Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa

The deepest questions an individual faces in life concern his or her posterity. Where will your children have the best chance of survival, success, and raising their own families? She quotes Russell Kirk, who said eloquently that society is a community of souls, joining the dead, the living, and those yet unborn. It coheres through what Christians call love of neighbor, facilitated by a shared language, literature, habits and heroes. Mercer goes back to these deep questions at every turn in this philosophical analysis of the differences among the societies she knows. Though she has chosen to live in the United States, she is deeply critical of the direction it is taking. She would not claim to have found her "community of souls" anyplace she has lived. I, your reviewer, am a Mayflower descendent who has abandoned the United States to raise a second family in Ukraine to escape the despair and self-loathing which seems to have paralyzed my adult children, and to escape the increasing dangers to life and property which Mercer sees the same way I do.

Mercer is a libertarian. She believes, like the American founding fathers, that people are endowed by their Creator with different levels of ability, and should be allowed by a free society to rise to whatever position their merit would entitle them. This puts sets her in opposition to any scheme in which society's goods are distributed on the basis of race or tribe. This is, of course, exactly what is happening in both the United States and South Africa. Without apology, societal resources are being redistributed in the name of affirmative action to minorities with enough clout to extort them out of the bureaucrats, who are not merely spineless, but complicit in such schemes because they expand their own power.

In South Africa the beneficiaries are of Nelson Mandela's Xhosa tribe. The losers are above all the whites, but also other tribes such as the Zulus. In the United States the beneficiaries are Blacks and Hispanics, the losers are above all white males. However, one notes that reverse discrimination also works against the interests of Jewish and Asian Americans with regard to college admission, and other minorities such as Native Americans, who are not so politically savvy, seem as often as not to be left out because they can be cynically overlooked.

Mercer's version of South African history is a story which I had not read elsewhere and is well worth reading. She takes particular interest in Nelson Mandela, who is enshrined as a saint in the United States, never the subject of a critical word from either Republicans or Democrats. He turns out to have been in his youth just another angry Marxist African. A small degree of sophistication, some incredible luck, and the support of a credulous Western press, and the naïve hopes of Western governments propelled him to the presidency. Defying all common sense, the white government and world advisors led South Africa to an unvarnished winner-take-all, majority rule type of democracy. Better models were available: the federal system from the United States, or various parliamentary systems. Totally predictably, the African National Congress took power and has never relinquished it.

I knew from press accounts that South Africa was a very dangerous country. Mercer emphasizes that this is not by accident, and the victims are not random. The criminals and the police are in cahoots, and white victims find little justice. Particularly oppressed are the farmers, almost 10 percent of whom, more than 3000, have been murdered since 1994 under the new South Africa. Mercer pleads their case at length, and underscores the cynicism by which Western governments refuse to recogize victims of egregious racial hatred when said victims are white.

She takes an almost prurient interest in the most heinous of crimes, such as raping babies under the shamanistic belief that sex with a virgin will cure AIDS, and the sadistic rapes, tortures and murders of white women by gangs of blacks. South Africa's police have stopped maintaining reliable statistics, and stopped releasing any statistics at all in many cases. The United States does a much better job. The FBI crime statistics do categorize perpetrators and victims by race. Even though Hispanics are lumped in with whites, significantly inflating the apparent rate of white crime, blacks commit several times more violent crimes than whites. I had read an analysis of these FBI statistics in a document called "The Color of Crime," available online.

Mercer emphasizes the degree to which hatred and envy drive black on white crime. This should be intuitively obvious. What is interesting is the fact that the governments of both South Africa and the United States stubbornly refuse to recognize that blacks could hate whites. Their dogma is that the hatred goes only one way.

Her most powerful chapter is entitled "Why Do WASP Societies Wither?" What is this death wish that we have? Why do we WASPs flagellate ourselves for supposedly unpardonable sins in our past, such as colonialism and slavery? It is absurd. All of these things are five generations or more in the past; United States was never much of a colonial power. Though my ancestors were in the United States at the time of slavery, they were Northerners. Methodists and Presbyterian abolitionists. Rather than having anything to be ashamed of, I should be proud that they led the battle to do away with slavery. The irony is that the United States was far from the only country to practice slavery, but together with England, and at considerable expense, it was at the forefront of eliminating it. As Mercer points out, South Africa pours scorn on the United States for our history of slavery, absolutely ignoring the much longer, continuing history of slavery in the Muslim world. Instead, they embrace the tyrants of the Muslim world as their comrades in arms against the evil white man. Mercer calls it a combination of envy and opportunism. The Africans envy our material wealth, and they have learned that they can shake us down pretty successfully.

