Exactly what effective force has been applied by defenders of free expression against terrorists bent on silencing it in incidents like those associated with The Satanic Verses, the Danish cartoons, Charlie Hebdo, and others? Who vigorously defends the dissident rights of those upsetting leftists’ aggressive political correctness campaigns which too often result in defamation and vilification (Titley et al., 2017)? The UN Declaration was especially criticised by some Muslim countries and in certain cases alternative declarations were subsequently composed. The American Anthropological Association (1947) contributed its views to the earlier Commission on Human Rights, expressing its concerns that while we are a single species, cultural diversity is found everywhere, and no cultures’ traditions should be deemed superior or inferior. The very notion of universal rights, while supported on many issues, is challenged by cultural differences and ultimately by anyone who chooses to ignore others’ rights by employing active strength or might against hallowed words. In 21st century Britain, due to disastrously ill-managed immigration, we have an ongoing clash of cultures, covert denial of some British rights and laws, and instances of violent intimidation of prized rights.
I believe a revised tranche of human rights directives would be timely. We are not living in the 1950s, and world conditions have changed greatly. With no end in sight to escalating problems in Africa, conflict zones around the world, and millions more associated migrants than ever before, a new moral and legal overview is required. Those advancing the emotional appeal of ‘speaking truth to power’ have to concede that power is not always untruthful, nor is truth always left-wing or minority-oriented. One harrowing scenario that repeats itself, as in Syria, is that of a dictatorial government’s massacre of its dissidents, civil war, and the role of onlookers from other nations. When sanctions and diplomacy fail, should third-party powers be prepared to intervene militarily, or remain bystanders while civilians are slaughtered? Intervention always involves messy results that include unintended deaths of civilians, followed by unhelpful blame from leftist SJWs. This is the perennial damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario. Some consensus should be sought on what is for the best in order to optimise protection of human rights and lives.
Given the likelihood of increasing mass immigration from all corners and by any means, we must face the question of how to respond. The pro-open-borders lobby, which is usually synonymous with those playing on the lottery-of-birth trope, needs to be pressurised into explaining how many immigrants (and their children and relatives) should be allowed in, and how such demographic upheaval is to be realistically accommodated. A ‘let them all in’ plea is childishly unrealistic. The pro-enforcement of borders lobby has a clear case for the rights of longstanding citizens but needs to state how it will respond to the human toll of wars and refugee displacements. Australian offshoring methods is but one response; paying nearby countries to provide temporary shelter is another. The rights of realistic, concerned national citizens are often at odds with the rights of migrants. Asylum seekers have a right to fair reception, assessment and temporary shelter with dignity, but host countries have a right to discriminate between true and false refugees, and to deport excessive numbers of migrants. What few are willing to countenance is the tragedy-either-way possibility: allow in too many and utter mayhem and civil war may result; turn some away and they may die. What many are unable to countenance too is the necessity of birth control education, policies and means.
Human rights are invented; they are a social construction. They do not exist in nature. They are certainly valuable as an ingredient of civilisation and arise from evolved altruism but their short-term emotional drivers are often at odds with a complex modern, densely populated world. Our immediate compassionate responses have to be balanced by longer-term calculations (Bloom, 2017). Before we even look at policy decisions, however, we should ask who decides, and how. If we in Britain were to have a referendum on immigration right now, it is likely, as in the Brexit decision, that a majority would vote against continuing immigration, or would even seek reduced immigration levels. With a left-wing government in power, however, related policy decisions and propaganda would of course tilt the case more towards immigration-friendly, and accompanying massive housebuilding and infrastructure projects funded by higher taxes and greater national debt. As recent waves of immigrants settle and assume voting rights, many will presumably vote for generous immigration policies in order to facilitate future entry for their families and friends.
