Yes, the decline is genetic

Average polygenic score for educational attainment, by year of birth in Iceland. The blue line is a quadratic fit for the full range of birth years. The red line is a linear fit for people born in or after 1940. (Kong et al. 2017)

For most of the 20th century mean IQ went up at the rate of 3 points per decade throughout the Western world. This is the Flynn effect (Rindermann 2018, pp. 85-89). Much of the increase seems to have involved a change in mental priorities rather than a rise in intelligence: a culture of doing as we're told has given way to a culture of having several possible responses and picking the right one. But some of the increase seems real, being perhaps due to better nutrition and a more stimulating learning environment.

The Flynn effect is now running out of steam (Flynn 2007, p. 143). In Scandinavia, mean IQ peaked during the late 1990s and has since declined (Teasdale and Owen 2005). Using the Norwegian population registry, two economists, Bernt Bratsberg and Ole Rogeberg, attribute this decline largely, if not entirely, to "within-family variation." In other words, IQ has been declining even among people of similar genetic background, i.e., siblings. So this decline is not due to the poor outbreeding the rich or immigrants outbreeding natives.

All the same, a genetic cause cannot be excluded. In Norway, siblings are less and less genetically similar; they are increasingly half-siblings. This factor can especially affect the methodology of Bratsberg and Rogeberg (2018) because the IQ decline is most measurable between siblings who are born farther apart. As this birth interval increases, so does the probability that the younger siblings is a half-sibling.

This is not a minor factor. Bratsberg and Rogeberg were looking at pairs of brothers. (The IQ data come from the military conscript register, and only men are subject to conscription). To produce a pair of brothers, a woman has to have three children on average. Among Norwegian women with three children, 36.2% have had them by two or more men (Thomson et al. 2014). Furthermore, because those children tend to be born farther apart than children born to the same father, they contribute more to within-family variation.

If the genetic basis of intelligence has been declining within Norwegian families, specifically between older and younger half-siblings, two things must be happening:

1. The average divorced mother has her second child by a man who belongs to a lower-IQ segment of the Norwegian population.

2. Such men have been contributing more than other men to succeeding generations of Norwegians, at least during the last forty years. This point is important. Even if we look only at first-born sons, mean IQ has steadily declined among Norwegians born since c. 1975 (Bratsberg and Rogeberg 2018).

The first point has been proven by Lappegård et al. 2011) in their study of fatherhood and fertility in Norway. Multi-partner fatherhood is most common among men with the lowest level of education (10 years of schooling, "i.e., compulsory education"). Second place goes to men with college or university education (14 to 17 years of schooling, "tertiary degree"), and third place goes to men with upper secondary (11 to 13 years of schooling). 

At age 45, about 15 percent of all men in the 1960-62 cohort with a compulsory education had had children with more than one woman, compared to about 5 percent among men with a tertiary degree. If looking at fathers only (Figure 6), the pattern becomes even more pronounced. At the lowest educational level, 19.3 percent of those who had become fathers, had children with more than one woman, compared to 6.1 percent of those at the highest educational level. (Lappegård et al. 2011)

As for the second point, Lappegård et al. (2011) found that reproductive success is more variable among men with the lowest level of education. Such men have the highest rate of childlessness of all three groups, while having the highest level of multi-partner fertility. Moreover, multi-partner fertility has increased over time among these men, while childlessness has remained constant. Their overall reproductive success has thus gone up:

Like childlessness, multi-partner fertility has increased across cohorts, but unlike childlessness it has increased more among men with lower education than among those with higher education. From the 1940-44 cohort to the 1960-62 cohort the proportion of fathers who had children with more than one woman more than doubled (from 8.9% to 19.3%) in the compulsory schooling group, while it only rose by about 30% in the highest tertiary group, from 4.7 to 6.1 percent. (Lappegård et al. 2011)

Thomson et al. (2014) made the same observation:

In all countries [Australia, United States, Norway, Sweden], however, education is negatively associated with childbearing across partnerships, and the differentials increased from the 1970s to the 2000s.

Moreover, official statistics do not fully capture multi-partner fatherhood. It can be difficult to identify the paternity of children whose biological father is little more than a sperm donor. Lappegård et al. (2011) allude to this difficulty: "some of these men have never been in a stable relationship with the mother." This is less of a problem in Norway, where "only about 1-1.5 percent of the total number of children has no registered father."  The registered "father" may nonetheless be a cuckolded husband or a boyfriend who has agreed to assume paternity of the unborn child. The second situation is not uncommon if the woman is still young and attractive.

It seems, then, that modern Norwegian culture is facilitating the reproductive success of low IQ men. One such man was Anders Breivik's stepfather:

My stepfather Tore, one of my best friends Marius and my more distant friends Kristoffer, Sturla and Ronny are all living manifestations of the complete breakdown of sexual moral. All five have had more than 300 sexual partners (two of them more than 700) and I know for a fact that three of them have one or more STDs (probably all of them).

[...] My mother was infected by genital herpes by her boyfriend (my stepfather), Tore, when she was 48. Tore, who was a captain in the Norwegian Army, had more than 500 sexual partners and my mother knew this but suffered from lack of good judgement and moral due to several factors (media - glorification of certain stereotypes being one).

