Marjorie Taylor Greene (left) pictured at a news conference in November 2022 and Steve Bannon (right) addressing the media in September 2022. Bannon has compared Greene’s plan for a “national divorce” to spitting on the graves of civil war veterans.
I do not condone, but adhore, any attacks on Asians.
That said, I just watched ten minutes of Morning Joe and the talk was about going to war with China – if they supply arms to Russia, and – IF COVID came out of their lab. Last night I saw a segment on China moving into the Americas with big money and investments, putting an end to Anglo-Saxon Hegemony. I m not going out of my way mentioning RACES, because China has mentioned how bad Whites treat other races and their culture – as a propaganda weapon. China and Russia are in Africa.
Yesterday, Marjorie Taylor Green declared a Manifest Destiny – IN REVERSE! She wants ex-Californians who move to Texas, and other Southern States – to not be able to vote for five years, lest they vote for Democrats, because???…..THEY ARE INFECTED WITH WOKE! What about California’ Children? How do Green and her Election Deniers feel about Putin using Chinese Drones to MURDER Anglo-Saxons? I suspect she would be for that – IF the Ukraine was ON THE SIDE of The Liberal Woke Union!
The most WOKE THING I encountered was the demand that the statue of London be removed from Jack London Square because he is accused of inventing the RED CHINESE SCARE, in his Science Fiction novels. I came back with the idea to create Science Fiction Square. I anoint Jack a member of the Manana Society. Did Jack see China launching un-manned drones against America? How – science fiction of him. Were these robot planes carrying a – PLAGUE? Such was the nature of the Morning Joe this morning
Hitler asked if Tolkien was a Jew. He is worshipped by Aryan Neo-Nazis, thus I have been reluctant to promote his work – fully! Last night I made the most profound literary and movie discovery – of all time! It will make me famous – and rich! Thus I will keep it – SECRET!
The question I put to you this morning, is…..Would Rep. Greene launch drones against the WOKE people in California – from Red State Georgia? Bannon admonishes Marjorie, because she is a woman getting involved in MAN STUFF DESTINY – that she knows nothing about! This is one of the reasons our Founding Fathers did not give women the right to vote. They are ignorant about the ways of war. Greene is the Canary in the Mind for me. She made it official…The Third World War – is on! We have crossed the line, the point of no return.
If London was alive when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, he would declare – HE PREDICTED THIS SNEAK ATTACK! Other journalist would agree. Here is an article that uggests Jack was – WARNING THE WEST!
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/123122
Why didn’t Tolkien SOUND A LOUD WARNING?
John Presco
War Correspondent for Royal Rosamond Press
FLASH! I just found this science fiction book by Jack London that foresees the present day threat by RED CHINA who has built hundreds of warships and is forcing the United States t do the same – at the cost of billions of dollars! This changes everything! I clear Jack of all charges, and accuse his accusers of MODERN BOOK BURNING, and of being Racist Defamers! The destruction of whole worlds and people is a MAIN THEME of much science fiction, especially if they pose a threat. Jack London – went into the future – and saw the threat! He responded with SCIENCE FICTION! Jack even sees COMPUTER ART – that is under attack by China and Russia.
Right now, there are men in the Pentagon considering dropping nuclear bombs all over China. It is their job. There are written scenarios. Jack London realized being a Science fiction Writer he could author scenarios in a pseudo science manner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War
Sources do not agree on a precise number of deaths from the war because of a lack of body counts for confirmation. The number of Japanese Army dead in combat or died of wounds is put at around 59,000 with around 27,000 additional casualties from disease, and between 6,000 and 12,000 wounded. Estimates of Russian Army dead range from around 34,000 to around 53,000 men with a further 9,000–19,000 dying of disease and around 75,000 captured. The total number of dead for both sides is generally stated as around 130,000 to 170,000.[89] China suffered 20,000 civilian deaths, and financially the loss amounted to over 69 million taels‘ worth of silver.
