White genocide

As far as I can tell, practically the only thing that white supremacists don’t consider genocide is the actual Holocaust.

[I]f we don't look out the white race [...] will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved. [...] It's up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.

The idea of a white genocide (or white extinction scenario) refers to any of several doomsday scenarios describing Caucasians or some demographic group associated with white people (typically Westerners, Protestants, or Christians, with perceived "pure" white ancestry) would be heading towards a demographic crisis, becoming a minority in some or all countries, possibly followed by extinction. The term was coined by racist ex-Reagan appointee to the Office of Personnel Management Bob Whitaker. Whitaker, unsurprisingly, also coined the strawman phrase, "Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white." Every white nationalist believes in this, be it Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazi, white power skinheads, alt-right, identitarian, and others.

These scenarios are a kind of framing used to promote white supremacy or similar movements as self-defense, by describing non-whites, mixed-whites, non-Christians, and/or non-Westerners (notably Arabs, Hispanics, and black people, depending on context) as the aggressors in a clash of races or civilizations. When it comes to Arabs or Muslims, claims about white extinction might be associated with the Eurabia scenario. These scenarios can draw a parallel with genocides that have really happened, such as the Holocaust. A similar canard focuses on the perceived decline in specific genetic traits associated with white people, such as blue eyes or blonde hair, rather than the "white race" itself. Some variants of the white genocide scenario are the South African genocide conspiracy in South Africa and The Great Replacement in France and Europe.

Some statistics and definition of genocide
Let's begin with some statistics on population change in Europe and the United States:


 * 1) Predicted European population by religion, without adherence to race. As most European countries neither keep census records for race nor religion, the Muslim identity is usually based on country of origin. The number of "Muslims" almost certainly includes non-Muslims from Muslim countries, as they are more likely to emigrate to secular countries.
 * 2) Predicted Muslim population in Europe, without adherence to race.
 * 3) Predicted population in the United States by race, without adherence to religion. As people of mixed origin, as well as white Hispanics are categorized as non-white, the ratio of whites is deflated. The US census definition of "white" is also the unusually broad "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa."

A frequent (usually deliberate) mistake people make in discussing whites as a minority is lumping every non-white race as a blob of indistinguishable other. This mistake usually betrays the prejudices of the speaker. In actuality, given the 2010 United States Census with whites at 223.5 million and the next largest demographic of African Americans at 38.9 million, it's going to be a very, very long time before whites could potentially become a minority for legal purposes.

Purported tactics
Some claims usually made together with the white extinction scenarios are that:
 * Low birth rates among white/Western communities could lead them to extinction, caused by abortion and family planning. Claimants might argue to restrict abortion or contraception to increase birth rates. They usually don't consider that this would increase birth rates independently of race, i.e. for both whites and non-whites, unless they exempted non-whites from the abortion/birth control plan, which just sounds like it causes more suffering for whites (i.e. the exact opposite of what white supremacists want).
 * Immigration could decrease the ratio of white people/Christians/Westerners in certain countries. According to conspiracy theories such as Eurabia, immigration into Western countries might be a deliberate strategy for colonization and/or demographic warfare.
 * Miscegenation could cause a decline in "racial purity," leaving fewer unmixed white people with each generation.
 * Multiculturalism could erode "white" or Western identity or values perceived as Western, including cultural traditions, "family values", or even democracy.
 * Unorganized violence against white people, Christians or certain ethnic groups (such as the South African farm attacks) could be part of a persecution campaign.

Actual genocide
Let's examine the United Nations' Convention for the Prevention and the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide' definition of "genocide"; namely, one or more of the following:


 * (a) Killing members of the group;
 * (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
 * (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
 * (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
 * (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Contrary to what some may believe (or shout about on message boards and comment sections), there are currently few places in the world where such events are taking place against white or fair-skinned people. The change in the demographics of a nation over time due to migration, immigration, and emigration are not the same thing as systematically and deliberately exterminating a group of people in a somewhat organized fashion. These demographic changes do not even come close to meeting any of the definitions above.

While there have been historic genocides against people who would be classified as "white" by some today, they were not targeted due to being "white" and the perpetrators were often (a different kind of) "white" themselves. For instance, victims and perpetrators of the Nazi Holocaust were both mostly white, as long as one doesn't subscribe to the belief that Jews and the Slavic peoples are somehow non-white.

