Own a bookshop? Beware of TVNZ journalists

In 1993 Lindsay Perigo resigned from TVNZ as a journalist/presenter declaring its news as "braindead", and a lot has happened in that time. From its one time commanding role claiming "more people get their news from TV One news than from any other source" (copied from US network ABC at the time), it is facing a declining market, as a whole generation gets news, of sorts, from online sources, and those who don't want to be talked down to like 12 year old schoolkids look elsewhere.

But never fear, TVNZ is out there to ensure that you are aware of misinformation and it is even patrolling bookshops to check if they are stocking books and magazines that.... shock... print inaccurate information, or even write about conspiracy theories.  

At least twice in the past month (I don't want it daily) has TVNZ engaged what it calls investigate journalism into the horrors of there being, perfectly legally, books and magazines published and even more appallingly, sold by bookshops across Aotearoa.  

Books that challenge Māori nationalism

Some weeks ago TVNZ broadcast a piece purportedly reflecting an English literature tutor, Brittany Rose, who is "disgusted" by finding books in a bookshop that "raised red flags"(!) for her because... they contained opinions she didn't like.  Frankly I think Brittany Rose would happily have flown red flags in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, because she would have made a great Red Guard:

The books were filled with pages warning of the dangers of a so-called greedy, tribal elite.

And descriptions of Māori as violent savages who were saved by colonisation.

“It just struck me as incredibly insensitive, ill-informed and damaging. It's potentially harmful to propagate views that are anti-Maori. That's not at all what we should be having on shelves of our bookstores,” Rose said.

Colonisation devastated Māori, claiming land and lives.

University of Auckland Senior Māori studies lecturer, Dr Daniel Hikuroa, was equally disgusted.

“That's something I would hate for my daughter to stumble across at bookstores but on the other hand I would like for them to understand that it's hate material is what it is. It's hate material. It's designed to drive wedges between peoples,” he said.

I'm not going to go into the details of the books, not only because I haven't read them, but because it is somewhat besides the point. You see, Rose is not so concerned about refuting these books she wouldn't buy in a shop she doesn't own, she is worried about them being "insensitive, ill-informed and damaging", because the views are "harmful".  By extension, TVNZ is sharing this concern by giving a platform to someone who trots out the high-status "insensitive" and "damaging" claims about opinions she doesn't like. It's not enough to be offended nowadays, you have to claim differing views are "harmful".  Harmful to whom? People who can't handle a rigorous debate?  Surely if the books are THAT weak and woeful, it should be easy to dismiss them as poorly written drivel easily refuted.  

How does she know how well they will sell? How does she know that those buying them are going to agree with the books? How does she know the books don't contain facts in among assertions and false claims?  

It doesn't matter, Brittany Rose wants them removed, and by extension, TVNZ. 

The books were published by Tross Publishing, which must be immensely grateful for the free publicity, and although it refused to be interviewed on air (unsurprisingly given it is clearly designed to be a hit job, author John Robinson did send a statement to TVNZ:

I absolutely reject the untrue charges made against Tross Publishing. I believe in equality, decency and accuracy and oppose the divisions in to-day's New Zealand. I am appalled by the ridiculous claims of wrongdoing which implicate me. I am being damned without a hearing.

Given the wording of the TVNZ report it is hardly surprising Tross Publishing did not appear on camera, as it is clearly of a monolithic perspective:

The company has been publishing books that condemn things like treaty settlements and the Waitangi Tribunal for years.

But they are still being sold by big franchises, including Paper Plus and Whitcoulls.

BUT? So does TVNZ say that Paper Plus and Whitcoulls should NOT sell books condemning treaty settlements and the Waitangi Tribunal? What if a radical Māori publisher produced books saying treaty settlements and the Waitangi Tribunal are sell outs? So TVNZ has made it clear what opinion it has. Some books shouldn't be sold.

Then TVNZ puts out this line:

There are calls for stores selling the books to promote balance.

Does TVNZ seriously think bookshops should sell books with a wide variety of views on public issues? Did it even check? No, of course not. There is little difficulty in finding books that advance Māori sovereignty and nationalism, but that would damage the shock-sound bite nature of the story.

Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon is quoted as saying:

But what really disturbed me about this was the idea that freedom of speech is about being able to have any opinion and go unchallenged

This is Orwellian nonsense, it is actually Brittany Rose that wants to have opinions unchallenged, and TVNZ that is advancing an agenda of a monolithic view on Treaty of Waitangi matters. Freedom of speech is not about having opinions unchallenged, but it is about being able to write and publish opinions and not have the state, by proxy, campaign to stop your books being able to be sold.

The report concluded with a most sinister line:

1News has asked for clarification as to why the books can be purchased at both stores.

The right response (if the bookshops don't want to just say, piss off we can sell whatever we want and we aren't answerable to the state) would be "the books are legal, we embrace freedom of speech including challenging points of view held by academics, media, politicians and journalists, and encourage our customers to buy a variety of books".

Conspiracy magazines

So on 29 December TVNZ broadcast a story about how Auckland Airport newsagents were selling magazines that contained content about conspiracy theories around Covid19, and included misinformation about vaccines etc.  It queried, once again, why newsagents were selling magazines that contained such material, unfortunately this story is now only contained on the full length recording of the 6pm bulletin online. The whole story was based on the outrage that a newsagent would sell titles that publish nonsense.  

So what?

Now I carry no flag for Tross Publishing, some of its titles may be worth a read, others not so much ("A Plague of People" looks like Malthusian nonsense), but it's not the point at all. The state broadcaster should not be engaging in a witch hunt of either publications or bookshops that are acting legally, just because a fragile wanna Red Guard is offended by their content.  

Nor do I care much for little known magazines on a shelf, because before I buy something I tend to browse through to decide for myself if it is worth reading.  If not, I wont buy it. Amazing to TVNZ, I think almost everyone does the same thing. 

If TVNZ journalists want to criticise books or magazines, they should write book reviews, not sound-bite hit jobs demanding to know why a bookshop is selling a book. 

Maybe the books wont sell, maybe the bookshop wont restock them,  because the marketplace of ideas is what determines how most of the book and magazine media world works. Of course TVNZ journalists don't worry about that, although it is a State Owned Enterprise, it isn't going to be allowed to go under.  

From the age of five to ten my parents owned a bookshop, it was independent and could legally only open five days a week (before even Saturday retail was permitted), but it was a six-seven day a week job running a business.  They sold a wide variety of publications from encyclopaedic non-fiction through to trashy paperbacks, through to comics, soft erotica, cards, stationery and even coal. It's a lot of work, and I'd be appalled if any state journalist entered their premises to interrogate them on why they are selling some books or magazines.  

This is the point. If TVNZ actually wants to engage in journalism, instead of engaging in a Maoist style witch hunt to find businesses that have the audacity to sell publications that it thinks is wrong, it could choose to either engage in an honest, balanced debate between people with diametrically opposed views, whilst being an honest broker.

However it isn't an honest broker, it's partisan. It should have just ignored the magazines at the airport, because the likelihood is they wont be around for long. 

It should have told Brittany Rose that bookshops everywhere sell books that some people find upsetting and offensive, and that maybe if she is that fragile she should just not buy the books and tell others to not do so, or write a blog post.  

