Credit: Ivan Musinov.
There is this strange dichotomy with respect to Russia.
The Western elites like Hillary Clinton and many Russophile right-wingers believe that it is a paragon of fascist/conservative and white supremacist/traditionalist values, respectively. (The main difference being that the former think that this is Bad, while the latter think it’s Good).
On the other side, the more fervently anti-Putin Russian nationalists and /pol/ shitposters are in agreement that the Kremlin are just pursuing a Russian version of multiculturalism and open borders.
The Myth of Mosque-O
The central exhibit in this has become the Cathedral Mosque, and photos of the 100,000-200,000 strong crowds congregating around it on Islamic holidays.
Even Steve Sailer has written about it. Our Ukrainian friend AP never tires of reminding us about it in the comments.
Here is a slightly more relevant statistic: There are a grand total of four mosques in Moscow, and this is one of them.
Moreover, it was originally built in 1904, then controversially demolished, and rebuilt in a project largely financed by a private Dagestani tycoon, Suleiman Kerimov.
The other Moscow mosques include the historical Old Mosque (constructed in 1823), the Moscow Memorial Mosque (more of a war monument than a place of worship), and one that is part of a complex of religious buildings that also includes a Buddhist stuppa. The latter two were both constructed in the 1990s.
This is in comparison to Moscow’s 1110 churches, a number which is increasing by about 5% yearly.
Two of them are Catholic churches. What is the ratio between the Muslim and Catholic population in Moscow? 20:1? 100:1?
To add an international perspective, the “UK Mosque Searcher” lists 427 mosques in London (many of which are funded by Saudis).
It should therefore be immediately obvious as to why the streets around the Cathedral Mosque are jam-packed with worshippers. Unlike in London, or Paris, or Berlin… they pretty much have nowhere else to go!
It is also probably – hopefully – as good a proof as any that Russia’s elites are not focused on a population replacement agenda, as is evidently the case in Western Europe. If mosques aren’t being constructed, then presumably, there aren’t any intentions to keep many Muslims around in the long-term.
What I am saying is that there is rhetoric and there are facts and statistics, and the former is no substitute for the latter if you want to be taken seriously outside your own narrow ideological circles.
The Myth of Moskvabad
Here is another, in many ways stunning, statistic: Moscow is the last and only megacity in the world where Europeans remain a solid majority.
According to the 2010 Census, 92% of Muscovites are Russians, rising to 94% amongst infants. For all intents and purposes these figures go up to more than 95% if you only count Slavs and other non-Central Asian and non-Caucasian minorities. Now yes, to be sure, if you go outside, then 85%-90% of the faces you encounter will have a Slavic appearance. In 2014, the Federal Migration Service estimated there were 1.4 million foreign workers in the city, of whom 400,000 were there illegally. Bearing in mind that the city’s official 12 million strong population is overwhelmingly Russian,
Rounding that up to two million – while bearing in mind that a significant percentage of those are Ukrainians and Moldovans – and adding them to the city’s official population of 12 million, which is overwhelmingly Russian, and you get a figure of about 14 million people. That is, about 85% European.
In comparison, London is 60% white according to the latest UK census. The French (in)famously don’t collect such data, but Paris is probably similar. Non-Hispanic whites constitute 45% of New Yorkers and 29% of Los Angelinos.
Most importantly with respect to the post-1960s European experience, fertility amongst these Gastarbeiters appears to be very low. There’s a simple explanation why this must be the case: There are 8x as many Uzbek and Tajik male citizens in Russia as women in the 17-25 year age group, and 4-5x as many in the 25-45 year age group. Men cannot bear children, as it generally acknowledged outside the SJWsphere.
There’s another scrap of circumstantial but pretty strong evidence to support this. In Europe, we are constantly inundated with news of how Mohammed has become the most popular’s baby boys’ names in the latest European city of church spires and historical taverns. Yet according to Moscow official statistics, it was the 80th most popular name in the city in January 2015, with only ten Mohammeds being born (actually some “ethnic” names were more popular: There were 26 Amirs in 51st position, and 16 Umars in 66th position). The most popular “ethnic” girl’s name was in 36th position, with 34 Aminas being born.
This is not to say things are ideal, and I don’t think I ever have. London, Paris, and Berlin did not become the way they are now over a few years, but over several decades. Not even the Social Democrats of Germany ever planned for Gastarbeiters to stay permanently. There is no guarantee that the same will not happen in Russia.
Yet even so, it’s important to keep things in perspective.
The Last White Megacity
Here’s a stunning implication: Moscow is now the last and only megacity in the world where Europeans remain a solid majority.
In contrast, Japan has three 99% Japanese conurbations, out of 127 million people. China has more than a dozen. Korea has one.
This is a very sad state of affairs for the European world in general, but it might well be a relative boon for Russia itself. Economists have long identified increasing returns to city size for economic wealth and technological productivity, and psychometricians have long noticed that big cities tend to attract the cognitive elites, which further turbocharges economic dynamism. Russia is the only country within “Greater Europe” to retain a megacity with a solidly predominant white population and its associated benefits of a high average IQ.