The story takes place in 2073, sixty years after an uncontrollable epidemic, the Red Death,[2] has depopulated the planet. James Smith is one of the survivors of the era before the scarlet plague hit and is still left alive in the San Francisco area, and he travels with his grandsons Edwin, Hoo-Hoo, and Hare-Lip. His grandsons are young and live as primeval hunter-gatherers in a heavily depopulated world. Their intellect is limited, as are their language abilities. Edwin asks Smith, whom they call “Granser”, to tell them of the disease alternately referred to as scarlet plague, scarlet death, or red death.
In 1938, Tolkien was in negotiations with Berlin publisher Rütten & Loening about creating a German-language edition of The Hobbit; that is, until they asked for proof of Tolkien’s “Aryan descent,” due to Goebbels’ regulations on Jews’ participation n German cultural activities. Tolkien objected, writing to his British publisher Stanley Unwin:
I must say the enclosed letter from Rütten & Loening is a bit stiff. Do I suffer this impertinence because of the possession of a German name, or do their lunatic laws require a certificate of arisch origin from all persons of all countries?
Personally, I should be inclined to refuse to give any Bestätigung (although it happens that I can), and let a German translation go hang. In any case I should object strongly to any such declaration appearing in print. I do not regard the (probable) absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honourable; and I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine.
Steve Bannon has savaged Marjorie Taylor Greene‘s proposal for a “national divorce” between Republican and Democrat states, comparing it to spitting on the graves of civil war veterans at Arlington National Cemetery.
This attempt by the Nazis to purge Germany of any culture that wasn’t Aryan in origin led to the questioning of artists from outside the country.
Nazi book burning via Wikimedia Commons
In 1938, English author J. R. R. Tolkien and his British publisher, Stanley Unwin, opened talks with Rütten & Loening, a Berlin-based publishing house, about a German translation of his recently-published hit novel, “
Marjorie Taylor Greene doubles down on call for ‘national divorce’ and says US is headed for ‘civil war’
Marjorie Taylor GreeneAmerican politician (born 1974)
- Charlie KirkAmerican political activist and radio talk show host
Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has again doubled down on her highly inflammatory call for a “national divorce” between red and blue states, which some have interpreted as advocacy for a second American Civil War.
Speaking to Sean Hannity of Fox News on Tuesday evening, Ms Greene refused to back down and insisted instead that the US was headed for precisely that outcome.
“In my life and my world, all of my friends are regular Americans,” she told Mr Hannity.
“Everyone I talk to is sick and tired and fed up with being bullied by the left, abused by the left, and disrespected by the left.
“Our ideas, our policies and our ways of life have become so far apart that it’s just coming to that point. And the last thing I ever want to see in America is a civil war. No one wants that – at least everyone I know would never want that – but it’s going that direction and we have to do something about it.”
The row began when the Georgia legislator tweeted on Monday: “We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s [sic] traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”
The statement succeeded only in bringing Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans together, with the likes of Jon Stewart and Liz Cheney united in condemnation.
“We get to keep the name right?” the former Daily Show anchor joked.
On Tuesday, Ms Greene took her anti-democratic stance further when she told Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on his Real America’s Voice show that Democrats who relocate to Republican-controlled red states should not be allowed to vote in elections for five years.
“Red states can choose in how they allow people to vote in their states,” she told Mr Kirk.
“What I think would be something that some red states could propose is: well, okay, if Democrat voters choose to flee these blue states where they cannot tolerate the living conditions, they don’t want their children taught these horrible things, and they really change their mind on the types of policies that they support, well once they move to a red state, guess what, maybe you don’t get to vote for five years.
“You can live there, and you can work there, but you don’t get to bring your values that you basically created in the blue states you came from by voting for Democrat leaders and Democrat policies.”
