"Why Would You Care About White Demographic Decline if you're not a racist?"

No fancy subtitle this time.

Years ago, an amazing man told me he no longer wanted to be my friend. After one heated conversation, he said, “I cannot talk to a person who fundamentally believes that apartheid was good¹.” We then temporarily reconciled, but our rupture was probably made inevitable as my political beliefs became less egalitarian and my questions more unpleasant. Most friends and acquaintances eventually grow to dislike me, but his kindness and understanding made our falling out hurt just a little more than usual.

What made this friend so special was his empathy and his intelligence. Like many English social democrats with a fundamentally decent worldview, he had considerable empathy. He was one of the few people who would spend his valuable time helping me understand the intricacies of psephology and correcting my misunderstandings of how real people thought.

Years later, he said that I was a stupid and boring fascist who could not understand that my politics were undermining and destroying everything I loved and blocking me². Since then, I have become more open and honest about my evil far-right inclinations. I thought it best to at least give him an honest answer.

A Place to Call Home

A Place To Call Home

Let’s imagine an alternate reality in which 1 million Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese, and Chinese all elected to emigrate to the Republic of Ireland in the span of a decade. Let’s also assume that these Irish Asians have settled across the Republic rather than concentrating in Greater Dublin. Towns and cities that were once homogeneous and a bit sleepy would become home to large, healthy communities that would bring about huge changes.

These Asian immigrants learn to love Guinness and participate in GAA leagues. Many of them work dirty, difficult, time-consuming, and dispiriting jobs that Irish people are glad to give up. Towns like Athlone and Portlaoise see their low-end chippies become mid-market Korean barbecue restaurants.

A generation of schoolchildren becomes accustomed to the smell of Hunanese braised pork and Daegu kimchi during lunchtime. The lunch ladies start serving surprisingly edible versions of Osaka-style tonkatsu and stinky tofu. Some teenagers start thinking, “Why learn Irish when half my friends speak Korean?” and “Is Ryukyu Japan’s version of the six counties?” An autistic student at Belvedere College starts drawing pictures of Irish Pikachu and Derry Ultra-Girl, becoming one of Ireland’s first great manga-kas.

Japanese-Irish chefs turn Galway into one of the few European towns that make perfect soba, sushi, tempura, and unagi. A New York Times critic dubs it “Edo by the Corrib.” In the ensuing years, thousands of foodies drive to Clifden to enjoy an amazing, locally sourced version of sushi omakase that puts Tokyo to shame and still feels intrinsically Irish.

Thanks to ingenious Chinese-Irish engineers, Dubliners and Corkonians now enjoy proper subway networks that rival London and Paris. Korean-Irish music execs turn the nation’s attractive 19-year-old buskers into worldwide stars singing Celtic pop. In time, people start to expand the circle of Irishness. Thanks to the million or so Irish Asians and their contributions, many cosmopolitan citizens begin to truly believe that the Republic of Ireland can serve as a bridge between Europe and East Asia.

This is supposed to be a bad thing?

But it ain’t all Castlebar-style tofu and seafood stew and spotless North Dublin video game arcades either. In time, the million or so Irish Asians start to throw their weight around.

One of the first flashpoints is education. Many Asian-Irish parents begin pushing for selective grammar schools in the Republic. They point out that Northern Ireland already has them and that their children’s work ethic is producing uncomfortable grade gaps.

The debate in the Dáil turns poisonous. A Sinn Féin TD calls the proposal “elitist and divisive.” A gifted Fine Gael minister tries to explain the sensitivities around Northern Ireland’s system, but her fear of being labeled racist causes her to sound like ChatGPT. When a rural TD from Kerry pushes back with typical country bluntness — “We built this country for our people” — Twitter and TikTok explode for two weeks. The hashtag #AllOurPeople becomes a lefty rallying cry. The phrase “model minority myth” gets trotted out by people who never had to sit the Junior Cert alongside kids whose parents ran cram schools from the age of seven.