[...] Tore, my stepfather, worked as a major in the Norwegian military and is now retired. I still have contact with him although now he spends most his time (retirement) with prostitutes in Thailand. He is a very primitive sexual beast, but at the same time a very likable and good guy. (Breivik 2011)

The evidence from Iceland

Iceland isn't Norway but it is culturally similar. According to a recent study, the genetic basis of intelligence has been declining in that country since the cohort born in 1910. The authors used a "polygenic score," based on alleles associated with high educational attainment, to measure the genetic potential for academic achievement from generation to generation:

Here, we investigate the effect of this genetic component on the reproductive history of 109,120 Icelanders and the consequent impact on the gene pool over time. We show that an educational attainment polygenic score, POLYEDU, constructed from results of a recent study is associated with delayed reproduction (P < 10-100) and fewer children overall. The effect is stronger for women and remains highly significant after adjusting for educational attainment. Based on 129,808 Icelanders born between 1910 and 1990, we find that the average POLYEDU has been declining at a rate of ~0.010 standard units per decade, which is substantial on an evolutionary timescale.

This is the same polygenic score I've discussed in previous posts, such as Frost (2018). Certain genetic variants are associated with high educational attainment and others with low educational attainment. Do these variants determine our capacity for intelligence? For the most part, yes, but I suspect that many of them have a stronger bearing on time preference or willingness to sit still in a classroom. The authors concede this point:

We postulate that, in addition to being correlated with cognitive ability (32, 33), POLYEDU is capturing a portion of the propensity to long-term planning and delayed gratification. (Kong et al. 2017)

These other traits still matter. Together, they form a mental/behavioral package that coevolved with the rising middle class over the last millennium, eventually spreading through all social strata (Clark 2007; Clark 2009a; Clark 2009b). That evolution is now unravelling. Reproductive success is shifting toward individuals with "fast life-history": lower cognitive ability, weaker orientation toward the future, and, for men, a larger number of sexual partners with less investment in the resulting offspring (Frost 2012; but see also JayMan 2012). This shift began seventy years before the decline in IQ scores.

It seems, then, that the Flynn effect has masked a longer-term decline in the genetic basis of intelligence and other mental/behavioral traits. This is in line with other recent findings. Woodley et al. (2013) argue that mean reaction time has increased in Great Britain by 13 points since Victorian times, although this finding may be an artefact of better sampling of the general population over time (hbd* chick, 2013). Another study, however, using Swedish subjects, has confirmed this lengthening of reaction time, particularly in cohorts born since the 1970s (Madison 2014; Madison et al. 2016).

Conclusion

The recent reversal of the Flynn effect seems to result from two trends:

1. a positive trend based on increasing familiarity with tests and test-taking, as well as improvements in nutrition and a more stimulating learning environment;

2. a negative trend due to dysgenic factors.

For most of the 20th century the positive trend overwhelmed the negative trend. In Norway, the negative trend has had the upper hand in post-1975 cohorts, partly because the positive trend has exhausted all room for improvement and partly because the current culture is facilitating the reproductive success of sexy, low-IQ men.

I've long believed that human evolution didn't stop in the Pleistocene. Nor did it slow down. In fact, we've changed much more over the past 10,000 years than over the previous 100,000, and I'm talking here not only about our outward appearance but also about our inward qualities of mind and behavior. But we can quickly lose what we so quickly gained. This reverse evolution is now taking place, and it’s visible even in the relatively closed system of Iceland's gene pool.

I used to be unconcerned about dysgenics. Any negative trends would surely take hundreds of years to produce serious consequences. So we would have plenty of time to get all of the relevant facts, discuss everything thoroughly with everyone, and reach a consensus. Well, I was wrong. Our dystopic future is close at hand.

References

Bratsberg, B., and O. Rogeberg. (2018). Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2018, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1718793115

https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1718793115  

Breivik, A. (2011). A European declaration of independence.

https://publicintelligence.net/anders-behring-breiviks-complete-manifesto-2083-a-european-declaration-of-independence/

Clark, G. (2007). A Farewell to Alms. A Brief Economic History of the World. Princeton University Press: Princeton and Oxford.

Clark, G. (2009a) The indicted and the wealthy: surnames, reproductive success, genetic selection and social class in pre-industrial England.

http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/Farewell%20to%20Alms/Clark%20-Surnames.pdf

Clark, G. (2009b). The domestication of man: The social implications of Darwin. ArtefaCTos 2: 64-80.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277275046_The_Domestication_of_Man_The_Social_Implications_of_Darwin

Flynn, J.R. (2007). What is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect. Cambridge University Press.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=qvBipuypYUkC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Frost, P. (2018). A new yardstick. Evo and Proud, May 14

http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-new-yardstick.html

Frost, P. (2012). Are the cads outbreeding the dads? Evo and Proud, November 3

http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2012/11/are-cads-outbreeding-dads.html

Hbd* chick (2013). a response to a response to two critical commentaries on woodley, te nijenhuis & murphy (2013), hbd* chick, May 27

http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/a-response-to-a-response-to-two-critical-commentaries-on-woodley-te-nijenhuis-murphy-2013/

JayMan (2012). It's not the cads, it's the tramps. JayMan's Blog, December 28

https://jaymans.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/its-not-the-cads-its-the-tramps/

Kong, A., M.L. Frigge, G. Thorleifsson, H. Stefansson, A.I. Young, F. Zink, G.A. Jonsdottir, A. Okbay, P. Sulem, G. Masson, D.F. Gudbjartsson, A. Helgason, G. Bjornsdottir, U. Thorsteinsdottir, and K. Stefansson. (2017). Selection against variants in the genome associated with educational attainment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114(5): E727-E732.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/01/10/1612113114.full