17
A Momentary but Necessary Dark Cloud of Self-Questioning
When writing a document such as this, one has to pause in good faith to ask about the motivation and values behind it. Am I a racist, misinformed, or misunderstood? Am I intentionally propagating hate, or simply expressing valid views and encouraging debate? Why have my views shifted from leftist to realist? Is any of this going to make the world a better place? Is nature like circumstantial tragedy and truth often unkind, or are these artificial constructs? These are unavoidable questions for a moral conscience.
I think there are perhaps five things to look at here. First, is it simply unkind to say certain things? What issues is it necessary to raise and what is only unpleasant mischief-making? Here is an example of a relevant dilemma, which brings up a touchy ‘intersectionality’ point involving race and gender. Satoshi Kanazawa has published provocative research, on IQ and race among other topics (Kanazawa, 2012) and about the claim that black women are rated less attractive than other women. Kanazawa’s article in Psychology Today on the latter theme received so much criticism that he risked being fired from the LSE, and had to apologise for this article. But Burke et al. (2013) in an article on own-race attractiveness (or assortative mating) showed that although little evidence could support this claim, in the highly multiracial USA ‘12.5% of black husbands, 2% of white husbands, and 0.4% of Asian husbands were married to women of other racial backgrounds’. Hirsch (2018b) unintentionally supports this view in a confused article about swinging couples, large black penises and other sexual stereotypes. In such lines of enquiry, it has been mooted by Kanazawa and others that African-origin women are on average less attractive because they have higher testosterone; they often tend towards being overweight and often meet the stereotype of strong and angry. An indeterminate number of black men in the UK prefer women of other ethnicities, according to one study up to 40% (Barker, 1996). Channel Four’s 2017 Is Love Racist? documentary experiment confirmed both an unconscious overall preference for own-race partners and some bias towards whites as more attractive. High figures for lone black female parents might suggest that many black men do not wish to stay with black females.
Now, the question here is that, aside from whether there is any truth in these claims, would it simply be too unkind, cruel, or too ungentlemanly and hate-generating to raise and explore such a topic? Is it indecent, in bad taste? Should any topic of interest be open to scholarly research and publication or should some be taboo out of consideration for the feelings of others, and the unintended but possible negative consequences? Horgan (2013) is one among many who believes some topics like race and IQ should indeed be banned, and sees it as a topic ‘irrelevant to serious intellectual discourse’ that only racist bullies could be interested in. But who is to decide such matters? Who gets to decide on exactly what is banned? Studies like that of Kubota et al. (2012), for example, on the neurology of racism, are given a free pass to investigate neural correlates of white racist attitudes with a view to finding remedies, almost as if no definitional problems exist and no justification for dissidence about an egalitarian ideology is warranted.
Secondly, we should ask if some topics are too risky or inflammatory and therefore unwise to raise. Darwin certainly paused before publishing on human evolution in 1859, knowing that it would upset a lot of people and probably also hurt his own reputation. Enoch Powell realised that his remarks in 1968 on race, immigration and potential social conflict might upset many people,
and his career was indeed cut short. It was feared during the sex grooming gangs scandals in British cities in the 2000s that naming the ethnicity of the offenders would raise cries of racism and consequently criminal proceedings were delayed. We have seen Tony Blair’s assertion that any talk of population policy would be ‘political dynamite’ and hence not engaged in. It is quite clear that one overwhelming reason for not saying things is that they will sometimes lead to serious trouble for the speaker and possibly to social turmoil and violence. Is it best not to say anything risky about race, immigration, and multicultural tensions? But most topically, it seems that anything that offends Islamic sensitivities can lead to murder, which perpetrators regard as their religious duty. In order to appease the hypersensitive, you must avoid anything that could be inflammatory. But double standards operate. Powell’s inflammatory metaphors in his infamous speech included (from Virgil) ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’ and ‘a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre’. Yet when James Baldwin, also in the 1960s, contrasted the Biblical imagery of the flood with the warning of ‘the fire next time’, this went unopposed.
