Politblogo

STEYN ATTACKS!

My first foray into the dangerous world of political mockery by image editing.

Johann Hari has an excellent takedown of Mark Steyn's book on the impending European Islamopocalypse. 

Johann Hari - Archive: But this cannot hide the gaping holes of logic and fact in his argument. To fulfil his headline predictions, Steyn needs to turn 20 million European Muslims into more than 200 million European Muslims - in just 13 years. Only Fallacci's rats could reproduce so rapidly. Steyn even admits that the history of demographic predictions is hysterically inept, noting that "most twenty-year projections... are laughably speculative, and thus most doomsday scenarios are too" - before offering his own.

Europe's real demographics are described in a similar book by a slightly more scupulous author. Tony Blankley, editorial page editor of the Washington Times and DC grande dame, last year wrote 'The West's Last Chance' predicting an enfeebled Europe would collapse before the Muslim hoardes. But after studying the figures, he admitted: “For almost every Western European country, their populations do not even begin to decline until at least 2025... In fact, for the next few decades, they continue to go up, even without any new immigration… The numbers only begin to move decidedly down about fifty years from now.” So for Steyn's predictions to hold true, the current Muslim birthrate needs to hold steady through five decades of life in the West, all Muslims have to become communitarian Islamists bent on sharia law, and there must be no natalist policies from European governments in the meanwhile.

Perhaps sensing this groaning crack in the foundation of his argument, Steyn adds hastily: "It is not necessary, incidentally, for Islam to become a statistical majority in order to function as one. At the height of its power in the eighth century, the 'Islamic world' stretched from Spain to India yet its population was only minority Muslim." But they were - a fairly obvious difference - not electoral democracies, where any group has to command a majority to rule.

And it goes on thusly to deconstruct Steyn's panicked racist natalism.  The main flaw of the article is that he resurrects the common multiculturalism strawman (and I am told he is an otherwise odious libertarian conservative of some kind?  Many people I like seem to hate him, and this is the first time I've ever heard of him), but for shooting the pirhana in the barrel so well, I'll forgive him.

Intellectual giant waxes wroth against fantasy novel character

Anh Khoi Do's inner self, determinedly marching forth to smite the pseudonymous Internet hordes.

I'm sure my recent posts on Anh Khoi Do, "secularism", and race---really a case of majoritarian wannabeism if you want it brought down to a nutshell---are still fresh in the minds of my multitudinous throngs of adoring, adoring fans (posts first here and then here).   Woe unto me, for I have awakened an intellectual giant, a figure of true blogular prowess and courage.

Finally, unlike you, Mandos, I have enough courage to publish my works with my real name. Now, who’s the one who doesn’t have guts and balls, eh?

I actually anticipated most of his responses on my subsequent post.  For instance, I do, in fact, think France is a racist country, in the sense I think that this planet is swaddled in a somewhat uneven blanket of racism among other ills.  But the purpose of this paragraph mystifies me.  I never questioned the "guts and balls" of the great eponymous orator Anh Khoi Do.  I never mentioned anything about his or my name.

From my "pathetic blog brimming with weak analysis," I merely pointed out the ideological consequences of Anh Khoi Do's stand.  And behold his truly glorious riposte.

Racism, secularism, and "secularism"

I recently wrote a post containing a strident but brief critique of a position by a Progressive Blogger named Anh Khoi Do, whose writings I had only just encountered.  I critiqued primarily his desire to copy the behaviour of certain European countries in what is to him an unwillingness to accomodate religious minorities in the public individual compliance with their own beliefs; in fact, I critiqued it as a form of racism, which in the present context it can only be.

Not surprisingly, I received a few irate comments from random visitors (who curiously appeared to write in a style and form very similar to each other).  One such commenter, Pipi---with the charming fake email address of pipi@caca.com---wrote the following, apparently entirely without irony:

Moreover, a secular country doesn't entirely "make people's personal choices of dress extremely inconvenient". It only says that you can't wear religious symbols in public places. In fact, France doesn't forbid people to wear their religious symbols in religious places. By implying that European countries are racist, you definitely show an extremely weak analysis.

Of course, I believe that any robust analysis would demonstrate that European countries all have components of racism, as racism is ubiquitous, and recent former imperialists must necessarily have more racism than their fair share. 

