WorldNetDaily is once again reviving its obsession with “demographic winter” — as it applies to white people, anyway — in an Aug. 10 article stolen from anti-abortion website Live Action News:
In response to the nation’s steadily declining fertility rate and what experts have described as a looming “demographic winter,” Russian officials have created a sort of “demographic special forces unit,” according to the Moscow Times.
[…]Chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko made reference to a sort of “special forces unit” that deals with demography, stating that in every governmental department there are officials in place who are prioritizing the government’s increasing focus on “family-centricity” and growth.
Matvienko said, “The main thing is that by joint efforts we managed to make family-centricity a general state affair. Today in any department you will be given the name of the deputy minister who deals with demography. Such a demographic special forces have been created. We can hope that we will return our traditional values.”
Russia’s total fertility rate — the estimated average number of children born to each woman — currently stands at 1.4. In order for any population to replace itself and maintain its size, the fertility rate must be 2.1. Lower numbers indicate an aging and shrinking population.
[…]In 2018, President Vladimir Putin announced the formation of the National Demography Project, with the stated goal of stopping the nation’s population decline within six years. Seven years later, the Russian fertility rate remains unchanged.
Writer Bettina di Fiore was curiously silent about one major factor in that shrinking birth rate: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As the Carnegie Foundation details, not only have tens of thousands of Russians been killed in the war — mostly young men — tens of thousands more have fled the country to escape Putin, mostly young professionals. This crisis is one that Putin, in no small part, brought upon himself and his country.
Meanwhile, Don Feder — one of the chief right-wingers behind the “demographic winter” obsession — pushed the idea again in his Aug. 12 column complaining that Catholic leaders aren’t forcing followers to have more children:
At a Mass concluding the recent Jubilee Youth Celebration in Rome, Pope Leo XIV urged the more than 1 million young people in attendance to “spread enthusiasm and witness your faith.”
I wish he had told them to witness their faith by marrying young and having lots of children.
Once, Catholicism was synonymous with large families. In the town where I grew up in the 1950s, Catholic families with only one or two children were suspected of being in league with Planned Parenthood.
Today, Catholic countries in Europe and Latin America are leading the death march into the depths of demographic winter.
To maintain population stability, the average woman must have 2.1 children in her lifetime. In Poland, the fertility rate is 1.3. In Spain and Chile, it’s 1.2.
All are overwhelmingly Catholic.
What happened?
A lessening of the church’s authority after Vatican II and substituting trendy causes (anti-war, environmentalism) for Catholic doctrine played a part. For many, calling themselves Catholic was more nostalgia than devotion.
[…]Other nations are frantically searching for solutions to the birth dearth, which usually involve subsidies. Still, declining fertility is a matter of the heart, not the wallet.
Religious leaders of all persuasions should be mobilizing the faithful to combat the great plague of the 21st century: rapidly falling fertility leading to the end of civilization.
As before, Feder doesn’t seem terribly interested in the reproduction rates of non-Christians.