In which the pond revives its affection for whiter than white soap powder...

Too soon?

How long ago was it that a white supremacist blew away 50 in Christchurch?

Turns out it's never too soon for the reptiles, even if it involves a necrophiliac act of grave-robbing, digging up a book to peddle tribalism and racism …

As for the thesis, "white decline emboldens the Left", the last the pond checked Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and many others were white, and Australians of all stripes once embraced the White Australia policy, a policy that no doubt would have emboldened the likes of Herr Eric Kaufmann …

Yes, it's 'take a dip in the sewer known as the lizard Oz' time, and this time the pond recommends a number of pegs be affixed, before approaching the thinly-veiled white supremacist pose with a long-suffering nose …

Confronted with this sort of yearning for whiteness, the pond once upon a time would have trotted out an old racist ad promoting the virtues of soap …

… though actually it's not that ancient, is it?

But enough of that, actually the pond was charmed by the reptiles' recent alarm at a story coming from the land of the long white cloud …

Indeed, indeed, the key point is that there's nothing wrong with butchering Islamics, it's what good white people have always been inclined to do …

Here's the start of the story, before it went on to talk of rugby, and the pond fell asleep ...

Horsemen in Crusader gear? Well that's clearly celebrating people who lobby for and strive for change… say by cleansing the world of anyone who isn't white enough or Christian enough, and where's the harm in that? See how the pond has learned to think like a reptile?

And so back to the reptile sewer …

The cleverness here is to purport to offer an objective academic analysis, while in reality endorsing conservative and authoritarian responses as fair enough, a goodly explanation for existential insecurity and instability …

Somehow this talk of academic objectivity got tangled with another good laugh the pond had at another bout of reptile panic and alarm …

Good old urbane Urban, trudging away in the reptile educational coal mine, and thereby providing the pond with distilled essence of reptile comedy, because the notion of rigorous scientific research in the matter of climate science must surely be labelled a "reptilian fantasy" … not even the most gigantic prick could fuck up climate science the way the reptiles do on a daily basis …

But back to the reptile sewer. Too soon? Not for the reptiles …

Phew, this one is deep in the white supremacist stew, and so it makes it even funnier that the reptiles should have Dame Slap and the meritorious Merritt also out and about this day …

The irony of course is that Herr Kaufmann is an academic, and nobody has done anything to stop the march of his illiberal ideas, nor has anyone stopped the reptiles from this act of necrophiliac grave-digging, as open up the corpse to inspect the detritus of right white thinking …

Another irony is that these illiberal ideas have stolen a march on Dame Slap, prattling Polonius, nattering "Ned" and other members of the reptile crusade, if only because Herr Kaufmann is inclined to be prolix (please, remember, the pond has a goodly dose of German blut as it clings to ancient traditions, though the only German word the pond can reliably use is "scheisse").

Well the pond hopefully will get back to its standard reptile fare for a Sunday meditation, but before moving along, please allow the pond to pause and marvel at this meritorious Merrittism …

But, billy goat butt, Bjorn is infamous, a subsidy seeker and a cash in the paw man, a rent seeker and a climate science denialism panderer, and utterly shameless in his toadying, and therefore a fit subject for reptile worship …

...and since when has the IPA become an expert on free speech, as opposed to lavishly subsidised speech on the joys of devouring tobacco, the wonders of coal, and the benefits of climate science denialism?

But enough distractions, because there's still some hard yards to go. Perhaps a Brexit joke in honour of Dame Slap, just to keep the spirits up? With more spirit-enhancing Rowe here …

Oops, something seems to have happened to that white Crusader horse, but fear not, somehow the wogs and the darkies will be kept out of little Britain … and now back to the reptile sewer …

Note the splendid both-siderism, and the wondrous obscurantism of "what I term ethno-traditional nationalism". If only Herr Hitler had been alive to gain a more nuanced appreciation of the ways he might have expressed himself.