The question of why we WASPs are such pigeons, such dupes to this sort of manipulation is interesting. Why are we committing cultural suicide? We hate ourselves, We feel guilty about our past, we feel guilty about bringing children into our world, we feel guilty about taking any pride in, or even teaching our history. Mercer says that this is a particularly WASP problem. Jews do not have a proclivity to such self-loathing. They have thick skins; they have been picked on and called names for generations. Mercer attributed to our pietism, the teachings of our religion. I'm not sure that she has a full answer to the question, but it is certainly one worthy of investigation. On this topic, one thing I enjoy about Ukraine is that it has no sense of national guilt. In recent centuries it has been the victim of aggression by Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Germany, Austria, and Turkey. Among others. It is unapologetic about what happened to Jews here; after all, it was a Soviet Jew who directed the Holodomor in which three million Ukrainians, my wife's ancestors among them, died. Today all Ukraine wants is to be left alone to enjoy its new sovereignty. The people are happy being who they are - a wonderful change from the University of Maryland campus where I was six years ago, where the message I got from all quarters was that as a white male I should be embarrassed even to breathe.

Born in South Africa, Mercer immigrated with her rabbi father to Israel in 1965 when his advocacy for democracy in South Africa made him an outcast. She returned in the 80s to study, marry, and start a family, after which she immigrated to the United States via Canada. She writes with personal authority, and on the strength of having read very widely in many fields and languages. Her "Cannibal's Pot" title - taken from Ayn Rand - is a bit provocative. Don't let it deceive you into thinking she is a doctrinaire anything. She is her own person, and has a tremendous story to tell. I'm glad to share a bit of it here.

Ilana Mercer has a gift for the written word that cannot be taught. She also has a brilliant mind grounded in fierce intellectual and moral courage. The result of this talent and courage is Into the Cannibal's Pot, a meticulously documented work that also manages to read like a page-turner given the power of the writing.

Perhaps you, like me, were indoctrinated at a young age about the evils of Western man, his rape of more earth-friendly cultures, his inherent racism given the power he yields in the socities he's conquered. You may have sat dumbfounded through it all, wondering how one group of people could be so bad while everyone else could be so good. A simplistic description of modern academia, perhaps, but one that anyone who's sat through an insufferable liberal arts course at most universities would probably recognize. Mercer blows the lie apart, demonstrating the adversity overcome by Afrikaners as they brought prosperity to a part of the world that had never seen it, the beneficial growth enjoyed by Afrikaners and blacks alike as a result of this culture, and finally, the systematic betrayal of this culture and disaster in the aftermath.

This book is no apology for apartheid, but instead a clear lesson in being careful what you wish for. The unthinkable hardship endured by South African whites may not get a lot of airplay in the West, but it is real, and it may be coming to a place near you if contemporary trends of rewarding sociopathic behavior continue.

This book was clearly a labor of love, difficult to read in certain places due to the graphic horror described, but I'm sure just as difficult for Mercer to write. Mercer's is a unique voice, a unique talent, and an honest account that must be told. Buy this book and your eyes will be opened.

...until I saw that the author was both heavily jewish and a follower of ayn rand (purposely not capitalized). Much of the South African civil rights movements were led by jews (Slovo, for example). Additionally, the crux of Western societal destruction is a pervasive movement called Critical Theory which started in Columbia University by zionist jews from the Frankfurt School. It has been successfully injected into our society to create political correction. To note, ayn rand (aka alissa rosenbaum) is a destructive agent promoting selfish individualism instead of a cohesive society thru her "literary" meanderings called books. She was yet another cold war agent from the USSR pretending to hate communism.

I have been reading Ms Mercer's column in World Net Daily for years now and have always found her analysis of current events and the state of the culture very poignant, well written and thought provoking. Her latest book is no exception. While not an apologist for the apartheid government, she concisely explains its origins, reasons for it's creation, it's positive aspects (law and order, first-world cities and economy, etc.), it's negative aspects (depriving a whole class of people of their economic rights), and the destructive path that the country is on since its end. As a former anti-apartheid activist, she is well qualified for this task.

While the West, in particular the US and UK, pat themselves on the back for the demise of the apartheid government, which was far from perfect, they have helped to unleash more loss of life and deprivations for far more people in the time period since apartheid ended than all forty-plus years of the old government. I never thought of SA as a microcosm for the ills of the West and the suicide track that it seems to be on until now, which shows that there are important lessons to be gleaned from this book, and I encourage those who love liberty and cherish classical liberal (western) values to read it Even those who don't - read it, and you may learn something.

One last comment, she talks about the plight of the Boer farmer and how they are being systematically exterminated. Where are the media now? Where is the outcry of Western governments for what amounts to be ethnic cleansing?

Well done Ilana, and I look forward to the next one.

