What Is Behind the Anti-Borders Personality?

Every supporter of CIS will know well the term “xenophobic.” They might have even been smeared with the label by globalist/anti-borders types before. But far fewer will know its antonym: “xenophilia”, or love, rather than fear, of the foreigner.

On xenophobia, thousands of scholarly papers have likely been written over the decades attempting to ascertain why Americans who resist “enrichment” by way of mass immigration think the way they do — the answer invariably being: “fear.”

For xenophilia, however, such analysis is virtually naught. At least according to one 2017 paper by German scholars (henceforth “Sturmer et al.”), there had been just six studies published on the topic up to 2012 — half being from the 1950s — which discuss its own psychological foundations.

This says a lot. Likely, it points to cosmopolitan attitudes toward the foreign as simply being de rigeur among academics and assumed to be good, healthy and, therefore, not worth delving into. Take, for instance, Sturmer et al.’s soft, admiring and complimentary approach to xenophilia in their psychological study of the concept. As they write: “In a very basic psychological sense, xenophilia can be conceptualized as a favorable attitude toward exploratory contact with individuals from other groups that are perceived as culturally different and unfamiliar on the basis of their language, ethnicity, habits or customs.” (Emphasis added.)

Clearly, for the authors, to be characterized as the opposite of xenophilic is to be planted in the camp of the irrational and the fearful. Indeed, xenophobia, they write, applies to those who apparently seek “intergroup dominance and hostility”; as if, to paraphrase UK-based sociologist Eric Kaufmann, any evolved ‘in-group attachment is somehow the same as fear or hatred of the out-group.’

Saying that, Sturmer et al. do acknowledge that such impulses are, at times, not wholly irrational, admitting that “the history of mankind is [] replete with examples where first contact with foreign out-groups has led to the enslavement, exploitation, or murder of those who ventured into this endeavor.” And because of this, as they hypothesized at the outset of their survey research, xenophilics are first and foremost likely to be people with “high levels of endeavor-related traits” (characteristics like extraversion and openness to experience) and with the greatest willingness “to engage in cross-cultural contact and exploration.”

Unsurprisingly, the authors’ survey results do show their hypothesis has merit. But what is of particular value of their paper is an almost throw away-line about what not to think about xenophilia. What they ask readers to dismiss outright is the conclusion of one scholarly paper which describes xenophilia as a suspicious and negative attitude involving “… an implicit or explicit disrespect for or hatred of one’s own sociological reference group.” Such a perspective seems perfectly fair and reasonable to consider as a test-hypothesis: that xenophilia is rooted, not in a love for one’s out-group, but in a loathing for one’s in-group.  

Such a claim is far from outlandish. British commentator and former Marxist, Peter Hitchens recently wrote that back in the 1960s, he and his comrades “wanted more immigration… not because [they] especially liked immigrants [but]… because [they] did not much like Britain, and saw mass migration as a good way of changing it.” Loathing for their in-group was their prime motivator. 

The scholarly paper which Sturmer et al. dismiss was published by MIT professor Howard V. Perlmutter in 1954. In it, Perlmutter provides a framework for understanding the xenophile that any supporters of an America-First immigration policy would profit from.

In a richly condescending tone, Perlmutter, an obvious skeptic of the neo-Marxist scholarship then entrenching itself within various universities across the country, introduces his study by stating, for those now leading “anthropological, sociological, and psychological studies” in the US, “[t]he [critical] intellectual energies of our time seem leveled primarily on the ‘ethnocentric typology’” — that is, papers professing to show “how to spot a racist” was apparently becoming a core intellectual pursuit for American academics at the time.

Such a disfavored typology, he writes, is to be contrasted with what he calls an “equalitarian syndrome’”; the “favored” typology for the academic elite. Apparently channeling his own “intellectual energies” elsewhere, Perlmutter then states he seeks to pursue his own psychological study, not of the ‘ethnocentric type’, but of its opposite: the xenophile.

Those well-versed in the “culture war” phenomenon which seemed to grip the country in the lead-up to the civil rights movement (and beyond), know well the importance of the neo-Marxian Frankfurt School and its German-turned-US-immigrant founders: people like Max Horkeimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Theodore Adorno. Perhaps the most important product to come out of the group was Adorno’s Authoritarian Personality (1950), a purportedly empirical study which sought to measure latent “authoritarian”, “fascist” and/or “xenophobic” tendencies in people by way of an assortment of psychologically probing questions. For instance, survey questions from Adorno’s “F-Scale” (‘F’ for fascist) sought to measure the degree to which someone denied their impulses, identified with the strong, or displayed an “inability to rebel against parental figures”; all characteristics which, if found high enough, supposedly pointed to a fascist personality.

