This piece in Taki’s Magazine, on the refugee crisis, contains an excellent proverb of which I was unaware (“fine words butter no parsnips”), a new maxim of Dalrymple’s own making (“there is no social phenomenon without its bureaucratic opportunity”) and a number of laugh-out-loud moments:
It was obvious to me that the British authorities reasoned thus: If a man preferred to stay in Rotherham rather than beg to be repatriated, his life must really have been in danger and he was a true refugee.
…in these multicultural times, it is fair to assume that no one, and certainly no Director of Diversity, has any interest in, let alone knowledge of, remote countries or other cultures.
the only Syrian asylum seeker I met was a man who had already been granted it. He said that he had been in the Syrian army, where his job was that of torturer; unfortunately for him, his work was not up to scratch, so to speak, and he went from being a producer of torture to a consumer of it.
I had never met any Kosovar refugees until NATO liberated Kosovo and made it safe for democracy.
But as always in Taki’s Magazine, you will definitely want to avoid reading the comments. My goodness.
Yes, the comments in Takimag are often off-putting, but are especially odd after a Dalrymple essay where his erudition, writing skill, and general wisdom etc. seem to go right over the commenter mafia’s heads. I even commented there once on that fact and expected to be flamed, but perhaps even my comment did not compute. Still, I continue to read Takimag for Dalrymple, Steve Sailer, and one or two others. John Derbyshire I think only writes for vdare now.
Yes, I enjoy some of the other writers (like Steve Sailer) there as well. The commenters (which, shockingly, really do include some actual, real-life – not exaggerating here – self-professed neo-Nazis) seem not to like Dalrymple’s moderation (for example, his criticism of the effects of mass immigration combined with his statements of admiration for the immigrants themselves), which is one of the things I like best about Dalrymple – his moderation, fairness and even-handedness.