Eric Kaufmann’s Whiteshift is in part a very long, very academic exploration of how immigration is playing out across the West — in particular, of how white majorities are responding to demographic change, including through political resistance, “white flight,” intermarriage, and broadening the definition of whiteness to include those of mixed heritage (a category that includes Kaufmann himself).
But it’s also, in part, a normative argument about how society should change in response to these trends if it wants to avoid a backlash and potentially even violence, and Kaufmann’s core suggestion is an eye-catcher. He says we need to be more open to anti-immigration arguments rooted in white “ethno-traditional nationalism” — i.e., in the desire of whites to maintain a given ethnic balance in their home countries. This would resolve the double standard in which minority groups are allowed to engage in identity politics but whites are not, a double standard that will become harder to maintain as whites themselves become a minority group. And it would let populists talk out loud about what’s really bothering them, demographic change, so that it can be addressed through policy.
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