Lappegård, T., Rønsen, M., & Skrede, K. (2011). Fatherhood and fertility. Fathering 9: 103-120.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.839.2752&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Madison, G. (2014). Increasing simple reaction times demonstrate decreasing genetic intelligence in Scotland and Sweden, London Conference on Intelligence, Psychological comments, April 25

#LCI14 Conference proceedings

http://www.unz.com/jthompson/lci14-questions-on-intelligence/

Madison, G., M.A. Woodley of Menie, and J. Sänger. (2016). Secular Slowing of Auditory Simple Reaction Time in Sweden (1959-1985). Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, August 18

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00407/full

Teasdale, T.W., and D.R. Owen. (2005). A long-term rise and recent decline in intelligence test performance: The Flynn Effect in reverse. Personality and Individual Differences 39(4): 837-843.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2005.01.029

Thomson, E., T. Lappegård, M. Carlson, A. Evans, and E. Gray (2014). Childbearing across partnerships in Australia, the United States, Norway, and Sweden. Demography 51(2): 485-508

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-013-0273-6

Woodley, M.A., J. Nijenhuis, and R. Murphy. (2013). Were the Victorians cleverer than us? The decline in general intelligence estimated from a meta-analysis of the slowing of simple reaction time. Intelligence 41: 843-850.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e8cc/634169c7c5d3e4738fe08091c86177be1380.pdf

Why is IQ declining in Norway?

Norwegian conscripts (Wikicommons: Soldatnytt) – in Norway, the conscript register provides invaluable information on IQ. This information can then be linked to other registers of the Norwegian population registry

IQ scores have been gradually increasing since the 1930s at the rate of 3 points per decade (Rindermann 2018, pp. 85-89). This increase, named the Flynn effect, has been much debated. Are we becoming more intelligent because of better nutrition and more stimulating learning environments? Or are we simply becoming more familiar with tests and test-taking?

Whatever the cause, this increase seems to be slowing throughout the West (Flynn 2007, p. 143). In Scandinavia, mean IQ peaked during the late 1990s and has since declined (Teasdale and Owen 2005).Why? There is plenty of speculation. Perhaps the poor are outbreeding the rich. Or perhaps lower IQ immigrants are replacing higher IQ natives. Whatever the cause, it seems to be something that is more advanced in Scandinavia than elsewhere in the West. 

Two Norwegian economists, Bernt Bratsberg and Ole Rogeberg, have tried to pin it down. 

Population intelligence quotients increased throughout the 20th century—a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect—although recent years have seen a slowdown or reversal of this trend in several countries. [...] Using administrative register data and cognitive ability scores from military conscription data covering three decades of Norwegian birth cohorts (1962-1991), we show that the observed Flynn effect, its turning point, and subsequent decline can all be fully recovered from within-family variation. (Bratsberg and Rogeberg 2018)

"Within-family variation" means that IQ is declining even among people with more or less the same genetic background, i.e., siblings. More to the point, this within-family decline seems to account for most, if not all, of the IQ decline among Norwegians. So this is not a matter of the poor outbreeding the rich or immigrants outbreeding natives. In fact, it doesn't seem to reflect any sort of genetic change.

All of this assumes, of course, that the genetic differences between siblings are the same now as in the past. That assumption may appear reasonable, but appearances can deceive.

Siblings in Norway are increasingly half-siblings. Among Norwegian women with only two children, 13.4% have had them by two or more men. This figure rises to 24.9% among those with three children, 36.2% among those with four children, and 41.2% among those with five children (Thomson et al. 2014). This multiple paternity is produced not so much by family size as by the passage of time. The probability of a relationship breaking up will increase over time. Brothers who are born farther apart are more likely to have different fathers.

Stepfamilies typically arise when a woman divorces and has a child by a second husband. Or she may divorce, have a child out of wedlock, and then marry a man who provides for the family without ever fathering any children. In this chain of sexual partners, the second or third man is qualitatively different, on average, from the first man. The stepfather, in particular, is less able to compete in the marriage market for one reason or another. In general, he has been less successful in life, and life, in itself, is an IQ test.

So, within a stepfamily, one would expect to see an IQ decline between older and younger siblings. The methodology of Bratsberg and Rogeberg (2018) is especially sensitive to this stepfather effect because the IQ decline is a function of time, i.e., the decline is most visible between brothers born farther apart. As this birth interval increases, however, so does the probability that the younger brother is a half-brother.

How strong is this stepfather effect? Bratsberg and Rogeberg studied the recent IQ decline in Norway by looking at pairs of brothers. The IQ data come from the military conscript register, and only men are subject to conscription. Now, to produce a pair of brothers, a woman has to have, on average, three children. Among Norwegian women with three children, 36.2% have had them by two or more men. So this is not a trifling matter.

There would be no problem if the word "father" in the registries means "biological father." It is now common practice, however, for a stepfather to adopt his wife's children. At that point, he becomes the "father" for all intents and purposes. This has been the case since 1986, when Norway passed The Adoption Act: "If a spouse or cohabitant has adopted a child of the other spouse or cohabitant, the said child shall have the same legal status in relation to both spouses or cohabitants as if he or she were their joint child." The Adoption Act (1986), Chapter 3, Section 13.