Third, following on from the above, can it be suicidal, in the sense of inviting attacks on one’s life either literally or metaphorically, to speak or write about certain risky topics? It was for Socrates. The phenomenon of shooting the messenger applies here. One may feel compelled to speak up about a perceived untruth or injustice in a spirit of sheer conscience, social concern and belief in objective truth, yet pay a heavy price for it. Otto and Anna Quangel in Hans Fallada’s novel Alone in Berlin, and Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984 all paid a heavy price. Theodor van Gogh died for making a film critical of Islam. Twelve staff members of Charlie Hebdo were gunned down for publishing cartoons. Numerous journalists are killed doing their work. These risks are, I think, the flip side of the perceived dangers linked with delicate racial topics. Sensitivity to anti-Semitism has reinforced all anti-racist hypersensitivity, so that SJWs rapidly pick up on any sign that a line of enquiry (e.g. race and IQ) seems to echo Nazi science and might ultimately suggest eugenics. Any such linkage, genuinely perceived or manufactured, goes straight to censorship mode and ad hominem condemnation: mention race and IQ and you are ipso facto a racist. Naïve belief in pure enquiry and free speech can hence be ‘suicidal’ if acted upon, or at least suicidally ostracising.
Fourth, is it suspicious that one would make certain risky statements? This is about perceived motivation. Why would I write this book? Why does anyone knowingly say unpopular, risky things? The possible answers could include a devious undeclared racism, a lack of self-awareness and empathy, an unconscious envy of and rage at non-whites, an adolescent contrarianism, or a Tourette’s-like compulsion to blurt out the very things polite society feels compelled to keep a lid on. We might say that polite society has become like a dysfunctional family refusing to mention its elephants in the room, until an ugly row erupts and all those unhealthily stored-up, suppressed feelings come pouring out. Or it might be about a fierce attachment to a principle, for example to the quaint old idea of truth: someone has to say these things, and if nobody else will, it will have to be me. Of course, this may sound ridiculously grandiose, and Horgan (2013) does indeed ridicule this idea. But consider that the human rights movement has been overwhelmingly leftist in its ethos and has not afforded much protection to those of us who believe we have the right and a duty to defend majoritarian commonsense, and speak up in ‘politically incorrect’ terms. Thirteen countries, all Muslim, retain the death penalty for atheism. Protection of religious adherents is not matched by protection of atheists who may believe themselves to have had a ‘rational revelation’ (McAdam, 2018).
Linked with the first point above, consider that Kanazawa (2010), who accepts the title of ‘scientific fundamentalist’, argues that science in pursuit of truth is neither good nor bad but only proven to be true or false. The Equality Act 2010 protects the rights of the religious and also mentions the rights of those with a ‘philosophical belief’. This latter category explicitly includes sincere beliefs about man-made climate change but explicitly excludes belief in white superiority. The Act mentions an example of employers not being within their rights to pass over a suitable Hindu candidate for employment in the interests of their perceived customer base. It appears that the Act discriminates for the religious and liberal, and against scientific scepticism and purely commercial interests. The Act, which focuses mainly on workplace scenarios, explicitly includes Rastafarianism and Paganism as protected religions. The former is an anti-capitalist Afrocentric movement, and the latter is characterised by pantheism, and an aversion to capitalism and science. The Act implies that no-one can openly discuss or even acknowledge in the workplace any sincere tendency towards a belief in race, IQ differences, evolutionary theories concerning the inferiority of religious belief, and so on. Presumably, however, anyone working for, say, a publication that raises these issues is protected by the Act. The implicit and confused pro-multiculturalism of such legislation remains uncontested.
