Political Correctness

The Usual Suspects Angered by Pat Buchanan’s Appearance on James Edward’s Radio Show

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Pat Buchanan, always a gentleman, refuses to back down when asked by NPR about his most recent appearance on The Political Cesspool Radio Program. (See also the current TOO featured video for the entire interview.) Note especially Pat’s unintimidated response to the interviewer’s point that ADL head Abe Foxman condemned the interview: “I think there’s an awful lot of smearing being done by the Anti-Defamation League frankly over the years of individuals who simply disagree with them maybe about U.S. policy toward Israel.” Exactly. As Joe Sobran famously said, these days anti-Semites are people that Jews don’t like.

In the meantime, the story of Pat’s latest interview with us is quickly becoming a top news story. Here is one example, from Huffington Post:

African American political advocacy group Color Of Change has called for MSNBC to fire longtime analyst (and even longer-time lightning rod) Pat Buchanan for what it called his “white supremacist ideology.”

The advocacy group sent petition letters to its members on Tuesday. The letter said that MSNBC gives Buchanan a platform to pass off his often loaded remarks as “legitimate mainstream political commentary.”

While Color of Change cited comments made by Buchanan from as early as March 2008, the advocacy group highlighted Buchanan’s new book “Suicide Of A Superpower” and a Saturday appearance on the controversial radio show “The Political Cesspool” (whose host has described his ideology as “pro-white”) as current reasons the network should fire Buchanan.

“Buchanan has just published a book which says that increasing racial diversity is a threat to this country and will mean the ‘End of White America.’ This weekend, to promote his book, he went on a white supremacist radio show…” read the “Fire Pat Buchanan” petition letter.

Buchanan also appeared on NPR’s “The Diane Rehm Show” on Tuesday and further discussed his new book and radio show appearance on “Political Cesspool.”

He defended his decision to visit the radio show and asked “Am I supposed to go and vet all the people on these shows and get the list from [Anti-Defamation League chief] Abe Foxman on what shows I can go on to?”

Make no mistake, friends, in today’s political climate, false accusations such as “white supremacist,” “racist,” and “anti-Semite,” simply mean “unapologetic conservative white person.” These are just intimidating words that are employed to try and make folks like me, who liberals truly hate, go away. I wrote a book about this concept. Read more

Kyle Kusz on Andre Agassi

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In a previous blog I commented on Kyle Kusz’s cultural Marxist analysis of White males in extreme sports. I can’t resist also commenting on Kusz’s outrageous discussion of another one of those oppressive White athletes, Andre Agassi. After Agassi’s redemption as an athlete (where he turned his career around after a long stretch of not taking tennis seriously), Kusz claims that Agassi’s later image of “white masculinity is implicitly invested in notions of personal responsibility, sovereignty, self-determination and the disavowal of structural privileges of any kind. … His response to his episode of suffering [during the period when he was a tennis underachiever] enabled the fantasy of extraordinary will and limitless energy of white men ” (p. 56).

In other words, Agassi’s personal determination to get his tennis career back on track counts for nothing. His career magically got back on track because he was able to take advantage of structural privileges only accorded to White men. Just being White allows one to overcome all obstacles. Hey Kusz: Know any White guys, even rich White guys, who have failed despite all their structural privileges? Read more

Racial Preferences in the California University System

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LA Times Caption: A student sells baked goods with prices based on a buyer's race, ethnicity and gender. In reality, the Republican club accepted whatever people wanted to pay. Seated at right is former UC Regent Ward Connerly. (Ben Margot / Associated Press / September 27, 2011)

The college Republicans at UC-Berkeley have gotten a lot of attention with their bake sale in which prices are determined by people’s race and gender, with White males paying top dollar. It’s a great gimmick, definitely putting the usual suspects on the defensive.

The event, met with anger by many students, was timed to counteract a phone bank in support of a bill on Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk that would allow the UC and Cal State University systems to consider such factors, as long as no preference was given, in admissions.

Proposition 209, passed by voters in 1996, banned affirmative action in public university admissions. The current bill would not violate that ban. Instead it would permit schools to consider things such as ethnicity, much as they do extracurricular activities, when weighing candidates. “Frosted by Berkeley ‘diversity’ bake sale“; LA Times, Sept. 28, 2011)

But of course that means that being Black will be counted like being captain of the debate team: Very positive. And being White will being like having a few run-ins with your guidance counselor on your high school record—definitely a negative. Read more

David Starkey: No Refuge in Cultural Arguments

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British historian David Starkey’s indiscretion continues to rankle among the morally uplifted (“David Starkey’s views on race disgrace the academic world, say historians.”) 102 academics are horrified by his behavior, complaining that

his crass generalisations about black culture and white culturrrre as oppositional, monolithic entities demonstrate a failure to grasp the subtleties of race and class that would disgrace a first-year history undergraduate. In fact, it appears to us that the BBC was more interested in employing him for his on-screen persona and tendency to make comments that viewers find offensive than for his skills as a historian. (See the letter here.)

