This book got pulled from Amazon like 2 days after I bought it (Mein Kampf still available in folio edition though, gj amzn) which is just to say that if there's one thing about me it's that if you tell me I can't read something, imma read it twice.

That being said, this book is racist and deserves the criticism that has caused it to be pulled from many a shelf, though I think that doing so is largely just performative virtue signaling especially when refusal to uniformly apply such treatment to e.g. SCUM manifesto, most of de Sade, various other manifestos, etc. implies a tacit endorsement or toleration of their respective contents. This isn't even a cry of "Bezos is treating rightwing ideas unfairly" bc see the above list – it's just an incoherent policy which can only be selectively applied as a knee-jerk reaction because the volume of "probably-bannable" books is effectively infinite if you open that can of worms and decide to become the arbiter of what is and is not okay to carry on your shelf. Go read Areopagitica you twat.

As for the book itself, the editorial and authorial prefaces detailing the philosophical undertones of the book and its reception since first publication are simultaneously much better than the book itself and, thus, at least partially dishonest about the message contained within the narrative.

According to the editorial preface, "The Camp of the Saints is about modern spiritual self hatred," which I would agree with - but I think this message is severely muddied by the racism.

The book could be argued to be anti-colonialist because all it does is voice the same concerns about a disappearing population like those victims of European colonialism.

His only fault was discussing a place not so foreign that the Western reader on average had never heard of it.

Preface states that Raspail's literary career began because of his sympathy for the Algonquins that he encountered on a canoe trip from France to New Orleans. (I thought this was cool, but after completing the book, I fail to see the connection... Maybe just included as a biographical nugget to try to prove that Raspail was not as hateful of a white supremacist as his narrator winds up being).

The preface describes how the book can be understood as a response to Sartre, who is maybe the most cucked philosopher after Nietzsche and Foucault. He [Sartre] demanded the need for reverse colonization, calling for Europeans to starve under hunger to correct the folly of their colonial ways. He was upset that it didn't happen, and that his vision remained a fiction. The preface claims that the book merely imagines Sartre's vision. In many ways this is true, but the damning thread is the narrative (omniscient) undertone throughout is not just that unchecked mass immigration is bad (not a hot take) but that the specific instance of Indian (non-white) immigration is bad. The preface equivocates about it being frowned upon to take pride in white heritage, which is maybe true, and that population replacement threatens white people (also not a controversial take). The preface fails to mention that the novel quickly leaps upon the strawman it constructs to inject white-supremacy (not just white/European/French pride and defensive preservation) into the argument against mass immigration. I think that the book would be just as effective if the mass of migrants was an ambiguous hoarde of other white people. The policy arguments remain the same, but Raspail is waaaayyyy tooo eager for it to be a vile brown hoarde of poo flinging barbarians and again exploits the omniscient narrator to make moral statements about the quality of these people based on the color of their skin. For Raspail, culture (and all the other axes along which "incompatibility" may be legitimately voiced) are strictly downstream of actual skin color.

The message comes not from the migrants, but from the Western ideology that forces the issue that they are clamoring for

I do like the argument that Raspail is indicting the West far more so than the migrants, the preface says something along the lines of him "merely holding up a mirror to their own willingness to forfeit responsibility to their citizenry to demonstrate a willingness to correct colonial wrongdoings." Along these lines, I think that he has surely been vindicated. This book tends to come up whenever Europe has a migration hullabaloo – and for that reason many passages indicting the West are bar-for-bar accurate qua Syrian refugee crisis being the the most recent one in my lifetime.

The migrants are described as being materially and culturally destitute. That is why they seek to immigrate to the West.

Sartre says something about how we ought to hope to be a native in the furthest corners of the world at his worst rather than a former settler, and Raspail is responding directly to this crazy claim which is filled with self loathing.

This kind of begs the question of can you separate people from the systems they exist within. People certainly make up the culture, and also some of those same people are responsible for the inequalities that the other people are seeking to escape from via the West. But I think that the preface might gloss over this a little bit too much. That being said, I don't know how you would handle this without falling victim to what aboutism, and Raspail doesn't even really try, he just goes mask off "brown = bad."

The president's wavering remark that it is up to each individual's responsibility to decide according to his own conscience atomizes the nation and dissolves it into individuals.

This is a very interesting and potentially dangerous authoritarianism read, but I don't think that it's entirely flawed.

Modern Catholic Christianity has been enrolled to universal humanitarianism, resulting in priests turning their back on their own flocks and seeking a messianic eschatology in finding Christ in each of the migrants.

Spot on. Hilarious that the Pope (who Raspail pays lip-service to in his preface) is called Benedict XVI and hails from South America. One of many curious tea leaves which he saw.

Decolonization is existential and violent. The colonized is only able to reassert himself by revolting against the colonist. This is not a right wing take.

This is the logical conclusion of Fannon and Sartre's's stated philosophies about how the colonized succumb culturally, morally, and obviously-geographically to the superior domination of the colonizer.

As for the book itself, the writing is just upper-mid. Obviously "derivative" of the rest of the dystopian hallmarks and of about the same prose quality. Raspail is willing to delve into strawman polls (Ch 32) with made up (?) statistics of favorability of racism, as well as scathing quotes from his fictitious pope about charity meaning bending over and basically spreading it. There is not too much dialectics – not that there has to be, but the combo of such a shoe-horned scenario, the omniscient narrator who reinforces ever last racist remark made (permissibly, within the confines of fiction) by every character, and the damning conclusions of the narrator's overtly racist leanings make for a less-than-intellectual argument made condescendingly and disgustingly from someone who is basically a broken clock...

As mentioned, would be as effective without portrayal of "barbaric" behavior of the mob, leaving it to the imagination of an unnamed foreign mob. But also there’s absolutely zero reason or obligation for the author to do that – would be like pulling a punch given what all else he is willing to dramatize.

god restoring whites to their proper place

preface didn't touch that ^

Wrongful dismissal of past violence (WWII) as being made by generations who did not have fully formed consciences, and that those acts were performed by wars of the rich. I don’t think that this is what the author actually believes, but it weakens the president’s argument for damn sure.

Attribution of STDs to racial intermixing rather than the disease ridden conditions on the ships. Those conditions are implicitly downstream of race for author who pretty much believes that the anti-christ will be born out of interracial marriage.

The problem in the abstract is thought provoking, but projected onto his racist specificities, I couldn't help but roll my eyes at the rhetorical vacuity of a book which received such high praise from the left behind closed doors according to Rapsail's preface. A 5th grader could dismantle his argument.

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