An Increasing Great Fear


In 1963, around the time of my first conversations with Fidel Raul, Che and the other members of the then Cuban government, a New York writer named John Gerassi published a book whose title I would never forget: The Great Fear detailed the inevitable rise of what was at the time referred to as The Third World, dovetailing perfectly with the Cuban Revolution (which Gerassi also wrote about).
Throughout the decades that followed, during which, among other things, I studied Global Survival (think Limits to Growth) and lived under Communism in its Eastern European setting (in Hungary, known as ‘its merriest barracks’, and in a Poland still obsessed with its three historical partitions before Solidarnosc brought fame…), the basic elements of systems thinking convinced me of its inevitable reunification, as I wrote in Une autre Europe, un autre Monde. Due to a lack of ‘credentials’ only a small independent publisher would take that work on, however I received the first copies on the day the Berlin Wall fell, and French Sovietologists recognized its prescience. (I was even invited to a Round Table in Brussels during which I braved the consensus, pleading for the rapid incorporation of Eastern Europe into the EU.)
In the preceding decade, the US had taken over France’s efforts to save its investments in Asia (Paris gradually let go of North Africa too) and yet, as American hegemony became an article of international faith, the Third World’s demands for a New Information Order were brushed aside, ultimately paving the way for 9/11. The West’s subsequent focus on Islamic terrorism obscured growing evidence that Gerassi’s Great Fear had been premonitory. When in the 2000’s, the backlash from NATO’s extra-European wars inspired large populations to renew the ancient trek from Africa into Europe, it was too late to prevent the cradle of Christianity from becoming a Muslim behemoth.
How many ways are needed to say it? With 16% of the world’s population, the days when technology — including nukes — enabled the Caucasian Race to rule are coming to an end. The Berlin Wall was erected to keep people in: Donald Trump and European leaders like Hungary’s Victor Orban are erecting walls to keep ‘the lesser races’ out. But they are insufficient to change the evolving ‘balance of power’ from white to honey-colored — confirming Gerassi’s Great Fear.
Indeed, the US Census Bureau’s release of race and age statistics for 2017 shows an increasingly aging white population, while the non-white population rises. For the first time since annual statistics have been released, they show an absolute decline in the nation’s non-Hispanic white population, accelerating a phenomenon that was not projected to occur until the next decade. Starting in 2007, at every age from zero to nine, more minority children (known as Generation “Z-Plus,”) are being born in the US than white.
But labels cannot obscure the fact that in 2020, only 16% of the world population is of ‘Caucasian’ descent, and it faces a steep learning curve if it is to survive, at a time when the Corona virus demands unprecedented North-South cooperation.
Deena Stryker is a US-born international expert, author and journalist that lived in Eastern and Western Europe and has been writing about the big picture for 50 years. Over the years she penned a number of books, including Russia’s Americans. Her essays can also be found at Otherjones. Especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.