The UN definition of genocide has been criticized for not including cultural genocide, which refers to attempts to destroy a culture through methods of forced assimilation and suppression of cultural symbols like languages, art, and traditional clothing (the Uighur genocide and Canadian residential schools being two illustrative examples of cultural genocide). However, trying to apply the concept of cultural genocide to white people falls completely flat, simply because white people don't have one unified culture; instead, there are a variety of different cultures among different groups, and again, the vast majority of examples of cultural genocide against white people were committed by other groups of white people (e.g. Francisco Franco's targeting of Catalan culture, British suppression of Irish culture, etc.).

Immigration
Brought to you by Christian Miller of the "White Genocide Evidence Project":

Many realize the 'open borders' movement is a thinly-veiled attempt to dilute and thereby destroy all white nations — Africa for the Africans, Asia for the Asians, White countries for everybody ... White people are libeled and demonized by cultural Marxists in academia, vilified by public slander and robbed of the right to self-identify all in order to instill a destructive sense of false white guilt... These malevolent social engineers yearn for a blended humanity in white nations — mocha-skinned people and societies without race by homogenous default. What they never mention — and what is left to nationalists to publicly emphasize — is that this plan for 'diversity' only applies to white nations.

"White Genocide Project" declares that "White Genocide", in addition to Christian Miller's comment, is:

Legally chasing down and forcing White areas to accept diversity.

If you're not white, you can't be British!
British "Freedom" Party leader Paul Weston has claimed that mass immigration into England is a form of genocide by demographics, while ex-British National Party leader Nick Griffin has argued that identifying non-white people as British is "a sort of bloodless genocide." This is rather ironic, given the fact that the British Empire was founded on the colonization of other countries, whose citizens became subjects of Britain. "The British Nationality Act of 1948 conferred the status of British citizen on all Commonwealth subjects and recognised their right to work and settle in the UK and to bring their families with them." However, this act was later superseded by the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968, and the Immigration Act 1971, which were introduced to control and restrict immigration from the Commonwealth to Britain. This policy was intended to mollify voters who agreed with Enoch Powell, the patron saint of politicians like Griffin and Nigel Farage.

Fallacies
White extinction scenarios usually rest on several logical fallacies, to feign an urgent threat towards white people.

Definition of race and ethnicity
The concept of separate races is, by itself, controversial. Add to that the difficulty of defining racial categories. Many Western racial concepts, such as the racist and arbitrary one-drop rule, would see people of mixed origin classified as non-white. As miscegenation has occurred through centuries, such definitions would make the ratio of white people smaller than more neutral definitions. The claims might rest on a confusion between race, religion, or nationality, to inflate the ratio of non-whites. Some examples are defining ethnic groups that are traditionally Muslims and white (Albanians,, , Turks, Levantines, etc.), or white Hispanics, as non-whites or excluding non-whites from a particular nationality (e.g. assuming any nonwhite British citizen is not British).

While some polities (United States, United Kingdom, etc) record self-identified race and religion in census data, other countries (France, Sweden, etc.) have no such records; one reason is the experience from World War II, where the Nazis used census records to facilitate the Holocaust. Therefore the statistics of people of a specific race or religion in a country might be an estimate, based on place of birth, parents' place of birth, etc. A Christian person descending from Iraqis could count as a Muslim. A white person in Europe descending from white colonists in Africa could count as an African, or as a black person.

The term "white" can vary by country and so can "percentage", and also the perception of who a white person is. For example, a person of white and mestizo (i.e., part-Native American) ancestry would be classified as white in Latin America, but probably not in the United States of America. Supporters of white genocide theories might regard colonized territories, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa, as "white homelands," to find more case studies for the hypothesis. One can find a declining ratio of white people in parts of the western United States, but one should also be aware that whites have only been the majority population in those areas for 150 to 200 years. South Africa has never had a white majority population. And various people who are today classified as "white" would have historically been discriminated against (and viewed as a threat) due to being "German", "Irish", Catholic, Jewish or whatever.