Of course the irony was this story was broadcast the same night about Hong Kong authorities raiding the offices of Stand News for publishing a seditious publication.  No, NZ is a long way from that, but it is the same philosophical principle that someone is publishing something that TVNZ disagrees with, and that it should be accountable to the state broadcaster for it.

Maybe former National Cabinet Minister Simon Power, soon to be CEO of TVNZ, might do something to change this culture of finger-wagging school prefect style petty-authoritarianism.  Or will he, like so many on the "centre-right" just take his money, run it competently, and be too much of a scared little mouse to take on a culture that has been 30 years in the making.

So Te Pāti Māori opposes one-person one vote liberal democracy?

 What to make of this?

and

The MP of Waiariki, thinks that to implement the Treaty of Waitangi, Parliament should have 50% representation from Tangata Whenua and 50% representation from Tangata Tiriti. Presumably his reason for doing this is because it "isn't fair" that a majority, in a liberal democracy, without constitutional limits on power, effectively mean the tyranny of numbers. This is a view that on the face of it, I sympathise with.  

Anyone who thinks a democracy can protect the rights of people under any jurisdiction, in itself, is a fool. So he has a point... perhaps if liberal democracy in New Zealand actually protected individual rights (which include the right of any group of individuals, such as Iwi, Hapū or Māori in general to organise on voluntary grounds), including property rights, then Waititi and his supporters could avoid fearing some sort of backlash, racist or otherwise, against living your life peacefully.

However my fear is that he doesn't really just want to be left alone, but actually wants to wield power much more widely, (although I am open to being proven otherwise, as he is far from being a conventional politician).

It's important to know what it means to want a 50/50 Parliament with half of the representation being Māori and the other half Tangata Tiriti, because according to his colleague, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, it isn't the population being split in two, it's the population being split in three.

Before you jump to the conclusion that this is simply a nationalist grab of power that has nothing to do with liberal democracy, you need to understand it isn't just about race, it's actually about political belief as well. You might assume Tangata Tiriti are the people who are entitled to live in Aotearoa because the Treaty of Waitangi established a framework to enable peaceful co-existence between Māori and settlers, but apparently not.

Writing in the NZ Herald, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer (list MP), claims the population of New Zealand is classified into not two (!), but three types of people:

• Tangata Whenua (people of the land. Māori);
• Tangata Tiriti (people of the treaty); and
• Everyone else.

Ngarewa-Packer wrote rather obliquely what she meant by all three groups in that same article.  It's worth quoting to get the gist of her meaning:

Tangata tiriti are people who don't argue the existence of Te Tiriti o Waitangi as our founding document. They promote the partnerships it intended, moving away from transactional engagements, preferring lifelong relationships.

They are secure in themselves and know we are equals, one as tangata of the whenua (people of the land) and one as tangata of the tiriti (people of the treaty). ...

Tangata tiriti understand te tiriti didn't create special rights for Māori - we already had Māori social structures and systems of lore in place....

They're comfortable loudly declaring they're recovering racists, and they teach anti-racism, extremely secure in knowing their place side by side with tangata whenua ushering in a new Aotearoa.

Tangata tiriti accept and appreciate the reason they live in Aotearoa is because te tiriti gives them citizenship and mana equal to tangata whenua. This doesn't denounce their own culture, it strengthens their stand on the whenua they've chosen to live on. 

So it's not just about not being Māori, you have to buy into a whole ideological set of beliefs and views to earn the status of Tangata Tiriti. This includes accepting the reason you get to live in NZ is because the Treaty gives you citizenship on the land you've "chosen" to live on. 

The fact you may have been born here (or indeed your parents were as well) and may be born of any mix of ethnic or migrant origin is irrelevant to her. Identify as Māori, and you have an automatic right to live in Aotearoa, but if not, you have "permission". It's not "blood and soil" nationalism, but it certainly isn't "equal".

It is akin to granting someone a residency visa,  you should be grateful "we" let you stay, but your entitlement to stay depends on you behaving.

Part of it is that you need to embrace the Māori nationalist version of "original sin". No matter your background or your thoughts or deeds, or being English, Pasifika, Chinese, Jewish, Indian in descent you are a "recovering racist". You must admit it, and preferably evangelise to others about your and their racism, and of course your "privilege". Although it's unclear if being distantly descended from settlers in the 19th century who occupied land taken from Māori is more privilege than having fled Vietnam on a boat in 1976.

So that's your path to being Tangata Tiriti, although it's far from clear how that could be policed.

Of course, like mild nationalists, the definition of the "other" group is more by inference. It's everyone who doesn't support this view of the New Zealand constitution or the rights of citizens or politics. If you don't think you are racist, don't think you have NZ citizenship as of right, rather than permission, and don't buy into Māori-only seats at local government, then you're the others. You're not Tangata Tiriti, you are racists and possibly white supremacists ("white" being quite a wide definition presumably). There isn't much tolerance in the Ngarewa-Packer world for debate and discussion about the role of the state and individuals.

The whole ideological foundation of this is not one that treats the smallest minority as the individual, and individuals each with indivisible rights and freedoms, but one that collectivises everyone into groups, each with different rights.

Now I have quite some support for Māori wanting control over their own affairs, including their property and to run their own institutions, as long as it shrinks the central government role (and taxation alongside it), it's all consistent with my philosophy. I really don't care if Waititi or Ngarewa-Packer and others want to live their lives in peace with businesses, schools, hospitals etc. I don't care about your race or background if you want to do that, I want a state that simply protects us from each other.

but I do care if the purpose of this is to create an ethno-nationalist defined autocracy, where some citizens are more equal than others. Even if the Tangata Tiriti category is magnanimously expanded to just mean everyone who isn't Tangata Whenua, it still destroys equality before the law and government. A government which gives more weight to your votes because of your ancestry is a racist government, it doesn't treat people as individuals, it treats them as members of collectives, and that's a path that leads to tyranny.

It's certainly not a view held by any other political party in Parliament, I should hope.

Fighting racism in all of its forms?

Racism is “growing in temerity” says Race Relations Conciliator Meng Foon in Stuff and it should be dealt with in “all its forms”.  Pardon me if I think he doesn’t really mean that.

He cites the colonial history of racism that diminished the status of Maori, which is all very well, but in that he infers that this predominantly remains in the minds of many.  I’m not so sure that’s true. There are certainly some who cling to ideas of racial superiority and inferiority, even if it is subtle rather than explicit, but to consider that the thinking in the 19th century of settler is akin to the thinking in the 21st century of their descendants (and the millions of others who are not descended from settlers) seems a stretch.  He’s right to point out historic discrimination against Chinese New Zealanders and of course the Dawn Raids on Pasifika communities came from racist fear, which both main political parties took advantage of at the time.  In all cases this was actions by a state that believed it was right to treat citizens not as individuals, but members of a group deemed to be below that of others.  

Foon points to threats towards some academics, all of which is completely unacceptable.  Speech threatening violence is not protected, as it is a direct violation of the rights of those threatened. However, speech that is abusive and angry is not, and indeed anyone entering the public domain to express their views should not be protected under the law from people responding with anger.  There is nothing wrong with people expressing anger in debating issues, indeed it seems almost de riguer for MPs from Te Pati Maori to do so.