In an attempt to grasp the opposite psychological profile — that of the xenophile — Perlmutter takes Adorno’s analysis of “fascist” personal traits and flips it on its head. In responding with his own “X-Scale”, he writes: “Logically, at least, it is possible to draw a list of characteristics of individuals which represent the converse of [Adorno’s] anti-democratic criteria…” By doing this, one could begin to ascertain what the xenophilic typology “would display strong dispositions toward.”

So, where Adorno probed respondents for characteristics showing “identification with the strong”, for instance, Perlmutter asked questions aimed at measuring one’s “identification with the weak”. While such methods might appear rather cute, Perlmutter’s paper is still highly instructive in understanding the xenophilic, anti-borders personality.

For Perlmutter, key characteristics for grasping such a personality from Adorno’s F-Scale included an “attribution or projection of badness to foreigners”, in addition to a “hatred of foreigners” — observations 4 and 5 from Adorno’s scale. Flipping these around, Perlmutter probed his own survey respondents for their propensity to “attribute or project badness to Americans and goodness to foreigners”, and who express “love and admiration for foreigners, generalized widely.” Such questions sought, says Perlmutter, to “tap into one’s preferences for foreign objects, persons, and institutions over their domestic counterparts”. If a respondent scored high enough in this area, they were placed high up on Perlmutter’s X-Scale.

Next, to further flip Adorno’s hypothesis on its head, Perlmutter posited that it was actually X-Scale high-scorers that exhibited a big propensity towards authoritarianism.

Under Adorno’s own logic, ‘suspicion of and hostility toward the other’ was key to his prediction of a fascistic or xenophobic personality. So, Perlmutter then queried whether “non-fascists” too could carry a similar level of suspicion, just one pointed inward towards people like themselves. As he hypothesized:

Xenophilia is based on an unconscious but rigid in-grout-out-group distinction; it involves stereotyped, negative imagery and hostile attitudes regarding in-groups and stereotyped, positive imagery regarding out-groups (often where he has had no direct experience with that out-group). The underlying dynamics of the Authoritarian and Xenophile are probably very similar.

This is indeed what he found. Those surveyed who scored high on xenophilia also scored higher on the authoritarian-measuring F scale than those rated low on xenophilia. Authoritarian traits included “suspicion of others”, “dichotomous [us versus them] thinking”, “stereotypic thinking”, and ‘beliefs in things like intrinsic good versus intrinsic evil and mystical forces.’

His conclusions should not surprise many today. Utopianism — which authoritarianism seems to always be guided by — appears more prevalent than ever, especially on the immigration issue.

Returning to Hitchens, for his former Marxist comrades, borders were far from protective (i.e. of jobs, the environment, cultural cohesion, etc.), and were viewed as a restraint; one which hinders, as he said it, “the development of civilization towards its utopian ideal… And if [his leftist comrades] will get there through a sea of blood, fine.”

Take, as an example, the hard-left Green Party of Hitchens’s own country. It views no standard on immigration as being justified at all. Referring to the near-decade long phenomenon of poor, mostly young, male African and Middle Eastern infiltrators arriving in boats on English shores, they write:

We have all benefited from food, music, art and culture from all around the world. But it shouldn’t require migrants or people of colour to sort of contribute a trick or deliver something for us to see our collective humanity… [t]he threat to our society is not arriving by dinghy or a small boat – they’re flying in a private jet.

Kaufmann nails this type of psychology in describing what he refers to as “multicultural millenarianism”. To paraphrase him, such adherents believe that the demise of the West’s historical majority will somehow pave the way for a more fair, just and happy society. Considering these lofty, utopian goals, it should be assumed that such adherents are likely not the types to hold pro-liberty, pro-free-speech, or pro-freedom-of-association views. Multiculturalism and authoritarianism would seem to go hand in hand.

In another new paper which, similar to Sturmer et al.’s, pushes for more studies of xenophilia (rather than xenophobia), researchers make the rather chilling demand that “efforts to promote tolerance are the backbone of work by many leaders who aim to resolve intergroup conflict… [t]his is essential but not enough, as not hating the outgroup is not the ultimate goal; liking them is.” (Emphasis added.) You would be forgiven if hearing “mere tolerance is not enough” takes you back to the ending of 1984, (perhaps the greatest work on authoritarianism) in which George Orwell presents a broken, mentally reconstructed Winston Smith; a man whose own mind had to be taken away from him:

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.