Ignoring that many White people whose families have been in the US for several hundred years also likely contain " ancestors and other euphemisms for having notably darker features, defining mixed-race people as completely non-White is extremely misleading, and the one-drop rule is a rather blatant case of racist special pleading. If a White man and Black woman have two kids together, by population genetics the kids are 50% White, but according to how we classify race they could be 100% Black, but logically, if the kids aren't White because they are half Black, they aren't Black either because they are half White. A town with half White couples and half interracial couples is 75% White, yet according to the stats, the next generation would only be "half" White, and then the generation after will be a "quarter" White, in spite of the town being genetically 3/4ths White. Even if the interracial couples have half the number of kids, the stats will still say that the next generation is "less" White.

An immigrant might be broadly defined as a person with one parent born abroad (or two, in some countries). This would count a natural-born British citizen with parents born in Ireland as an immigrant, no matter how white and English-speaking they might be. Of course, this kind of definition inflates the ratio of immigrants. Countries with significant (former) diasporas may also have "immigrants" that were only let into the country because of their supposed ethnic similarity to the native population. There are for example more Irish citizens outside the Republic of Ireland than inside it, and during the 1990s the vast majority of immigrants to Germany were classified as "ethnic Germans".

Problems
Even if the above were all incorrect, there are several problems with worry about a "white genocide".

Definition of religious groups
There is no universal demographic measure for the size of a religion in a country. Different countries can use any of these variables:
 * Membership of religious congregations
 * Country of origin (see above)
 * Self-identification in census
 * Self-identification in opinion polls
 * Reported attendance to church (or other house or worship)

In the United States, statistics for number of Christians are based on church membership. However, up to the late 19th century, only a minority of Americans were members of a church.

Demographic factors

 * The tempo effect: as the age of childbearing is increasing (which it is, in most high-income countries), the birth rate per capita, or current number of children per woman, declines, even though the total number of children per woman during fertile life stays largely constant.
 * Most of the world's nations pass through a demographic transition, where family size decreases from 4-8 children per woman, to stable reproduction around 2 children per woman. Several countries (most of Asia and Latin America) have a birth rate at or below 2 children per woman; however, due to increasing life expectancy, and high birth rates a generation ago, their population is increasing.
 * Their equivocation of decrease in the percentage of white people with decrease in the actual number. If we look at US census results, we see that whites comprised 75.1% of the total US population in 2000, and 72.4% in 2010 &mdash; giving the impression that whites have declined in number. But if we look at the actual population numbers we see that, between the ten years, the total number of whites actually rose from 211,460,626 to 223,553,265.

Perspective

 * Why does it matter what color your descendants are? Your black ancestors didn't seem to care, and even then, their descendants who eventually became "whiter" mingled like crazy with basically everyone near them. At this point, "racial purity" is a nonsensical concept.
 * Proponents might compare the claimed decline of white people to genocide (as in a conspiracy), while diminishing real genocides, such as in Holocaust denial.
 * Many far-right proponents of this concept in Western Europe also, somewhat bizarrely, oppose the immigration to their countries of white Eastern Europeans such as Poles almost as vehemently as they oppose non-white immigration, even though this is increasing the white population they claim to be so concerned for.
 * Proponents also often chalk the scenario up to non-white immigration, ignoring the role of declining birth rates amongst whites. William Beveridge (a eugenics supporter) spoke of a need to "ensure the continuation of the British race [which at] its present rate of reproduction… cannot continue" as early as 1942, long before there was a substantial non-white presence in the United Kingdom.
 * Even if you accept the dubious premises that the entire argument rests upon, there is no way of preventing the situation without banning international travel, banning international students and eliminating international lust. A substantial number of immigrants to "white" countries are on marriage visas, because some white person couldn't maintain their "commitment to racial purity" and fell in love with a non-white.
 * Skin lightening occurred independently from different gene alleles in east vs. west Eurasia due to similar genetic pressure (the need for more vitamin D from reduced Sun exposure), i.e. convergent evolution.
 * The false attribution by proponents of white genocide conspiracy theories of literally genocidal motives to others who do not share their poisonous ideology — typically focusing explicitly or implicitly on Jews — is likely a case of psychological projection of far-right motives onto others. They, or at least many of their ideological brethren, support the exact same kinds of virulent racial hatred and ethnonationalism that have actually led to ethnic cleansing, and genocides such as the Holocaust, in the past, when they became widespread in a population through fake news and other propaganda.
 * It is similar to, and feeds into, other bizarre reality inversions deployed by the far right, such as claims like "by criticising what they say is racist behaviour from white people like me, anti-racists are the real racists!"