The Racist and His New Clothes.

 

In recent years Britain has become a hotbed for anti-Muslim bigotry like many of its neighbours on the Continent. It has become the primary means of mobilisation for marginal elements on the radical Right. Old canards against immigrants are being recycled and directed purposely to siphon off disenfranchised working-class and lower middle-class support for mainstream parties in this way. For instance, the BNP’s accusations that there are South Asian paedophile gangs were transformed into ‘Muslim’ paedophile gangs as if the grooming and rape of non-Muslim children has any basis in theology. It is now a staple of right-wing commentary that there are ‘Muslim’ paedophile gangs in the shadows of every city in the country. No focus on non-Muslim paedophile rings.[1] Naturally, the mainstream media has plenty of time to feed its own rape-mania and has no qualms about fanning the flames of anti-Muslim racism in doing so. No real concern for the victims of child abuse.

 

 

Given that the Muslims have become the main target of groups like the BNP the old targets have had to take a backseat. The main reason for this is that it has become more acceptable to express disdain for Islam than the West Indians who settled here in the 1950s. Likewise it has become completely unacceptable to engage in old-fashioned Judeophobia. Meanwhile bashing Muslims has become an umbrella for spreading enmity against South Asian British citizens.[2] The slur ‘Paki’ has been replaced with ‘Muslim’ in the vocabulary of every racist in the country. The EDL have attacked Sikh temples in the past and have marched under the chant ‘We love the floods! We love the floods!’ in reference to the floods which devastated Pakistan in 2010. Of course, the EDL has no qualms about exploiting the sectarian tensions on the old Indian subcontinent and soaking Sikh and even Hindu support. In that way the rabble of aging football hooligans and skinheads can claim to non-racist in its joy at the prospect of Mother Nature drowning Pakistani children.

 

 

This is the same reason the EDL has been filmed wagging Israeli flags, and making Nazi salutes. When Lee Rigby was killed the EDL was quick to jump on the scene and soon there emerged a video of the goons yelling for the ‘black bastards’ to be deported. Mostly unreported went the attempts by the EDL to make headway in electoral politics. The British Freedom Party was founded in 2011 with Paul Weston, a former UKIP blogger, as well as with an influx of ex-BNP members. In one of the speeches given by Paul Weston he said “In fact, Islam is worse than Nazism” before sounding off about the stoning of women.[3] He went on to claim that the growth of a Muslim population will lead to the breakdown of British society, pointing to the Lebanese Civil War and the collapse of Yugoslavia. In other words, Weston places the blame for the collapse of these societies on Lebanese Muslims and Bosnian Muslims.[4] That would imply Weston takes the side of the neo-Fascist groups in Lebanon and the nationalist fantasists of a ‘Greater’ Serbia.

 

 

In spite of his courageous support for the ‘lesser evil’ to Islam the new party soon evaporated. Its existence lacked the strong presence of a fart in the wind. Not content with this failure Paul Weston formed Liberty GB with much of the same herd and little deviation from the comradely affection for Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.[5] The new group soon found plenty of friends in soaking up the right-wingers of the blogosphere united in their hatred of Muslims and non-whites. Soon Mr Weston was on YouTube again looking to beat the competition posed by various videos of cats flushing toilets. He had some more revealing words too. By the summer of 2013 Paul Weston was giving talks on what he described as the “racial and cultural war against the indigenous people of this country.”[6] Going on to deem this “genocide” Weston goes on to claim the cities are “inundated with the Third World”.[7] He lists the places which have been “inundated” as follows: Tower Hamlets, Bradford, Birmingham, Luton and Leicester. The plot thickens.