Coronavirus: China hits back at US for stirring up lab leak theory on Covid-19 origins
Story by Lo Hoi-ying • 1h ago
- Chinese foreign ministry repeats call to ‘stop politicising the origins of Covid’, after US Department of Energy cites new intelligence
- ‘Low confidence’ note indicates report not high on certainty, sources tell US media
Beijing has hit back at the United States for once again stirring up the lab leak theory on the coronavirus pandemic, calling on it to stop “smearing China” and “politicising the origins of Covid”.
It followed American media reports, citing classified intelligence provided to Washington, that said the US Department of Energy had concluded that a Chinese laboratory leak was the most likely cause of the pandemic.
The Chinese foreign ministry slammed the reports on Monday, saying tracing the origin of the coronavirus was a scientific issue that should not be politicised.
HONG KONG — China on Monday accused the United States of “disinformation” and a “double standard” over claims that it is considering sending Russia artillery and ammunition for its war in Ukraine.
Abdeer Ahmad started an online petition asking Whitehorse city council to remove the bust of London from Main Street downtown.
Ahmad said there are themes of xenophobia, racism and ableism in London’s well-known works of literature.
“As a writer, London actively wrote about the inferiority of people of colour and advocated for eugenic ideas,” she said.
Ahmad referenced London’s story The Unparalleled Invasion, in which she said London references Asian immigration as the “yellow peril,” while also emphasizing the value of biological warfare and genocide against Chinese people as necessary to upholding white civilization.
In other works, she said people of colour are “often characterized into groups likened to savages, animals, and spoken about as a subhuman species.”
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137545794_4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unparalleled_Invasion
Background and context[edit]
“The Unparalleled Invasion” was included in The Strength of the Strong, a collection of stories by London published by Macmillan in 1914,[2] which also included “The Dream of Debs“, a critique of capitalist society in the US, and “The Strength of the Strong”, which used a primitive background as metaphor of social injustice among men.
“The Unparalleled Invasion” has been used to support claims of racism in London’s work.[3][4] Academics pointed out that the premise, themes, and even some passages were borrowed directly from London’s 1904 “Yellow Peril” essay, where London warns that “the menace to the Western World lies, not in the [Japanese] little brown man, but in the four hundred millions of [Chinese] yellow men”. [5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unparalleled_Invasion
Science Fiction Square
Posted on March 29, 2021 by Royal Rosamond Press
Science Fiction Square
A Proposal
by
Jack Presco
Copyright 2021
In 1987, the head of Serenity Lane and the Buckley House in Eugene Oregon, suggested I was a Walk-in after I told Hillary I had a near-death experience in 1967. Several times I wondered if the spirit of Jack London had come back to complete some un-finished work. Yesterday, I learned Jack delivered a racist rant that suggested a plague be put upon the Chinese People so their numbers would be severely decreased. Later that evening, I discovered Jack wrote a science fiction novel titled..
THE SCARLET PLAGUE
Now, I am not Jack’s apologist, but he may have had a glimpse into our future when he shot his fool mouth off. Perhaps it was – the booze talking? But, the truth remains, Jack London qualifies to be titled..
THE GREAT FUTURIAN OF OUR AGE
What I am proposing, is the NAME CHANGE from Jack London Square, to, Science Fiction Square, that will be designed around Bunny Breckenridge who was the sinister alien schemer in Plan 9 From Outer Space. Bunny is kin to Bay Area swells, as you will see in my next post. Here are some of the entities I would like to see placed in…
SFS
The existing statue of London will now be the statue of James Smith. There will be a statue of an alien seated at the bar in The Last Chance Saloon – with mural on the wall.
I hear the Oakland Orchestra celebrating Ed Wood Weekend by playing the soundtrack from his movies, and others sci-fi tracks. I hear a hand-cranked siren with flashing lights – with starter pistol shots in the air. There will be a Jail Bait Beauty Contest.
