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The Camp of the Saints

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This book is so politically incorrect that I admire Amazon.com for actually carrying it. Written in the early 1970s, this book looks beyond the cold war to a North-South confrontation in which European civilization is unilaterally morally disarmed. The thesis is simple: suppose a million starving people from the Ganges actually took Western rhetoric of compassion, explotiation, etc., to heart, and comandeered, en masse, shipping, with the intention of moving to the shores of France? (Raspail, of course, is French.) Would anyone stop them? The imagery employed is interesting. The title comes from Revelation, Chapter 20, and refers to the forces of evil laying seige to the camp of the saints, here meant to be the nations of the West. "The thousand years are over..." is chanted from Third World lips, harking to the millenial reign of Christ, as well as to the millenial domination of Europe over the globe. Raspail has the Vatican, World Council of Churches, and other organs of what he saw as Western liberal compassion try to feed the Armada, as it sails around the Cape. The bodies of their would-be benefactors are cast into the sea. The characters who oppose, with violence, the Armada are named with names like Constantine Drasages and Luke Notaras, namesakes of the last Byzantine Emperor and Admiral. They are portrayed as villans in the media; one of the more thoughtful leftists, fashionably in support of opening up France's shores, but cynical enough to see the potential results, reflects on the parallels between Byzantium's fate and that of the West. The author's point is that any who dare to say that 'white' civilization has a right to exist are branded racists and cast out of the pale of polite society. The narrative is set up as a flashback. The Armada is about to disgorge its human cargo in Provence as we begin. An old man, M. Calgues, awaits them, Mozart playing in the background, after setting what he expects to be his last supper among the living. From there, we go back to the beginning, in India, as a Western cleric preaches quasi-liberation theology to the masses. Along the way, as the news spreads over the world, we digress, looking at Manhattenites holing up in skyscrapers as the spectre of race riots beckon, and at Russian troops on the Manchurian border contemplating the human waves gathering to wash over them. The central question of the book is this: will the West (including Russia - more properly, the North), when (not if) confronted with de facto occupation of national territories by Third World people, coming to live, but not to assimilate, use violence to save itself? Is there left in Euro-American civilization a will to live that is strong enough to pull a trigger? The stark question is answered in one of two possible ways by the concluding chapter. This astringent book, whether you agree with Raspail's views or not, demands thoughtful attention to the questions posed. How will we deal with population/immagration issues? Is our culture and way of life worth fighting for? -Lloyd A. Conway

During my long-ago youth, I remember people discussing a coming war of the Haves against the Have-nots. Well, what if the Have-nots launched their invasion armed not with pathetically out-of-date weapons, but with empty, out-stretched hands? In this book, author Jean Raspail examines just such an eventuality.

When the termination of a Belgian project of adopting babies from Third World nations is announced, a wave of despair sweeps through the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India. A crazed prophet announces that the West has forfeited its land, and leads a million of these impoverished people on a "last chance armada" towards France. The whole world holds its breath, as millions of others of the world's poor wait to see how the French (and as such the West) will react. But, sapped by a political-correctness that has preached self-hatred and self-sacrifice, can France fight a war against a group of poor, unarmed, emaciated souls, even if the cost is the loss of a thousand years of Western civilization?

In a word - No.

I first read about this book in the December 1994 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, and was quite glad when a copy recently fell into my hands. This book racks the political Left over the coals, up one side and down the other, while at the same time trampling Christianity and its gospel of self-sacrifice and brotherhood under foot. It is Jean Raspail's belief that the West has lost its will to power, and that with declining birthrates, the West is doomed to extinction; submerged beneath a wave of invaders. "Many a civilization, victim of the selfsame fate, sits tucked in our museums, under glass, neatly labeled."

If you are looking for an uplifting book of a hope-filling future, then you will have to look elsewhere. But in this world, where explosive population growth is coupled with drastically unbalanced wealth, this is a book that cannot be ignored. Mass population movement from the Third World to the First is a fact of today, and the West is beginning to realize the significance.

Jean Raspail was already a distinguished travel writer and novelist when he put his reputation on the line with this one - He had a lot to lose. To his credit, Raspail pulls no punches and manages to say just about everything there is to say about the threat that Third World immigration poses to Western Civilization.
I had heard about this book, but decided to read it for the first time only after boat loads of Kurds landed on France's Mediterranean beaches a couple of years ago. The sight of hundreds of ragged Kurds running through the streets of Cannes could have been a scene from the film version of this novel.
The story is about an invasion of France by boat loads of East Indians, and the small group of Frenchman who defend against them. But as Raspail notes in the Introduction, the story is a parable - A parable of the destructive Third World immigration in the West that has been going on since the latter part of the 20th Century, and the West's lack of will to resist it.
Immigration negatively impacts the environment, the economy, crime, and national security. This novel posits that it further threatens to destroy the relatively democratic, tolerant and civilized cultures of the West and the essential commonalities of the Western peoples. According to Raspail, the West "has no soul left" and "it is always the soul that wins the decisive battles."
To call the novel "racist" is unfair. Raspail includes an East Indian among the "Saints" who defend France, and portrays many White Frenchmen who welcome the invaders as their equals. The novel clearly states that being a Westerner is NOT a matter of race, but a "state of mind."