This paternity issue affects different registers to different degrees. The family register is most vulnerable. It is updated annually and thus identifies the current legal father as the “father” (Black et al. 2011, note 4). The birth register is least vulnerable. The mother will usually identify the biological father as the "father." The exceptions are cases of infidelity or cases where a new relationship has formed during the pregnancy and the stepfather wishes to be recognized as the child's father.

Bratsberg and Rogeberg (2018) were most interested in the conscript register. This was where they obtained the IQ data. They then used the family register to locate the conscript's brother or brothers, at which point they returned to the conscript register to find that person's IQ. The family register, however, will most likely identify a stepfather as a "father." One would have to go back to the birth files and double-check, but this doesn't seem to have been done.

When I discussed this issue with one of the co-authors, Ole Rogeberg, he replied that very few of the brothers could be half-brothers because the correlation between brothers for IQ was 0.47, and this figure is similar to a previously published estimate of 0.49 for inter-sibling correlation (Paul 1980). That estimate, however, is largely based on American whites, who are a more heterogeneous population than native Norwegians. The inter-sibling correlation should be higher in Norway, and higher figures have in fact been estimated from British samples. Record et al. (1969) found a correlation of 0.55, based on 5,054 pairs of English siblings. 

As for the correlation between paternal IQ and child IQ, this is because most of the fathers are, in fact, biological fathers. Probably about two-thirds of them. That is enough to produce a father/son correlation, but it is not enough to prevent a within-family decline in IQ between older and younger brothers.

Conclusion

The Norwegian population registry has long been popular with population geneticists. It is actually a collection of different registers with information on different life events, but if you know a Norwegian's unique personal identifier you can easily navigate from one register to another to collect information on that person and on all related individuals. Black et al. (2005) have described these registers at length:

Our primary data source is the birth records for all Norwegian births over the period 1967 to 1997 obtained from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway. All births, including those born outside of a hospital, are included as long as the gestation period was at least 16 weeks. The birth records contain information on year and month of birth, birth weight, gestational length, age of mother, and a range of variables describing infant health at birth including APGAR scores, malformations at birth, and infant mortality (defined as those who die within the first year).

[...] Using unique personal identifiers, we match these birth files to the Norwegian Registry Data, a linked administrative dataset that covers the entire population of Norwegians aged 16-74 in the 1986-2002 period, and is a collection of different administrative registers such as the education register, family register, and the tax and earnings register.  These data are maintained by Statistics Norway and provide information about educational attainment, labor market status, earnings, and a set of demographic variables (age, gender) as well as information on families.

[...] Another source of data is the Norwegian military records from 1984 to 2005 which contains information on height, weight, and IQ.  In Norway, military service is compulsory for every able young man. Before entering the service, their medical and psychological suitability is assessed; this occurs for the great majority between their 18th and 20th birthday.  For the cohorts of men born from 1967 up to 1987, we have information on height, weight, and Body Mass Index (BMI), all of which were measured as part of the medical examination. We also have a composite score from three speeded IQ tests -- arithmetic, word similarities, and figures.

At first sight, this collection of registers seems to be a gold mine of information. Unfortunately, the quality of the information has suffered from a social trend that has been stronger in Scandinavia than elsewhere in the West, i.e., the redefinition of the family. As a result, the word “father” no longer has a consistent meaning. In some cases, such as birth records, it usually means the biological father—the man who provided half of the child’s genetic makeup. In other cases, such as the family register, it means the man who provides the family with at least some economic support. Increasingly, the two roles are no longer played by the same person.

This is the nub of the problem. The family unit is no longer defined as a vehicle for procreation. Its members no longer have to share a biological commonality. Increasingly, it is an administrative entity, and as such it can be dissolved and reformed in many ways.

This redefinition of the family calls into question the value of this population registry. Some of its components, particularly the birth records, still provide reliable information on biological relationships, but the same can no longer be said about information that is collected at later times in a person's life and which is continually updated. As a result, we know less and less about the people who are providing the genetic material of the next generation.

References

Black, S.E., P.J. Devereux, and K.J. Salvanes. (2005). From the Cradle to the Labor Market? The Effect of Birth Weight on Adult Outcomes. IZA Discussion Paper No. 1864

http://anon-ftp.iza.org/dp1864.pdf

Black, S.E., P.J. Devereux, and K.J. Salvanes. (2011). Older and Wiser? Birth Order and IQ of Young Men. CESifo Economic Studies 57(1): 103-120.

ftp://193.146.129.230/pdf/papers/pew/PaulDevereux.pdf

Bratsberg, B., and O. Rogeberg. (2018). Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2018, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1718793115

https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1718793115

Flynn, J.R. (2007). What is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect. Cambridge University Press.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=qvBipuypYUkC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Government of Norway. (1986). The Adoption Act. Act of 28 February 1986 No. 8 relating to adoption,

https://www.regjeringen.no/en/dokumenter/ACT-OF-28-FEBRUARY-1986-NO-8-RELATING-TO/id443477/

Paul, S.M. (1990). Sibling resemblance in mental ability: a review. Behavior Genetics 10(3): 277-290.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/eda5/6485400cdddc1b974b9db6edf74acb28fb23.pdf

Record, R. G., McKeown, T., and Edwards, J. H. (1969). The relationship of measured intelligence to birth order and maternal age. Annals of. Human Genetics 33: 61-69.

Rindermann, H. (2018). Cognitive Capitalism. Human Capital and the Wellbeing of Nations. Cambridge University Press.