The Scarlet Plague – Wikipedia
Bunny Breckinridge – Wikipedia
Florence Breckenridge of Belmont | Rosamond Press
The story takes place in 2073, sixty years after an uncontrollable epidemic, the Red Death,[2] has depopulated the planet. James Smith is one of the survivors of the era before the scarlet plague hit and is still left alive in the San Francisco area, and he travels with his grandsons Edwin, Hoo-Hoo, and Hare-Lip. His grandsons are young and live as primeval hunter-gatherers in a heavily depopulated world. Their intellect is limited, as are their language abilities. Edwin asks Smith, whom they call “Granser”, to tell them of the disease alternately referred to as scarlet plague, scarlet death, or red death.
Believers maintain that it is possible for the original soul of a human to leave a person’s body and for another soul to “walk in”. In Montgomery’s work, souls are said to “walk in” during a period of intense personal problems on the part of the departing soul, or during or because of an accident or trauma. Some other walk-ins describe their entry as occurring based on prior agreement and when the previous soul was complete. The walk-in being/individual retains the memories of the original personality, but does not have emotions associated with the memories. As they integrate they bring their own mental, emotional, spiritual consciousness and evolve the life to resonate with their purpose and intentions. Incarnating into a fully grown body allows the walk-in soul to engage in embodiment without having to go through the two decades of maturation that humans need to reach adulthood. A walk-in soul also does not experience the conditioning of childhood and has a different relationship to life because they were not born
(5) Plan 9 From Outer Space Music Compilation – YouTube
(5) Jail Bait (1954) – Trailer – YouTube
FLASH! I just found this science fiction book by Jack London that foresees the present day threat by RED CHINA who has built hundreds of warships and is forcing the United States t do the same – at the cost of billions of dollars! This changes everything! I clear Jack of all charges, and accuse his accusers of MODERN BOOK BURNING, and of being Racist Defamers! The destruction of whole worlds and people is a MAIN THEME of much science fiction, especially if they pose a threat. Jack London – went into the future – and saw the threat! He responded with SCIENCE FICTION! Jack even sees COMPUTER ART – that is under attack by China and Russia.
Right now, there are men in the Pentagon considering dropping nuclear bombs all over China. It is their job. There are written scenarios. Jack London realized being a Science fiction Writer he could author scenarios in a pseudo science manner.
Chinese Fighter Pilot Says Taiwan ‘All Ours’ After Being Asked to Leave Airspace (msn.com)
Under the influence of Japan, China modernizes and undergoes its own version of the Meiji Reforms in the 1910s. In 1922, China breaks away from Japan and fights a brief war that culminates in the Chinese annexation of the Japanese possessions of Korea, Formosa, and Manchuria. Over the next half century, China’s population steadily grows, and eventually migration overwhelms European colonies in Asia. The United States and the other Western powers launch a biological warfare campaign against China, resulting in the total destruction of China’s population, the few survivors of the plague being killed out of hand by European and American troops, and China then being colonized by the Western powers. This opens the way to a joyous epoch of “splendid mechanical, intellectual, and art output”. In the 1980s, war clouds once more gather between Germany and France, and the story ends with the nations of the world solemnly pledging not to use the same techniques that they had used against China.
The Unparalleled Invasion – Wikipedia
As described in Isaac Asimov‘s 1979 autobiography In Memory Yet Green, the Futurians spun off from the Greater New York Science Fiction Club (headed by Sam Moskowitz, later an influential SF editor and historian) over ideological differences, with the Futurians wishing to take a more overtly Marxist political stance. Other sources indicate that Donald A. Wollheim was pushing for a more left-wing direction with a goal of leading fandom toward a political ideal, all of which Moskowitz resisted. As a result, Wollheim broke off from the Greater New York group and founded the Futurians in September, 1938.[1][2][3] The fans following Moskowitz reorganized into the Queens Science Fiction Club.
The counterintelligence and economic espionage efforts emanating from the government of China and the Chinese Communist Party are a grave threat to the economic well-being and democratic values of the United States.
Confronting this threat is the FBI’s top counterintelligence priority.
To be clear, the adversary is not the Chinese people or people of Chinese descent or heritage. The threat comes from the programs and policies pursued by an authoritarian government.