Finally, some self-questioning ambivalence should be apparent here. The present text is, I think, some mixture of investigative critical thinking, exploration, obsession, assertion, vulnerability, and working through common problematic human issues. An autobiographical aside: When I was somewhere between seven and ten years old, I was playing with friends in a nearby street. Perhaps we were being noisy, and an old woman who lived there told us off: ‘Why can’t you go and play in your own street?’ she half-pleaded and half-insisted. I recall arguing precociously with her about nobody owning any street. That is presumably how today’s anti-borders anarchists and pro-immigration activists feel about things: nobody owns a street or a country. Yet on looking back across sixty years, I can see that she was probably genuinely bothered by our noise and strangeness, and unable to empathise with us. But equally, we were unable to understand her sense of territory, her preference for quietness, her perception of intrusion, and anxiety. Just a few years ago, a group of students moved into rented accommodation next door to me. They saw nothing wrong in having noisy spontaneous parties going on until 4 or 5 in the morning, and found my complaints that I therefore could not sleep when I had to work the next day merely irritating — I was just ‘a boring old fart’. They did not have to get up early for work, and believed it was their right to drink, take drugs and play very loud music whenever they wanted to. Just as I had no insight into or concern for the old woman’s feelings, these transient young students were indifferent to mine. These two examples were both (mainly) white-on-white in nature but age-related. Such clashes and impasses are now being magnified by minority identities and mutual multicultural differences and misunderstandings across the country every day.
I have not mentioned the possibilities of misjudgement: I might be wrong in my understanding of immigration and its problematic knock-on effects, incorrect in some of my facts, and unwise to include some sensitive points. I am still puzzling over some discrepancies, such as the probable links between higher intelligence, post-theism and northern environments, and on the other hand the very high IQs of Ashkenazi Jews; and the inconvenient mismatch between the majority of (presumably high IQ) academics and what I judge to be their leftist multicultural short-sightedness. Perhaps I thought no-one would notice or care what I wrote. Perhaps I foolishly thought I would make some money. Perhaps I thought that if my arguments were wrong, critics would politely show me where I have made mistakes so a few corrections could be made to the text. Perhaps like Theo van Gogh I hoped we could ‘talk about it’. Naïvety could well be part of it.
I might be wrong here, in everything, or in many ways. That would be OK; indeed if we could properly, objectively evaluate the claims and counterclaims it would be most worthwhile. I do feel some guilt that this is probably not making the world a better place. ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all’, runs one well-known admonition. But I do have some fait
h in the idea that polemical exposure of suppressed views is healthier than suppression. I probably do have some residual mild xenophobia due to my age and discomfort at change. I may have some genuine but unnecessary anxiety (‘I am filled with foreboding’, to use a Powellian echo, but I am not exactly ‘filled with’, more troubled by foreboding) about the social future of the country I have lived in for over sixty years, and for my adult children. My father died in the 1980s but if he could come back today he would be astonished by new technologies, by the tattoo craze, and by the ethnic transformation of the populace, in only the first of which he would see some merit.
I trust that others will, like me, pause to identify and admit holes in any apparent case of blanket wariness of multiculturalism. As I say elsewhere, there are often individual exceptions to doubts about large groups of immigrants, and many love the exotic music, food and fashions that accompany immigrant cultures. The young Muslim woman in the headscarf at the local pharmacy looks very beautiful, for example. I might wish I had the body of some black athletes. I envy the cleverness and creativity of some Jewish academics and novelists. I do not admire the religious fanaticism of some ISIS members but I have some grudging respect for their disdain for material acquisitions and komfortismus. I even envy a little the passionate if misguided intensity of the SJWs.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali can be held up as a contradiction in terms — an African (Somalian) woman of great intelligence (she speaks six languages), who found political asylum in Holland partly by lying about her circumstances, but went on to become a Dutch Member of Parliament and later an American academic and champion of human rights. From being a conservative Muslim girl, she became an atheist and one of the most publicly anti-Muslim intellectuals, to the point of attracting death threats and the appellation of ‘extremist’ from the perverse Southern Poverty Law Center. She is also critical of the EU’s immigration policy. She was surely the embodiment of the SJWs’ ideal migrant, rising from Somalian obscurity with little help, disproving sexist and racist tropes, and gaining international eminence — until she came to appear Islamophobic and to oppose immigration. Anyone might admire such an exceptional person, or by chance befriend or fall in love with a single member of any out-group. But that is quite different from importing millions of strangers into one’s country and thereby transforming it beyond recognition.
Excessive Immigration Page 25