And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.
--- Revelation 20:9 King James Version [[ASIN:1585161519 Holy Bible: King James Version]]

John the Divine's Camp besieged and destroyed, as divinely ordained, by its enemies. Ilana Mercer reveals another besieged Camp. An overwhelmed Camp that sits on the cusp of destruction. Through tears induced by righteous rage, Ms. Mercer introduces the reader to her beloved Republic of South Africa ("RSA") and the White Tribe that built this nation with grit and glory.

This Camp is a tad larger than John's hallucinatory Jerusalem. This magnificent European outpost has "abundant natural resources," "a competent civil service," "a gold-backed currency," a "sophisticated banking and financial system" and "skyscrapers and a space program." It is society informed by "Western civilization, and the legal philosophy of liberalism that evolved within it...," a society "`...characterized by an obsession with imposing restrictions through proper legislation, and with due process in executing these law.'"

And what of the tribe that built this Camp?

" `... one of the most rugged, virile, unconquerable races ever seen upon earth...'" A tribe as pious as it is fierce. Puritans who, like the Divine John, "...were scripturally steeped in the Hebraic faith." Who, "...in their community...saw an extension of the covenant God formed with the Israelites." The Camp was a "....Staunchly traditional Christian country. Stores closed on Sundays, which was a holy day, not a holiday."

Now gaze upon their enemy, if you can. The Saints' enemy is Legion. Let us meet them each in turn.

We are introduced to "a culture of envy." A culture which "...picked up machetes to slash to bits nearly a million of their Tutsi neighbors... `slashing at their own perceived ugliness, as if destroying this thing of beauty, this thing they could never really attain, removing it from the earth forever.'" The enemy also uses rape as a war tactic. War against the Saints, of course. In accounts this writer cannot even bear to summarize, and which almost make him blind with rage, she shows how the Enemy kills and rapes and loots and maims "`this thing of beauty, this thing they could never really attain, removing it from the earth forever.'" We learn that the "indigenous people" with the aid and abetment of the ANC, are in the process of looting white property, virtue and life. Ms. Mercer rightfully slaps us in the face with the Enemy's brutality. Those among us who call ourselves men should feel ashamed and de-balled by our universal failure to stop this, or even notice it.

This brutal, ugly and envious is also stupid. One learns that "`[B]arely one percent of black high school students pass higher grade math, and very few opt for tough subjects at University, such science or engineering.." We are astonished to learn that "`One-third of all beneficiaries of all councilors controlling budgets in the billions are illiterate.'" So dismal is the Enemy's ability to navigate the 21st Century that even its well-wishers are forced to concede that "`It pains me to say this, but my African collegues who manage large companies or government departments tell me that get a job done, you usually have to employ a white.'" "Alas," in the new RSA, "white males are not supposed to comprise more than ten percent of the payroll."

Toynbee famously observed that "Civilizations die by suicide, not by murder." The description of the enemy above should be sufficient for those of keen mind to conclude that such a creature could not besiege and conquer the Camp of the Saints. It had "someone on the inside." "Black Power" in and of itself was too weak to defeat the white tribe of Africa; a tribe that had known defeat but once, and that too at the hands of their cousins from overseas.

An archetypical example of the "inside man" is The Economist. A magazine famously devoted, since September 1843, to take part in "a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress". This avowedly liberal magazine supports the ANC's demand for "`making white farmers transfer forty percent of their farms by value to black shareholders,'" and describes the blood-thirsty ANC as a "`friendly monolith.'" Instead of standing like a wall with the besieged Saints, the Economist brushes off ongoing genocide by describing it as "discontent over the loss of `status, flag, party, geographical place-names and most of their schools'" Ms. Mercer turns to the chestless wonders at the Economist and wonders if "[the Economist] will consider ethnic cleansing campaigns against farmers to be screamingly funny?"

The inside man is, in a word, a traitor. A man who betrays a trust. In this case, the Camp was betrayed by its cousins overseas. An alliance that Ms. Mercer describes as "the Anglo-American-Australian Axis of Evil." Let us turn to another writer who (in?)famously described yet another Camp of the Saints([[ASIN:1881780074 The Camp of the Saints]]) for a brief description of the Traitor "A species the West abounds in, and it seems to get richer and richer the smaller it grows...Since that day in 1522, the twelfth of October, when that noble knight Andrea d'Amaral...threw open the gates of Rhodes to the Turks..."

In brief, there is something within the Western man, the white man, that compels him to betray his kind. And the worst kind of traitor is the one who betrays his kind for "principle." Ms. Mercer savages the American "idee fixe of the propositional nation" and "...the infatuation among America's political class with the black liberation movement." Whether it is Leftism, or "a degraded Protestantism" ([[ASIN:0826214177 Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Towards a Secular Theocracy]]) or something even darker, there seems to be no end in sight to white ethnomasochism, or corresponding sadism. Not only will these traitors not own up to their crimes, but they will not even give refuge to their besieged cousins. "To date, `there has been a trickle of South Africans applying for asylum in the United States in the grounds of racial persecution. Almost all have been deported.'" Feel ashamed. Feel angry.