Teasdale, T.W., and D.R. Owen. (2005). A long-term rise and recent decline in intelligence test performance: The Flynn Effect in reverse. Personality and Individual Differences 39(4): 837-843.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2005.01.029

Thomson, E., T. Lappegård, M. Carlson, A. Evans, and E. Gray (2014). Childbearing across partnerships in Australia, the United States, Norway, and Sweden. Demography 51(2): 485-508

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-013-0273-6

A look back over 2015

 

Marion-Maréchal Le Pen (Wikicommons - Remi JDN). This year, she received 45% of the popular vote in one of France's regions, as a Front National candidate.

 

We must act now to bring anti-globalist parties to power: the UKIP in Britain, the Front national in France, the Partij voor de Vrijheid in the Netherlands, the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, and the Sverigedemokraterna in Sweden. How, you may ask? It's not too complicated. Just go into the voting booth and vote. You don't even have to talk about your dirty deed afterwards.

I wrote the above last January, fearing that Europe would see an acceleration of the massive demographic change already under away—the Great Replacement, to use a term coined by Renaud Camus:

Oh, the Great Replacement needs no definition. It isn't a concept. It's a phenomenon, as obvious as the nose on your face. To observe it, you need only go out into the street or just look out the window. A people used to be there, stable, occupying the same territory for fifteen or twenty centuries. And all of a sudden, very quickly, in one or two generations, one or more other peoples have substituted themselves for it. It's been replaced. It's no longer itself.  We should note that the tendency to consider individuals, things, objects, and peoples replaceable or interchangeable is fairly widespread and in line with a threefold movement whereby people have become industrialized, deprived of their spirituality, and dumbed down. Call it a later and more generalized stage of Taylorism. At first, we replace only the parts of manufactured goods. Then, we replace workers. Finally, we replace entire peoples. (Camus, 2012)

Two breaches have been made in the dike that used to hold back this process of replacement: one in Libya and the other in Syria. Through them is pouring the demographic overflow that has been building up in Africa and the Middle East. Meanwhile, there has been an incredible loss of will among Europe's leaders to do anything, other than hectoring recalcitrant nations like Hungary for not taking their "fair share."

I'm not using the word "incredible" lightly. This wave of immigrants won't be a one-time-only thing. It won't come to an end when conditions improve in their home countries. Indeed, once it gets under way it can only increase in magnitude, and spreading it over a wider area will do nothing to stop the increase. Instead of being confined to Western and Southern Europe, the Great Replacement will be extended to Eastern Europe. Swell. You call that a solution?

Instead of replacing native Europeans, why not replace their leaders? Why not vote them out of office? That was the solution I advocated back in January and still do. Political change is more certain when done by peaceful means at the ballot box, as opposed to being imposed by coercion and illegal acts. Unfortunately, this option faces a number of obstacles.

The obstacles are threefold:

Unwillingness to play by the rules

In this, the problem lies not so much with Europe's nationalist parties as with their opponents. It's the latter who are not willing to play by the rules.

This was the case in Belgium, where in 2004 a court ruling shut down the Vlaams Blok, a party that had won 24% of the popular vote for the Flemish parliament the same year.

In October 2000, the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism, together with the Dutch-speaking Human Rights League in Belgium registered a complaint at the Correctional Court, in which they claimed that three non-profit organisations connected to the Vlaams Blok (its education and research office and the "National Broadcasting Corporation") had violated the 1981 anti-racism law. The publications which were referred to included its 1999 election agenda and 1997 party platform. The challenged passages included those where the party called for a separate education system for foreign children, a special tax for employers employing non-European foreigners, and a restriction of unemployment benefits and child allowances for non-European foreigners. (Wikipedia - Vlaams Blok, 2015)

Elsewhere, nationalist parties have faced a combination of judicial and extrajudicial harassment. Indeed, when antifas commit brazen acts of violence that go unpunished, one cannot help but wonder whether the correct term is "quasi-judicial." The antifas are functioning as a kind of secret police that is allowed to do what the regular police cannot do.

Even without the antifas, the level of harassment is considerable. In 2013, for example, the European Parliament stripped Marine Le Pen of her parliamentary immunity for having denounced the illegal blocking of French streets for Muslim prayers:

For those who want to talk a lot about World War II, if it's about occupation, then we could also talk about it (Muslim prayers in the streets), because that is occupation of territory. ...It is an occupation of sections of the territory, of districts in which religious laws apply. ... There are of course no tanks, there are no soldiers, but it is nevertheless an occupation and it weighs heavily on local residents (Wikipedia - Marine Le Pen, 2015)

For that comment, she was dragged before the courts, being finally acquitted this year. Compare that with the indulgence reserved for the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur when it featured a tweet on its twitter page that called for the mass rape of women who vote FN. The tweet was removed but there was no apology, and there certainly won't be any prosecution by the Minister of Justice—as was the case with Marine's comment.

This is the reality of political debate in Western Europe. One side can speak with impunity, whereas the other has to watch what it says.

Extremist image of nationalism

In 2015, the progress of nationalist parties was not uniform. In Greece, Chrysí Avgí (Golden Dawn) seems to have stalled at 7% of the popular vote. In Norway, Fremskrittspartiet (Progress Party) lost support in local elections, this being part of a decline that began in 2011 … with Breivik's terrorist attacks.

In Norway, it is now difficult to be a nationalist without being associated with Anders Breivik or church burnings by black metallists. In Greece, nationalism is tarred with Nazi-like rhetoric and imagery—this, in a country that Nazi Germany had occupied during the last war. It is a sign of just how bad things are that so many Greeks are still willing to vote for a party that revels in an extremist image.