 

 

All the while Paul Weston is adamant that it’s not just the Muslims that are the problem. Oh no, most certainly not! The Muslims are only the ‘pawns’ in Weston’s mind, a foreign race imported to undermine and destroy white Britain.[8] The people responsible are broadly pinned as ‘liberals’, ‘hippies’, ‘multiculturalists’ and ‘Marxists’. In his more blunt moments Mr Weston claims that it’s all the Frankfurt school. From beyond the grave Jewish Marxist intellectuals such as Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse are responsible for political correctness, multiculturalism, feminism and mass-immigration.[9] It’s all a part of a calculated plot by the Jews who deems ‘cultural Marxists’ who created critical theory to wage ‘cultural terrorism’ against Western civilisation.[10] He claims elsewhere that “the Left now control pretty much everything”.[11] Yet again the raison d'être of National Socialism resurfaces in the clever language of a ‘counter-Jihadist’.

The anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that the Frankfurt school are responsible for a vast array of problems has become increasingly popular and mainstream on the Right.[12] It originates in the mad ramblings of Lyndon LaRouche and in the twenty years since it has been taken up by American shock-jocks and the reactionary press in Britain.[13] It has been promulgated by many cultural conservatives as well white nationalists.[14] Naturally the BNP have moved in on this. In 2011 Nick Griffin put across his non-understanding of the Frankfurt school in a talk with Simon Darby and posted it on the Party’s YouTube channel.[15] This year the BNP appears to have gone on to hold a knuckleheaded talk on the Frankfurt school where the Jewish intellectuals were painted as belonging to an international conspiracy alongside the Freemasons, the Illuminati and Bilderberg.[16] If anything it’s good to see that the Illuminati conspiracy theory has finally been given the audience it deserves.

 

 

Not coincidentally, Anders Behring Breivik promulgated the same theory in his manifesto and considered ‘cultural Marxists’ to be “traitors” deserving of execution.[17] In that same manifesto Breivik praises the EDL as a ‘blessing’ and quoted Paul Weston’s Gates of Vienna blog posts predicting ‘a European civil war.’[18] Fortunately, the economic crisis in Britain has not been so severe as to produce the conditions necessary for a full-blown fascist resurgence as we have seen in Greece for instance. The rabbles organised by the EDL come nowhere near the ranks of Blackshirts led by Sir Oswald Mosley. It’s primarily an online phenomenon with the potential to influence psychopaths and thugs to take action. It was this that led to Breivik’s rampage and the numerous attacks on mosques and Muslims since the Rigby murder. It would seem that this could get a lot uglier before the liberals wake up to find what they have allowed to flourish and take it seriously.

 

This article was originally written for and posted at the Third Estate on September 29th 2013.

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[1] Bard-Rosenberg, R; Daily Mail Lies: Are Asian gangs targeting white girls? (2010): http://thethirdestate.net/2010/11/daily-mail-lies-are-asian-gangs-targeting-white-girls/

[2] EDL Uncovered: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6_D9J685CQ

[3] Paul Weston on Islam & Nazism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZjOd-A5HDM

[4] Ibid.

[5] ‘Communist UAF orders BBC to curb Free Speech’: http://libertygb.org.uk/v1/index.php/news-libertygb/5836-communist-uaf-orders-bbc-to-curb-free-speech?highlight=YToxOntpOjA7czo5OiJjb21tdW5pc3QiO30

[6] Paul Weston on the Woolwich killing, Islam and the State of Modern Britain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ocqyqjaVSg#t=271

[7] Ibid.

[8] Paul Weston ‘Is Britain sustainable?’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBhe4nsm8rI

[9] Paul Weston on ‘How to Destroy a Country’: http://libertygb.org.uk/v1/index.php/news-libertygb/5868-how-to-destroy-a-country-part-one

[10] Ibid.

