HARD TRUTHS:

"He is a racist and he stokes racism in this country. And it does not just offend our sensibilities, it fundamentally changes the character of this country and it leads to violence," said O'Rourke, who represented El Paso in the US Congress until recently.

"We've had a rise in hate crimes every single one of the last three years during an administration where you have a president who's called Mexicans rapists and criminals."

O'Rourke was responding to questions about a manifesto purportedly written by the gunman which railed against the Hispanic "invasion" of Texas which borders Mexico.

More than 80 percent of El Paso's population is Hispanic, according to US census figures.

Crusius wrote that the attack "is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas," and made references to the Christchurch shootings in New Zealand, where a white gunman killed 51 mosque worshipers in March.

Crusius claimed that he was "defending" his country "from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion."

He added: "If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can be more sustainable."

Some creedal nationalists maintain that because it is open to anyone, at least in principle, to believe and support these ideas, there is no reason to favor immigrants from one background or another. I don't think that conclusion necessarily follows. Many, indeed most, inhabitants of the Third World, don't necessarily share our ideas and beliefs; others pay lip service, but don't really comprehend them. There are exceptions of course, but most people are not exceptional. Thus, creedal nationalism could support a low and slow approach to immigration.

But the second type of nationalism is what I want to concentrate on. I term it cultural distance nationalism, and it goes further. It is based on the insight and understanding that people's background culture can affect their ability to fit into a modern advanced society and to perform the roles needed to support and maintain it - civic, occupational, economic, technical, and the like.

According to this view, we are better off if our country is dominated numerically, demographically, politically, at least in fact if not formally, by people from the First World, from the West, than by people from countries that had failed to advance.

Tweet   @brothersjudd