This problem is inevitable with any movement that begins on the fringes among people who feel alienated. As nonconformists they tend to be lone wolves, and as lone wolves they tend to act without restraint, sometimes mindlessly. Such people are both a help and a hindrance for any new political movement.

Assimilation into the dominant political culture

There is also the reverse problem. In the Venice state election, the Liga Veneta received 41% of the popular vote. This might seem to be good news, since the Liga Veneta is part of the Lega Nord, which in turn is allied with the Front National in France.

Unfortunately, things are not as they might seem. When a new party comes closer to power, it tends to assimilate mainstream values because its leaders now have to navigate within that culture—daily encounters with the media, meetings with campaign donors, invitations to wine and cheese parties ... The result may be seen in the Liga Veneta’s political platform for 2010-2015:

The challenges that Veneto should face in the next decades, said the party, were to enhance "internationalization" in the era of globalization, to overcome the traditional Venetian policentrism and interpret Veneto as a united and cohesive region: a "European region in Italian land". The program stressed also concepts such as "Europe of the regions", "Europe of citizens", "global Veneto", "openness toward the world", "green economy", "urban planning" in respect of the environment, "respect for diversity" and "integration" of immigrants, along with the more traditional "think globally, act locally". (Wikipedia - Liga Veneta)

It is not enough for nationalist parties to gain power. They must also have confidence in their ideas and change the way other people think. Otherwise, they'll end up assimilating into the dominant political culture.

But there was progress in 2015

Despite these problems—harassment, lack of discipline, ideological assimilation—most nationalist parties are moving forward. In the first round of France's recent regional elections, the Front National took first place in six of the thirteen regions in Europe (four others are overseas). Yes, it was shut out in the second round, when left-wing parties threw their support behind the main right-wing party, but this defeat was only a partial one. While not securing the office of president in any region, the FN is now represented on all regional councils of European France, ranging from a high of 34% of council seats in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur to a low of 8% in Corsica. Imagine a similar situation in the United States: a nationalist party with at least 8% of the seats in every state legislature.

This year saw gains for nationalist parties elsewhere. In Poland, Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc (Law and Justice) took power with 38% of the vote, in large part because of its opposition to immigration. In Switzerland, Schweizerische Volkspartei (Swiss People's Party) became the leading party, receiving 29% of the popular vote, up from 27%. In Denmark, Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People's Party) earned 21% of the popular vote, up from 12%.

Outside Europe, in other European-descended societies, the picture is more mixed. In the United States, Donald Trump has shattered the phoney consensus on massive demographic change, but even if elected he will face a long uphill battle against opposition from the bureaucracy and from entrenched factions in society at large, particularly the business community—which has long been a source of funding for the Republican Party.

In Canada, the Conservative Party lost power in Ottawa and the Parti Québécois lost power in Quebec City. To be honest, I feel little regret for either loss. In their earlier incarnation, as the Reform Party, the Conservatives were committed to a sharp reduction in immigration. But that promise fell by the wayside once they took power, and they instead chose a neo-con policy of "Invade the world! Invite the world!" They followed that recipe to the letter and—Surprise! Surprise!—it wasn’t what their own voters wanted, let alone the rest of the electorate. Well, good riddance.

As for the Parti Québécois, it began in the 1960s as an alliance of the traditional left and the traditional right. Over time, both factions withered away, being replaced by the new synthesis of globalism and post-nationalism. The PQ became an anti-nationalist nationalist party. They lost power largely because they could no longer energize their natural constituency while failing to make inroads into others. Well, good riddance.

*****************************************************

This will be my last column for 2015, and I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas! Although I no longer go to church, I still consider Christmas to be a very important time of year when we can spend more time with our loved ones and enjoy the traditions of this mid-winter celebration.

I don't know whether I will resume my column in the new year. The legal environment in Canada has changed over the past few months, especially with the adoption of Bill 59. If need be, I will concentrate on writing papers for academic journals.

References

 

Camus, R. (2012). " Renaud Camus à L'AF : " J'ai une conception lazaréenne de la patrie " ", L'Action française, no 2832,

http://www.actionfrancaise.net/craf/?Entretien-Renaud-Camus-a-L-AF-J-ai

 

Wikipedia - Liga Veneta. (2015)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liga_Veneta

 

Wikipedia - Marine Le Pen (2005).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Le_Pen

 

Wikipedia - Vlaams Blok. (2015).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlaams_Blok#Court_of_Cassation_ruling_.282004.29

 

A pauper's death

 

The Pauper, 1894-1895, Theodor Kittelsen. This and other works by Kittelsen have appeared on Norwegian black metal albums

 

Black metal is a musical subgenre that grew out of death metal and, more broadly, heavy metal. In general, it pushes certain aspects of this genre to even farther extremes: fast tempos, shrieking vocals, and violent stage acts. Black metal bands can be found almost anywhere—Europe, North America, East Asia, even Indonesia and Israel.

In one country, however, it has developed differently, taking violence off-stage and into the political arena. That country is Norway. In the early to mid-1990s, black metallists launched a wave of arson attacks on churches, including one dating from the 12th century. By 1996 there had been 50 church burnings, with similar attacks spreading to Sweden.