[11] Paul Weston ‘Is Britain sustainable?’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBhe4nsm8rI

[12] ‘Who are Breivik’s Fellow Travellers?’: http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2012/04/who-are-breivik%E2%80%99s-fellow-travellers

[13] Jay, M; Dialectical Counter-Enlightenment: the Frankfurt School as a Scapegoat for the Lunatic Fringe (Skidmore College, 2010): http://cms.skidmore.edu/salmagundi/backissues/168-169/martin-jay-frankfurt-school-as-scapegoat.cfm

[14] ‘Cultural Marxism’ Catching On: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2003/summer/reframing-the-enemy?page=0,1

[15] ‘EU-Frankfurt school neo-Marxism’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMTULjwiG08

[16] ‘Frankfurt School & New World Order’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZoj2fLbYk0

[17] Seymour, R; Anders Behring Breivik and 21st Century Fascism (2012): http://www.leninology.com/2012/08/anders-behring-breivik-and-21st-century.html

[18] RT; Breeding Breiviks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwxq_ml0T0o



A White Problem.

One of the major flaws of political correctness and multiculturalism has been the way in which it has subsumed questions of 'race' under the euphemistic umbrella of 'culture'. This shift in language correlates with the disavowal of the race problem. Culturalisation of discourse has amounted to depoliticisation. With good intentions of inhibiting prejudice and furthering sensitivity, we find ourselves all too complacent in attestation to racial oppression and injustice. You'll know what I mean if you've ever had that conversation about Malcolm X with your liberal friend, who accuses the man of being as bad as the white racists he fought against. It's the presupposition of equal standards which trips over the unevenness of history's contours, where we find the grievances of black people conveniently tucked away from prying eyes.

As if standards have ever been levelled between white and black. The continued relevance of these categories of race are evidence of the inequality already present before we begin to talk. The categories remain with us in spite of the civilising consequences of the abolition of slavery, the struggle for human rights, the emergence of affirmative action and political-correctness. In the avoidance of these primitive forms of classification we only affirm them as categories, in that we hold them at arm's length because they seem too real. This isn't to say that we should revert back to the language of scientific racism. Rather I would suggest we have to first acknowledge the problem of race and engage with its emanations and its poisonous legacy. I would not discard politically-correct and multiculturalist tolerance for I value hybridity, equality, freedom and solidarity. It's that these innovations are reformist rather than revolutionary for which I reproach them.

 

What was so interesting about the trial of George Zimmerman was the way in which Zimmerman's own ethnic background became a subject of discourse. The question of whether or not Zimmerman counts as 'white', or if 'white Hispanic' is a more appropriate term, became an early fixture of the media spectacle. This is interesting for a number of reasons. For starters 'white' isn't even a colour and the classification of 'Caucasian' has been discredited as a product of a discredited ethnology. Yet the history of 'whiteness' reveals it is not a wholly natural factor. There was a time when signs saying "No dogs or Irish" could be acceptably left in shop windows. Benjamin Franklin considered German immigrants to be too dark. By the 19th Century the American settlers laid claim to a mythic Anglo-Saxon heritage to distinguish themselves from the fresh influxes from the Old World. Traditionally racists have viewed any tainted form of whiteness to constitute its opposite.

 

Last year John Derbyshire was dumped by National Review for a racist article in which he refers not to 'white' people but to 'non-black' people. Revealingly we find 'white' to be socially constructed and necessarily distinguished from the Other. How else are we to understand the tones of voice in which coloured and half-caste were once said? This is how we are to properly understand George Zimmerman and the media fascination with his background. It is not whiteness but his status as a non-black person. Incidentally we find that the signifiers used to designate blackness are just as slippery, if not more so, than in the case of white privilege. During the American imperial adventure to the Philippines, the racial classifications of the period were far from absent. Sergeant Howard McFarland of the 43rd Infantry described the situation "At the best, this is a very rich country; and we want it. My way of getting it would be to put a regiment into a skirmish line, and blow every nigger into a nigger heaven." In these examples we find that there can even be a disconnect between pigmentation and racial constructs.

