Awkward thoughts from a very dark corner
Even if one has only a very limited effect on opinions and events, it behoves all of us blessed with a talent to explain not to use that talent by following the far more lucrative path of propaganda demonising a social, ethnic, political, sexual or cultural group in society.
There comes a point, however – and we in the West reached it, in my view, about twenty years ago – when the very freedom to explain objectively is being muzzled by those who use insane logic-leaps to further an ideology that is at best unnatural, and at worst utterly exploitative.
The term ‘Useful Idiot’ originated in 1916-17 Russia, when Lenin perverted the liberal sentiments of the growing middle class (represented by the Menshevik Party) in an appeal to their very real sense of Tsarist injustice. To shrewd observers, the nature of this tactic was obvious; but they were outnumbered by ‘radical’ intellectuals. Lenin also made impassioned appeals to the military – with dire consequences for the Romanov dynasty.
Although the sworn enemy of the German Nazis, Hitler and Goebbels understood and admired the element of brutal hypocrisy in Marxism-Leninism. They learned from it, and grasped that – without the tacit support of the bourgeoisie and the Generals – they could not establish the Third Reich. The imprimatum of President Hindenburg brought a tinge of social respectability to the Nazis after the 1933 election, and the purge of Röhm’s Nazi Sturm Abteilung (SA) was the quid pro quo for getting der alter General to let Hitler into Government.
So began the historic face-off between Communism and Nazism. But in fact, the two were identical power-lusts united by a single con-trick, and one overriding belief: the inability of ‘The Masses’ to be anything other than mindless slaves.
For sure, the sting was expressed differently by the two ideologies – a dictatorship of the Proletariat for the Communists and the Völksgemeinschaft for the Nazis – but this was designed purely to give an illusion of power to the commonality in those terms – viz: the concept of a community of the Ordinary Citizen.
It was hogwash, pure and simple. As Hayek showed, it was all the same route to serfdom.
During the first three decades after the Second World War, Western education gave every bright kid – absolutely free and regardless of class background – the means to grasp the nature of the totalitarian threat…..and the irrelevance of the Left v Right hopscotch when considering the obvious dangers of Thought Intolerance.
Towards the end of the second of those decades, I was studying History & Politics at University. In 1967, most of my fellow-students became Weekend Hippies. By 1968, the same bourgeois clowns were giving clenched fists to LBJ and fealty to Ho chi Minh. Most of us grew up and went into proper jobs. The rest went into teaching.
What we’re witnessing in Britain (and elsewhere) today is a battle for power between those who progressed, and those who regressed.
Those who went into teaching found – as the rise of Reagan and Thatcher stomped on their ideas – that they needed comfort blankets with unquestioned ability to offer safety not so much in numbers as rhumbas….something to keep the emotional rhythm of Belief obeying the right pentameters.
What they came up with was political correctness, global warming, Wimmin are rightly angry, sexuality minorities need auto-respect, science is settled, and all discrimination is evil.
If you have your wits about you, it’s not hard to see the fascist’s never-ending desire for Thought Certainty in all this claptrap.
Don’t get me wrong here: the ideology of trickle-down wealth, the global village, monetarism, irresponsible financialisation and neocon energy obsession is equally to blame. It has given the likes of Antifa, Momentum and what remains of Maoism a great deal of leeway in presenting their twisted view of the world and the Human Condition….and left most people confused about which way is up.
But it is time at last, I think, to ask some awkward questions:
- When you turn up at a Yorkshire railway station – and the cabs driven by Pakistanis tend to have meek-looking, spotty teenage girls in the back – what conclusion is one allowed to reach?
- How ill-at-ease (as a shopkeeper) are you when (say) half a dozen Jewish kids enter your shop, versus half a dozen West Indian teenagers?
- When “Yellow” Asians come up to you in the street, do you feel a frisson of fear – or just a desire to help?
- When a negro follows you along a deserted road in Brixton late at night, is your fear level the same as it would be if the person was Indian?
The contemporary Western Leftlib self-appointed heroes would have you believe that racism is racism; such irrational dislike does not distinguish between races, and in fact only white people are racist.
Such folks just don’t get out enough. The Chinese have fangwoi (white foreign devils) and hakwoi (black foreign devils): they are in no doubt about which of these they fear most. Indians have a social system based on depth of dark skin: negroid features and black skin are the lowest caste. The Vietnamese, the Filipinos and the Japanese all share the same bigotry.
Look outwards across the World, and you will find – wherever you go – a deep-seated suspicion of those with their roots in Africa.
Is this all one gigantic anti-negro conspiracy? Or is it a justified fear that requires the Caribbean>American>British Africans to prove wrong?
The former of those possibilities really doesn’t bear analysis: what would the motives of those plotters be?
As this post said at the outset, these are all dark thoughts. But they must be interrogated.
The Slog 