But let's look at this odd comment more seriously.  I definitely contend that these sentiments are well contained in any serious and robust understanding of racism, in particular this individual's concept of "secularism", which appears to be congruent with that of the works of Anh Khoi Do.  In order to do this, however, we need first to define our terms, in particular, racism and secularism.

Racism

First of all, it must be immediately understood that a standard English dictionary is totally insufficient for giving us definitions of overtly political concepts like racism.  A dictionary serves as a guide for those unfamiliar with terms to gain a grasp of what they are reading; it cannot encompass a term like racism.  The act of racism emerged in a particular and evolving social context.  The description of racism continues to evolve with that act.

When most people think of racism, they first and foremost think of skin colour, as this is how it emerges in North American society in particular (but also elsewhere, of course).  It is not hard to see how the differentiated treatment of individuals based on their skin colour leads to a concept of race as a biological characteristic.   (The act of that differentiation---the act of racism---creates the concept of race in a real way.) 

But when we look at history, biology as the marker of race and the trigger of racism is insufficient.  In relatively recent and shamefully long-running European history, the act of being Jewish was frequently made criminal to the point that the death penalty was imposed on millions for that "offence."  We remember most recently that this was justified due to biology, but it was earlier justified due to the cultural characteristics of Jews.  Fairly innocent Jewish beliefs and rituals were retold to the masses as lurid, disgusting fabrications in the service of what we call now anti-Semitism. 

But even those who did not follow those rituals, of course, were subject to the stigma.  Consequently, racism is not defined in terms of biology or even culture---it can only be best encompassed by a relation between identity and culture.  To be racist is to laud or enact oppression on the bases of that identity.  Thus it is a racist act to discriminate based on an identity and, by implication, on the visible display of that identity.

There is an implied ingredient in a robust concept of racism that I have not yet directly exposed: that of privilege.  This ingredient is essential.  For an act to be a racist act, it must be an exertion of power from a position of privilege, in addition to being an attack on individual (and perhaps collective) identity.

One of the most common forms of privilege is that which accrues from being a member of---or incorrectly imagining that one is a member of---the majority identity.

Secularism

Like racism, secularism is a present-day political concept that is best treated by direct analysis of present-day events in the context of history rather than by dry prescription from a dictionary text.  As an English word, it reflect the ideology that the state should be neutral on matters of religion.  American idiom often cites the "separation of church and state" as the mark of secularism.  By this, it means that the state should not interfere in the practice of religion by its individual members.  It is easy to extend this concept using the principle behind it: the state should be neutral on the matter of identity and the expression of identity.  This is the same principle that underlies the Canadian government's present-day attitude towards those of the homosexual persuasion as prescribed by the courts. 

There is another concept, laïcité, that is often considered to the French equivalent of secularism.  It emerges, I am given to understand, from movements in France and in Québec to decenter the power of the Catholic Church. which stood as a colossus on the neck of political dynamism.    It is not quite the same as secularism, because it appears (from the present day debates ongoing in francophone media) to encompass the possibility that society may choose to decenter the church by diminishing or abolishing its public identity.

"Secularism" as racism

Now we return to the question of the comments made by Pipi and, by extension, the ideology of Anh Khoi Do that they appear to reflect.   For convenience, I reproduce the words of Pipi yet again:

Moreover, a secular country doesn't entirely "make people's personal choices of dress extremely inconvenient". It only says that you can't wear religious symbols in public places. In fact, France doesn't forbid people to wear their religious symbols in religious places. By implying that European countries are racist, you definitely show an extremely weak analysis.

So Pipi equates a "secular" country with one that prevents the wearing of religious symbols in "public places" (by this I assume he/she/it means "public institutions"), but, ever so kindly, permits them in religious places.  Religious symbols, however, are often an expression of religious and cultural identity, an identity that often happens to differ with that of the majority community that often controls the state.  Given that it is necessary to make use of public institutions in order to be a functioning member of society, it is doubly clear that Pipi's injunction permits the majority to use its racial privilege (given that religious and cultural symbols are subsumed under racial identity) to exert power via the identity of the minority community.  This is racism.

Pipi also offers us a standard majoritarian objection:

A secular country is a country that strictly separates religions from the state. Therefore, religiously accommodating minorities is a complete violation of the principle of secularism. In fact, while the state refuses to accommodate Christians, it grants prerogatives to religious minorities. As a result of that, the only way to treat people equally is to copy France, which means that nobody is to be treated on religious consideration by the law.

