‘Have you ever listened to my lectures?’
‘I’ve read transcripts, heard tapes.’
‘Of course you have.’ Professorial politesse to the point of aloof disdain, soft Bostonian tones and recent Californian inflection that might have overlaid Alabama menace.
‘To the untrained ear, they sound more like political rallies.’
‘And to the untrained mind. Mr Kemp, I have a duty to be honest.’
‘You have a responsibility to those who are carved up, mutilated in your name.’
‘The corpse in the Thames? I was wondering how long it would take for the British authorities to search for a scapegoat.’
‘I thought that was your speciality.’
‘Flippant and cheap, Mr Kemp. Lunatics will be lunatics, serial murderers will murder, however they legitimize their actions.’
‘You’re quite a neat hook.’
‘Racially motivated violence exists not because of my comments, but because no one is allowed to comment. Patriotism is frowned upon by the ruling elite, so it turns ugly, becomes nationalistic; nationhood is pooh-poohed, so disgruntled alienation replaces it. Look around, see the rise of the far right in Austria, Italy, France, Germany. When core culture is undermined, decent folk feel threatened.’
‘Decent folk with shaved heads and swastika tattoos? Decent folk who firebomb migrant worker hostels?’
‘Thugs hijack an agenda when the mainstream won’t discuss it.’
‘Is that your prognosis for Britain?’
‘The symptoms are there. You’re told to be embarrassed of your history, to apologize for your past, for being white and Christian. You can’t wave the Cross of St George, so it’s adopted and debased by soccer hooligans; you can’t fly the Union Jack – it’s offensive, you’re told, to racial minorities – so it’s stolen by extremists. Debate is quashed, and vocabulary and tolerance vanish with it.’
‘Point made.’
‘And taken?’ Pitt raised an eyebrow. ‘Legitimate concerns, basic tribalism, human instincts, go sour – then rotten – if they’re forced underground. They need an outlet.’
‘You?’
‘I’m merely an academic.’
‘Albert Speer was merely an architect, Heinrich Himmler started out as a poultry farmer.’
‘I have fought fanaticism all my life, Mr Kemp. It’s why I put up with the venomous protest, the demonstrations, the ignorance, the howls of abuse. Label me a Nazi and you misunderstand everything I’m about.’
‘Why is it then, that every time your name is mentioned, commentators equate you first with Deutsche Leitcultur, and then with the Ahnenerbe, the SS ancestral heritage unit?’
‘That merely reflects on the commentators themselves, the impoverishment of their vocabulary, the subjective hysteria surrounding the issue.’ Irritation disguised with a thin smile. ‘Ahnenerbe sought to link an Aryan future to a golden mythic past. I do no such thing. I have no Hitlerite fantasies, no political agenda.’
‘And Leitcultur?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with the concept of a primary culture, Mr Kemp. It’s what gives societies their cohesion, their soul, nations their stability.’
‘It’s often a short step from a belief in primary culture to a belief in superior culture, from identifying second-class citizens to creating Untermenschen.’
‘And from placing them in ghettos to sending them on cattle-waggons to the gas chambers and crematoria. I’ve heard the arguments.’
’You don’t accept them.’
‘My research conclusions may be disturbing to some, but I’m no crank or Blackshirt, nor am I of a totalitarian bent. I hate to disabuse you, but eugenics never went away.’
‘Its proponents simply got madder.’
‘Far from it. You’ll find that in the field of psychology my views are considered sound and fairly orthodox.’
‘So, multiculturalism stinks?’
‘Multiculturalism is mongrelism, multiculturalism is for countries that lack vision or confidence, that have chosen to cut their own throats.’
‘You’re surprised people call you a racist?’
‘I prefer the term empiricist. Name me one ethnic melting-pot which thrives in the long term, in which tensions and imbalances do not eventually bring it down.’
‘You might be surprised.’
‘By your country? I doubt it. Within the next fifty years, whites in America will become a minority. In England, it will take until the end of the century. It’s already happened in your cities of Birmingham and Leicester; in London, white schoolchildren are outnumbered. That’s the two greatest powers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries voluntarily committing suicide, the first time in history major indigenous populations have opted to become minorities rather than having it imposed by war, famine or disease. It would be foolish to ignore the impact.’
‘Or to talk it up.’
‘I’m not attempting to rabble-rouse. It’s a serious point, an explosive mix. Historians will ask – why did it happen, how did white Western European civilization allow itself to be eradicated, its values, traditions, identity, nationhood, the past that gave it Mozart, Goethe and Shakespeare, the Kings and Queens of England, displaced? Without a shot being fired, a vote being cast. Surrender.’
‘To inferior races?’