Benedikt Beckeld is a writer and philosopher, a native of Sweden who has lived for long periods in Paris and London, and now — most gratefully — lives in the United States. He is the author of the 2022 book Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia in the Decline of Civilizations, which Cornell University Press published.
The Muslim invasion not just of his native land, but of so much of Europe, alarms Beckeld, and he is sounding the tocsin here in his new country. His latest article presents the case for monoethnic societies. What he means by that can be found here: “Ethnic Memory: Why Societies Should Be Monoethnic,” by Benedict Beckeld, European Conservative, August 25, 2026:
The title of this article may immediately invite accusations of racism. Since nothing could be further from the truth, in my case, than such an accusation, let me begin with a crucial distinction, which I shall then explain: that between racial realism and what I will call ethnic memory. This distinction can help clarify a number of political disputes. Leftists will argue, for instance, that the United States and even European countries have always been multicultural. There is some truth to this in the American case, but ‘multicultural’ meant something different in the late 18th century than it does today. In those times, ‘multicultural’—the physical reality, not the later term—might mean Englishmen and Frenchmen, rather than Englishmen and Pakistanis, living side by side and creating a new nation. So one must be precise in one’s use of terms.
This then leads to the question of what it means to be an American, Englishman, Australian, and so on. And here we find that there must be, in these cases, a dominant Anglo culture for such identities to have any meaning. But that is not all: one must also understand the role that ethnicity plays in the formation and maintenance of national identity. People may acknowledge the importance of culture but wonder what the color of one’s skin could possibly have to do with it. In and of itself, it ought to have nothing to do with it, but de facto it does, and for quite cogent, defendable reasons. An example of the confusion caused by unclear use of terms took place recently during a discussion in the UK between journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer and Restore Britain spokesman Charlie Downes, which made the rounds on social media. Hartley-Brewer, while sharing Downes’ concern about the Islamization of Britain, seemed to reject the notion that whiteness was a part of British identity, while Downes felt that preserving the white nature of Britain was important. When Hartley-Brewer wondered why whiteness would be a determining factor in who should be a part of the British fabric, Downes seemed incapable of offering a clear answer. Had Downes been able to explain the philosophical basis underlying (one may hope) his position, Hartley-Brewer might have been more receptive. Instead, the exchange devolved into the usual insults. The subject has become increasingly topical, especially as waves of immigration have transformed Western societies, particularly in Europe.
So let me explain the philosophical distinction. Racial realism is the racist notion that a person’s race is the deciding factor of his character, that it makes him in some way intrinsically better or worse than a person of another race. Defenders of racial realism will sometimes point out, for example, that the average black person scores lower than the average white person in the United States on IQ tests (although the average white person scores lower than the average American of Asian or Jewish Ashkenazi extraction). The answer is that, although the IQ scores of some ethnic groups cluster higher or lower than those of others, there is considerable overlap between them. Many individuals in a lower-scoring group will score higher than many individuals in a higher-scoring group. This is why, for example, the black ethnicity in the United States, while having a lower cluster of IQ data points than many other ethnicities, still produces men like Frederick Douglass, Thomas Sowell, and Clarence Thomas. And so regardless of differently located clusters of data points, one should still treat people of various ethnicities as individuals and reject the racial realism that would seek to definitively define them….
Food — not pabulum — for thought. Please read the whole article here take the time it takes to digest it.
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