Those convicted showed no remorse, and lack of remorse still prevails among many in the black metal scene:

Many, such as Infernus and Gaahl of Gorgoroth, continue to praise the church burnings, with the latter saying "there should have been more of them, and there will be more of them". Others, such as Necrobutcher and Kjetil Manheim of Mayhem and Abbath of Immortal, see the church burnings as having been futile. Manheim claimed that many arsons were "just people trying to gain acceptance" within the black metal scene. Watain vocalist Erik Danielsson respected the attacks, but said of those responsible: "the only Christianity they defeated was the last piece of Christianity within themselves. Which is a very good beginning, of course". (Wikipedia, 2015b)

Why this hostility to Christianity? And why is it more extreme in Norway? These questions are raised in a review of black metal around the world:

Individualistic and anti-Christian rhetoric is common across the American death metal scene, and metal bands worldwide look to native traditions as a means to combat cultural hegemony [...], yet nothing on the scale of the crimes in Norway has occurred elsewhere. (Wallach et al., 2011, p. 198)

One reason is the role of organized religion in Norwegian life. Although there are other denominations, the Church of Norway is the leading one and receives State support. Despite recent legislation in 2012 to weaken this relationship with the State, all clergy remain civil servants, the central and regional church administrations remain part of the state administration, all municipalities must support the Church of Norway's activities, and municipal authorities are still represented in its local bodies (Wikipedia, 2015a)

As either a partner or a rival of the government, the Church of Norway has helped to make public policy: first, the postwar expansion of the welfare state and, later, the boycotts against South Africa. Now, it is leading the push for large-scale non-European/non-Christian immigration, which began in the early 1990s through the "sanctuary movement." By 1993, as many as 140 congregations were housing 650 Albanians from Kosovo. By reframing immigration in moral terms, the Church made it that much harder to place limits on it, since morality is normally perceived in absolute terms, e.g., murder is always wrong, and not wrong within limits (Lippert and Rehaag, 2013, pp. 126-129).

After a lull, this movement is once more on the upswing:

As the group of unreturnable refugees in Norway has risen over recent years, churches have again become places for public appeals for these groups, through hunger strikes, tents camped as protest at the walls of central churches, and asylum marches following old pilgrimage paths. (Lippert and Rehaag, 2013, p.129).

The Church of Norway is now working with Lutherans elsewhere in Northern Europe to facilitate immigration from Africa and the Middle East. At a meeting this year in Trondheim, the Lutheran World Federation pushed for three measures: expansion of Italy's Mare Nostrum initiative to the entire Mediterranean; creation of "safe passage" corridors for migrants; and "just distribution" of migrants within Europe (Anon, 2015).

Norway is not the only country where churches have been promoting African and Muslim immigration, but church involvement is especially pivotal there and in Scandinavia as a whole. Because immigration was very limited until recent decades, it is legitimized much more by Christian universalism than by a pre-existing tradition of immigration, as in the United States, Canada, and France. A second reason is the relative dominance of one State-supported church and the unthinking adherence of most Scandinavians, even atheists, to the Lutheran tradition. Thus, in comparison to other predominantly Christian societies, they can more quickly reach a policy consensus, or have one imposed on them.

When a stage act leaves the stage

This was the social context that radicalized Norway's black metal scene, causing it to go beyond the fake violence of stage performances. Wallach et al. (2011, p. 196) argue that the acts of arson had their roots in "disaffection and alienation from the dominant society," which many musicians tried to channel into "an extended campaign to return Norway to an idealized pagan past through acts of destruction."

That campaign failed. It foundered on the movement's nihilism and contempt for ordinary men and women. "Extreme metal in general does not lend itself well to inciting social change beyond its own scene, since the lyrics are frequently indecipherable and the musical characteristics are often confounding to the uninitiated listener" (Wallach et al., 2011, p. 196). Moreover, as a haven for disaffected people, the metal scene tended to attract loners, exhibitionists, and other misfits. Though perhaps better at seeing through the lies of mainstream society, they lacked the social skills to win the mainstream over to their point of view.

There were of course other reasons why they failed to win over the mainstream. The burning of historic churches antagonized Norwegians in general, including traditionalists and even many black metallists, thus making it easier for the police to crack down and sentence key individuals to lengthy prison terms. Commercial success caused others to become apolitical: "many black metal musicians are now attempting to focus on their actual music and do not want that to be overshadowed by social and political activism" (Wallach et al.,2011, p. 196).

Today, the black metal scene exists mostly as a weird subgenre:

Isolated acts of vandalism still occur, and some in the scene, like Gaahl of Gorgoroth, still engage in violence. Yet the incendiary rhetoric frequently leveled at Western urban society, multiculturalism, and Christianity has not produced the uprising and pagan resurgence that some in the scene claim to desire. (Wallach et al., p. 196)

And Breivik?

It would be tempting to see the church burnings as a prelude to Anders Breivik and the 2011 Norway attacks. Yet, by his own account, Breivik was never into black metal, preferring hip-hop instead. In his manifesto, he disparaged the Oslo metal scene as quiet and law-abiding, an indication that the church burnings had limited support even within that subculture.