Any cranks promoting violence should be dealt with firmly, but Foon’s commitment to addressing racism “in all its forms” has a blind spot. He accepts on face value the claims of academics who take a post-modernist structuralist view of racism, in that racism doesn’t even need to be expressed in actions but is inferred through outcomes. His citing of AUT lecturer Dr Heather Came who claims there is structural racism “everywhere” is indicative of his view.  The same Dr Heather Came blames “libertarian discourse” for distracting people from the privileges of Pakeha (this is the radical idea that people have some agency for their lives, and that one reason why crime occurs is poor parenting).

This belief system means he wont see the rhetoric of Te Maori Pati MP Debbie Ngarewa-Packer as what it is. Ngarewa-Packer isn’t a traditional ethno-nationalist, she bases her world view on classifying people based on links to land, not land and blood (like ethno-nationalists do), and their belief system.  You’re one of three groups depending on whether:

• You are THE people of the land (or not); and

• If you have redeemed yourself in your belief system (or not).

Note if you are tangata whenua, you don’t need to redeem yourself.  Ngarewa-Packer wrote in the New Zealand Herald on 26 May 2021 that New Zealanders consists of three groups, Tangata Whenua (she includes herself in this, and presumably encapsulates all who identify as Maori), Tangata Tiriti who she calls “reformed racists” (those she deems as allies, basically those who agree with her view as to the constitutional, legal, policy and social structure of New Zealand as a nation-state and society) and racists (everyone else).  

So instead of treating over 5 million diverse individuals with distinct backgrounds, characteristics, abilities, knowledge, perspectives, beliefs and ideas, she pigeon holes them first and foremost into two groups. Maori and others. She declares Tangata Tiriti as equals, although they have sinned, they have redeemed themselves.  As far as everyone else is, they are still sinner, they may yet be able to redeem themselves (and become Tangata Tiriti), but they need to be “left in the past”.  

What is this view if it is not racist? Place these comments in the hands of any ethno-nationalist and they wouldn’t be unfamiliar. There are the best people, there are the people they let become their allies and then there are those that are against them.  Who knows what Ngarewa-Packer thinks should happen to the third group? Given someone who had responsibility for Rawiri Waititi’s Twitter account claimed Caucasians are an “archaic species” and she cites several demographics, she seems to think that eventually Tangata whenua and Tangata Tiriti will be the majority and so the “racists” can be ignored. What if she is wrong and a majority don’t share her little Aotearoa view of humanity?

If she were from another ethnic background, it would be called out for what it is, simple racism. Her view is that unless you are Maori there is something wrong with you that can be fixed, and the way you fix it is by agreeing with her world view and by actively promoting it.  You then gain mana equal to tangata whenua. You should feel lucky then, perhaps that you can be reformed through compliance.  What happens if you don’t agree with it all though? Are you racist if you think there should remain a liberal democracy with majority rule, and that the principles of a common law criminal justice system should remain over an undefined traditional Maori system of lore (which, as with all matauranga, was passed down by word of mouth and observation/tradition, and was not recorded with a written language)?

One indication of what she thinks is her belief that if you are not Tangata Whenua, your right to live in Aotearoa is conditional.

She wrote:

Tangata tiriti accept and appreciate the reason they live in Aotearoa is because te tiriti gives them citizenship and mana equal to tangata whenua. This doesn't denounce their own culture, it strengthens their stand on the whenua they've chosen to live on.

Hang on a moment. Chosen to live on? So, you may be BORN in Aotearoa, you may have no other citizenship, but you’ve chosen to live there. A choice that is not a right because you apparently had another “choice”, which will be news to millions who don’t have dual citizenship.

This is all a bit chilling.  You’re not equal after all.

Ngarewa-Packer in her maiden speech said Maori suffered a “holocaust”, which is demonstrable nonsense. Injustice, killings and discrimination is not industrial-scale extermination, and indeed to compare the violence of the colonial era (an era that Te Pati Maori thinks hasn’t ended) to the Holocaust might be seen as racist by members of those groups that suffered under the Holocaust. However, I doubt Meng Foon will be calling that out and to be fair, Ngarewa-Packer is not the first to make such a ludicrous comparison. 

Imagine for a moment if the Caucasians are an archaic species” comment from Rawiri Waititi’s account had been uttered from the Twitter account of a National or ACT MP, in describing Maori as “a species”. No apologies would have been accepted, the staff member would have had to resign and the mea culpa from the MP would never had been enough.  

So no, Meng Foon is not interested in racism in “all of its forms”. His is a narrow, post-modernist, structuralist view that racism can't be expressed by people who identify with groups he deems as not having power,  although it is difficult to see Members of Parliament as people who are lacking in power.  Is racism increasing in New Zealand? Foon gives no useful evidence, but rather cites a series of anecdotes, all from academics or politicians which universally share one political perspective. It would be better if he were to spend some of the taxpayer money his office gets undertaking balanced surveys of people's attitudes to other races, including testing various stereotypes. 

However, would Foon simply think I am the third category of the Ngarewa-Packer hierarchy of Aotearoa? I am not Tangata Whenua (I think), I am not Tangata Tiriti (I'm not keen on any state that believes power should be shared, rather than fully devolved to individuals as much as feasible), so does that just mean I am racist?

70 years since VJ Day - a victory that was necessary and moral

I remember hearing the stories of the men who endured being POWs of Japan in World War 2. Growing up with TV series such as Tenko exposed me to a taste of the sadism and violence of imperial Japan.  So it is with some sadness to note that one of the primary narratives, from the so-called "liberal" left has been not remembering the brutality, fascism and racism of Japanese militarism, but demands for American apologies for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It's a small sign that culturally, the stories of the Burma Railway (which saw around 100,000 work as slave labour), the Nanking Massacre (at least 50,000 killed, 20,000 women and girls raped) and Japan's brutal occupation of almost all of east Asia from Korea to today's Indonesia, have such a low profile. You can be sure that China's modern tyrants and the two Koreas damn well make sure nobody forgets in their countries, as they don't need to exaggerate the genocidal approach Japan took to placing their lands under the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere".  Perhaps it is because Western leftwing academics aren't excited when it isn't Europeans doing the invading and killing, as it doesn't fit the banal "only white people can be racist" narrative.   The so-called "peace" movement has no answer as to how the world should have responded to imperialist Japan, is it because it is less concerned with "peace" than it is with opposing Western civilisation, liberal democracy, freedom and capitalism, with a distinctly anti-European bent?

The endurance of those who fought militarist Japan is difficult to calculate.  There were Americans, Koreans (not Kim Il Sung after 1940 despite the complete fictional account he based his legitimacy on), Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, Nepalese and many others, and they were rolling back a regime that had at its centre a philosophy of:

- Racial supremacy:  The Japanese were the master race, all others were inferior.  Indeed, Koreans  and Manchurians were so inferior that chemical and biological weapons were tested on them (and yes the Allies took the research conclusions for their own purposes after the war).  