Besides the Indian Navy, the Malabar naval exercise was participated by the navies of the U.S., Australia and Japan. The four countries are part of the Quad or Quadrilateral coalition.
China has been suspicious about the purpose of the Malabar exercise as it feels that the annual war game is an effort to contain its influence in the Indo-Pacific region.
India, U.S. begin two-day naval exercise in eastern Indian Ocean region – The Hindu
- Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Tuesday that the US Navy needs more than 500 ships by 2045 to counter China.
- The Pentagon envisions a force of 355 traditional warfighting vessels by 2035 and a larger force of over 500 manned and unmanned vessels by 2045.
- The plan, known as Battle Force 2045, calls for more submarines and hundreds of unmanned or optionally-manned assets, among other changes. It would require a major funding boost similar to what the service saw in the Reagan-era build-up.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Tuesday afternoon that the US Navy needs more than 500 ships by 2045 to counter China.
Speaking at an online Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments event, Esper unveiled his plan for the future fleet: “Battle Force 2045.” The plan calls for a force of 355 traditional warfighting vessels by 2035 and a larger force consisting of over 500 manned and unmanned vessels by 2045.
Steve Bannon has savaged Marjorie Taylor Greene‘s proposal for a “national divorce” between Republican and Democrat states, comparing it to spitting on the graves of civil war veterans at Arlington National Cemetery.
https://news.yahoo.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-doubles-down-153641661.html
Jack London, Asian Wars and the “Yellow Peril”
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by Daniel A. Métraux
Daniel A. Métraux is Professor of Asian Studies at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia. He recently served as president of the Southeast Chapter of the Association for Asian Studies and as editor of the Southeast Review of Asian Studies. He has written many books and articles on Japanese and Asian affairs including The Soka Gakkai Revolution (1994) and Burma’s Modern Tragedy (2004). His most recent book, The Asian Writings of Jack London: Essays, Letters, Newspaper Dispatches, and Short Fiction by Jack London was published by Edwin Mellen Press in 2009. He wrote this article for The Asia-Pacific Journal.
Novelist Jack London (1876-1916), by far the most popular American writer a century ago, is these days remembered for his novels and short stories on the Yukon. The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and To Build a Fire have retained much of their early popularity, but his visits to Japan, Korea and Manchuria, his brilliant coverage of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), his short stories based in Japan and China, his essays predicting the rise of the Pacific Rim, and his call for mutual respect and better contact between Americans and Japanese are long forgotten. London deserves to be remembered, however, as a writer on Asia and the Pacific who directly confronted Western racism against Asians, denounced such concepts as “The Yellow Peril” and showed great sympathy for Japanese and Chinese in his literature.
Today the term “The Yellow Peril” — but not necessarily the fears and fantasies associated with it — has long since passed out of fashion, but it was a widely used expression in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The supposed nightmare of Oriental hordes swarming from the East and engulfing the “civilized” societies of the West was a popular theme in the literature and journalism of the time. The term “Yellow Peril” supposedly derives from a remark made by German Kaiser Wilhelm II following Japan’s defeat of China in 1895 in the first Sino-Japanese War. The expression initially referred to Japan’s sudden rise as a military and industrial power in the late nineteenth century. Soon, however, it took on a broader more sinister meaning embracing all Asia. “The Yellow Peril” highlighted diverse fears including the supposed threat of military invasion from Asia, competition to the white labor force from Asian workers, the moral degeneracy of Asian people, and the specter of genetic mixing of Anglo-Saxons with Asians. (1)
There were many writers and journalists who in the very early 1900s gave very unflattering views of Asians or who touted Anglo-Saxon superiority over the “yellow and brown” people of Asia. The Hearst newspapers stridently warned of the “yellow peril,” as did noted British novelist M.P. Shiel in his short story serial, The Yellow Danger. One also finds similar views in Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden” and in some of his stories and novels.
