What Happened to Asian-Americans?

Note: Throughout this essay I will be using the term “Asian” and “Asian-Americans” as shorthand for “East Asian” – namely Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, and Vietnamese. Though I know “Asian” should also include Middle Easterners and South Asians, they will be excluded for the purposes of this essay. Thank you

Growing up, I greatly admired Asian civilization. No, I was never an anime fan, though I did grow up loving kaiju, martial arts films, and Nintendo (still do for those first two). But, honestly, it went deeper than that. Growing up when I did, Asian-Americans were presented as the “model minority” by much of the Right. They were seen as hard working, industrious, intelligent, and with strong family ties. What’s more, they were often small business owners. They were often the victim of brutal (mostly black) violence. And, especially in the case of the Vietnamese, they were staunchly anti-communist. These were people, after all, that had lost their country to the Red Menace. I was told that they had fought against the communists to save their land with incredible bravery until a bunch of spineless politicians in the U.S. stabbed them in the back. That was only reinforced by growing up near a military base. As with many Dixian boys, I grew up in awe of the United States military, and since many soldiers had Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese wives, I figured that they must be good conservatives.

And, they were. Unlike the GOP’s love affair with other non-Whites, it was not a one-way street between the GOP and Asians. Many were justifiably angry at the Democrats for failing to give them the support they needed to keep their countries from falling to communism. Drawing from that, many on the Right felt guilty, and unlike the White guilt of today, and this is not without reason. The United States promised these people that if they fight hard, the American Empire would give them everything they needed to destroy communism. The U.S. failed to live up to that promise, allowing communist governments to pop up throughout Asia, the best result was a single stalemate in Korea. Since the U.S. had failed these people, many on the Right felt they should be allowed in. After all, these people were clearly anti-communist or they would not have taken up arms against them.

When the Rodney King Riots broke out in 1992, Korean men did what men are always called to do – defend their homes and families from wonton violence. In 1992, Pat Buchanan even won Koreatown in the Republican primary. Because they were so hard working and intelligent, their kids were notorious for having 4.0 GPAs and near perfect SAT scores, they were also seen as natural allies because of the Democrat push for Affirmative Action. If it hurt well-qualified Whites in favor of blacks and Hispanics, then Asians were hurt even more.

However, in the past 30 years something has changed. Since the 1990s, Asian-Americans have transformed from a solidly Republican demographic to an overwhelmingly Democratic one. That they have become Democrats is remarkable considering how rightwing they were seen as in 1990. These were not Dixians or the Northern ethnics (Irish, Italians, Poles, etc.), who might have still had lingering ancestral attachments to the Democratic Party. Somewhere down the line, they became attached to the increasingly radical, blatantly anti-White Democratic Party. The consequences to this have been real. Though their numbers are small throughout most of the United States, they are a large segment of the population of California. This, I think, is an often overlooked reason why California has gone from a fairly conservative middle-class paradise to a Far Left hell hole in a generation.

And, they have embraced the anti-White rhetoric of the Democratic Party. I know it’s common for the Dissident Right to focus on the “Jewishness” of those that engage in this kind of rhetoric, and with good reason, but it comes from Asian-Americans, too. Additionally, earlier this year news of black youths going “panda hunting” (i.e. beating up defenseless Asians) started becoming mainstream. Even when it became clear who was doing the violence, Asian-Americans still largely went along with the rhetoric that the attacks were the result of “white nationalism” and Trump’s attacks on the communist Chinese government, not Chinese people as a whole. That the overwhelming percentage of the attackers were black was largely ignored.

The fact that a significant amount of young “white nationalist” men want to marry Asian women to live out their anime-soaked fantasies, rather than engaging in random violence against them, was ignored, too. That Trump and the vast majority of the Right was very careful to draw a distinction between the government of communist China and Asian people was also ignored. Nope, it was the result of America’s new boogieman – “White supremacy.” “Stop Asian Hate,” which translated to more attacks on Whites, White history, and Heritage America, became a rallying cry. And, when a White lunatic shot up an Asian message parlor it was naturally treated as the rule of anti-Asian violence, rather than the exception.  

The question is why did this occur, and I see two principal sources. One is the difference between the average Asian-American of 1990 and the one of today. In 1990, many Asian-Americans were indeed hard working, intelligent, and industrious small-business owners. They, typically, were not college graduates and were normally, especially in the case of the Vietnamese, first generation immigrants. Their kids, though, were college graduates. While their parents might view the U.S. from the lens of an anti-communist lens, their children became heavily indoctrinated. Because they are overrepresented at places like Yale, Princeton, Duke, and UCLA, etc. they are hit by this indoctrination particularly hard. At college, they somehow combined the White guilt of White leftists and combined it with the rage of black victimhood. They feel guilty that they are the beneficiaries of an unjust system, but also think that very same system is oppressing them because they aren’t White. How they square that circle, I will never know.

The other factor is that Asian-Americans are, in fact, still conservative. I know that sounds odd, considering what I have written above, but Asian-Americans are still conservative in a lowercase “c” apolitical sense. They are conservative in that they support the status quo, something that is undoubtedly a result of the heavily communitarian societies they come from where one is instructed to fit in and not rock the boat. In 1990, the status quo was still Heritage America and they supported it. In 2021, the status quo is globohomo and they support that. The shift of Asian-Americans is part of a greater adjustment in the American Empire.

I still see much to admire in Asian civilization. The history is vast and fascinating. That China has been able to keep its culture, more or less, intact for thousands of years is impressive. I think Asian architecture is beautiful, and that so much of it was destroyed during Mao’s Cultural Revolution is one of the great tragedies of the 20^th century. Chinese, Koreans, and the Vietnamese fought bravely to save their countries from communism. And, America did not give them the support they promised to defeat communism. I sincerely hope that one day they are all free. I also like the honor-based culture that views bringing dishonor to one’s family as a fate worse than death. It would be unthinkable to see Japanese kids tearing down the statues of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson if those statues were in Japan. If it did happen, the police wouldn’t coddle them for months and their parents wouldn’t ignore it as “just a phase.” Being a nationalist does not mean to dismiss, ignore, or hate other cultures. It just means to love your own.

As much as I admire Asian civilization, even as I think it is unique to Asia and should stay that way, I see nothing to admire about what has become of Asian-American culture, it’s just another extension of globohomo.