- Militaristic fascism:  Japanese imperial rule was based on the entire militarisation of society, with no sense of consultation or input from the governed.  All were subjects, all were to do as they were told and to operate effectively as slaves, for the Empire of Japan.  It was a complete totalitarian regime, and given the superiority of Japanese rulers, its subjects were deemed to be grateful for the mercy of the Emperor.

- Religious authenticity:  The rule of the Empire was deemed to come from the Emperor, who was the living embodiment of god.  That was absolute and not able to be questioned.

One measure of the human cost of Japanese imperialism is over 6 million deaths due to murder, under its occupation from 1937 to 1945 alone, but Japan's imperialism started in 1910 (with Western consent) in Korea and its invasion of China commenced in the early 1930s.  100,000 were massacred in Manila alone in early 1945.  The "Three Alls" policy applied to China after 1940 was to "kill all, burn all, loot all" in retaliation to Chinese resistance to the occupation.  Women and girls throughout the occupied territories, particularly in Korea, were kept as sex slaves (so-called "comfort women") to please the military.   Japanese newspapers even celebrated the "contest" between army officers as to who could kill 100 with a sword first.

Japan's militarist regime was the aggressor, but it also had the compliant and enthusiastic support of a people who did what they were told, who worshipped their Emperor and basked in the propaganda that told them how superior and special they are, and how lucky they were to have been chosen to lead Asia.  What dissent there was in Japan was not organised and on a minor scale.  Japan's dictators had the effective consent of its population to conquer.

So the defeat of Japan, unconditionally, was wholly moral and justified.  The use of nuclear weapons to accelerate that defeat and contribute towards it was also moral and justified.   The reason Japan had nuclear weapons applied to it was because it had invaded the United States, it had conquered and placed much of Asia under its brutal sadistic jackboot.  The moral culpability for the deaths inflicted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and indeed already by conventional bombing in Tokyo, Osaka and many other cities, was the Imperial Government of Japan, which was willing to continue murdering and killing innocents abroad and refusing to surrender in a war that it started.

No one can doubt the abject horror and suffering the two atomic bombs caused, the horror they inflicted undoubtedly contributed not only to them not being used in Korea by President Truman (against military advice), but also inadvertently creating the deterrent effect which remains to this day.  However, the justification for their use is not from those impacts, but because defeating a ruthless, sadistic and murderous tyranny justifies using weapons that minimise the casualties of your own population.   Better to use the atomic bombs than to suffer greater Allied casualties by ground invasion or not obtaining an unconditional defeat and complete withdrawal of Japan from Asia.

When a tyranny wages war against its neighbours, and brings death and destruction upon them, its victims cannot be constrained from inflicting defeat upon it, for fear of the inevitable deaths it causes upon the weakest who reside under that tyranny.  All tyrannies hope and expect that governments with less appetite for war than it, will weaken in the face of taking such unpalatable decisions.  These same tyrannies don't think twice of massacring others.  The children killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the responsibility of their parents - the same parents who remained in Japan, working and contributing towards a system that had been waging a sadistic expansionist war against its neighbours.

So yes, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, appallingly dreadful and unspeakably vile though they were, were a considered, reasonable military decision to seek to accelerate an end to a war that was the responsibility of the Empire of Japan.   The attacks on Japan were acts of self-defence, to remove a regime that until the last day of the war, insisted on retaining control over Japan, on taking responsibility for prosecuting war crimes itself, and essentially no change in government.   It took the evidence of the nuclear attacks to force Japan to surrender with only one condition - that the Emperor would be protected.  That was one condition that could, grudgingly, be accepted.  You don't need to imagine what the Empire of Japan would do when it defeated a country - for it did so many times - it enslaved the entire country under martial law, and engaged in forms of genocide.

Those who fought against Japan were heroes, they defeated one of the most malignantly evil regimes of the 20th century (albeit this has quite a long list), an expansionist racist tyranny that any "true" liberal would celebrate the defeat of, without question.

The hand-wringing about the atomic attacks may be understandable, given their historic significance. However, to talk of the suffering of those attacks outside the wider context of Japanese eliminationist racism and militarism, is disingenuous.  It smacks of cheap anti-Americanism.   There are questions that can be asked about how some Japanese war criminals were effectively excused and some Japanese atrocities were deliberately ignored after the war, and bigger questions about how Japan still hasn't effectively faced up to its history (but then neither has communist China).  

However there should be no questions about the victory over Japan.  Moreover, given the enormous assistance the West gave to Japan to rebuild, reject communism, become a friend and until recently become the second biggest economy in the world (with a standard of living to match),  and be a functioning, vibrant liberal democracy,  the picture painted of an evil USA engaging in mass murder of Japanese civilians unjustifiably, seems selective indeed.   Now if only Japan's leaders could start treating their wartime history like German leaders treat theirs.   

One law for all?

Jamie Whyte's "one law for all" speech was disappointing.  Not because of what his end goals are (which are largely ignored by his critics because he gave them so much else to aim at), but because the rhetoric was clumsy and in my view, counter-productive.

One of the most corrosive elements in New Zealand is the widely held consensus amongst most political parties and indeed the bureaucracy and media, that there remains a strong element of racial determinism around the lives people lead, at least for Maori.  This being the idea that the reason Maori on average perform worse in terms of a wide range of social indicators compared to individuals from other ethnic groups, is due to a mix of the legacy of what happened to their ancestors (which seems not to hold back refugees from genocides from living memory) and a system that doesn't "meet their needs". The latter because "the system" is "designed for Pakeha" (not because state provided services aren't necessarily very tailored to individual need).

It is post-modernist structuralist theory which posits that because Maori are (the descendants of) the indigenous people of a land that was colonised (and then gained independence), they are structurally disadvantaged.  With this thinking you can conveniently blank out individual cases that prove how flawed all of this is, like the young Maori woman I once met who got a government scholarship to pursue her law studies, a scholarship open only to Maori - she was proud, because her parents were lawyers.  Not exactly a scholarship that was lifting someone from a below average background.

The view perpetuated by the Greens, Labour, Mana/Internet/Opportunist, Maori Party and much of academia is that she is inherently disadvantaged because she is a Maori woman (doubly disadvantaged).

Forget that her family easily had an income several times that of the average household (so one can argue that her family long ago climbed out of disadvantage), that gets blanked out - the system structurally disadvantages her against a young man from a single parent household with no family history of tertiary education.  Her race was deemed to transmit disadvantage in a system that "creates" it.  The same quackery justifies all sorts of affirmative action programmes, which when government funded (I couldn't care less if private companies run them) are picking winners on the basis of race, out of a sense of "fairness", as if treating individuals differently on the basis of race somehow "redresses collective unfairness".  That is, of course, nonsense.  There is no collective brain or life, just individuals living their lives, and if the state decides that one individual on the basis purely of characteristics she can't choose, deserves privilege over another, then it is simply engaging in the unfairness it is purporting to address.

Unfortunately Jamie Whyte's rhetoric hid the real point, which was I think a major strategic error for those of us who want to move on from racial determinism and neo-Marxist structuralist interpretations of power, capitalism and society.  The mistake many have jumped on is misconstruing a detail around educational quotas (which is not where the debate should lie) and the pre-revolutionary France comparison (which was historically wrong), but I think his two biggest mistakes were:

- To not focus on how the current system privileges a few Maori over everyone else (including other Maori);
- To not sell the optimistic case for individual empowerment and diversity.