Jack London has often been associated with the term “yellow peril.” John R. Eperjesi, a London scholar, writes that “More than any other writer, London fixed the idea of a yellow peril in the minds of the turn-of-the-century Americans…” (2) Many biographers quote London, just after his return from covering the first months of the Russo-Japanese War for the Hearst newspapers in 1904, as telling a coterie of fellow socialists of this profound dislike for the “yellow man.” Biographer Richard O’Connor quotes Robert Dunn, a fellow journalist with London during the Russo-Japanese war, as saying that Jack’s dislike of the Japanese “outdid mine. Though a professed Socialist, he really believed in the Kaiser’s ‘yellow peril.’” (3)
However, a close examination of London’s writing indicates that he was anything but an advocate of the racist “yellow peril” writing that was so common during the early years of the twentieth century. When one reads his Russo-Japanese dispatches from Korea and Manchuria one finds very balanced and objective reporting, concern for the welfare of both the average Japanese soldier and Russian soldier as well as the Korean peasant, and respect for the ordinary Chinese he met. As perhaps the most widely read and famous of the journalists covering the Russo-Japanese War, London emerges as one of the few “internationalist” writers of his day who realized that the heyday of white “superiority” and Western expansionism and imperialism was coming to an end, but his positive views of Asians can be traced back a decade earlier in his first published stories.
London saw that Asia was in the process of waking up and that countries like Japan and China would emerge as major economic powers with the capacity to compete effectively with the West as the twentieth century progressed. He urged that Westerners make concerted efforts to meet with Japanese and Chinese so as to understand each other better as equals. (4)
Particularly notable are London’s writings on Asia, especially his coverage of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, his essays “The Yellow Peril” and “If Japan Awakens China,” and his short story, “The Unparalleled Invasion.” It is widely known that Americans had racist attitudes towards Japan and China and their citizens. Reading London shows that there were also alternative points of view.
London had a deeper understanding of the profound changes occurring throughout the industrial world in the early twentieth century than most writers of the period. His fiction and essays explored changing aspects of modern warfare, industrialization, revolution and the beginning of the rise of Asia. London also shrewdly predicted elements of the coming of total war, genocide, and even terrorism, making much of his writing as relevant today as when it was first composed. As Jonah Raskin observed, “In a short, volatile life of four decades, Jack London (1876-1916) explored and mapped the territory of war and revolution in fiction and non-fiction alike. More accurately than any other writer of his day, he also predicted the shape of political power – from dictatorship to terrorism – that would emerge in the twentieth century, and his work is as timely today as when it was first written.” (5)
London’s Prediction of the Economic Rise of East Asia
London during and after his time in Korea and Manchuria developed a thesis envisaging the rise first of Japan and then of China as major twentieth century economic and industrial powers. London suggested that Japan would not be satisfied with its seizure of Korea in the Russo-Japanese War, that it would in due course take over Manchuria and would then seize control of China with the goal of using the Chinese with their huge pool of labor and their valuable resources for its own benefit. Chinese workers and farmers, however, when awakened by Japan, he anticipated, would overthrow their conservative leaders, oust the Japanese and rise as a major industrial power. China’s rise would so distress the Western powers that they would eventually attack China to eliminate its economic competitor.
The past few decades have witnessed the rise of East Asia. First Japan and later South Korea and China have experienced tremendous growth in wealth and power. East Asia’s surge has challenged the status quo of American and European dominance and could pave the way for a subsequent military challenge that would overturn the current balance of power in Asia and the Pacific.
Writing a century ago, London had warned that the West was living in a bubble — that its incredible power and wealth and its tenacious hold on Asia in due course would burst and the center of power would shift to Asia. The transition would be peaceful because Asia’s rise would be primarily economic, but in the long run, he held, war between East and West would be inevitable.