 

We can't get away from these tropes even if we have moved away from the acceptance of scientific racial classifications. The constructs have to be understood partly in accordance with the historic situations from whence they came and the consequences they continue to have in society today. It is on these lines that Noel Ignatiev talks of the need to abolish the 'white race', e.g. the category of 'whiteness' as a privileged social strata. This is no simple task and cannot be achieved by liberal colour-blindness. The hopes of resuscitating Black liberalism in the wake of the Zimmerman not-guilty verdict are highly flawed. The radical strain of the Black Civil Rights movement has to be resuscitated. Though we also need to engage with the historical process behind the identities of white and black. The very contours of the debate have to be explored before Americans, let alone the rest of us, can move to a post-racial society.

Claims of 'East' and 'West'.

It is an illusion of liberal society that the language we use can ever have a neutral application, in the strictest sense, for it carries all sorts of hidden cargo - some of it intentionally so, no doubt. You only have to look at the discourse around the Middle East for a demonstration of this and that’s before we even get to the details of the various crises. The very designation of the region as the ‘Middle East’ has a historical and political significance in itself. There is no longer commonly heard talk of a ‘Near East’ or even a ‘Far East’. The days when the Balkans and Greece are seen as otherly to the rest of Europe are hopefully gone. Of course, Turkey is the exceptional case, typically viewed as a middle-passage from the West to the East. Yet the example of Turkey ought to prompt serious questions about the widely accepted and most problematic division of ‘East’ from ‘West’. The assumptions built into such statements are in dire need of a vigorous unpicking.

It’s not the case that the difference boils down to a distinction between Islamic and Christian culture. If this were the case then not only would Turkey not be European, but neither would Bosnia be considered European. We would then be led to the suspect conclusion that the level of Muslim population determines the un-European nature of a society. In contrast, many would assume that Europe ends at the borders of Greece even without Islam in mind. And this in turn would lead us back to the old colonial signifier of a ‘Near East’ from which we must be on guard. It used to be that Greece was a part of the ‘Near East’ along with the Balkans, yet it has been confined as the ‘Middle East’ to the territory ruled by the Ottoman Empire in the last century or so. The terms ‘Near’ and ‘Middle’ imply that the region is defined in relation to the rest of Europe, though not as a part of the same region. Serbia may be more near than far as with Singapore, while Syria falls in the middle from where we sit. Yet no one would draw Indonesia as Eastern with the same connotations as Syria.

No one talks about the ‘Near East’ or the ‘Far East’ with any serious today, but the 'Middle East' remains in our vocabulary as stubborn as ever. Given the hybridity of European countries, the distinction can no longer be maintained on the contours of ‘race’ and instead the language of ‘culture’ fills the breach. This is where the talk of a clash of civilisations enters, with the West is defined as civilised only negatively against the barbarism of the East. For the nationalists, Christian identity is worth emphasising because it isn’t Islamic. In the conflicts erupting from Yugoslavia’s demise in the early 90s it was the claims to civilisation which prefigured the exclusion of an Other. So-called Christian civilisation was under threat in the Balkans, as people like Karadžić claim, and therefore it was necessary to resort to ultra-violence.[1] As ethnic identity became determined by religious affiliation Orthodox Christians became Serbs while Muslims remained Bosnian regardless of the heritage they may have shared.

In light of this we’d do best to note that human civilisation has never been homogenous, nor monolithic, and certainly not ahistorical. We may reiterate these points with regard to the variety of cultures in the world. If we then accept religion and culture as socially constructed, responding to a need in human society, as well as constitutive of identities, this ought to be obvious. In this sense culture is partially determined by its material basis, while culture retains its own capacity for productivity and not all of its development can be reduced to the material.[2] It should surprise no sensible person then that the economic formations in the region have been conducive to religiously infused forms of politics. Due to the transient condition of society the interdependence of the economy and its cultural effluvia may lead to serious contradictions. The unbridled forces of the market tend towards relativism, pluralism and pragmatism, are fettered by tradition, order, cohesion and moral realism.[3]