Forgotten posts from the past: Compulsory welfare - a quaint remnant of nationalism?

With the whole debate about welfare one question is rarely raised - why does compulsory state welfare only apply to the poor in your own country? Why are the poor in other countries less needy?

Now the obvious answer is that it would be unaffordable to tax everyone to pay for people in other countries to be relieved of poverty, then, in which case, as with anything that you fund, you prioritise.

What is more important, a family with a TV, bed, clothes, car and ample nutrition, or a starving family with nothing?

For to simply say it is "none of our business" you're admitting you're a nationalist.  Human beings not residing in the country you live in are a lower priority to you.

Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating a global taxpayer funded welfare system.  I don't advocate the state based one.

However, given it is the left that is the source of the welfare state and defender of it on moral grounds, on what moral grounds is there to give money to people who, by any measure, are better off than the vast majority of humanity?

Could it simply be that socialism is nationalist too?

and isn't that rather racist?

UKIP membership makes you unfit to raise children?

Think of where in the world belonging to a political party is enough reason for a government official to take children off of you.  That place is Rotherham in the UK.

The story goes like this:

- A couple, who have fostered over a dozen children successfully over seven years with no controversy, get to foster three others from a troubled family;

- The report appears yesterday that after a tip off to the Council that the couple are members of UKIP (UK Independence Party), that the Council decided it was better for the children to remove them.  The report in the Daily Telegraph, which broke the story, said that the parents were told that UKIP is a "racist party"

The civil servant responsible is one Joyce Thacker, the six figure sum earning Head of Childrens' Services from Rotherham Council, who has had a disastrous day with several shocking interviews, including this one on the BBC, where she claims she was protecting the children from "strong views".  She backed off from claiming they got legal advice to do this, but implied that the children's "cultural needs" wont be met by parents with such political views.

The couple were told by the person removing the children that UKIP is "racist".  They have since claimed that not only did they let the children speak their own language, but they encouraged them to teach the couple the language (the children range from a baby to a girl of adolescent age).

In other words, the Council decided it was in the best interest of the children's "cultural needs" to not be fostered by people who belong to a political party.

So what is UKIP's policy on multiculturalism?  The website says this:

End the active promotion of the doctrine of multiculturalism by local and national government and all publicly funded bodies

The party manifesto from the last election says:

UKIP believes in civic nationalism, which is open and inclusive to anyone who wishes to identify with Britain, regardless of ethnic or religious background. We reject the “blood and soil” ethnic nationalism of extremist parties. UKIP opposes multiculturalism and political correctness, and promotes uniculturalism - aiming to create a single British culture embracing all races and religions. UKIP will: 

· Recognise the numerous threats to British identity and culture · Restore British values, scrap quotas and political correctness and return to meritocratic principles

Essentially it is a view of integration, that those who migrate to Britain can bring whatever culture they wish, but should be loyal to Britain.

But so bloody what?

Does it mean that people who are members of UKIP will treat children of a non-British ethnic background differently?  What is more important?  That children needing fostering are part of a loving family or are in care, but "culturally safe"?

The response from politicians has been predictable with UKIP leader Nigel Farage understandably "appalled", Education Secretary Michael Gove saying this is "indefensible" and Labour Leader Ed Miliband wanting a review - of course he's concerned because there is a by-election in Rotherham next Thursday.  Rotherham is a safe Labour seat, with the by-election triggered by the resignation of MP Denis McShane because of the scandal of him falsifying receipts to claim expenses fraudulently (just another piggy in the trough).

It isn't a coincidence that the local authority (Rotherham) is strongly Labour holding 50 of the 63 seats on Council.  Why?  Because this scandal is a direct result of the embrace of the philosophy of cultural relativism, the post-modernist worshipping of neo-Marxist identity politics which has been propagated through the far from liberal (so-called progressive) mainstream left for decades.

It takes the view that whilst avowedly anti-racist and ultra-sensitive to being accused of racism, that people who do not belong to the dominant culture/ethnicity (i.e. white British) are automatically at a disadvantage, and that society must accommodate all other identities equally, and that there should be a positive discouragement of claims of achievement or pride of the dominant culture.  In other words, pure cultural relativism.

There is a lot that can be said about that view, but in essence it doesn't treat people as individuals, but as ethnicities.  That makes identifying those who are victims and who are with power easy.  White British = powerful,  Black = victim, Pakistani Muslim = victim, indeed even white European non-British are victims.

However, it is more than that.  In this case it is a Maoist view of those who don't share this mindset.  Consider for a moment the political and philosophical structure of the people who work for Rotherham Council and especially social workers.  Do you really think that it is a place where people who think that Britain should leave the EU, that immigration should be constrained will be working or welcome?  

You see that is behind Joyce Thacker's belief that it is actually ok to discriminate against people because they belong to the "wrong" political party with the "wrong" beliefs.  It is a world whereby she grudgingly accepts that not everyone votes Labour, but treats with utter disdain those who express views she and her ilk find wrong.

In other words, she and the management of Childrens' Services at Rotherham neither believe in liberal democracy nor believe that people can hold views on immigration that differ from them.  It is not far removed from the attitude of Chairman Mao's Red Guards who defined political correctness.  Being a member of UKIP is not Politically Correct.

They cannot even tell that what they have done is akin to actions of a totalitarian state, to remove children because the parents have implied political views deemed to be contrary to their interests.  

Who cares if UKIP wants an end to open immigration from the EU?  Who cares if UKIP believes in celebrating British culture in Britain?  It doesn't want to deny children from other ancestries their cultures or language or would even remotely advocate foster parents telling children from say Poland, that they can't speak their language or they are unwelcome.  At best such a view would be a parody of reality.  At worst it reflects the kind of gutter politics and malignant attitude to those with other political views that is exactly parallel to the Maoist absolutist view of political correctness.

It has been exacerbated by an official from Rotherham Council saying that the couple concerned can foster other children, as they are otherwise good foster parents, but only white British children.

Why, by any objective measure, it is better tonight for these children to be in care with the state in preference to a couple who would foster them, just because the parents hold the wrong political affiliation?  Why are the children at less risk being in care with the state than they would be with successful and well loved foster parents?

Only in the twisted subjectivist world of neo-Marxist identity politics based cultural relativists, who think it is more important that children have people of similar ancestry look after them, or with the right political views,  or to be looked after the state, than to be loved and appreciated as individuals.  

The right response by government should be clear.

Joyce Thacker should go, her views and philosophy are contrary to the interests of children she purports to care about, and her and her team "who thought carefully about the issues" are more closely aligned to the former Stasi, than people who should have any power over others.

Rotherham Council should be put under administration and be declared unfit for purpose.

This very council has already been found wanting by being aware of, and with the Police not acting against gangs of Pakistani and other ethnic minority men enslaving and sexually exploiting underage girls - because it didn't want to "cause offence".  A failing even admitted by Labour.   It refused to act on criminality because it didn't want to be seen to be targeting offenders who happen to not be of backgrounds they, no doubt see, as being "powerless" and "victims" in the identity politics the men who raped young girls.