But while London, long before Samuel Huntington, predicted a major clash of civilizations, it would be the West, the veritable “White Peril,” that would attack Asia. London surmised that Westerners, living in ignorant bliss, had no understanding of Asian cultures and were far too confident of their superiority to realize that their days of world power were severely numbered. In dispatches from Korea and Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese War and in several postwar essays, London analyzed the potential of the three major cultures he encountered and predicted changes in the pattern of world dominance. For London and other writers of his time, Japan’s defeat of Russia was a turning point in the representations of Asia because it directly challenged long-held beliefs in the innate superiority of the white race. (6)
London clearly distinguished the Chinese and Japanese, at times referring to the Chinese as the “Yellow Peril” and the Japanese as the “Brown Peril.” Even though it was Japan that was ascendant in 1904-1905 while China appeared moribund, London believed that in the long run Japan lacked both the size and the spirit to lead an Asian renaissance. Japan would rise first as a military and then as an economic power, but each time it would falter because of a lack of “staying power” to persevere in the long run. Japan would launch a crusade crying “Asia for the Asiatics,” but their contribution would serve as a catalyst that would awaken the Chinese.
Japan’s strength at the turn of the twentieth century rested on its ability to use Western technology and to achieve national unity, but London believed there were severe limits as to how far Japan could go in realizing its clarion call. The first factor inhibiting Japan is that “No great race adventure can go far nor endure long which has no deeper foundation than material success, no higher prompting than conquest for conquest’s sake and mere race glorification. To go far and to endure, it must have behind it an ethical impulse, a sincerely conceived righteousness.” (7)
The second inhibiting factor, he held, was Japan’s small population. A century ago there were forty-five million Japanese. That was enough to hurl back Russian forces, but London believed that it was not enough to create a massive Asian empire, still less to militarily or economically threaten the Western world. Seizing “poor, empty Korea for a breeding colony and Manchuria for a granary” would greatly enhance Japan’s population and strength, but even that would not be enough. “The menace to the Western world lies not in the little brown man, but in the four hundred millions of yellow men should the little brown man undertake their management.” (8)
London believed, in short, that the future belonged to China. But London’s 1904 essay “The Yellow Peril” left his readers hanging. Japan had demonstrated its capacity to defeat a major world power, Russia, but was not strong enough to achieve its dream of an “Asia for the Asiatic,” that is, an Asia in Japan’s embrace. Before Japan lay Manchuria with all of its resources and beyond that was China proper with its four hundred million hard working citizens. China’s vast potential as a world power was restricted by leaders who cling to power by embracing a conservatism that hewed tenaciously to the past and refused to let their country modernize. London did not tell his readers who would prevail as the great power in Asia, but his 1906 short story, “The Unparalleled Invasion,” pointed to China.
China, with its vast resources and huge, skilled, hardworking population would be the factory workshop that would provide Japan with the wealth and power she desired. The Chinese could then either accept the Japanese as their new master or develop their own industrial and military might. A resurgent China, he noted, would directly challenge the economic might of the West.
“The Unparalleled Invasion” is a futuristic horror story involving a major world war, massive killing, and the annihilation of Chinese civilization. Although critics have read different messages into the story, the irony is that the West is the paranoid aggressor and China the innocent victim. London’s story is a stern warning of what can happen if racial hatred is allowed to flourish. London was writing at a time when the modern concept of germ warfare was being considered by various nations. Here he sounds an alarm over the hazards of biological warfare. The story is also an indictment of the behavior of imperialistic powers per se.
The Japanese are expelled from China and are crushed when they try to reassert themselves there. But, “contrary to expectation, China did not prove warlike,” so “after a time of disquietude, the idea was accepted that China was not to be feared in war, but in commerce.” The West would come to understand that the “real danger” from China “lay in the fecundity of her loins.” Nevertheless, as the 20th century advances, Chinese immigrants swarm into French Indochina and later into Southwest Asia and Russia, seizing territory as they expand. Western attempts to slow or stop the Chinese expansionism all fail. By 1975 it appears the world would be overwhelmed by this relentless Chinese expansion.
