We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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A strange headline Rod Liddle, in his role as knuckle-dragger-in-chief at the Spectator, has an article bearing a most arresting headline. Now the writers of such articles often don’t get to choose the headlines, so this might even have taken Mr Liddle aback somewhat:
“We should seize whatever opportunity we are given to be racist”.
The Spectator now has a new editor in the form of Fraser Nelson, one of journalism’s good guys. Well, I know it is good to start one’s term in the editor’s chair with a bang, but er, isn’t this a bit off? Actually, if you read the article, it is quite clear that Rod Liddle, despite his salty turn of phrase and spirit of cheerful nastiness, is not saying that being a racist is a good thing.
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Well, it certainly gets your attention, which is the function of a headline. And it’s not as if the editor made it up out of whole cloth; it is, after all, a direct quote from the article itself.
It seems to me that the term “racist” seems to have lost whatever meaning it might once have had. What does it mean to say that Russians, Germans, English, Irish, etc., are different “races”? Different nationalities, certainly; different ethnicities, maybe; but different races? Not in any meaningful sense of which I am aware.
I have just come upon David Stove and have been much entertained by his views on Racism.
Ethnic stereotypes are ancient – they have always been used, and there is normally some truth in them. Of course it is wrong to treat a person one has just met by the previous experience one has of people from his group (be that caravan owners, in terms of road manners, or Romanians as regards honesty) but if this is the only thing one has to go on in meeting a new person…….
However, this is all considered wicked racism today – by the same people who seize on the fact that Winston Churchill used naughty racist words and declare that this puts him in the same camp as Adolf Hitler.
And if one tells that almost everyone at the time used the same words (indeed that “the n. word” was even to be found in commercial paint lists – “n……. brown” as opposed to other shades of brown) then they simply declare that the whole world was Hitlerian before recent years.
The whole Western world that is – as they refuse to see that all other cultures use naughty words and ethnic stereotypes.
And, of course, leftists in the Western world get a free pass – whether Karl Marx and other Marxists (who used naughty racist words a great deal and held that some races were biologically superior to others “L is part n….. and therefore closer to the animal kingdom than the rest of us, it is fitting that he represents that area of Paris that contains the zoo” and on and on) or non Marxist leftists like H.G. Wells (who held that nonwhites be exterminated) the left are held to be immune from blame.
The most optimistic bit of Mr Liddle’s article was on Malaysia – I hope most Muslims there have the opinions he describes.
It is simply a new synonym for “heretic”. Among the priesthood, it has the specific meaning of “oppression of non-whites[1] by the white hegemony”, for what it’s worth.
[1] Jews are white but, paradoxically, arabs are not.
You know, it’s awfully difficult discussing posts like this one with that fierce smite filter in the way.
I don’t laugh much, anymore. Thank you,
And, for a new bookmark for the browser.
Ah, nostalgia for Benny Hill and Monty Python.
The people who preach diversity look and sound too much alike. I don’t even get along with myself.