On January 23rd, 237 illegal immigrants, escorted by extreme leftists, boarded on a ship from Chania, Crete to Piraeus and from there they traveled to Athens city center where they occupied the building of the Athens University Law School.

Their demand was that of amnesty for all illegal immigrants living currently in Greece. Such a demand—if met—would have contravened the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum but, more importantly, would have been a suicidal own-goal. It would apply to hundreds of thousands of people (moderate estimates talk of 470,000 but illegal immigrants in Greece may well be twice as many, or even more) and it would once again send a signal to all countries in the world that Greece still is ‘soft touch’ on immigration and that if someone, somehow, makes it in the country and stays in long enough, he/she will be legalized sooner or later.

The incident also raises the question why people of the Left are willing to support people who are in the country illegally and organize such stunts which promote demands which are against the rule of law and against the country’s interests. The reply to this has two strands: the first is ideological and the second is political. The people who organized and supported the occupation of the Law School building, be they members of parliamentary parties or not (some of them were, some others were not), are ideologically fixated to a neo-communist worldview. Not only do they not support the Constitution and parliamentary democracy but their actual aim is to overthrow it and to turn Greece into a socialist “people’s republic” (of the Cuban or Venezuelan sort). Their extremism is more apparent now as their moderate comrades, not agreeing with such extremist views, have left them and formed a new socialdemocratic party. Moreover, these people have a perverse view of cosmopolitanism which results in a total rejection of all things Greek (be it the Greek nation, its history, its culture etc). That’s why they unreservedly support a maximalistic view of multiculturalism and want to impose it on the country’s unwilling population.

The neo-communists’ plans have not found much electoral support among Greeks. And that’s where the political strand comes in. For them the immigrants (especially the illegal ones) represent the new proletariat which will act as a battering ram in bringing down the regime of parliamentary democracy. By supporting the large and continuous influx of illegal immigrants (and their ex-post facto legalization) they shatter Greece’s homogeneity and they erode its national identity and social capital. That way they slowly but steadily destroy the pillars which support the Hellenic Republic. Moreover, out of the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants they can gain new recruits who will swell their ranks, new voters (ex-post facto legalized immigrants had the right to vote in the recent local elections) and even new foot-soldiers for when they decide it is time to plunge the country into anarchy and make their final push in order to storm the Winter Palace…

Everyone is entitled to have midsummer night dreams – but not at the expense of the rest of society. What is even sadder is the fact that multiculturalism in any shape or form has turned out to be an utter failure all over Europe. The more pluralist approaches of the UK and the Netherlands have failed in the same way the civic approach has failed in France and the ethnocentric approach has failed in Germany. For example, the riots and the ethnic clashes in the towns of the English North in the Summer of 2001, the suicide bombings of July 2005 by British Muslims in London, the continuous failed terrorist attempts, the signs of disenchantment towards immigrants by the native population, the increasing radicalization of British Muslim youth, etc. are signs of the irreparable failure of multiculturalism in the UK. Similar lists could be made for all aforementioned countries.

Unfortunately, these lessons have not sunk-in in the heads of Greek neo-communists. It seems that what the rest of Europe has realized it has turned out to be a big problem, the neo-communists still consider it as a good solution and as a necessary means for the creation of their socialist utopia!

PS: On February 4th the Minister for Education Ms Anna Diamandopoulou speaking in Parliament on the Law School incident, said that, in her opinion, the occupation was part of a plan organized by left-wing groups which aimed to cause bloodshed in Athens that evening or the following days. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

I’m usually not as pessimistic as Richard about electoral politics.  My attitude yesterday was “talk about how much Republicans suck tomorrow, tonight is all about watching liberals get what they deserve.”   And while the elephants did do about as well as the pundits thought they would, the results out of Nevada can only be described as a crushing blow to the American far right.  Politico reports

Luis Gutierrez is pushing Harry Reid today to return to immigration legislation, on the grounds that Hispanic voters saved his hide.

Reid got an amazing 90% of the state's 12% Hispanic voters, according to exit polls; Sharron Angle got just 8%.

Now for years the establishmentarian conventional wisdom has been that Republicans need to improve their numbers among Hispanic Americans.  On the other hand, writers at VDare, particularly Steve Sailer, have said that the GOP should forget about minorities and focus on getting a larger share of the white vote (See the Sailer Strategy).

If the Politico article is correct, subtract Hispanics out of the Nevada vote and Angle wins by about 5 percent. Despite Angle hammering Reid on the issue of illegal immigration, not enough whites came out to make up for what was lost among the Latino electorate, as the Sailer strategy would’ve predicted.  Not in a relatively conservative state like Nevada, not in a "wave" election year. 

Seems that the conventional wisdom may be right after all.  Harry Reid’s win was a victory for third world, get out the peasants ethnic politics. If the far Right position on illegals couldn’t work in Nevada this year, where and when will it? (It must be noted that Pew Research contradicts Politico, reporting that Angle actually won 30 percent of Latinos, which if accurate means the Sailer Strategy fails even if it doesn't lead Hispanics to vote like blacks.) Also, in Colorado Hickenlooper not only beat Tom Tancredo but got more votes than the Constitution and Republican candidates combined.

Where to go from here? Sailer has got some other ideas that weren’t tried in the Nevada race, like trying to tell Hispanics to vote like Americans and making the Democrats unappealing by branding them "the Black party." We can call this “Cultural Sailerism” compared to what Angle ran on, which was “Classical Sailerism.”  Cultural Marxism proved a more successful strategy in the long run than its intellectual predecessor and hopefully its Sailerist counterpart will have the same fate.