To be sure, there are plenty of megacities in the world. Most are now in the lower IQ Third World, and thus inconsequential from a “smart fractions”-central perspective, but a good twenty or so are in high-IQ East Asia, a civilization that has thus far managed to escape the “baizuo” disease of mass immigration and cultural decomposition.
However, considering East Asians’ relative lack of curiosity, it is not completely beyond the realm of the possible that Moscow might become a genuinely one of a kind cultural and scientific hub as the 21st century goes on.
You make a strong case for your position here. The only dynamic missing, however, is how Russia’s future political environment will develop (or regress), for this will have a huge impact on how its economic development will proceed down the road. An authoritarian model that has to this point been strongly augmented by a petrol driven economy doesn’t necessarily bid well for future super economic growth, as Fukuyama so poignantly pointed out in his seminal book “The End of History and the Last Man”.
You mean 10-15%.
Buenos Aires is also a megacity, and IMO still qualifies as solidly white-majority, whatever the IQ cultists may say.
All “economic dynamism” is not the same. A parasitic and financialized excrescence is no blessing to the people or the nation it attaches to, however astronomical the IQ of its inhabitants may be deemed.
The twisted pretzel shaped skyscraper in the first picture could easily be included within the second futuristic science fiction styled one. Anyone know the name and purpose of this interesting looking building? I’ve never seen a building quite like that!
@Anatoly Karlin: Does this mean that Russia no longer needs a Big Beautiful Wall (BBW) considering that the “demographic threat” from non-White migrants to Russia appears to be very overrated?
That’s for now. Buenos Aires is suffering an intense flow of mestizo population and “villas” and “negros villeros” are infesting everywhere. Buenos Aires is just delayed with respect to cities like Paris and London but under the same dynamics.
You can just be sure about one thing about Fukuyama and his predictions: they will not occur with a 100% certainty. Reading his absurd claims today is just for fun. He missed in about any claim he did.
It’s the Evolution Tower. An office building.
I think that Russia should build a Big Beautiful Wall as their World Wonder nonetheless for Culture gain.
I don’t even think that Fukuyama thinks they will occur with 100% certainty now.
Attempting to fix by sending the elite generation to Western universities to be credentialed in the latest fads in cultural creativity and reality fluidity. However, instructions appear to be unclear, results seem to turn into large numbers of co-ethnic baizhou instead.
Halp.
I mean he had almost 0% accuracy on his predictions. That’s a pretty achievement because sometimes even a random shot is right on the target.
Do they? Anecdotally, most Chinese in western universities study quite straight laced subjects and limit their interactions with, but not totally cut themselves off from, westerners. Consequently, they seem to have quite nuanced opinions with respect to the west and their own country.
I’ve lived in both London and Moscow in the last two years. I much prefer Moscow, even with the language (hard to learn with a brain wired for English). If you are a young (sadly, I am not), ambitious person who likes city living, consider Moscow. I think that you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
While the comment is tongue-in-cheek, there definitely seems to be a number of Chinese who after exposure to Western institutions, turn into classical NGO types. They are typically women, and often self-identify as one of the Chinese minorities such as Hui or Manchu. They’re quite annoying and pretty much parrot each and every one of the popular SJW opinions.
Off the top of my head, one went on this entire spiel of how the world is getting better and therefore more and more things are seen as forbidden, just like how killing and fighting was once acceptable but no longer are, soon saying mean things will no longer be acceptable.
In the long run, atomization is a powerful force against every culture. One could even argue that individuality is necessary for creativity, but individuality also seeks self-maximization, which means disrupting and destroying societal norms as necessary in order to maximize the self, esp. if Western norms are seen as high status.
The problem with Moscow, and indeed most megacities, is that they seem to be run almost exclusively for the benefit of their rentier class. Those who bought property in one before about 2000 or inherited are essentially an aristocracy. They attract the young and naive, who think they can join them through hard work and immigrants from poorer countries, where the remittances after rent will give a decent standard of living to their recipients.
Off-topic, but I just wanted to emphasize that Turkish immigration to Germany a) started under the Christian Democrats in the 1960s, b) American pressure played an important role in opening Germany to Turkish immigration, c) there was lots more of it (“family reunification”) again under the Christian Democrats in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Social Democrats are disgustingly pro-Islam today, and they played a disastrous role in the past with their intransigence over matters like asylum, family reunification etc., but “conservatives” are to a large degree responsible for the mess we’re in now.
Anyway, good for Moscow, hopefully it stays that way.
As usual a good read.
But … that “antigravity soon, with wife” picture! Is that a uniform of the Principality of Zeon?
Anatoly’s remark about white megacities might well be technically true, but if it is, it probably depends highly on some questionable definitions of ‘megacity’ and ‘European descent’.