It’s an inescapable problem for modern societies. Some, like Britain, have become increasingly secular and that has actually solved the problem to a large extent. This secularisation of Britain seems to have come about with a displacement of religion to the state. Ironically, it may be the absence of a separation of church and state in Britain which maintains its secularity in everyday life. Meanwhile the US remains as fervent as ever in spite of its formal laicism. Yet there is nothing English about the Church of England, other than its peculiar head, no Christian value which can be monopolised by the British state. More and more British society is comfortable with its relativizing economy and its religious-state establishment. The problem for those who complain of the threat of immigration to British values is that there are no such values. There is nothing uniquely British about emotional restraint, even if it is a cultural value.[4] As Eagleton points out, the moral values of  the ‘natives’ and the ‘foreigner’ hold much common ground than we might first assume when customs and beliefs differ.[5]

There may be a probability of a cultural transformation, but there are no values under threat and culture was never a unified and ahistorical continuum to begin with. Likewise, if we take Islam and Christianity as sharing a common ancestor, namely Judaism, then we shouldn’t lose sight of the common ground either. As a monotheistic tradition it lays claim to universal truth, and this was a huge advance on polytheism with its multiple truths taken for granted. It was a necessary shift for culture and civilisation to undertake, moving from particularism to universalism.[6] This laid the groundwork for the Enlightenment to come many centuries later. In this way we may understand secular society as necessarily post-monotheist, its own universalist claims holding ancient precursors.[7] The predisposition of religion towards an aversion from Enlightenment values does not necessarily amount to an incompatibility between religious conviction and a liberal society.

The British Right has long maintained that the United Kingdom is separated from Europe not just by the seas, but by its culture, language and history. Strangely, we find this view of the Anglo-Saxons can be found among the dirigiste conservatives of France and has a history of its own going back to Charles de Gaulle if not further. It rears its head in odd ways every so often in French politics, yet it is a recurrent motif of British political discourse. The paucity and anaemia of our ‘national’ identity can easily be overlooked when there is an Other within reach. Thus we once raved about turbans and now it’s the much maligned niqab. Likewise, it doesn’t matter if we can’t define our so-called ‘Western’ values - that we must protect from the hordes about to swarm across our borders - as we can reassure ourselves that we are not like the Other. Not only is this danger of xenophobia underestimated, we have overlooked the role we could play in counteracting the very presuppositions of the debate to be had.

In this way we find that the conservatives may have succeeded in defining Britain as somewhat alien to Europe then we should undo the colonialist designation of ‘Middle East’. It seems not just necessary but preferable in countering the absurd narrative of permanently clashing civilisations. The region may be better designated as West Asia, that’s including everything from the Iranian plateau to Anatolia. It includes not just Israel but Palestine and the surrounding Arab petro-states, as well as the Kurdish land in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The Arab Spring should dispel all orientalist twaddle about the imperatives of the one-party state over the peoples beyond the Turkish middle-ground. If we are to take monotheism as running westward in its universal claims then we can’t pretend the claims made by the Enlightenment ends at the doorstep of Europe.

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[1] http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/europe/karadzic-no-genocide-we-killed-in-self-defence

[2] Eagleton, T; Culture and Barbarism (2008):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN6FcBXlIcA

[3] Eagleton, T; Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (Kindle edition, 2010) p.142-143

[4] Eagleton, T; Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (Kindle edition, 2010) p.150-152

[5] Ibid.

[6] Gray, J; Straw Dogs  (Granta, 2002) pg.125-126

[7] Ibid. pg.126-127

 

Shouting Fire.

The recent explosion of outrage in the Middle East over an anti-Islamic cartoon produced in America has raised the debate over freedom of expression and speech once again. Here's some food for thought on this complicated matter. As Slavoj Žižek argues there is a point at which censorship can function as the measure of cultural standards. He suggests we shouldn't fear censorship for this reason. It's been commonplace for European countries to ban explicit Fascist propaganda, swastikas and so on, yet in Hungary the restriction has been altered to outlaw Communist and Nazi propaganda. This new change leaves the door open for other Fascist propaganda - it's the rehabilitation of Fascism other than the Hitlerian variety. We wouldn't like to live in a society where you argue against rape. Instead Žižek argues that the ideal situation would be where anyone who argues for rape to be legal is immediately disqualified by virtue of their position. It's certain that the sanctions of regard are already in place to some extent across the West.