Well offence has been caused.  This Council has harmed children, it has harmed adults and has been negligent in fulfilling its responsibilities towards those in its care.   It is infected by its own racism, so that it sees racism everywhere and lazily treats those who don't fit its narrow view of the world as being racist.

It should go, and the people of Rotherham should wake up and vote UKIP next Thursday, to give Labour a shock (for it has been the party that, despite Ed Miliband's protestations today, has been the conduit for such views), and to declare that it IS ok to hold views contrary to the establishment.

It isn't just UKIP supporters who should be appalled, but everyone who believes that government should not judge individuals on the basis of their political party affiliations, but on their actions and deeds.

Meanwhile, there isn't a profanity I know of that is sufficiently critical of Joyce Thacker that I can think of, but I hope her next job involves clearing tables at a UKIP conference.

oh and David Cameron can carry his small share of the blame, having called UKIP a party of closet racists... so really, how much better is he?

Guido Fawkes says it is the "progressive agenda" of Common Purpose (a leftwing charity) that Joyce Thacker is expressing.

Only white people can be racist

Labour, Greens, Maori Party and Mana all share this view of racism.

The post-modernist structuralist view of reality is that which carries the mainstream of academia in universities in the English speaking world.  It is what most of our leftwing politicians were raised on, and it is what causes them to believe that a fairly simple concept - racism - is not simple at all.

Racism is, from a classical liberal definition, the belief that another person is inferior (or superior) purely because of that person's racial heritage.  It is taking those physical characteristics to judge that person.

Racism is irrational and has been the source of countless bloodbaths in history, and remains a primal drive within humans that overrides the rational faculty with fear and loathing of "the other".  

Objectivists consider it antithetical to individualism, which judges people on their behaviour and ideas, not their heritage.  Ayn Rand said as much herself.

Yet why do some say that non-white people can't be racist?  Well it has been eloquently explained by the Socialist Worker - the British Marxist newspaper which demonstrates that once you have put everyone into silos - then you can label them any way you wish.  Consider for a moment the irony of those who claim to be against racism using the very same techniques as those they oppose to classify others and then to seek to initiate force against them on that basis.

" the idea that black and Asian people can be racist towards white people is wrong. It confuses a reaction to a racist society with racism itself.

It is true that black and Asian people sometimes respond to racial discrimination by saying that all white people are part of the problem. Some say all whites are inherently racist. They may even make crude jokes to this effect.

These ideas can impede the fight against racism. But they are not themselves racist.

Racism is more than simple prejudice, no matter how ugly or unpleasant. It is the combination of prejudice with power. It occurs when a group of people are discriminated against because they are seen as inferior."

There you understand it, you are not racist if you are black and treat someone who isn't black in a negative way purely because of that person's race.  Why?  Because the racism isn't expressed by individuals' reactions, but by those actions with power.   

Power from the Marxist structuralist perspective is purely binary and is extracted from the bourgeoisie-prolertariat dichotomy that Marx and Engels propounded, but adjusted to fit the post-colonial narrative invented by academics.

It goes like this and it is worth deconstructing to see what it really means:

"The vast majority of people, black or white, aren’t in positions of power. Yet most of those who hire and fire staff, and make and implement policies that affect the lives of millions are white.

This, in the British context, is deemed to be because of racism.  Not to deny that it didn't exist officially and unofficially on a considerable scale when most of those migrants' ancestors arrived, but it is taken as given that position that this is the sole reason.  

Many among them hold racist views and they are given a chance to put their prejudices into action. And it’s not just racist individuals who discriminate—the capitalist state does too.

So it is now asserted that "many" who hold power, who are managers in business hold racist views.  No need for proof, it is "fact" and recirculated as such.  Then the state does so too.  Again, who would deny there are always a number in the Police and other institutions who act this way, but then the "capitalist state" disproportionately hires people of minorities as well - yet if they acted in an objectively racist manner in hiring, that would be "ok".

It is for these reasons that darker-skinned people are more likely to be out of work, in poor housing and the victims of racist policing. They are at the bottom of a racial hierarchy.

Again, just a bold assertion.  If a manager doesn't hire the black candidate for a job it is racism, not because the candidate might not be the best candidate available.  Another assertion is this "racial hierarchy".  It isn't one created by the state, or even businesses, but one that is created to fit the post-modernist Marxist view of race.

If a white person argues that all black people are illegal immigrants they are using racist ideas to side with the powerful against the oppressed.

Really?  Which of the powerful argue that all black people are illegal immigrants?  Who outside the nutty fraternity of the National Front claim such nonsense?  It's just an inane racist comment.

Racism runs deep in capitalist society because it is such a crucial component of the system. That’s why black and Asian people can accept racist ideas about themselves and other oppressed people. 

Now we are really into the fantasyland thinking.  If you think racism is a critical component of capitalism, you'll hate capitalism, yet racism isn't only irrelevant to capitalism it is antithetical to it.  For racism is fundamentally irrational, and it involves treating individuals not on their talent, intelligence and abilities, but their backgrounds.  Businesses that write off people on that basis are losing opportunities for talented staff and management, but would also be incapable of developing and marketing products for people, because of racism. The most systematically racist states in the world have been fascist-socialist constructions that have had capitalism under their jackboots.  

What does this all mean?

Leftwing parties almost universally advocate the state undertaking activities based on the "affirmative action" model following the philosophical contortions expressed above.  

If you are Maori, Black, etc, you are deemed to automatically fall into the oppressed proletariat category, so state sponsored scholarships, loans, grants and programmes, including quotas for employment, are deemed to be "correcting" the racism you have endured.  Blank out if you are actually a high income professional or son/daughter of such a professional (the people typically most able to take advantage of such programmes).  

Statistics of poor economic, health or educational performance are deemed to be "because" of racism, for any other explanation is inconvenient (and it is racist to even search for alternative explanations).

If you seek "one law for all" or to end racially determined institutions or programmes, you are "racist", because you don't understand that the state is racist and needs to be racist to counteract its own racism.

Yes, the racist state needs to be racist (which isn't racist unless it is expressed by the powerful, which the state is) to not be racist.

Of course in the 1930s in Germany, the state saw that there was vast racism in the management of business and government in the form of one race that ran everything and was seeking to dominate and enslave the race it saw as inferior.  That was swiftly addressed of course, and naturally few today would claim that the success of Jews in pre-war Germany was because of racism (indeed to some extent, in spite of it).

So is it not time to intelligently take on the post-modernist structuralist view of racism and the state in the developed world, and to do so by identifying exactly what are the sources of the disparities in outcomes that get labelled as racist by the baying mob of power hungry politicians on the left?

Could it be that cultural attitudes among communities regarding education, entrepreneurship, risk-taking, esteem, individualism, violence, the value of tight safe secure family structures, saving and aspiration are really what matters?

Black and for school choice? You must be racist

So says the Louisiana Federation of Teachers.

