Paul Kersey, American Renaissance, July 13, 2018

You’ve seen this movie before — an all-white team is defeated by an integrated or black team. The victory ushers in a new era of Western Civilization, in which whites are literally on the sidelines.

Disney’s Glory Road celebrated Texas Western University using only black players to defeat all-white Kentucky in the NCAA basketball final. Invictus was a fable of racial redemption, with South Africa’s all-white rugby team winning the World Cup only after President Nelson Mandela (played by Morgan Freeman, of course) gave it his blessing. The victory heralded South Africa’s transition to multiracial “democracy” as well as its reintegration into international sports.

Remember the Titans celebrates racial replacement, as blacks substitute for white coaches and players on a Virginia high school football team. The new integrated team defeats its opponents and, symbolically, America’s white past.

The mass media condition us to see sports as the ultimate example of successful racial integration. Sometimes, sports even become a celebration of black supremacy or white inferiority. Reality does not always cooperate. Let us consider the final in the World Cup between France and Croatia to be played on Sunday.

France’s team is heavily non-white, and journalists are already treating the team’s victories so far as a slap in the face for French nationalists. The Washington Post’s Karen Attiah wrote:

There is a certain glee that comes with knowing that racists, nativists and anti-immigrant politicians in France have to contend with the fact that the World Cup hopes of Les Bleus rest on the shoulders of black African men. We celebrate when black people succeed in elite Western spaces, especially if those spaces are European.

Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl said in a podcast:

I went back and reread my SI story from 1998 [when a similarly piebald French team won the World Cup] about that team and how at a time of rising unfortunately right-wing politics, this was sort of a rebuke to those politics, and I think there’s a lot of similarities there.

Of course, the “right-wing” politics Mr. Wahl bemoans are here to stay. As President Trump recently put it:

Allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad. . . . I think it changed the fabric of Europe and, unless you act very quickly, it’s never going to be what it was . . . .

Europe’s soccer teams are changing just like Europe. In order to reach the finals, Croatia played England, a team with a demographic profile similar to that of France. In a recent Associated Press article, English coach Gareth Southgate bragged that his team represented “modern England:” Eleven of the team’s 23 players were reportedly of African or Caribbean descent.

According to the Guardian, 48 percent of the players on the Belgian team — which France defeated to reach the finals — had foreign backgrounds. Seven were Congolese; others were from Morocco or Mali.

Yet one nation seems to be still “what it was,” to use President Trump’s words — and it has an incredible soccer team. Croatia, a nation of just four million people, will field an all-white (all-Croatian!) team when it plays France in the finals. Several players were born outside the country, but only because their families had escaped the violence of the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Tiny Croatia has only 513,000 men of prime soccer-playing age compared to France’s 7.9 million. While the English, French, and Belgian teams represent the legacy of colonization and Third World immigration, Croatia’s team still represents the Croatian nation. Zlatko Dalic, the team’s coach, put it this way, heading into Sunday’s final: “For Croatian football and for Croatia as a country, this is history being written. We have our heart, we have our pride, we have our players.”

France’s team has little to do with the historic French nation. Only six of its 23 players are white. Seventeen are sons of first-generation immigrants. Eight are from the banlieues, the Third World slums that surround French cities. These are described by the New York Times as “places with large, working-class, non-white communities, synonymous with riots and social strife, thought of as breeding grounds for crime and terrorism.” Twelve of the 23 players have black African ancestry, and if you include North Africa, more than 60 percent of the players are African. Here is a video of players relaxing on the team bus.

To some journalists, the team’s real opponent is the French Right. Le Monde’s Abdourahman Waberi wrote that the spectacle of French fans cheering for non-white players marks a victory over Marine Le Pen and other anti-immigrant voices, with “the magic of football [sending] stereotypes, hatred, and prejudices off the pitch.” Similarly, University of Nice historian Yvan Gastaut sees soccer as a way of reminding people about “mobility, movements, [and] multiple identities” paving the way for a world where “we can focus on something else other than what are our origins.”

The determination to draw such a sweeping conclusion from a soccer game suggests desperation. France, Britain, and Belgium are all suffering the heavy costs of mass immigration, and traditional liberties such as free speech are already being throttled to prevent criticism of the multiracial experiment. A winning soccer team will not solve these problems; France’s 1998 World Cup victory certainly didn’t. The spectacle of USA Today publishing headlines such as “Why the World Cup is a Great Advertisement for Immigration“ is embarrassing at a time when the Eiffel Tower requires a permanent wall to protect it from terrorist attacks.

Yet even if one accepts the argument that banlieues and riots are a small price to pay for soccer glory, what if an all-white team wins the world cup? If mass non-white immigration is a good thing because it built a great English soccer team, what would it mean if an all-European team were even better? What if Croatia beats France? The same people telling us that French soccer justifies mass immigration will tell us it’s only a game.

Of course, it’s only a game. Even to speak of the “French team” is ridiculous — it is more of an international franchise than a real national symbol. Being a “fan” is like being a “fan” of Coca-Cola.

This Sunday, two worldviews are going to battle it out before the entire world. Leftists like to imagine themselves the underdogs, but in this David-and-Goliath story, France is, by far, the odds-on favorite. Croatia represents nationalism against the powerful, soulless, rootless international conglomerate masquerading as the “French” national team.

As an American, I normally care very little about soccer, but this Sunday, I’m making an exception. I’m rooting for Croatia: the last European team standing.