Apparently there is good on both sides, and it's all just a matter of a differing world view if you happen to get out on the street, don appropriate garb and chant "the Jews will not replace us."

As for "voluntary assimilation", please, call a spade a spade. In the pond's day, it was dubbed miscegenation and a weakening of the blut ties and the blut line, and what was wrong with that, apart from the odd world war? Oh there was much science in discerning the level of contamination. Why you could move past quadroon to octoroon or even hexadecaroon...

Meanwhile, it seems one noble crusader is in trouble yet again …

Does the onion muncher keep on giving, or what? And they're promising a Four Corners on the matter. Naturally the pond attributes it to a lack of whiteness in the ABC … which reminds the pond that there's still a gobbet to go in the reptile sewer…

What, no place for an enduring white atheist tradition? No place for a white Karl Marx tradition?

And where did the reptiles dig this up? Why are they giving it such a big push?

Well they might claim its copyright date is 2019, but it was out and about in Britain in October 2018, and being heavily pushed by Murdochian rags of The Times kind … but it fell to earth with a resounding thud, and failed to turn Herr Kaufmann into the new Jordan.

Reaction was so muted in fact that there were very few reviews to be found, though Kenan Malik noted it in The Graudian/Observer on 21st October 2018 here …

Malik made some obvious enough points …

Whiteshift is a hefty work crammed with data and graphs. The trouble with viewing the world primarily in demographic terms, though, is that, for all the facts and figures, it is easy to be blind to the social context. Consider Kaufmann’s discussion of 19th-century Irish immigration into Britain. The influx, Kaufmann writes, created a “cultural demography” that was “fertile soil for the growth of anti-Catholicism”. What this misses is that anti-Catholicism was well established long before Irish immigration. Its roots lie in 17th-century power struggles. Anti-Catholic bigotry was institutionalised in a series of laws enacted after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which denied Catholics jobs, votes and rights. It was shaped, too, by Britain’s annexation of Ireland. It’s not demography but that history of bigotry and occupation that helps make sense of the response to Irish immigration...

Well yes, the pond was taught to hate Cromwell, maintaining four centuries old rage, and Cromwell had little time for Catholics …

Catholicism is more than a religion, it is a political power. Therefore I'm led to believe there will be no peace in Ireland until the Catholic Church is crushed

… though with a little adjustment by the pond, he came closer to the truth with this …

Work hard, trust in imaginary friends, and keep your bowels open.

And there were a few mother points made by Malik worth quoting …

...Kaufmann wants to normalise attachment to “white identity”. Historically, such identity has been the means through which to promote racism. Today, many on the far right use it as a way of rebranding their bigotry.

The real problem, however, is not that the notion of white identity is racist but that it is meaningless. There is no singular set of interests shared by all whites. Those responsible for the marginalisation of the working class are also largely white – politicians, bureaucrats, bankers, company bosses. Kaufmann’s argument is, ironically, the mirror image of that of leftwing identitarians; both see whiteness as a homogenising label, one for a repository of privilege, the other for common interests. The idea of “white interests” obscures the real problems facing the working class. It transforms solidarity from a sense of commonality with those sharing my values and aspirations, though not necessarily my skin colour or culture, to an identity with those who do not share my political hopes, and may undermine my interests, but whose skin colour or cultural background is similar. There’s little dignity in that.

Well yes, but the real curiosity for the pond is why the reptiles dug up this book, and gave it space and prominence. There seems to be only one credible answer …

Hold fast Crusaders, stick to your white skin, and soon you too can regard anyone of colour as an enemy, just right for a Crusader dust-up (though a little help from a fugitive Chinese tycoon can still come in handy in the heat of battle).

And so to a Pope cartoon, if only because infinite papal wisdom is always on tap here …

By golly, is it too soon? 

The poodle's gone, the gatling's jammed, the red square runs white with white blood, the north shore crusader is feeling the heat, is it too soon to farewell the onion muncher with a cavalcade of Pope cartoons? Even if it is too soon, the reptiles have shown how it's never too soon ...