The American Federation for Children (a lobby group promoting educational voucher programmes and tax credits to enable parents' taxes to follow the school they want their children to attend) reports that the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, an avowed opponent of school choice (presumably because it breaks their dominance of the profession and the single shop approach to negotiating pay) has tweeted that the Black Alliance for Education Options (BAEO), a group of African Americans who also support education vouchers/tax credits for private schools supports teaching that the KKK is good.

Yes.  A pro-Democrat, leftwing union claimed a black educational advocacy organisation endorsed the teaching of racism.

How did it come to this conclusion?  Who knows.  It simply tweeted this...

BAEO has responded and clarified...

Because some private schools enrolled in the program reportedly use texts that may attempt to downplay the awful history of the Ku Klux Klan, LFT (via twitter) called BAEO a "black organization that supports KKK vouchers." This is not only the most ludicrous description of our organization but it is also one of the most unintelligent. 

We unapologetically stand for parental choice. That doesn't mean that we believe every private school is great or that private schools are better than public schools. It simply means that while serious people go about the difficult and long-term work of trying to reform low-performing traditional public schools, we must also give parents real options that allow their children to get a quality education today. We trust that parents, when given the option to choose and when armed with accurate information, will make increasingly better choices for their children.

What I see is an interest group adopting any technique it can to smear those presenting options that threaten their position of privilege and lack of accountability.

The idea that a state monopoly on education and restrictions on access to schools only in a local area is good for children or what parents want is ludicrous, and it is little short of disgusting that teachers' unions - whose primary interest is to increase the pay, reduce the workload and reduce the accountability of teachers - continue to prey upon the vulnerable, weak and poor to demand that they maintain this monopoly on teaching their kids.  They fear new schools, dynamic ones, ones that pay teachers on performance, that hire teachers that aren't unionised into their collective gang, and that parents like them.  They fear not being able to lobby politicians to decide what those schools teach or what they should be paid.  They fear that, when given their own money back or given a way to transfer their taxes from public schools to other options, that they wont choose the options the teachers want monopolised.

They'll find every example they can of non-public schools not delivering the best performance, whilst ignoring the same of their monopoly schools, they will constantly claim that it's all about the children, that this is all they care about, all the time implying that they and the state knows best, not parents.  

Nothing is more important in pushing freedom and changing the culture of modern liberal democracies today than taking schools out of the hands of these peddlers of protectionism, hatred and statism.  That's why they, and their friends in politics (e.g. the Green Party in NZ), are so keen to oppose them.

For they argue private schools should remain for the rich, for the poor kids shouldn't get to go to a school which declares that individual achievement and excellence are the primary goal that should be strived for.

After all, what could be worse that kids from backgrounds that can't afford to pay taxes and private school fees, stand up and proudly live lives that aren't about dependence.

Identity politics lays down a path of Orwellian thought control

In the UK at the moment, one of the main news items is the criminal trial of Chelsea football club captain John Terry for allegedly making a racist comment to footballer Anton Ferdinand.

Terry isn't exactly a great thinker, and given that one of his contract conditions is not behave in such a manner, he certainly deserved to be reprimanded if guilty and be subject to whatever punishment is appropriate in that context.

However, now he faces criminal charges, essentially for hurting someone else's feelings.

In New Zealand, Dr Cat Pause (yes, imagine the university thesis on the psychology behind that name) not only embraces this, but wants a similar approach to be taken to discrimination on the basis of mass.  She is a taxpayer funded university lecturer at Massey (yes, agriculture clearly isn't enough), and her belief in criminalising make fun of obesity, in opposing businesses selling diets, exercise and in her hatred of the fashion industry.  She even hates the airline industry for not having wide enough seats for the obese.

She is hosting a conference on "fatism" and of course she has been the subject of the obvious jokes from Whaleoil.  It is easy to poke fun at someone with an amusing name who is seeking to normalise a condition that health professionals regard as dangerous and a key contributor to a vast range of chronic diseases, particularly a condition that is largely a matter of personal choice.  

However, I'm not laughing that much, because the wedge that has opened up the chance for taxpayers to fund discussion, debate and study into this perspective was created many years ago.  It's the embrace of identity politics, and its neo-Marxist, ultra-collectivised, power stereotyping that pigeon holes absolutely everyone into categories, whilst claiming it is actually about empowering people.

The conference Pause is leading demonstrates this:

Fat bodies politic: Neoliberalism, biopower, and the ‘obesity epidemic’ by Jackie Wykes

This paper will argue that the discursive construction of the ‘obesity epidemic’ mobilises neoliberal concepts of risk and responsibility to produce fat people as failed subjects across various sites of power, including capitalist production, profitability, and reproductive (hetero)sexuality.

In other words, "fatists" blames capitalism for creating a subjective "myth" around obesity as showing people as failures as productive individuals and as being fit to breed.   The existence of plenty of successful overweight people, men and women, is blanked out, because it doesn't fit the story being manufactured.   

Then there is this paper:

The role of diagnosis in marginalising corpulence by Annemarie Jutel

In this presentation, using overweight as a heuristic, I will describe the social model of diagnosis and how it assists us to understand contemporary attitudes to health, illness and disease.  At the same time I will explain how the ascendance of diagnosis and the paradigm of evidence based practice have forced the emergence of overweight as a disease category.

In other words because evidence is used to inform medicine, being overweight is seen as a disease.  Now I think it isn't a disease, because it can't be caught and it doesn't spontaneously emerge, but it is a "state of being".  People aren't born that way (unlike race and sex).  However, is it seriously being argued that medicine should not be evidence based?

It is easy to go on, but Cat Pause claims she is "promoting the idea that fat people deserve the same rights and dignity as non-fat people".

Yet there is no objective assessment of not having the same rights.  The rights she appears to want are demands upon the persons and property of others to make special provision for obese people.  Of course she has a precedent in this, in the "disabled rights" movement demanding accessibility and people to be made to pay for their private property to be accessible to people they don't know.  She claims airlines kick fat people off planes, and then demands that economy class have wider seats (although she pays for premium classes herself - which is the same point with better food anyway).

Of course she goes further.  She wants to criminalise "fat hatred"  Why?   "fat phobia, or fat stigma, or fat hatred, is harmful. It stigmatises fat people, which is harmful for both physical and mental health. It also affects non-fat people – making many of them terrified of becoming fat. Being shamed, or bullied, is never good for anyone"

It's Orwellian thought control, she wants it to be wrong for people to think it is wrong to be overweight, wrong to seek to change their bodies, wrong to sell goods or services to facilitate that.  She wants to criminalise people being hurt by what others say. 

 

Yet people don't have a right to not be insulted or hurt.  It is a fact of life.  A person throwing an insult because of how you look isn't nice, and isn't fun, but is it a matter for the criminal law?

Should the state be there to protect people from stigma, hatred, fear or shame?  

What is next?  The obvious next characteristic to pursue is hair colour.  Red headed people are probably sick of being called gingas, or being thought of as angry.  Blondes are probably sick of being presume to be ditsy, stupid or even slutty.  Should short and tall people demand "rights"?  How about people who wear glasses being thought of as being smart or geeky?  How about commenting about what people wear?

Those of us who embrace individualism and the treatment of people as individuals have no problem with the moral dimension of being open to who people are, what they think and what they do, but it does not mean surrendering the personal right to not have to surrender to what others want to claim from you.

