Invaders Aren't Civilians
You are already at war
Have you ever wondered why countries have armies? No? It seems obvious right? To prevent hordes of foreigners from marching in, taking your stuff, raping your women, and trashing your culture?
When that happens, it’s called an “invasion.”
So, why is it then that hordes of foreigners have been allowed to march in, take our stuff, and rape our wives and daughters and trash our culture? Without punishment?1
It’s because we’ve been invaded.
Sure, some of the invaders are here “legally.” What does that change? Were the Turks any less the enemy because a traitor opened the gates of Constantinople?
No.
“Oh, but they aren’t armed.” Many of them are, in fact, armed, but what would it change if they truly weren’t? The outcomes would remain perfectly consistent with invasion.
They are only unarmed because we are too feckless and stupid to call an invasion an “invasion” when they don’t march in with uniforms and rifles.
Can you imagine the scene at Constantinople if the Turks had been unarmed? What would have happened, once the gates were thrown open, had they set their swords and spears down in neat little piles and marched in with sad faces instead? Do you think the Byzantines would have lined the streets, puzzled, and watched scratching their heads as the Turks strolled through their homes and markets, stealing fruit and groping at girls as they went?2
It sounds too absurd for a Monty Python skit, but somehow we’re living it.
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A few weeks ago, this video of Somalis mocking Americans about recently-revealed frauds did the rounds on Twitter. Infuriated, I quipped to some friends, “invaders aren’t civilians.”
But the more I thought about it, the more truth I saw in the quip. These men are not innocent pranksters. They are invaders. Their tribe stole from our tribe and now they are mocking us. They are daring us to respond under threat of force (via what were once, nominally, our own police).
That they are not (obviously) armed (at this moment), does not make them any less invaders.
They are invaders. They are here, en masse, to take by force. That the force is wielded by amorphous and bureaucratic systems does not make them any less invaders.
They aren’t civilians, they aren’t “noncombatants.”
A VietCong or Al Qaeda operative who spent the night raiding a US FOB didn’t become a “noncombatant” in the morning just because his rifle was now hidden under his mattress. The VietCong or Al Qaeda commander who sold the stolen stuff to Russia wasn’t a “noncombatant” just because somebody else on his team did the fighting and taking.
Likewise, an Indian with a fraudulent SBA 7a loan you can’t get doesn’t become a civilian just because he let someone else with guns take the money from you to fund it. Every fraudulent visa, every fraudulent loan, every under-the-table cash deal, every nepotistic hire that violates the CRA at our expense, every house and business purchase made with stolen money, and every violent crime… is an act of war.
These people are at war with us and they are all combatants. They do not get to loot us at gunpoint (even if the guns are held by our own traitors), take a cut of the loot, rub it in our faces, and then claim they aren’t parties to the conflict.
“But you need to take it on a case-by-case basis. America judges individuals, not whole groups.”
Not anymore; that’s how we got here. Your enemies are not acting as individuals. They are acting like an army. They secure a foothold and then take the territory for themselves. They aren’t here to share.
If you had been in WWI and a bunch of enemy soldiers jumped into your trench, would you have taken the time to chat them up about which holidays you shared and how they got on with their families and make sure you only bayoneted the bad ones?
The millions of Indians, Somalis, Hatians, Muslims, and other hostile foreign tribes we’ve allowed to take root here are not gaseous atoms dispersing randomly across the country. They live with each other, hire each other, and lie for each other. They are coordinated and intentional.3
They came as groups and stole as groups. In the more egregious case, they raped and murdered as groups. They must be targeted and removed… as groups.
This is doubly true for people who have committed themselves to an ideology of warfare against you. Islam calls all adherents to jihad, communism calls all adherents to class struggle. Both of these peoples are not just de facto at war with you, they have openly declared war on you.
You should take them seriously.
If it sounds like I’m justifying violence, well, yeah… I am. We have always recognized that there are situations in which violence is justified: self-defense, defense of your family, or during war. Killing someone who has declared war on you doesn’t even rise to murder.
This is a moral argument, not practical, and certainly not legal. Practically, I am not advocating that you, random reader, go off half-cocked and a get yourself jammed up or slotted. You aren’t doing our tribe any good ineffectively attriting yourself. Legally, well… if you need me to tell you why this isn’t legal advice or explain to you why you aren’t ever even going to get a jury of your peers, you’re NGMI.
So, what does my argument mean in practice?
For now, the Trump administration is doing good work on this. I’d like to see more, sure, we all would, but we should be cautious of undercutting their legitimacy. As long as we have a legitimate government in place that is working on addressing these things, we should be supportive. Don’t get squishy about the particulars of each ICE shooting. Invaders and their supporters are enemies, they are at war with us, and their particular actions 30 seconds before their demise make basically zero difference in whether or not our boys were justified.
For the more libertarian of us, remember that this is a war and not one we started. The American government exists to protect the rights of Americans, not hostile foreigners. In the WWI trench, you would not have evaluated whether an individual enemy soldier had violated the NAP against you. The invaders are here specifically because they will vote with your domestic enemies against your liberties. They must be purged for you to have any hope of keeping or resecuring the rights you value.
Should legitimate government fail, understand that you have been invaded. Whatever action your morality will justify in such a case will be justified in this one.
I haven’t even been bookmarking these, there are just SO many of these that they’re trivial to find on demand. Here’s a lengthy compilation just from the last few weeks for shits and giggles:
I had to go out of my way to not quote Camp of the Saints at length here. If you haven’t read it, you should fix that ASAP.
Are there good immigrants? This is obviously its own huge debate, but I think in short: yeah, high-quality people who actually leave their tribe and join ours and contribute aren’t invaders. Even within that framework, we probably need far, far fewer of them going forward so that we have a chance to reconsolidate our tribal identity.
Great post
Some hard factd here we all must reckon with here.