"America's New Map" Deleted Scene #2

The notorious "Camp of the Saints"

Initial draft drawing by Jim Nuttle

I was determined to make a strong case in the book for a linkage between Americans’ fear of immigrants and — more specifically — White Americans’ fear of displacement into majority-minority status. To that end, I wanted to spend some time on the a key source of that argument, the 1973 French novel by Jean Raspail entitled Camp of the Saints.

Among the various anti-immigrant, White-supremacy, Great-Replacement-Theory types, this is a sort of bible. I read it decades ago and it is compelling in its core scenario dynamic (very Marxian, very French) of the unwashed masses simply realizing their numbers and rising up against the flaccid elites. I won’t go into further details (see the deleted scene below), but it gives off this perfect South-v-North vibe that neatly fits the onset of climate change, thus my desire to use it.

Problem was, it was too much detail and thus a bit of a history detour, since I cite the later Le Grand Remplacement by yet another French conservative Renaud Camus (I know, what’s with the French?). One such reference was enough.

Similarly, my publisher, Glenn Yeffeth, in his long editorial letter on the first submitted draft, opined:

This deep dive into the racist tract The Camp of the Saints doesn’t feel on point to me. If your message is that the migrations north you envision in #7 will face resistance, this seems to be pretty obvious to all, and doesn’t need this diversion.

However, if you, as seems possible you are doing (you aren’t very clear) are trying to say that the resistance to the billions moving north is based on racism and being “Seperators who instinctively crave self-segregation,” this feels very naïve. There is no country or society in the world that would welcome this level of immigration in this timeframe.

Honestly, not really sure what you are trying to say here.

That was enough for me to jettison the segment and dedicate those spaces to something more forward leaning. My target here was too obvious, meaning I ended up going overboard in my criticism. That’s the weird thing about the book: its presentation of White/European fear of a lost civilization is just sympathetic enough (and just racist enough toward non-Whites) to lure you into its logic. In that sense, it is effective propaganda, which is what makes it dangerous

So, here’s the deleted scene (sharp readers will note some sentences that got repurposed elsewhere). I did not mourn it.