Why diversity isn't a strength. The Backlash effect.

Within Murray Rothbard's posthumous Published book, The Progressive Era, the third chapter discusses the voting patterns of people prior to the start of this so-called Progressive Era in the late 1800s, specifically from the late 1880s to the early 1890s.

Murray Rothbard goes into great detail to discuss the ethnic and religious factors related to voting during this period. To quote directly from the book:

“A third factor influencing voting patterns was the backlash effect; that is, in those townships or wards where opposing religious groups lived side by side, friction and hostility came much more intensely to the fore. In particular, in those townships where German Lutherans, even highly liturgical ones, had to rub elbows with their ancient foes, the ultra-liturgical Catholics, the Lutherans tended to vote more heavily Republican. A striking example is two townships in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin. In Mishicot township, made up of Wisconsin Synod Germans, the vote in 1880 was 87% Democratic; but in Manitowoc township, consisting of a mixed group of Wisconsin Synod and German Catholics, the Lutherans, in reaction, voted Republican en masse, making the total Democratic vote only 33%.” (p. 126)

I had never heard of this backlash effect before, even though personally, I theorized that such a phenomenon exists: when people groups come into close contact or live in close proximity, they become more identitarian, nationalistic, and hostile.

The Progressive Era, which saw an influx of migration from Europe, as well as high birth rates of Irish Catholics, arguably witnessed the greatest rise in ethnic hostilities America had seen up to that point in time.

Below shows the ethnic and religious voting patterns of the American Midwest during this era.

Despite all these people listed above being European Christians, who are physically indistinguishable from one another, they still self-segregated and were quite hostile toward one another. Anti-Catholic hatred was very common in the United States even up until the 1960s, with many believing John F. Kennedy would be loyal to the Catholic Church and the Pope over the United States.

Of course, now any serious racial hatred between white European ethnic groups has all but subsided, and all of the different groups mentioned above have, for all intents and purposes, become Americans through and through.

But that doesn't mean the current influx of third-world immigrants will or can assimilate. Gypsies have lived in Europe for nearly a millennium, and they've been a small population surrounded overwhelmingly by many different European ethnic groups, yet they have retained their culture and their sleazy, smelly ways.

This backlash effect is far from unique to the United States. Within any nation or community, if there are two groups of ethnically or religiously different peoples, animosity is bound to erupt with literally no notable exceptions in all of human history.

To counter this truth, many mainstream historians and left-wing history YouTubers may bring up the idea of an Andalusian paradise that was tolerant, especially in Muslim Spain under the rule of the Umayyad dynasty.

But as Dario Fernández-Morera lines out in his 2016 book The Myth of Andalusian Paradise, this is far from the truth.

Well, Morera never used the term "backlash effect" in his book, as far as I can remember. He did discuss the ethnic, religious, and nationalistic hatreds that grew in Islamic Spain due to its diversity.

The ruling Umayyad dynasty practiced the Maliki school of Sunni Islam, and if anyone else practiced a different school of Sunni Islam, or God forbid, Shia Islam, they would be put to death. This made the Umayyads far less tolerant than their Eastern Fatimid and Abbasid contemporaries.

There were also many laws regarding what the religious minorities, such as Jews and Christians, could and couldn't do. For example, a Christian could not own Muslim slaves, a Christian man and a Muslim woman could not marry, but a Muslim man could marry a Christian woman, whose children would be raised as Muslims—the children could not be raised as Christians.

A Muslim could not eat food that was leftover by a Christian or a Jew.

A Christian could not repair a church if it was adjacent to a Muslim neighborhood.

Both Jews and Christians were given the status of dhimmi and were forced to pay the jizya tax, a tax applied to non-Muslim people living in Muslim nations. Muslims weren’t the only ones that were extremely ethnocentric and rigid in their beliefs in Al-Andalus. The Jews of Spain were equally extreme in their beliefs. The Jews didn't allow their people to mingle with others of the peninsula. The Jews, didn't allow their people to mingle with others of the peninsula. I remember one horrific case where a Jewish woman had her nose cut off by her community for getting into a relationship with a Christian man. The Jews, like the Muslims, were also harsh on what they saw as heretical sects. The Karaite branch of Judaism began to take hold among many Jews of Al-Andalus; the Karaites did not believe in the Babylonian Talmud and were comparatively more liberal than Rabbinic Judaism when it came to allowing women into positions of power. The Rabbinic Jewish majority was extremely harsh on what they saw as heretics. When the Reconquista continued, the king of León's Jewish advisors told him to persecute the Karaites.

Moving away from medieval Spain, we find many more examples of the backlash effect. Within the Republic of Ireland, most Irish have generally become pretty secular and far less religious than they once were. While the Irish Catholics and Protestants in the northern part of Ireland may not be particularly devout religiously, they are very identitarian, at the very least culturally Catholic and culturally Protestant. All politics in Northern Ireland can basically be summed up as a Protestant-Catholic divide.

Within modern-day Canada, in fact, many countries that have had a large Sikh migration, Khalistani activism, and identification with the Khalistani movement have become very popular. Every single day, I see Khalistani decals on cars, and I'm not exaggerating. Within the city of Brampton, they even held a referendum on Khalistani independence where 110,000 people showed up, voting 95% in favor of independence. Similar referendums were held in Calgary, where 55,000 people showed up, and Surrey, BC, where 60,000 people showed up; all of them had over 95% in favor of independence. This issue is not unique to Canada—within Italy, there are 200,000 Sikhs, and 64,000 showed up for a referendum on Khalistan in Rome. But here's the thing: the movement within India itself is small and dormant, with Khalistani parties not even having seats in the Punjab legislature. There have only been a couple of notable instances of Khalistani terrorism over the last 20 years in India. The reason the movement is so popular among the Sikh diaspora is once again because of the backlash effect: Sikhs are now ethnically and religiously isolated. Even if there are large numbers, with 800,000 of their kind in Canada, they are still a small minority, even if they consist of a majority in a given area. In Brampton, Sikhs make up 25% of the population, which makes them the largest singular group but still a minority, while many regions of Punjab have an over 99% Sikh population.

The Sikhs feeling isolated and working shit minimum wage jobs become far more identitarian than the Sikhs who live entirely among other Sikhs. Another example would come from Iraq, which is roughly 55% Shia and 40% Sunni Muslim. Both are extremely identitarian, with the Sunnis of Iraq, after being dispossessed from bureaucracy and government roles by a Shia majority, Founded ISIS after the fall of Saddam Hussein. ISIS perpetuated genocide against the Shias of Iraq, who since then have become even more identitarian. The remaining Iraqi state can, for all intents and purposes, be considered a Shia theocracy, with them recently lowering the age of consent from 15 to 9, because that was the age when the prophet Muhammad consummated his marriage with his child bride Aisha. This stands in stark contrast to Iran, where Shia Muslims make up over 90% of the population, and while people do nominally identify as Shia, they have become increasingly less religious and more secular.

I could honestly see in the near future Iraq becoming the heartland of Shia Muslims and the benefactor and founder of Shia terrorist organizations like Hezbollah or the Houthis, while Iran takes a back seat and possibly reinstates the monarchy. There are many more examples of the backlash effect throughout human history and the modern world; the entire continent of Africa could be considered a byproduct of the backlash effect. It is probably the most well-recorded pattern in human behavior in history, and yet people still believe diversity is our strength somehow.

Anyway, this was Dark Age Sage, and see you in the next one.