[...] As for the right wing community at that time, it was simple. They loved metal and we loved hip-hop. Being into the very small right wing community or the larger mainstream rock community meant Goth girls and hard rock. I disliked both. The big irony was that they; Edward and his friends, were a lot more "normal" than us during this period. They were peaceful while we were violent. They followed the law and rules while we broke the law and ignored the rules again and again. At the same time, the hip-hop community was cheered by the media, praised as the pinnacle of tolerance among the new generation, while THEY were condemned for their political views, systematically harassed and beaten by non-white gangs, extremist Marxist gangs (Blitz etc) and the police. (Berwick, 2011)

During this time of his life, he saw young Muslim men as role models and looked down on "ethnic Norwegians" as sissies:

If I ever got in to trouble I expected my friends to back me up 100% without submitting or running away, as I would for them. Very few ethnic Norwegians shared these principles. They would either "sissy out", allow themselves to be subdued or run away when facing a threat. [...] The majority of people who shared these principles of pride was the Muslim youths and the occasional skinhead.

In time, Breivik became disenchanted, eventually leaving the hip-hop milieu after a personal incident. The more he associated with Muslims and antifas, the more his respect for them became a simple matter of "necessity":

In Oslo, as an ethnic Norwegian youth aged 14-18 you were restricted if you didn't have affiliations to the Muslim gangs. Your travel was restricted to your own neighbourhoods in Oslo West and certain central points in the city. Unless you had Muslim contacts you could easily be subject to harassment, beatings and robbery. Our alliances with the Muslim gangs were strictly seen as a necessity for us, at least for me. We, however, due to our alliances had the freedom of movement.

In short, there is no reason to believe that the black metal scene helped to push Breivik toward his terror attacks. The only elements common to both are Norway itself, its policy of demographic change, and the weak hold of mainstream culture on marginal individuals.

Conclusion

Aside from a few frozen islands and a brief claim to part of Greenland, Norway never had a colonial empire. Nor was it ever involved in the slave trade. Yet, today, the average Norwegian feels more guilt over having white skin and more deference toward dark-skinned people than do citizens of most European countries, including former colonial powers. This is a relatively recent development, being postwar and mostly post-1960—a time when Norway and other Scandinavian countries were striving to assimilate modern Western values, including antiracism.

Scandinavians have been very good at internalizing and acting out those values. They are like model students who have learned to outdo their teachers. This partly reflects—ironically—their cultural homogeneity and their ability to reach consensus and act collectively with little foot-dragging.

This also reflects certain profound psychological traits that characterize Northwest Europeans in general, with Scandinavians forming the epicenter. To the north and west of the Hajnal line, Europeans have long had weaker kinship ties and correspondingly stronger individualism. This social environment has in turn favored a greater emphasis on absolute, universally applicable rules, combined with a stronger desire to expel rule breakers. This system of morality differs from the relativistic, kin-based morality that prevails elsewhere in the world, where right and wrong are more a matter of whose side you are on ... and who does what to whom.

Moral universalism and moral absolutism have brought many benefits. They have enabled Northwest Europeans to free themselves from the limitations of kinship and build large high-trust societies that leave greater room for the individual. But such societies have an Achilles heel. They are vulnerable to people who play by a different rule book, be they native deviants who practice "selfishness for me and selflessness for thee" or immigrants from low-trust, kin-based societies ... in short, the majority of humans on this planet.

In the past, this was no problem because Norway received few immigrants and because rule breakers of any origin were ruthlessly ostracized. Over the past half-century, however, Norwegians have been persuaded that the supreme rule is Thou shalt not be racist. It follows, therefore, that racists are supreme offenders who must be expelled from society, like witches and heretics of another age. A psychological mechanism that once enabled Norwegian society to perpetuate itself has been reprogrammed to ensure its self-liquidation.

That outcome is not far off. In a country of five million or so, it doesn't take long to elect a new people. Even remote Arctic communities like Narvik are starting to look like a cross between Mogadishu and Karachi. Will Norwegians stop before it’s too late?

Stopping means dismantling the moral consensus that has legitimized this massive demographic change. But how? Violence simply confirms the judgment that racism is evil. This is what happened after the church burnings and the attacks of 2011. A moral consensus can be dismantled only by moral means ...by denouncing it openly and nonviolently.

That won't be easy. No one wants to be a "bad" person, and in a conformist society like Norway a rule-breaker is “bad” no matter how stupid the rule may seem. As long as the rule is affirmed and never challenged, people will obey and make others obey. Only when enough people challenge it—openly and defiantly—will the moral consensus weaken and collapse. To get from here to there will be difficult but it can be done. Rules of sexual morality were deconstructed. Why not antiracism?

Finally, Norwegians should remember the cost of being "good." A "good" member of a death cult will die just as surely as a "bad" member. And that is exactly what antiracism has become for Norway. A death cult.

References

 

Anon. (2015). Europe's Lutherans pledge increased efforts to welcome refugees, The Lutheran World Federation, May 19

https://www.lutheranworld.org/news/europe%E2%80%99s-lutherans-pledge-increased-efforts-welcome-refugees

 

Berwick [Breivik], A. (2011). A European Declaration of Independence.

https://publicintelligence.net/anders-behring-breiviks-complete-manifesto-2083-a-european-declaration-of-independence/

 

Lippert, R.K., and S. Rehaag. (2013). Sanctuary Practices in International Perspectives: Migration, Citizenship, and Social Movements, Routledge

https://books.google.ca/books?id=LBAmltBXyUYC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Wallach, J., H.M. Berger, P.D. Greene. (2011). Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music Around the World, Duke University Press.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=1WgxKHHr-2kC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Wikipedia (2015a). Church of Norway

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Norway#Current_issues

 

Wikipedia (2015b). Early Norwegian black metal scene

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Norwegian_black_metal_scene