The Limits of Hospitality

I wonder if anyone has looked at the crisis surrounding illegal, virtually unchecked immigration in the US, UK, and European Union, as well as a country like South Africa, from the perspective of the notion of ‘hospitality.’ Ultimately, one could argue, such ‘immigration’ (or perhaps ‘migration’) is in fact a question of hospitality, as Immanuel Kant already indicated in the late 18^th century, when he wrote (in his famous essay on ‘Perpetual Peace’), that: ‘The rights of men, as citizens of the world, shall be limited to conditions of universal hospitality.’ 

This is the third of the ‘Definitive Articles’ formulated by Kant, which have to be observed to promote endless peace. At the same time he emphasised that hospitality as a ‘right’ implies that a stranger entering a foreign territory peacefully has the right not to be treated with hostility, but that he or she cannot simultaneously claim the right to be treated as a ‘guest’ for a longer stay, which would require an agreement or ‘compact’ between visitors and the host country. 

Kant’s claim concerning hospitality already shows that the matter is not as straightforward as may seem at first blush. In fact, although hospitality may not seem anything complex, this is precisely the case, as the poststructuralist philosopher, Jacques Derrida, has demonstrated in his inimitable manner. The theme of hospitality in particular, as explored by Derrida, lends itself to being used here, with illuminating results (Derrida, ‘The principle of hospitality,’ in Paper Machine, Stanford University Press, 2005: 66-67). 

According to Derrida there are two concepts of hospitality. He calls the first one ‘aneconomic,’ which means unlimited, unconditional, excessive, and ‘generous’ to the point of the ‘self-effacement’ of the host(-ess) in favour of the guest, the stranger or foreigner. In ordinary language, this kind of hospitality consists in bending over backwards to accommodate the guest or visitor (which would include migrants entering a ‘foreign’ country); that is, giving them virtual free rein to behave as they wish, and do whatever they want to, with no regard to any code of acceptable behaviour. 

By diametrical contrast, Derrida calls the other notion of hospitality ‘economic,’ which means that it is conditional, limited, even a smidgen ‘hostile’ and self-assertive in the sense of severely limiting the amenities and privileges that the migrant or guest is granted. Again, in plain language, such supposed ‘hospitality’ comes with lots of strings attached – ‘you may come in, but you may not look in the fridge, much less take anything from it, and if you use the bathroom, don’t exceed five minutes. And by the way, the lounge is out of bounds.’ Or: ‘you are allowed into this country, as long as you don’t settle in these areas, and don’t apply for work at any of the companies listed here.’

These two concepts are not contradictory in the strict sense, but neither is either reducible to the other. They are irreducible, which means that they are distinct, non-identical. Moreover, in their ‘purity,’ each is ‘impossible’ as hospitality. Why? Because conditional hospitality, where the host or hostess asserts his or her power over the guest in an unbearably restrictive manner, would lose all semblance of hospitality if it were not tempered by its counterpart, unconditional hospitality, the striving towards which imparts to the act of (conditional) hospitality its recognisable character of hospitality. Hence, pure, conditional hospitality is impossible – because it would not be a ‘workable’ kind of hospitality. 

But the same may be said of unconditional hospitality: in the absence of a touch of ‘hostility,’ reserve or tentative suspicion towards the stranger or migrant, for instance in the event of offering the latter everything the host has to give ‘without limits,’ it would be self-destructive, because the guest who takes such unconditional hospitality at face value cannot really be blamed if she or he were to trash their hosts’ homes or countries. Such hospitality is therefore equally ‘impossible;’ it requires, in turn, the mitigating influence of ‘limits’ imposed by conditional hospitality. 

Neither is therefore reduced to the other; each remains distinct, but only by allowing the logic of the one to be softened, or alternatively, strengthened, by the logic of the other, the practice of hospitality first becomes possible as such. In a nutshell: with this complex analysis of the phenomenon of hospitality, Derrida has shown that it only becomes practicable when the guest is called upon to be well-mannered (lest they lose their status as guest), which, in turn, enables and encourages the host to be fair, or generous and accommodating. Conditional and unconditional hospitality, when carefully interwoven, make hospitality work.

Looking at what has become a veritable explosion of migration to the countries mentioned earlier in the course of the last six years or so, from the perspective opened up by Derrida’s analysis, it appears that this was made possible, not by conditional hospitality, nor by a judicious interweaving of the latter with its unconditional counterpart, but by the one-sided practice of its completely unconditional variety. Attentive and informed readers would already know what I am referring to, but nonetheless, let me be specific. 

On September 29, 2023, Donald Trump, addressing an audience at the CAGOP Convention, commented on the sorry state of California cities like San Francisco, under the impact of illegal migration in that state, and promised to restore law and order there in the event of his re-election. It is well-known, however, that this flood of illegal migrants into the US and elsewhere goes much further back than this time, and also that the Democratic Party has gone out of its way to facilitate the arrival of these migrants on US soil, sometimes openly admitting that granting them amnesty is intended to strengthen the party’s chances at the ballot box.  

