Into the Cannibal’s Pot

The daughter of a leading anti-apartheid activist blows the lid off the new South Africa

Read a précis of the Introduction. Related columns: “Clueless in South Africa,” “American Veteran-Hero Jailed,” “Where Magic Wins Out over Reason,”  “Pat Buchanan & MSNBC’s Pygmy,” “The Sequel To ‘Suicide of a Superpower.'”  Articles Archives .

“Egalitarianism leads to democracy; democracy leads to socialism; socialism leads to economic destruction; and democratic socialism in multicultural societies leads to death and democide. This, in shocking detail, is what Ilana Mercer illustrates superbly in her case study of post-apartheid South Africa. America’s political and intellectual ‘elites’ will ignore this book, because it is politically ‘incorrect.’ We can only do so at our own peril.”

– HANS-HERMANN HOPPE, Austrian school economist, libertarian political philosopher, emeritus professor of economics, University of Nevada, distinguished fellow, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, author of Democracy: The God That Failed, and The Economics and Ethics of Private Property

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“If you want to witness the end result of what in America is called ‘diversity,’ you must read Into the Cannibal’s Pot. ‘Diversity’ is a euphemism for racial retribution administered mostly by guilty white liberals in universities, corporations, and government. It is a thoroughly collectivist notion that condones punishing the current generation of white males for the sins of the past. It’s most extreme form is practiced in post-Apartheid South Africa, and its effects are meticulously documented by Ilana Mercer (who also writes marvelously): rampant black-on-white crime, racist labor laws that have created ‘The world’s most extreme affirmative action program’; the confiscation of private property; economic socialism; state-sponsored terrorism; and, most sickeningly, the idolization of the corrupt and murderous Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe. The Western media ignore all of this because of their ideological love affair with the communistic African National Congress and, frankly, their support for many of these same policies.”

– THOMAS J. DILORENZO, professor of economics, Loyola College, Maryland, author of the best-selling The Real Lincoln, Lincoln Unmasked, and most recently, Hamilton’s Curse

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“It’s hard to put this book down. For a non-novel, that is saying something. Into the Cannibal’s Pot is so very rich; Ilana has a huge amount of information to impart, especially a depth of knowledge of scripture and how it ties into the fabric of South African and American society in the past. Into the Cannibal’s Pot is very, very insightful.”

– JAY TALYOR, Austrian-perspective investor, former banker, and broadcaster at Voice of America

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Ilana Mercer’s well-documented, encompassing study is at once heartbreaking, infuriating, illuminating and instructive. Ethnic cleansing is underway in the once great nation of South Africa, but Americans hear nothing of it; they are deliberately shielded by the same parties that served to bring it about, the liberal elites in Western governments and the press who believe that white South Africans ‘have it coming.’ It is white guilt and the so-called right of black reprisal extrapolated to ghastly extremes; political correctness on steroids, and all in the name of craven progressive ideology. If the West is ever to occupy anything resembling moral high ground – not to mention avoiding this fate itself – it will have to come to terms with its part in South Africa’s demise, and the misery, degradation and naked horror of those who now suffer.”

– ERIK RUSH, WND columnist, author of Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal-America’s Racial Obsession. Erik was the first to break the story of President (then Senator) Barack Obama’s ties to the militant, Afrocentric, Chicago preacher Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

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“Ilana Mercer calls her book ‘a labor of love to my homelands, old and new.’ The old is South Africa, which the author left in 1995. The new is the U.S.A. In both nations the founding European stock yielded up their dominance in the interests of justice and liberty. Instead of moving to equal citizenship under fair laws, however, both nations – in different style and measure but with similarly dire results – have embraced official tribalism (‘multiculturalism’) and state-enforced racial favoritism (‘affirmative action’). For South Africa the transformation has been fatal – brutally so for victims of the nation’s swelling social disorder, as Ms. Mercer documents in heartbreaking detail. For the U.S.A. it is not too late to change course. The lesson of South Africa, if widely known, will help to open American eyes. Here is the lesson, in a compelling and important book.”

-JOHN DERBYSHIRE, novelist, National Review columnist, pop-math writer, author most recently of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, and all-round bon vivant

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“Tocqueville in the 19th century, and Solzhenitsyn in the 20th, noted that conformity of thought is powerfully prevalent among Americans. I have always thought that a strong justification for freedom of speech and press is the possibility, however small, that a lonely voice telling an unwanted truth might be heard. Such a speaker requires intellectual courage—the rarest of all forms of courage. The feisty, independent-minded libertarian columnist Ilana Mercer has that courage—in spades—as she chronicles the drawn-out murder of civilization in her native South Africa. She not only describes what is happening, she tells us how it came about and what it means. This is one libertarian who knows that the market is wonderful, but it is not everything. …”

– CLYDE WILSON, professor of history, University of South Carolina, writing for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture (March, 2012)

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“Into the Cannibal’s Pot is well-written, courageous, and is clearly a strong socio-political tract on South Africa.”