But the US has its turn coming. Now that the Enemy's appetite has been whetted, it seeks bigger prey. The book is described as a paean to lands "old and new." The new land is the USA. A nation that has elected to go down the RSA route by actually electing an African tyrant. A nation, as Ms. Mercer demonstrates, has given in to the Cult of Diversity and is busy devastating its historic majority by the importation of inassimilable third-worlders who have nothing in common with the people who established these United States.

"The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have been created without the genetic endowment of the creating people nor is there any reason to believe that it can be successfully transferred to a different people." [Why Race Matters, American Renaissance, September 1994].

Although Ms. Mercer refrains from discussions of mean IQ and other observerable differences between whites and non-whites ([[ASIN:1593680341 The Perils of Diversity: Immigration and Human Nature]]) that have been discussed dispassionately by Byron Roth, Charles Murray ([[ASIN:0684824299 Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (A Free Press Paperbacks Book)]]), Ms. Mercer channels Russel Kirk ([[ASIN:1933859024 The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays]]), whom she calls the "father of American conservatism" and describes society as "...a community of souls, joining the dead, the living, and those yet born." The creation of a society is facilitated by "...shared language, literature, history, habits, and heroes." Ms. Mercer seems almost captivated by the horror of Western determination to commit suicide via erosion of standard, culture and ultimately, the election of a new people.

Ms. Mercer goes through US murder and rape statistics confirming that blacks and Hispanics are the worst offenders insofar as rape and murder are concerned. She notes anyone who "publicize[ing] these unexceptional, government-crunched numbers run[s] the risk of being treated as though [such person] had committed the crimes [one was] reporting."

In chapters entitled "The UCLA Race Racket," "Thou Shalt not Discern" and "What Would Martin Luther King, Jr. say" she engages in a no-holds barred contest with affirmative action in the US and conclusively proves that black and Hispanic students are not, on an average, of the same mettle as white and Asian students. She demonstrates how such actions, in addition to destroying academic integrity, constitute lawless dispossession , and are indicative of the third-world-ization of America. America is no longer making immigrants in its image; it is being remade in the image of third-worlders.

Civilizational suicide is not new. The Greeks did it and after them the Romans. Babylon and Persia have long since fallen. If Spengler ([[ASIN:1400097002 The Decline of the West (Abridged)]]) was right, and we are in the Winter of the West, then the West is fortunate to have one so fiery, so lucid, so erudite to defend what is left of her glory.

Ms. Mercer provides the products of modern `education' the opportunity to whet their appetite on some heady stuff: from Aristotle to Kirk, from Jefferson to Hoppe, she offers the uninitiated the opportunity to acquaint himself with the finest the West has to offer, so that he may go forth and continue learning and discovering the glory of the West. To those who are acquainted with this glory, she offers the joy of sharing the true believer's vision of the West, and watching her paint that glorious apparition.

John's Camp fell to the Enemy as did Jean Raspail's. All indicators seem to be in the direction of Ms. Mercer's worst nightmare: a "new" USA, akin to the "new" RSA. Two nations united by common envy, resentment, and a desire to stamp out "`this thing of beauty, this thing they could never really attain, removing it from the earth forever.'" John's Camp was destined to rise. Raspail was not such an optimist. It is not known whether Ms. Mercer is in John's Camp or Jean's. All I know is that I am firmly in her Camp.

Most people in Western civilizations view other countries with the basic assumption that all people all over the world share the same value system and want / need democracy. This assumption is badly flawed, as there are many places in the world where people have no value system at all.

This book is a must read for all people in advanced civilizations all over the world, if they are interested in preserving their civilization.

Post-Apartheid South Africa has not lived up to expectations, not least due to the less-than-brilliant performance of the ANC government. Most of the poor are still poor, whites are discriminated against and crime is out of control. Ilana Mercer has been brave enough to point this out when much of the media is ignoring the plight of South Africa's people. A very readable book recommended for anyone not afraid of controversy.

Mercer bravely treks to the highveld to carefully examine historical events and trends with the skill and tenacity of a Talmudic scholar. Her expertly documented predictive analysis connects the dots and provides an ominous foretelling and cultural 'deep dive' which we ignore at our own peril.

Alan Lackey
COL(Ret) US Army

THOMAS SZASZ recommends this book so I will NOT read it!
THOMAS SZASZ was a nut job and a crypto-$cientoligist.
THOMAS SZASZ cause the deaths of many people under his care and influence.

Should be required reading in all American high schools and universities