audience to raise money to fund a plane filled with supplies to deliver to the refugees:

“We, the people of France… we’re going to send our own plane [of supplies]. Yes, the people’s plane!… we have two hours to raise the money. And two hours to say what’s in our hearts. So please… please, friends, send in what you can no matter how little.”

Perhaps one of the most dangerous characters in the book is Albert Durfort, an “opinion monger” who helps shape the views of millions of Frenchmen over the airwaves each night.

“Full of the milk of human kindness,” and “adored” by the public, Durfort promises a “rebirth of man” following the arrival of the fleet. Durfort is a direct product of the Western consciousness. The hollowed out Western spirit, in Raspail’s view, wants nothing more than to believe the sweet words flowing from Durfort’s mouth.

Durfort’s message allows the “ten million good Frenchmen [entrusted] to his care each night” to go to bed feeling good about themselves. As Raspail writes, “That night, having heard [their] Durfort, [the people of France] would fall asleep with an easy mind.”

It is Durfort’s job, however—through carefully chosen words— to charm the public to accepting an immigration policy that will ultimately seal their doom— “hook, line, and sinker. Thank you, Durfort!”

Durfort would pick “just the right words to hit home, to sink into the muck of each heart with a soft little plop.” He’d “pic[k] simple stories from his file-card brain… Stories about Third World children, adopted not so long ago, and now caring for their aged French parents. Stories about dark-skinned immigrants, model citizens today, some even with seats on town councils. [His listeners] were moved to tears.”

Durfort speaks, not in substance, but in platitudes: “We’re going to share our profits, invest them in the social good, conceive our economy in terms of love, not personal gain, so that each one among us… can finally claim his right to a rich, full life.”

These platitudes however, are merely that: “Nothing but words.”

Durfort knows full well the consequences that will ensue from the policies he advocates. Durfort is one of the first to “ru[n] off to Switzerland, with a few tens of thousands of francs’ worth of gold in his luggage” at the first sign that the incursion has actually arrived.

Ultimately, Durfort is nothing more than a cash cow for his corporate sponsors. Even though his immediate boss would like to fire Durfort for peddling treasonous immigration policies, the boss recognizes that his hands are tied because Durfort’s is the darling of big business advertisers.

“I can’t touch you,” the boss reluctantly admits. “You’ve got a reprieve [because] my board wants money, and they want it in a hurry. It’s true, they’ve sold out to the Left. They’re a slimy bunch, but maybe when they get good and scared they’ll start thinking.”

Durfort, of course, is fully aware of the role he plays for his corporate sponsors, and dutifully repays the hand that feeds him: “In advertising, today,” Durfort explains, “it’s only the Left that sells… nothing pays like generosity.”

In our own anti-epic, one could argue that the role of Durfort could be played by Marco Rubio. For conservatives, Rubio— with his school boyish looks and scripted, consultant-tested and diligently memorized lines— is the sugar coating for open borders policies. In 2013, Rubio launched a charm offensive to pass amnesty and mass immigration. Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin and Bob Menendez have all explicitly stated as much.

As Sen. Dick Durbin told Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker at the time: “[Rubio] has been invaluable… He’s willing to go on the most conservative talk shows, television and radio, Rush Limbaugh and the rest. They respect him, they like him, they think he may have a future in the Party… He brings up the names of some of these conservative people I’ve never heard of who everybody in their caucus knows… [For instance:] Who is Mark Levin?”

While immigration zealots like Lindsey Graham and Jeb Bush are toxic to the minds of professional conservatives, Rubio is beloved. They are charmed by his a vague and optimistic platitudes focusing on “tomorrowness” such as:

“I believe the way forward is to embrace the future.”

“We live in the most exciting era in human history, but if we look to yesterday, we will lose tomorrow.”

Rubio, like Durfort, promises a rebirth of sorts— namely a “New American Century,” brought about by a mass immigration agenda in which 33 million new immigrants will be imported in the span of a single decade, or what he called “modernizing our immigration system.”

Rubio, like Durfort, knows the billionaire hands that feeds him. Rupert Murdoch, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Disney’s Bob Iger, Michael Bloomberg, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates, Bill Marriott, and Google’s Eric Schmidt have all endorsed and lobbied for his immigration Gang of Eight and new I-Squared immigration bills.

In Raspail’s novel, he proffers many reasons for why the West is ultimately helpless against the incursion and why the French people, who are against the incoming invasion, refuse to speak out.

One of the most tragic explanations offered is simply a lack of any meaningful opposition. In the novel, all conservative opposition gives only the appearance of opposition to the establishment media. The only newspaper editor clearheaded enough to speak out against the surge “plays dead in his foxhole” refusing to “wake from his self-imposed slumber.”

Thus, the people “have to wait patiently till [he wakes] to hear, at last, the first discordant notes in the great altruistic revel.” But by then, it is largely too late. The editor dies as a martyr for the West, even though he slept during the time when the fight could have been effective.

In 2004, William F. Buckley praised Camp of the Saints as a “great novel.”

Yet today, many of the people who make a comfortable living as professional conservatives seem as somnolent as the characters in the novel.

They write sleepy articles about the merits of Marco Rubio’s tax reform plan, but write nothing about his desire to throw open our nation’s border to refugees, triple low-wage H-1B workers, or print up 33 million green cards. They condemn the low-income supporters of Donald Trump, but sing the praises of a Senator backed by billionaire donors.

The novel ends, ominously. As Western nation after Western nation throws open her doors and descends into chaos as influxes of migrants pour in— “push[ing] on still further” and displacing each nations’ tolerant, former inhabitants.

The last line of the book recounts the “melancholy words” at last drummed into the narrator’s mind: “The fall of Constantinople is a personal misfortune that happened to all of us only last week.”