With despair mounting, an American scientist, Jacobus Laningdale, visits the White House to propose eradicating the entire Chinese population by dropping deadly plagues from Allied airships flying over China. Six months later in May, 1976, the airships appear over China dropping a torrent of glass tubes. (9) At first nothing happens, but within weeks China is hit by an inferno of plagues, gradually wiping out the entire population. Allied armies surround China making it impossible for anybody to escape the massive deaths. Even the seas are closed by 75,000 Allied naval vessels patrolling China’s coast. “Modern war machinery held back the disorganized mass of China, while the plagues did the work.” (10)
The reader sees that vast cultural differences divide the West from China and it is these differences that cause hatred and malice on the part of the West. The focus here is not on the dangers that China presents to the West, but, rather, the reverse. As Jean Campbell Reesman points out, “London’s story is a strident warning against race hatred and its paranoia, and an alarm sounded against an international policy that would permit and encourage germ warfare. It is also an indictment of imperialist governments per se.” (11)
London urged the West to come to terms with the new Asia and to live with non-white peoples in a spirit of brotherhood. He anticipated that the wars of the twentieth century will greatly surpass those of the past in terms of their killing and destruction not only of armies, but of civilian populations as well. Indeed, his predictions concerning the great wars to come were prescient.
There was a marked refinement of London’s views towards Asians and other non-white people of the Pacific in the last seven years of his life during and after his 1907-1909 trip to the South Pacific aboard his decrepit schooner, the Snark. London’s increasingly pan-national view of the world led to his 1915 recommendation for a “Pan-Pacific Club,” where people from both East and West could meet in a congenial setting. The “club” would be a forum where East and West could exchange views and ideas on an equal basis. These are hardly the thoughts of a racist; rather, they are the words of a true internationalist. In particular, he felt it was necessary for Americans and Japanese to come together to better understand their respective cultures and increase mutual understanding.
Conclusion
Jack London traveled extensively during his short life. He encountered people of many cultures and empathized with the suffering of downtrodden people not only in the United States, but also in Europe, East Asia and the South Pacific. London was an internationalist who sought to understand the people and cultures in the lands that he traversed. His “Pan-Pacific Club” essay was his final appeal for the West to overcome its stereotypical view of Asians as inferior peoples who needed Western domination for their own good.
NOTES
(1) See William F. Wu, The Yellow Peril: Chinese-Americans in American Fiction, 1850-1940 (Hamden CT: Archon Books, 1982).
(2) John R. Eperjesi, The Imperialist Imaginary: Visions of Asia and the Pacific in American Culture (Hanover: Dartmouth University Press, 2005, 108
(3) Richard O’Connor, Jack London: A Biography (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1964), 214.
(4) London most fully developed these ideas while covering the early stages of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) in Korea and Manchuria. He was stunned to find Asians using the most up-to-date military technology, methodology and weapons of mass slaughter with great proficiency. He published these ideas in two articles (“The Yellow Peril” in the San Francisco Examiner, 25 September 1904; and “If Japan Awakens China” in Sunset Magazine, December, 1909) and one short story, “The Unparalleled Invasion” (McClure’s Magazine, May 1910).
(5) Jonah Raskin, The Radical Jack London: Writing on War and Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 1.
(6) John R. Eperjesi, The Imperialist Imaginary, 109.
(7) Jack London Reports, 346.
(8) Jack London Reports, 346.
(9) China was the victim of Japanese biological warfare (Unit 731) in bombing late in the China-Japan war of 1931-45. Moreover, China (and North Korea) would charge that the United States used germ warfare in China and North Korea during the Korean War, touching off a fierce debate that continues to this day. See Tsuneishi Keiichi, “Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army’s Biological Warfare Program, http://japanfocus.org-Tsuneishi-Keiichi/2194 . See also Stephen Endicott, The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Critics have strongly challenged Endicott’s key points concerning the alleged use of germ warfare in the Korean War.
(10) Jack London, “The Unparalleled Invasion“ in Dale L Walker, Ed., Curious Fragments (Port Jefferson NY: Kenkat Press, 1976), 119.
(11) Jeanne Campbell Reesman, Jack London: A Study of the Short Fiction (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1999), 91.
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