It is said that when a civilisation rots it rots from the top down. The rot always takes the form of silly ideas that tend to bring about the decline of that civilisation through acting irrationally and persistently to its own detriment.
Unnecessarily extending the definition of racism (originally meaning the political doctrine that one race is superior to others therefore justifying that race's oppression of other races, eg Hitler's Aryan Ideal, South African Apartheid and, not so well known, the Hindu caste system) to include those guilty of mere expressions of dislike for other races is one of the more insidious side-effects of cowardly self-censorship.
Well-meaning people tend to assume that they must not say anything rude about any other race. Politicians, wanting to be populist and not wanting to offend any potential voter whilst relishing the opportunity of scoring points at the expense of those who are seen to be out of step, have connived in extending the meaning of racism.
The ugly truth is that nasty people of all hues would exploit and bully the vulnerable, either outsiders or insiders, if they are allowed to get away with it. Of course there should be laws against this, but they should not be allowed to disproportionately limit our freedom of expression. If freedom of expression means anything at all now, it must mean that we are at liberty to be offensive about each other, provided we do not fall foul of the laws of defamation, criminal incitement or public order.
The law on defamation would be a relatively cheap but focused way of fighting the cancer that is politically correct censorship.
Is being called a racist likely to bring a person into hatred, ridicule and contempt by right-thinking members of the community?
Do the BNP mind being called racist?
Quite a few of them do, it seems.
Win or lose, they would be doing us all a favour by causing the law to decide what racism actually means and how it should be defined.
If only they dared, they would be performing a very valuable service for the nation and the world at large.
We are either free to dislike, insult or mock anyone at all (including call any group of people cockcroaches), for reasons rational or irrational, or we are not. If we are not, then it appears that we have now arrived at the New Dark Age of the 21st Century, with its modern equivalent of blasphemy ...
THE VOICE OF REASON Solon, (born c. 630 BCE—died c. 560 BCE), Athenian statesman, known as one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece (the others were Chilon of Sparta, Thales of Miletus, Bias of Priene, Cleobulus of Lindos, Pittacus of Mytilene, and Periander of Corinth). Solon ended exclusive aristocratic control of the government, substituted a system of control by the wealthy, and introduced a new and more humane law code. He was also a noted poet.
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2 comments:
Yees...
Difficult one really. Racism is so easily used by special interest groups using the 'really thick' ground troops.
As always it's a question of degree, the 'racism' of Monty Python versus the racism of the National Front are two very different fish.
Poking gentle fun at the politically correct in the subtlest of fashions doesn't really work when all that comes back is through a megaphone... reminds me of a Dilbert sketch where the boss sticks his fingers in his ears and goes "la la la, not listening, not listening".
Maybe some of those bleeding edge comedians could put there energies to use here. They've had a difficult period in the last couple of years adjusting to Muslim extremism. The funniest I heard was a Muslim - no really! It's just that the others were so embarassingly unable to cope with it.
Friday, March 09, 2007
The sacked Tory and the punched woman: anti-racism hysteria IS racism
The sacked Tory front-bencher, Mercer, of course had not said anything that was, or even could be conceived to be, racist. The Tory high command in sacking him disingenuously got round that Mercer had done nothing inherently wrong by claiming that he had "given the impression that racism was acceptable". But not only had Mercer not done that either, he had correctly pointed out that team building involves mutual 'wind up', and taunts of all kinds; and that what may seem to be racism was in fact no such thing. He very clearly spelt it out with his direct comparison of 'fat bastard', 'ginger bastard' and black bastard'.
Now, with this, the whole argument inverts: by viewing a taunt of 'black bastard' as somehow special, then because all taunting and 'wind up' is now viewed as bullying and prejudice, then necessarily the taunts to do with fatness, gingerness, or, indeed, whiteness: all these are thereby diminished in seriousness. Inevitably, either the rendering special of taunts re blackness, and/or conversly the rendering trivial of taunts re anything but blackness, is itself racist: to non-blacks -- that is, to other ethnic minorities not classed specifically as black, as well as to whites.
The logic collapses because of a failure to understand human social psychology of in-group/out-group, whereby any distinguishing feature can and will be used as the basis of conflict, either constructive or destructive. There is nothing 'special' about what may be construed as racism -- and this goes irrespective of whether such an epithet is appropriate or misconstrued.
This is what I was writing about in The Great Immigration Scandal, in the chapter on anti-racism hysteria.
The real irony is that most media commentators and the Tory party are the racists here.
This is exactly parallelled by the current story about the black woman punched by a policeman. Here the media are being racist (and sexist) by singling out a black woman as so deserving of special treatment that the story is given main headline status.
The most interesting aspect of that story is .....
would it have been a top news story if the victim had been:
(a) male?
(b) not of an ethnic minority (crudely: not white)?
(c) both male and 'white'?
Obviously not, or there would be countless instances regularly in news bulletins, such is the pervasiveness of CCTV in city centres and outside nightclubs; and necessarily regular use of force by police officers to subdue violent drunks -- and likely more than there used to be, given the 'risk averse' virus that the police have caught along with the other authorities.
The media would appear to be guilty of either sexism or racism; or, more probably, both.
The media really can't hide behind 'news values' -- what appeals to people as 'news': they are here going well out of their way to go beyond reflecting popular concern to actively promote the notion that we should have concern for female and/or ethnic minority victims in contrast to what we should feel for male and/or non-ethnic minority victims.
This is a beautiful illustration of what social science research shows: that violence against men is in many situations not seen as a crime (by anyone: men or women, witnesses and -- often -- the victims themselves), whereas violence towards women is always seen as a crime -- by anyone and everyone.
This is a generic problem with media output, (as campaigners have more specifically and repeatedly highlighted re domestic violence). This instance shows that this kind of prejudice and discrimination against men and non-ethnic minorities (crudely: whites) is a very wide and deeply entrenched phenomenon.
To understand what's going on taking in the dimension of race as well as sex, you have to look at political correctness fascism. This is the appalling state into which the political Left (which is now the position of all of the establishment) has descended of contempt for ordinary people as a predictable if bizarre backlash against their own failure. This explains the elevation of anyone who belongs to a minority sub-group to be considered more worthy than the people who previously had been championed: 'the workers'. But that's another big debate, and one I've touched on before.
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