Meanwhile, mass resentment festers in the schools. Native Irish students watch their Asian peers dominate academically, win nearly every scholarship, and take up just about every university place. Some respond with racist taunts in the playground. A surly teacher tells a late-blooming pupil who has only begun blossoming in her final year, “Of course, your application went nowhere. Your entire class is Asian!”

Parents in towns like Sligo complain that tiger parenting and weekend Chinese schools have turned their close-knit community into an unending pressure-cooked competition. GAA games become dull formalities full of players who treat sport like an extracurricular. The Ireland that once moved at its own characteristically chaotic pace starts to feel like it’s being outworked and out-organized by a people who treat some aspects of success as a non-negotiable compact with their ancestors.

Three decades down the line, Irish Asians become an incredibly powerful group that people quietly resent, openly admire, and try not to fear. Their numbers, especially in major cities, make politicians of all stripes eager (if not always willing) to advocate policies once alien. Too many fresh-faced TDs and councilors try to pander to Irish Asian voters by speaking Korean and making anti-racist bromides. One Social Democrat TD goes so far as to say, “Taiwan, like the North, is being manipulated by foreign forces.”

Immigration eventually becomes the most toxic political issue because the desired consensus for carefully managed inflows clashes with the need to maintain generous family reunification, work visas, and golden investor programs. A voter in Wicklow complains that his area isn’t receiving any of the investment despite being a hotspot for rich Chinese emigrants. The retiring councilor lashes out at him, furious that anyone would question his life’s great achievement — the diversification of the area.

In time, the native Irish gradually resign themselves to being lectured by the most sanctimonious superiors at work. Their resentment at no longer feeling comfortable in their old neighborhoods, at seeing their children condescended to by the most insufferable overachieving fifteen-year-olds, and at being disdained by their more cosmopolitan peers curdles into silent resignation.

Many self-segregate, move further into the country, and speak in code. It’s an uneasy cold peace that makes everyone a little more miserable.

What’s Your Point?

The point of this ridiculous thought experiment isn’t to demand that every non-white person in a white country be deported so you can all eat cabbage and bacon stew forever. It’s to show people like my old friend — and anyone reading this — that even high-skill immigration has real drawbacks.

Nations, especially small ones, are made by their people. When the people change, the nation changes too. It’s just a cold fact that we hate accepting.

My friend believed countries succeed because of strong culture and practical thinking. I knew from our first conversations on Twitter that his parents and community had given him indestructible decency. That’s why he could tolerate stupid and boring fascists like me for so long.

But the color of your skin, the god you worship, and the language you speak aren’t just optional traits you can melt away with therapy and a liberal arts degree. They shape the kind of person you become and the kind of society you build. My friend came from one world. I came from another. Pretending those differences don’t matter is exactly how you end up with the Ireland I just described — clean, rich, full of great food, and quietly miserable.

Look at what actually gets lost. The old chaotic Irish pace that once felt like home. The meaningful GAA matches. Schools where native kids could still compete without constant test prep and endless cramming. Neighborhoods where you recognized almost every face and didn’t have to speak in code. Those small, everyday structures that hold a society together don’t survive mass demographic change intact. They erode gradually, then suddenly, until people are left with quiet resignation and a country that no longer feels like theirs.

Few great nations ever had truly closed borders, and even fewer truly believed there was no cost to diversity. If nothing else, stop calling people evil for noticing the changes around them — and stop believing the Western world can turn every last person into a Hobhouse-reading Nanci Griffith enthusiast.

1. Despite my animus towards many a Black South African progressive, I have never supported apartheid. Not only did apartheid fail on its own terms, but the National Party’s prejudiced attitude towards the Brits also prevented large numbers of potential European immigrants from living in South Africa.

2. My friend also called me a coward for believing Britain shouldn’t automatically grant the SNP an independence referendum every time support for independence was high. In fairness, he did apologize to me after I told him that I (and many others) endured police brutality and harassment so that Hong Kong could become a democracy.