Consider the following: If I came into your home and put up a poster which declares that the Holocaust was a 'hoax' it would not be a violation of my right to free-speech and free-expression if you were to rip down the poster and throw me out of your home. It would be utterly absurd for me to claim that this is a fundamental violation of free-speech, as well as a concerted effort by the Left to subvert our society and undermine the unremitting greatness of the white man. Even the most strident advocate of the right to free-speech would shudder at the thought of defending this case. So there is a distinction between private and public space, which is relevant to free-speech as there is a difference between expression in the home and expression on Speakers' Corner. Really freedom of speech is not supposed to be applied consistently as a universal principle justifying every statement in any situation. The complex question regards the specifics of the particular situation.

The conflict between private space and free-speech becomes increasingly ambiguous when it comes to the media, in which debates can be held in a space which is at once public and private in a way. The extent to which the broadcasting is a form of involvement of your private space is blurred. Significantly the popular anger about political correctness has emerged with the decline of the public space in recent decades. It has become a means of political mobilisation for the Right in the post-political era. The only struggle worth fighting is to preserve the permissive society of racists, sexists, homophobes and so on. After all, we're led to believe that the Left are working to undermine our civil liberties with this totalitarian notion of political correctness. Even though political correctness can be found on the most conservative of university campuses in the US. It's primary focus is the phraseology deployed in statements regarding race, gender, sexuality etc. 

Political correctness is not as much a matter of what can be said as much as about how it can be said. Nevertheless it is viewed with suspicion by many, we are told it must be combated for it is an imposition on our wholesome society from the lair of cultural Marxists. You can tell it's a concocted panic as it is endorsed by the mainstream media and commentariat. No one ever stands up to promote political correctness. It is only railed against by the brave journalists who are paid by Rupert Murdoch. At the same time there is little concern for the evacuation of meaningful political language and discourse. You can see this when the use of the word 'profits' is replaced with 'jobs' whenever a politician talks about a deal involving government and business. It's more blunt when the mass-killing of foreign civilians becomes 'collateral damage' while kidnapping and torture by governments becomes a 'rendition'. As Gore Vidal observed, you can now 'liberate' a country by bombing it - this is true decadence! The death of 1789 may not be far off the emptying out of the language of politics.

It was politically correct for conservatives to accuse Ken Livingstone of 'homophobia' when he said that the Conservative Party is 'riddled' with closet homosexuals. He was accused of racism when he said that he looked forward to seeing the Saudi Royal Family 'swinging from lampposts'. Yet at the same time Ken Livingstone is constantly accused of being a rabid anti-Semite with a sympathy for Muslim extremism. An honest observer can see that Ken Livingstone has used provocative language in picking fun at the opponents of his worldview: whether it's Tories or the King of Saudi Arabia. As for the allegations of anti-Semitism Ken Livingstone is an outspoken critic of Israel and has been vilified as a Judeophobe for over three decades because of his position on the conflict. With all of this in mind it has to be acknowledged that these accusations are forms of political correctness expressed by the Right. It seems that the phenomenon has transcended left and right.

As Stewart Lee once said political correctness is little more than a clumsily institutionalised form of politeness, which has downsides too but it's a lot better than the time when people could make all kinds of obscene comments. Before political correctness, in Britain, we lived in a country where people like Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson were allowed on television to spout jokes that pick fun at gays, women, ethnic minorities and the disabled. That was a time when we could watch shows like The Black and White Minstrel Show, in which white actors "blacked up" for the sake of 20 years of "family entertainment". And it has to be acknowledged that very often the stories of political correctness going mad are exaggerated. Lee has pointed this out that the infamous example of Birmingham Council banning Christmas. Actually Birmingham Council decided to use the word Winterval as an umbrella term to cover Christmas and other religious celebrations around the same time.