In simple prose and shockingly honest frank descriptions of his characters, Jean Raspail travels in the company of writers as great as Dostoyevsky and Chekov concerning a subject matter so sensitive it is forbidden to even discuss in public today. I feel the book makes an eloquent case for a conclusion so obvious that few of us can afford to ignore it like the Emperor's Clothes for much longer : given differentials in birth rates and immigration, the complete elimination of whites as a race is inevitable within a single century from now. Reading the book will make you understand why white people are treated as different by all the other races of the world and why they are considered as too dangerous to be permitted to develop the same racial cohesion and consciousness that is taken for granted by everyone else. Forget about political correctness ... this book will curl your toes inside of the first three chapters with startling insights and you'll recognize a lot of the personalities caricatured in the book in both the mainstream media and in the entertainment industries. At the turn of the century, white people were a mere 22% of the world population. Today, they are 8% and rapidly declining. For those interested in protecting endangered species, look no further than this astonishing literary classic, excellently translated from the original french by Norman Shapiro. If you read one book this year, make it "The Camp of the Saints."

This book is disturbing in the extreme. This is mainly due to the fact that most of the predictions Raspail made back in 1973 are now coming true. Consider that he told us that in 20 years, Arabs would be 30% of France's population -- look at today's demographics and you'll see that it has come to pass just as he predicted.

To those nay-sayers and biological flat-earthers who denigrate this book because of what they perceive to be Raspail's prejudices coming through in the characters, I must say this:

It is not necessarily that Raspail is letting his own prejudices come through in the characters, it is that Raspail is allowing the characters to exhibit the TRUE feelings of most Westerners when they consider the prospect of the imminent Third World invasion. People ascribe these views to Raspail himself simply because, since it's not possible for White people to speak openly about their feelings in this day and age, such views are never brought up in "polite company."

Don't fool yourself into thinking that this book is not an accurate portrayal of the White man's struggle against envy and hatred, for it most surely is.

I'm really of two minds on this book. In the first place, it is undeniable that this book is racist. As I was reading along about the visceral hatred of the other races for the whites, of their planed genocide, of their mass raping of white women, I couldn't help but feel that I was reading something right out of Nazi Germany. It just went on and on.

However, I think that the author of this book saw clearly the rot that had taken hold in the heart of the West. Political-correctness leading to the hatred of everything Western (including Christianity). Loathing of white police officers and soldiers. Reading this book, you might get the idea that France could never again go to war against third worlders again. But, seeing France side with the butcher of Bagdad against Western nations seems to bear that out. The rot in France has produced a hatred of the West and subservience to non-western nations.

And, the idea that the third world would flood the West. As pointed out here, its already under way, with the immigrants refusing to be assimilated to their new countries - again look at the arab community in France.

Even though the author goes too far in making a point, this book is right on the money. This is a book that every one in the West should read. This book shows the future, one that is probably right around the corner!

Nearly 30 years after its creation, and more timely than he ever imagined, Raspail's book is a "must-read". It presents a chilling depiction of the West's humanitarian institutions helping to ensure their own destruction. The enormous third-world migrant population's "miraculous" voyage to Europe, and the subsequent ramifications which he depicts, are especially ominous because the system into which they sail is in place right now. It is, without question, one of the most articulate, politically incorrect books I've seen anywhere, and Amazon should be congratulated for selling it.

It is a story which the current generation of Europeans, and Americans of European descent, should read and take to heart as they ponder the effects of contemporary ill-conceived immigration policies. And it lends great credence to the Australian government's decision to impose limits on the rate of change of their national composition.

A novel written in the early 1970's Camp of the Saints is about France being deluged with an armada of slow moving boats containing millions of the worst that the "third world" has to offer and the ensuing reaction of the population to the invasion in the weeks before they arrive on the shores of France.

I believe at the time this was written Raspail in many ways meant it as an exagerated parody/satire of naive liberal leftist universalism but now things have gotten to the point with the brainwashing "white guilt" that so many whites buy into and the never ending flow of third world immigrants into North America and western Europe that that you could make a good arguement that Camp of the Saints is closer to reality than it is parody at this point in time.

But whether you want to look at this as satire or reality Camp of the Saints is a brilliant (and at times very funny) book and is probably the best "racial" novel ever written.

This controversial book is a must for anyone with doubts about "mass immigration" or the merits of free international migration. It describes a situation in which France is selected as a final port of destination for a band of East Indian refugees (over one million strong) who find a means to leave their wretched conditions during a famine. These 'few' become the future basis for a full scale colonization of France. This premise has been substituted by the author for the actual situation, in which France has absorbed up to 20% of her total population in Algerian migrants, for purposes of having the book printed by a major publisher in the 1970's.

Though somewhat futuristic for the time it did capture in essence what the future of France was to become, even insomuch as getting the name of the current Pope Benedict correct.

The writing style is very flowery and sometimes hard to follow in the English translation; and here is a work of caution for the uninitiated. This book is very, very 'nativist' to the point that frequent non PC 'offending words' and overtly simplistic, somewhat dehumanized depictions of the refugees are used, perhaps much to the detriment of the central theme.
Without giving away the entire plot: the French national military loses in the final pages with very few shots having actually been fired. At that point an Orwellian society emerges out of the ashes in some sort of multi-racial commune.

I first read this book 25 years ago. Then I thought it might only apply to Europe. Now I see it in my home town. The latest census admits a minimum of 14% of Dallas was born in another country. The census may err on the short side. Over the last 2 decades I have seen my traditional values being ridiculed as old fashioned and no longer applicable while, at the same time, I am being pressured to respect incoming cultures and foreign heritages. As in Raspails book, these non Western cultures have seemingly endless organizations to assure their "rights" but noone seems to push them to assimilate into trditional American culture. Will they eventually destroy that which they came here to enjoy? Will America become a nation of overpopulated Balkanised, tribal "communities" with little in common other than demanding larger portions of the diminishing feast? Camp of the Saints certainly makes the reader consider the ultimate price Western Civilization can pay for it's generosity and how far down that road we may be at present