If you own a business, should you not have the right to decide who you trade with, who you buy and sell from and who you employ?  Indeed, similarly as a consumer you should also be able to assert the right to buy from whomever you wish, and refuse to trade with those you don't wish to. 

Moreover, you do have a right to not like people.  There is a right to not be polite, to not be considerate and accommodating.  That doesn't mean using force or fraud, but it does mean you can blank out people, ignore them and yes, laugh at them. 

Sterilising expression and discourse by criminalising it is disturbing.  

It can be seen in the thin line between actions that insult Islam and Muslims who claim they are being "discriminated against" because they have beliefs that I, and billions of others, regard as peculiar or even evil.

It can be seen in the way that some people can throw around racist insults, promote racist policies without shame because the identity politics touters claim people of some races "can't be racist" - even Members of Parliament can be "oppressed".

Meanwhile, hatred of wealth creation, entrepreneurs and Christians is all allowed.

Human rights legislation banning discrimination should itself be struck off the books.  The proper response to racist and sexist activity by businesses is to boycott and shame them.  Indeed, if the fat women (and it is women) have a problem with how others treat them, then they can boycott, protest and the like.  That is entirely appropriate and the only way to really change behaviour, and to isolate those who are bigoted, rude or simply intolerant.

However, they and others should not claim a right to be treated a certain way by law by private businesses or individuals.  For those who do are as intolerant as those they seek to bully and force to treat them the way they demand.

In a free society we all have freedom of thought and freedom of expression, and that includes the right to say things other people don't like and to act on that basis as private individuals.  

Dr. Cat Pause and her gang of reality evading subjectivist post-modernists can create all of the fictional fantasy conspiracies, can proclaim victimhood and demand that people be forced to accommodate their demands, but for all of that they shouldn't be allowed to make people do what they want.

Her philosophy portrays itself as being about acceptance and tolerance, where it is about hatred and intolerance.  It is about reality denial and a grand claim upon the minds, mouths, pens, keyboards and deeds of everyone else.

It takes the right to be an individual and to live you life as you see fit, and morphs it into an artificially constructed "identity" with "oppression", "victimhood", an "interpretation of history" and as a result endless demands for taxpayers to be forced to pay for her studies and to investigate accommodating this self styled identity group, at the same time as taxpayers are being cajoled to deal with obesity as a key factor contributing to multiple chronic diseases (with children who are obese being a specific concern).

If it continues to get government support, then I propose that someone invent a "blonde studies" course and start doctoring up some post modernist snakeoil that would be easy for any half smart person to manufacture.   Then the "dim witted", "low IQ" and "not very smart" can claim the same, how they are insulted by being expected to know stuff.

The rest of us will be getting on with our lives.

Sometimes culture is corrosive

One of the big news stories this week in the UK has been around the conviction of nine men in the Greater Manchester for systematic sexual exploitation of vulnerable underage girls.   

I don't want to go into the lurid details, but essentially these men, using two takeaway businesses owned by them, lured girls in their early teens into relationships and being passed from man to man, and with other men.  They plied them with liquor, bribed them with mobile phones, gifts and money, and the girls engaged in a wide range of sexual activities, including group sex.  The men almost acted as their pimps, and were deliberately predatory.  The face lengthy jail terms.

In one example, the BBC reports:

sentencing the ringleader to 19 years in prison, the judge called him an "unpleasant and hypocritical bully" who had ordered a 15-year-old girl to have sex with takeaway worker Kabeer Hassan as a birthday "treat".

However, the elephant in the room on this issue is about race and culture.

The men range in age from 24 to 59. All are Muslims, eight are Pakistani, one is Afghan. 

None of the girls abused were Muslim, they all appeared to be British.  

So?  Well the judge found that the men treated the girls "as though they were worthless and beyond respect" and that "One of the factors leading to that was the fact that they were not part of your community or religion"

In short, these men targeted girls, not just because they were young and impressionable, not just because they tended to come from broken or troubled low income homes, so were needy, but because they had blatantly misogynistic attitudes towards girls and women who are not of their ilk.

Pakistani Muslim girls, after all, are expected to remain virgins until marriage and to be under the control and supervision of their fathers until it is the time for their husbands.  English girls of course are, from the point of view of the men, sluts to be used and disposed of as objects for their satisfaction.

The fact that some of these men are married, with their own daughters, was irrelevant to them in their hypocrisy and dehumanisation of their victims.  One of these married fathers got a 13 year old girl pregnant.

Of course there are millions of men who rape and exploit women and girls, of all races and cultures.  Indeed misogyny is the norm in most countries outside the Western world.  I know no one who would try to claim that such behaviour is confined or dominated by Pakistani/Afghan Muslim men in the UK.

However, culture is a factor.  It is a factor in the men's behaviour, but sadly has also been part of the Police's response to early complaints about their behaviour.  The men have also claimed that the prosecution is "racist" and the conviction is racist because the jury happened to be all-white - as if the UK is dominated by the attitudes of the British National Party/National Front (neither of which can muster more than 2% of the total vote at the last general election).

Former Labour MP Ann Cryer says the Police did not proceed with prosecution of one of the men for fear of being branded "racist".  In short, the cultural relativism and hypersensitivity to the left's instant response to anyone of a ethnic minority accused of crime, cost time, pain and suffering to the victims.

However, the race industry supporters have stood by claiming it isn't about race and religion.    Leftwing journalist Sunny Hundal claims that it is irrelevant because Muslim men also rape Muslim girls, and that it was just misogyny.  Ken Livingstone sycophant/leftwing activist Lee Jasper simply claims it is not race.

Strictly speaking they are right.  It isn't race per se, but it is culture and identity.

The liberal values that most people in the West reflect are ones that treat women with respect as equals, and also treat young women and girls as deserving of protection and respect, rather than as objects for the satisfaction of men.

It is not a value shared by men people from most other cultures. 

Both law and practice seen in almost all non-Western societies is to treat women and girls as subservient.   In parts of Africa, raping virgin girls is seen as a cure for AIDS, indeed Chairman Mao once considered it appropriate to "cleanse" himself with girls in that way.  From the boundaries of the EU across the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, up through East Asia through to Japan, misogyny remains the norm.

Pretending that all cultures deserve respect maintains the corrosion of the bigotry and mindlessness so many perpetuate, which those of us proud of individualism should remember, is so young in our own cultures.  It was, after all, not that long ago that a girl going to the police about rape would be treated as if she asked for it - and it is sadly far from unknown for that attitude to still be expressed.

Fortunately, more than a few Pakistani Muslims in the UK have demanded that attitudes must change, that working class young girls who are vulnerable are not fair game for married fathers to rape, abuse and treat as if they 'asked for it' (as one young man of similar extraction volunteered to a TV camera last week). 

It isn't racist to point it out, as much as the real racists in the near corpse of the BNP are trying to milk it for. 

It's simply supporting the individual rights of those who get exploited by those who hold cultural values alien to the country they have chosen to reside within.  Values that should be alien to ALL countries - values that belong in the past, with slavery (and indeed the worship of a pedophile prophet).