But far from granting "prerogatives to religious minorities"---a hilarious phrase that brings to mind images of religious minorities eating bonbons in bed fed by long-suffering Christians---"religious accomodations" merely acknowledge that the majority community's privilege is that it lives in a society that is thoroughly defined by its history and identity, and that to force this identity on others is a racist act.  As such: an act of illegitimate power.  Even applying the history of laïcité to the present context is an expression that power: the power to apply what was necessary for majority society steeped in Catholicism to what are recent immigrant communities.  And make no mistake; that's what this is all about.

It must be noted that Pipi's views are contained strikingly well in what has been expressed on Anh Khoi Do's blog, which furthermore appears to express a racist ideology that minority identities should be subsumed by the majority, which can only happen because the majority is privileged.  And both in France and in Canada (and elsewhere) this issue has come up in a certain context: the context of Muslims.  Consequently, it is fair to say that this ideology is inescapably racist against Muslims, because it cannot be held in this present context without that logical consequence and connection. 

(It is fascinating that a subsequent commenter and apparent supporter of Anh Khoi Do, again very similar in style to Pipi, writes,

I agree with Inaritu and Pipi. It looks like you're an offended Muslim who is desperately looking for attention, Mandos. If Anh Khoi Do was so racist, he would tell Muslims to leave.

By the way, stop playing with the words. Anh Khoi Do is not an "extremist", because he never said that he wants to kill people for a "Holy War".

This commenter seems to set a very low standard for Anh Khoi Do.  For him to hold a racist and immoral view, it would require for him to advocate the worst kind of violence, clearly encoded in the phrase, "tell Muslims to leave."  Also fascinating is his association between the words "extremist" and "Holy War", when the English language---both in common usage and in the dictionary---requires no such association.  I leave what this means as an exercise for the reader.)

A caveat

I have spent most of this post discussing why Anh Khoi Do's views and the views of a couple of commenters are actually racist opinions.  Now I would make one final cautioning statement: nowhere in this post have categorically denied that the collective sometimes has an interest in limiting some of the practices of its individual members; it should go without saying.

Stabbing your fellow in the back

This gentleman's blog ("Anh Khoi Do's blog") is part of the Progressive Bloggers aggregator, and yet his take on religious accomodations in Québec is bizarre and ugly and extremist, and the fact that he belongs to a racial/cultural minority in Québec does not excuse it.   Let's face it: the argument over religious accomodations is an argument about Muslims, and that's all it's really about.  Yes, a very conservative fringe was a little bit scared of Sikh turbans in the RCMP, but it hardly generates the angst that this does.

And it's not just about Muslims, but about Muslim women.  Muslim women who wear the hijab.  The hijab is involved in a complex conversation and conflict which the gentleman completely fails to understand, but he can be forgiven that.  There are issues about it that can be discussed and are among Muslims in the West.

But what must be understood: he hates the woman who wears it.  To argue against "religious accomodations" is exactly to argue that it is legitimate for the state to tell a hijab-wearing Muslim woman that she just take her hijab off when she attempts to make use of the services offered to citizens.  That is hatred.

Colour, privilege, and self-consciousness

By accident, while looking for something else, I came across this interesting blog post on a blog I'd never seen before.  It's by a women living in Addis Ababa, written a few months ago.  She discusses an interesting aspect of her experience living as a foreign white woman in Ethiopia.   

for the love: a ferenjwa on ferenji (or ferenjoch, however you want to put it: Ferenji don’t want to cause a scene. We get stared at. Two ferenji crossing paths feels more like a social experiment in a closed room with people standing around ready to take notes. People are watching to see what will happen. And so we ignore each other. Observations are made but at least we can be sure the conclusion is not “all ferenji know each other.” The other part of it is the message that ferenji in Ethiopia are no big deal.“We don’t make a big deal about each other so please don’t make a big deal about us.”

The relative privilege of whiteness in the world has an interesting side effect in the way in which white people can interact with each other among the non-white.  A kind of embarassed self-consciousness.

As an aside, I am fascinated to learn that "ferenjoch" is the word for people of European descent in Amharic.  "Gora" is used in Urdu as the normal and perhaps slightly perjorative way to refer to white people, but there's also the word "ferengi," as in, amusingly, the big-eared short people on Star Trek: The Next Generation who had a religion of wealth-acquisition.  However, I am quite certain that both words are transported from Arabic "al-Faranj", which means "Frankish".  That is: "Crusader."