Michelle Malkin tells it like it is:

I have watched and listened to many establishment Republicans and TV talking heads deride GOP Senate candidate J.D. Hayworth as a “clown,” “charlatan,” and a “huckster.”

I have watched and listened to many purported “Tea Party” spokespeople and limited-government lobbyists defend entrenched GOP Senate incumbent John McCain as a “conservative” “hero” who will shrink government and defend our borders.

Hayworth was far from a perfect candidate. But there is no bigger clown, charlatan, and huckster Republican serving on Capitol Hill than four-term, 24-year Big Government fixture John McCain.

After burning through a whopping $21 million in campaign funds to hold on to his seat, McCain is poised to claim a primary election victory over Hayworth tonight.

Some victory.

To stave off Hayworth, the reborn conservative McCain not only had to throw $21 million down the drain. He had to thrown his own old “maverick” self off the bus, start talking like Tom Tancredo, appear on cable news non-stop, disavow all his good friends in the “Eastern press” whose approbation he thrives on in off-election years, and pander shamelessly to the grass-roots conservative base that he has despised, undermined, and spurned for more than two decades.

McLame stubbornly refused to admit his own individual responsibility for supporting the pre-socialization of the economy started under George W. Bush and continued under Obama. Fellow Republicans whitewashed McCain’s fiscal irresponsibility record, including his support for:

*The $700 billion all-purpose, earmark-stuffed TARP bailout;

*The $25 billion auto bailout;

*The $300 billion mortgage entitlement bailout; and

*The $85 billion AIG bailout; and

*The costly, intrusive, junk science-fueled Climate Change agenda.

McNasty attacked Hayworth with more verve and vitriol than he ever could muster up for that “decent man” that “you don’t have to be scared of” — Barack Obama.

The most notorious Johnny-come-lately on border security in Washington, McAmnesty couldn’t get enough of the very same fences he openly cursed in front of open-borders crowds.

His cynical embrace of Arizona’s SB1070 enforcement law fooled no one who is fully informed about his radical, sovereignty-sabotaging ties.

Flashback January 2008: Remember?

Shamnesty peddler John McCain taps former Mexican government official/shamnesty advocate Juan Hernandez as his presidential campaign Hispanic Outreach Director.

Hernandez is a fellow at McCain’s “Reform Institute.” What has he been working on there for the past year?

“Dr. Juan Hernandez serves as a Senior Fellow of the Institute’s Comprehensive Immigration Reform Initiative.”

That is: Shamnesty.

Among the immigration projects at McCain’s Reform Institute: An art contest in which students depicted their protests against a southern border fence.

The winner on the American side of the border?

Here:

The grand prize winner incorporated the specious open-borders propaganda comparing our fence to keep trespassers out to the Berlin Wall designed to wall people in:

Is this what McCain believes in his heart, too? No wonder he cursed the “goddamned fence.”

I’ve come to the conclusion that discourse among American conservatives has degenerated into little more than “values” button-pushing. Mention the Culture of Life, and you can argue for just about anything -- including open-borders immigration.

Take this from Cesar Conda, Dick Cheney’s former assistant for domestic policy, who is pro-immigration for lofty, moral reasons that have nothing to do with his ethnicity:

As a pro-immigration conservative (yes, I know, we could fit in a phone booth), I am opposed to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R., S.C.) proposal to end birthright citizenship for babies who, through no fault of their own, are born in this country to illegal immigrants. Innocent children shouldn’t be held responsible for the sins of their parents.

In terms of why not amend the Constitution: The Fourteenth Amendment rejected the idea that someone could be a person but less than a person legally, as well as the idea that citizenship can be made dependent on race. It is of enormous symbolic importance. There is no data supporting the claim that significant numbers of women deliberately cross the border to give birth in the United States in order to take advantage of this provision.

Further, the Republican party would be committing political suicide if it were to endorse ending birthright citizenship, as it would cost the party Latino votes, which are crucial in Florida and in several Western states. It could also hurt the GOP’s prospects in the upcoming mid-term election by diverting attention from the Democrats’ record of over-spending, over-taxing, and exploding the national debt. Given inexorable demographic trends, the GOP could be rendered politically irrelevant, certainly at the presidential level, for generations.

But wearing my other hat as the co-chair of the Susan B. Anthony List’s executive committee (though speaking strictly for myself), my biggest fear is that Graham’s proposal, if enacted by constitutional amendment or by statute, will lead to more abortions: Undocumented immigrants with unplanned pregnancies might choose to have abortions instead of risking apprehension by the police or government immigration agents (not to mention possible deportation down the line) at the hospital maternity ward. Some women terminate their pregnancies for less serious and sometimes superficial reasons. It also might encourage women to have unsafe births outside of a hospital setting.

Senator Graham’s plan to end birthright citizenship is not only substantively and politically flawed, but it undermines a bedrock principle of modern conservatism — preserving the sanctity of life. Republicans and conservatives ought to think long and hard before embracing such a controversial proposal.

Perhaps Cesar will next inform us that Americans who desire immigration restriction “don’t support the troops” because closing our borders would keep out Iraqi migrants and refugees, and thus imply that they are not ready for democracy, which would demoralize our fighting men and women currently expanding the blessed form of government in the Middle East. This seems no more ridiculous than the argument above.