– IRVING LOUIS HOROWITZ, Hannah Arendt distinguished professor emeritus, Rutgers University, New Jersey

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“An unflinching take on South Africa. This is well done.”

– JED DONAHUE, Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI)

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“Into the cannibal’s Pot is brilliant, exceeding all my expectations; it is very courageous of Ilana also to attack the whole notion of ‘democracy.’ This is a much-needed shot at a holy cow.”

– DAN ROODT, Ph.D., noted Afrikaner activist, author, literary critic, director, PRAAG

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“Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa is a very powerful, eloquent, and original indictment of South Africa’s ‘democracy.’ It is a disgrace that such an informative and courageous book could not come out with a major publisher.”

– PAUL E. GOTTFRIED, Horace Raffensperger Professor of Humanities, Elizabethtown College, author of Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right, After Liberalism (Princeton, 1999), and Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt (Missouri, 2002)

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“I relish reading Into the cannibal’s Pot. Ilana Mercer’s conceit in comparing post-apartheid South Africa with post-American-creed America seems brilliant—and timely.”

– PAUL SPERRY, investigative journalist, Hoover Institution media fellow, author of Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington (2005) and the blockbuster book Crude Politics (2003)

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“Ilana Mercer has written about a topic that the Western media have almost completely ignored – the failure of [democratic] post-apartheid South Africa to move in the direction of peace, justice, and prosperity. She hopes that her book will be a small contribution that can help turn things around in her native land, while providing valuable lessons to Americans as well.”

– LEWROCKWELL.COM, anti-state, anti-war, pro-market (July 21, 2011)

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“Powerful stuff …Ilana has done us a service in writing one of the best books I have read; one of the most profound evaluations of human nature, in the misdirected pursuit of a multicultural soup. Into the Cannibal’s Pot should be required reading in political science courses at the university level; it’s that good.”

– JAN MICKELSON, WHO News Radio, 1040

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“The one person who has the clearest vision of the truth about South Africa, before and after apartheid, and the implications for the United States is writer, commentator and, yes, is philosopher of reality, Ilana Mercer.”

– BARBARA SIMPSON, WND columnist, KSFO talk-show host

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“Cannibal is a klaxon of a kind—leaping frequently, if not always seamlessly, between the RSA and the USA. Mrs. Mercer seeks urgently to show how the perils of South Africa are being replicated in her new country of domicile. Both countries are roughly the same age, and both have frontier-taming, republican and Low Church traditions which are metastasizing into anxiety-utopian complexes. They also have large and mutually distrustful racial groups, a factor which militates against social cohesion and democracy because, ‘A perquisite for a classical liberal democracy is that majority and minority status should be interchangeable and fluid.’”

– DEREK TURNER, editor of the UK-based Quarterly Review, writing for Alternative Right.com, “an online magazine of radical traditionalism.”

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“…As a classical liberal writer, Ilana Mercer has written one of the greatest- and probably most complete dissertation on post-Apartheid South Africa – in many ways, of Apartheid South Africa. Her book ‘Into the Cannibal’s Pot: South Africa’ is a script that is a minimum requirement for ANYBODY who values a future in South Africa (and for that matter the USA) – notably for their children- and theirs. Read it – I urge you. …”

– CLAUDIA MEADS, writing for News24.com, South Africa’s largest newssite, and PRAAG, The Pro-Afrikaans Action Group

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“Ilana Mercer infuses ‘Cannibal’s Pot’ with her wealth of knowledge and insight into the dynamic of South Africa’s plight,… As she asserts, condemnation of the new racist South Africa is not advocacy for the racist old. However, her warning to America is much more than implied: What occurred in South Africa was brought about by the same machine that is bringing about dangerous transformations in America.”

– ERIK RUSH, WND, February 27, 2013

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“Author and columnist Ilana Mercer reveals not only how the conceit of Western liberal elites served to bring down one of the most prosperous nations in the West, but how the same motivations and methods are at work in America’s decline.”

– CANADA FREE PRESS, March 2, 2013

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“In addition to having lived—and loved—in South Africa for much of her life, Ilana Mercer’s reflections have the added advantage of being shaped by the concern to prevent her adopted homeland—America—from making the same catastrophic mistakes that placed her native homeland in such dire straights.”

– FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE, March 14, 2013

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“I have read Into The Cannibal’s Pot twice and am duly impressed by your tackling of the grave problems facing South Africa. Chapter 6, “Why Do WASP Societies Wither,” mentions your father and I am honoured – but there are hundreds of people who did far more than I did. On the other hand, there are an equal number who did nothing in the fight against Apartheid and have been rewarded. Your book penetrates to the core of South Africa’s problems and questions the very fibre of the country. Well done!”

– RABBI ABRAHAM B. ISAACSON, dad, March, 2013, South Africa