A depressing must-read. I rarely use the phrase “must-read”, do I? So you know this is important…
Sean Gabb writes:
Or, to give myself as an example, there was my BBC debate of the 16th February 2004 with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, an Asian immigrant who seems incapable of seeing any issue except in terms of white racism.
During this debate, I asked her: “Yasmin, are you saying that the white majority in this country is so seething with hatred and discontent that it is only restrained by law from rising up and tearing all the ethnic minorities to pieces?”
Her answer was “Yes”.
It is possible she did not understand my question. It is possible she would have clarified or retracted her answer had the debate been allowed to continue. Sadly for her, the BBC immediately switched off my microphone and threw me into the street. Mrs Brown was allowed to continue uninterrupted to till the end of the programme.
The hundreds of complaints received by the BBC and the Commission for Racial Equality were all either ignored or dismissed with the assurance that nothing untoward had taken place in the studio.
Gabb makes the point I’ve made here numerous times and have seen nowhere else in Canada –probably because even some of those on “my” side are careerist, overeducated white collar professionals who’ve swallowed whole the twaddle that “multicultural tolerance and diversity” made Canada great: That the Human Rights Commissions in particular and the Canadian Liberal Ruling Elite in general find the manner that workingclass people think distasteful and will use State power to correct the way they speak, which is essential if they are to correct the way they think:
This explains why words and expressions are defined almost at random as “hatred”, and why names of groups and places keep changing almost at random.
The purpose is not to protect various minority groups from being hurt – though clever members of these groups may take advantage of the protections.
The real purpose is to hobble all expression of English identity. It is to make the words and phrases that come most readily to mind unusable, or usable only with clarifications and pre-emptive cringes that rob them of all power to express protest.
Or it is to force people to consult their opponents on what words are currently acceptable – and whoever is allowed to control the terms of debate is likely to win the debate.
And look how easily it can be done. Also during the past week, we have seen working class demonstrations in the north of England against the employment of foreign workers. “British jobs for British workers” they have been chanting. A few raised eyebrows and warnings from Peter Mandelson about the “politics of xenophobia”, and the trade unions have straightaway sold out their members and are preparing to bully them back to work. Better that trade union members scrabble to work for a pound an hour, or whatever, than that they should be suffered to use words like “Eyeties” or “Dagoes”. (…)
We should also at all times bear in mind that political correctness is not about protecting the weak but disarming the potentially strong, and it must be made clear to the ruling class that its management of language has been noticed and understood and rejected.