This episode is a good example of policing elite levels of discourse. People like Starkey represent a potentially grave threat to the system because they not only have excellent academic credentials, they also have access to the elite media. Deviations from the path of moral and political righteousness by people with Starkey’s stature must be severely punished. If at all possible, he must be removed from access to the elite media. The letter clearly aims at getting Starkey removed from his position at the BBC:

We the undersigned would therefore ask that the BBC and other broadcasters think carefully before they next invite Starkey to comment as a historian on matters for which his historical training and record of teaching, research and publication have ill-fitted him to speak.

I suppose it’s fair enough to bring up Starkey’s lack of academic publications on current race relations, although I rather doubt that they would have been disturbed if he had blamed it all on an evil monolithic White culture.  In the original interview he mentioned a study he did of rap lyrics illustrating a Black subculture of hyper-masculinity, dominance, and violence. This is the culture he was portraying as at the root of the rioting, both because it is common among Blacks (Starkey explicitly stated it didn’t characterize all Blacks, so his comments are quite compatible with different Black sub-cultures) and because the (relatively few) Whites involved seem to have similar tendencies.

The historians’ letter simply asserts that things are more subtle and differentiated than Starkey represented them without saying exactly how they are more subtle and differentiated in a way that would make a difference to what Starkey is saying. One would think that  when attacking  a colleague, they might feel a little guilty for not being more specific–that they would feel a need to say what added subtlety would have cleared away all the clouds. I guess the idea is that if moral righteousness is on your side, you don’t have the usual scholarly obligations. Read more

Condemning the Messenger: Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Anders Breivik, and the Politics of Repression

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The Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, led by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, has issued the following statement regarding one of my articles on the Anders Breivik:

Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Sunday, July 24 demanded that California State University Board of Trustees President Herbert L. Carter and the entire Board of Trustees condemn Cal State Long Beach Psychology professor Kevin McDonald who praised Norway mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik as a “serious political thinker” and for having “good practical ideas on strategy.” McDonald is an influential university professor and he praised Breivik in a July 23 op-ed piece in the well-read e Zine on-line alternative right newsletter.

The fulsome praise of Breivik a self admitted hater of Muslims, persons of color, and multi-cuturalism, by McDonald is vile and reprehensible and deserves swift condemnation. This gives back door validity and justification to mass murder, but also tacitly encourage others to believe that mass murder is the way to solve social problems.”

The censure of McDonald by the California Board of Trustees will send the strong message that professors at taxpayer supported institutions that spout racially loaded views do not speak for those charged with administering state supported institutions.

Endorsed by:

Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable

NAACP National Board Member Willis Edwards

Youth Advocacy Coalition

Black Ministerial Alliance

Los Angeles Civil Rights Assn.

National Action Network West Coast

Black Womens Coalition

See also this KABC-Los Angeles story that includes an interview with me, death threats, etc.

Hutchinson’s claims are ridiculous. Saying that someone is “a serious political thinker” and has “good practical ideas on strategy” is certainly not to endorse his actions. Indeed, the blogs I have written (see here and here) quite clearly show that I do not approve of his actions either as morally legitimate or as tactically well-advised. And it is at least highly doubtful that they will help the cause of keeping Europe European. Read more

Fools in Public Schools

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It seems like we can’t go more than three or four days without seeing a story about the foolishness that goes on at America’s public schools. I don’t mean the fights, the assaults, the murders, the gang activity, vulgarity, and the general mayhem perpetrated by students; but rather the lunacy carried out by teachers and administrators. It’s a subject to which we could dedicate a month’s worth of Political Cesspool broadcasts – and that still wouldn’t be enough time to catalog and discuss a month’s worth of shenanigans and outrages. Read on, for a sampling of what I mean from the past couple of days. Read more

Roger Scruton’s “The Rebirth of Nations”

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Roger Scruton is familiar to TOO readers for his starring role in Brenton Sanderson’s wonderful series, The War on the English (see here and here). Scruton’s comments on the destruction of the English quoted by Sanderson are well worth re-reading.

Scruton recently published an article in The American Spectator that summarizes some of the successes of nationalist parties in Europe and the deep disillusionment with immigration, multiculturalism and the European Union (“The Rebirth of Nations“). It is a very heartening article with some familiar themes, particularly the point that this has been a top-down, anti-democratic revolution. The elites have systematically stifled nationalist sentiments, but these sentiments are once again “prominent in the cultural landscape of Europe. And they are the more prominent for the attempt by the Eurocrats to forbid them.” Read more