Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Collusion and Prejudice in Modern Society

A saying goes that those who win the war write the history.

Modern journalists, as a profession, have largely updated that aphorism by creating a narrative that is one sided and, by deliberately misinforming the public to the facts of history, rewriting it.

Conspiracy theories and popular prejudices are but a part of that arsenal of slightly titillating but ultimately poisoness journalistic behaviour; and repetition, when embraced by our politicians provides a veneer of respectability. There are those whose ultimate goal is not simply to justify their own prejudices and twisted fantasies but to destroy the object of their bigotry by embedding a cancer of lies into a canvas of disinformation, distortion and innuendo.

The idea that one persons history is mythology to another has been popularized in our universities, but in particular by the political Left to remove ethics from any argument and to dominate discussion through guile and bullying. We are today living through an extended period of Left wing McCarthyism and Britain is its epicenter of hate, having foreseen the economic potential that prejudice can amass to its master players.

French intellectual guilt over its Algerian colonial history and Edward Said’s faulty academic analysis of Occidental ism (polemics as war by other means equating to indoctrination as a substitute for scholarship), has provided the base. The popularization of violence that accompanied the Black Panthers and other radical 60’s movements provided the glue that cemented the control that the Left now has of debate. A study of this particularly noxious aspect of twentieth century history is long overdue.

The art of any word-smith is to become a spokesperson for their cause and while we should all of us take care not to stereotype the other, independence of thought is largely proscribed in academic circles. Our universities inform our society’s views. It is why charlatans are usually to be found within and not outside of the establishment.

Too often, the only way to force hegemonic religious or political entities to change is to demonstrate their hopeless inadequacy. And like delinquent children their behavior will inevitably deteriorate before it improves. Unfortunately however, there is no other strategic option left to us.