To the first point, there are a lot of European cities that are smaller than than London / Paris / Moscow but still quite large, and that haven’t had all that much mass immigration. Warsaw and Prague have stayed mostly cities inhabited by the majority ethnic group, as has Budapest. Outside eastern Europe, Vienna and Copenhagen have had more mass migration than I’d like, but are still around 70-75% Austrian and Danish respectively (and are situated in countries with reasonably sensible immigration policies). Europe just doesn’t have that many megacities in general- due to being fortunate enough to be the first continent to experience demographic transition. But what that should tell us is that maybe the concept of a megacity is somewhat less than meaningful, and maybe there’s no magic threshold that gets crossed when you go from 4 million to 5 million (or for that matter, even from 2 million to 8 million or whatever). A European city of a million people can most likely hold its own in terms of cultural influence against cities of five or ten million elsewhere.
To the second point, South America has several megacities and South America (outside the Andes) tends to be more ‘European’ than a lot of us realize. The median Brazilian, for example, is around 75% of European descent (yes I know the stereotype that Brazil is as much an African settler state as a European one: it’s a myth). The median south Brazilian is closer to 90% European, genetically. Given that Sao Paulo and Rio are closer to the south than to the north, and that percentage European increases along a north-south axis, I’d guess that the median Paulista or Carioca is around 80% genetically European. And Buenos Aires is of course even more ‘European’ than that.
“Asian lack of curiosity” – heh.
What you mean, my dear Anatoly, is that Asians have historically not spent their time developing techniques to control matter. On the other hand, Asians have poured enormous effort into metaphysical investigations – with spectacular results.
Funny how curiosity now means almost the exact opposite of what it used to – once it meant investigation into the ultimate nature of reality, now it means techniques for control of matter.
Ha!
Sorry to crash your party, anyways, it just hit me how loaded that term “curiosity” has become these days.
No, the study that claimed absurdly high levels of white ancestry all over Brazil was completely fraudulent. Sao Paulo is majority white, but to nothing like the Moscow extent.
Quite true. In Britain, too, shameless party propagandists are always trying to elide the Tories’ equal responsibility for the disaster with Labour.
I don’t have reason to believe it was “completely fraudulent”, but you’re correct that it does appear to have been the high end of the range, so point half-taken. That having been said, the estimates for Sao Paulo state itself range from 61-79%, so the median is 70%, and since European ancestry (in Brazil) is higher in urban areas than in the countryside, Sao Paulo is probably somewhere around 75% European.
In fact, even southern brazilians are less than 90% European now, of course, they have still high ancestry towards 80-85%. There was a large migration from the Northeast (heavily black and mulatto population with many pardos) during the military period to all states, the south no exception. Also a more recent migration from the southeastern states into the south also hits current generations.
São Paulo and Rio aren’t states with population with 80% european descent, much more a statistics fight between mulattos and tri-racials (the pardos) and those who still kept majority european ancestry. You can see many “white-looking” people, even some Mendel-like recessive results among pardo couples having “white-looking” children, but in general the pardo and mulatto population are slowly eating away the white population since they have more children than them and race there isn’t much an issue in their society (although race issues still exists and brazilians are instinctively racists, but not so in public) as social mobility problems and economy.
Evolution Tower of “moscow city” center. Regular office/rich housing building. Nice looking thing, can be seen from where i live.
Designed by Tony Kettle in collaboration with Edinburgh College of Art Professor Karen Forbes, was inspired by “Rodin’s Kiss”
You are overstating the percentage in Moscow ” Rounding that up to two million – while bearing in mind that a significant percentage of those are Ukrainians and Moldovans”. There were 400,000 estimated illegals. The million legals would already be in the 12 million.
I have seen black construction workers, Central African from the look of them, in Moscow but in the suburban construction sites there seem to be a lot of Armenians.
Nevertheless, an interesting thought. Does the lack of diversity reflect on the SU’s isolation, a socialist economy or a lack of attractiveness? After all Russia only had 10 years on the oil needle. The first 4 weren’t exactly peak oil either.
A certain Enoch Powell did more than a little to stimulate what was then called “coloured immigration”. London Transport wanted cheap staff.
“Russia is the only country within “Greater Europe” to retain a megacity with a solidly predominant white population and its associated benefits of a high average IQ.”
at the same time it’s almost certain that western megacities will keep very well-endowed smart fractions; they’re after all, absorbing not just cognitively challenged masses, but also the very cream of the crop from all over the world. Social cohesion will likely suffer the most, though, and Moscow may one day become a refuge for red pilled, accomplished whites (if its demographic profile is preserved, as you’re campaigning for)
Looks like they’ve succeeded – sure caught my eye!
I recall reading somewhere that the average self-identified white in Brazil is actually of only 80% European ancestry. This would likely impact Brazil’s stats.
With respect to many of the Western mega-cities suburbia ought to be included, in which case not only Buenos Aires but also New York (73.4% white, 51.4% non-Hispanic white, but some of those Hispanics who claim to be white are probably indeed whites, so perhaps around 60% white) and probably London.
Apart from following Islam and having small Asian/MENA admixture. How are Turks any different from Greeks, Spaniard or Italians?
The main problem they face is high fertility rates among Kurds, whose share have risen from 10 to 20% and is likely to continue to grow.