If the obvious question is asked, namely, where these illegal aliens come from, an excellent source of information is the ‘Muckraker Report,’ a documentary of about a year ago, made at great risk to those who had the courage to film what they called ‘the illegal alien pipeline.’ On the website, the documentary is described as follows:

United States Invasion Route Exposed | ENTIRE ILLEGAL ALIEN PIPELINE REVEALED | Muckraker Report.
Muckraker followed the entire mass migration route from Quito, Ecuador to the United States border. To our knowledge, no one has ever produced an entire documentary following this entire route.

Until now.

Our journey included:

Crossing the Darién Gap.
Discovering secret Chinese hotels.
Getting smuggled into Mexico by the Sinaloa Cartel.
Embedding with a massive caravan.
Riding the Mexican Train of Death.

And finally, getting kidnapped by the Gulf Cartel.

In this documentary, you will learn how the United Nations is planning and executing an industrial scale weaponized migration program and you will see the entire route that millions of illegal aliens are taking to the United States every year!

Another very informative source on the carefully planned and disguised way in which these migrants are brought into the US is found in the documentary work of the late Dutch investigative journalist, Janet Ossebaard, (who was found dead under suspicious circumstances while she was busy making the sequel to her first series, The Fall of the Cabal). In the first episode of the original series (6 min. 30 seconds into the video), Ossebaard mentions the migrant crisis, but it is in Part 3, titled “The Alien Invasion,” that she devotes almost the entire discussion to this topic.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of this thoroughgoing exposé to be able to grasp the extent of the forces at work behind the scenes, determined to bring about the destabilisation of American society, and worse. Having viewed this (3^rd) episode of the first series, where she establishes verified connections among the ‘alien invasion’ and other aspects of the globalist cabal’s concerted onslaught against humanity, one is able to perceive it in a different light than before. Ossebaard probably gave her life to be able to inform humanity of the extent of this sustained offensive, carefully hidden from view by the mainstream media, as she points out.   

The United States is not the only country where this has been happening, of course; far from it – this is happening in tandem with similar efforts in other Western countries, and with the same agenda. In Europe, for example, the same process has been unfolding, with exactly the same intentions of weakening the sovereignty and sense of national identity of European countries, as that intrepid Dutch philosopher, Eva Vlaardingerbroek explains in this stirring 2024 video address to Hungarian people. 

Eva does not pull her punches here, backing up her claims that the national cultural and ethnic character of European countries is being deliberately destroyed by the globalist elites in Brussels, giving credence to the so-called ‘Great Replacement Theory,’ which the globalists deny. She provides statistics for major European cities in France, the Netherlands, and Britain, demonstrating that the migrant populations in these cities now outnumber the native populations significantly, with Brussels standing at 70% migrant and 30% local populations, respectively. The statistics cited by her on assaults and stabbings of European citizens by illegal migrants are frightening, and resonate with similar occurrences in the United States. 

Does this ring a familiar bell? Namely, that of (illegal) migrants having been treated with ‘unconditional hospitality,’ given carte blanche about their behaviour as vaunted ‘guests’ in their host countries? Recall that Derrida pointed out the ‘impossibility’ of such ‘excessive’ hospitality, which really means something that turns out to be not any hospitality at all, but a perversion of it. 

Vlaardingerbroek does not hesitate to connect these lamentable instances of violence against indigenous European citizens with Samuel Huntington’s prediction, a quarter of a century ago, that this ‘clash of people from different cultures’ would happen in the era of mass migrations, when conflicts will no longer be between social classes, or between the rich and the poor, but ‘between people belonging to different cultural entities.’ ‘Tribal wars and ethnic conflicts will occur within civilizations.’ 

In addition to Vlaardingerbroek’s address in Hungary (one of the EU countries resisting pressure from Brussels to open its borders to migrants), there are increasing signs that people in these countries are not taking the migrant invasion lying down. A few days ago, the conservative Dutch politician, Geert Wilders, announced a 10-point plan to slash migration – that includes using the army to guard land borders and turning away ALL asylum-seekers.’ It is not surprising that Wilders has resorted to this, given information that a country such as Germany is still paying NGOs millions of Euros to ‘ferry’ illegal migrants to Europe.  

That the carefully orchestrated flooding of Western countries with illegal aliens is a paradigmatic instance of ‘unconditional, excessive hospitality,’ as characterised by Derrida, should be apparent from the above. The reason why specifically Western societies have been targeted should be obvious: these societies are founded on a belief in individual human rights, coupled (one would think) with a culture of resistance to totalitarian control, dating back to the Second World War. In other words, if anyone would protest the imposition of tyrannical measures of control on them, it is likely to be Western people (which did not really work out that way, as one knows from the Covid lockdown experience). 

To add insult to injury, what has unfolded in the United States is not merely migrants (‘guests’) proving Derrida’s point that unconditional hospitality is likely to lead to guests taking advantage of the host’s misplaced largesse. As many people know by now, the host country – in this case, America – has leaned over backwards to aid and abet the migrants to do just that. Two instances of this concern evidence that illegals were given $5,000 gift cards by the Biden regime about a year ago, and that, around the same time, the American DHS was exposed as handing out ‘$290 million to sanctuary cities and NGOs for resettling illegal aliens.’

In light of President Trump’s appointment of Tom Homan – the ‘Border Czar’ – to address the tide of illegals streaming into America, together with efforts at their repatriation, one seems to have reason to hope that the tide may be turned, the enormity of this task notwithstanding. This, despite persistent efforts by Democrats to thwart the process. 

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