Wednesday 10 December 2014

Gerald Warner's "The PC police state is finally terrorising even the police", and Barry Rubin's "Silent Revolution"

You can read Warner's superb article on Breitbart, here. In case you need convincing to make the effort, here's an extract:
In 1968 Enoch Powell returned to his native Birmingham to deliver a speech in which he warned of the consequences of uncontrolled immigration. For that outrage against the then embryonic PC orthodoxy he was called "racialist" and "evil" and was deprived of his political career. Yet a Gallup poll showed that 74 per cent of the British public agreed with him and only 11 per cent disagreed.

Consider the significance of those figures. They demonstrate that in 1968 the political class abandoned representation of the majority and identified itself exclusively with the elitist 11 per cent minority. It was able to do so by the anti-democratic device of cross-party consensus, leaving the electorate with nobody to vote for who would execute the popular will.
Warner (orJames Gerald Warner of Craigenmaddie, to use his legal name) used to write for the Telegraph before that paper became a mouthpiece for the social democratic views of David Cameron and his chums - but he jumped ship several years' ago.

Warner's pithy little post echoes several reviews I've read of a book published earlier this year, called Silent Revolution: How the Left Rose to Political Power and Cultural Dominance, by Barry Rubin, an American-born Israeli expert on Middle East affairs. Rubin's theory is that a new kind of virulently anti-capitalism, anti-West, cultural Marxist left-wing movement - which he refers to as  the Third Left - has been softening America up for decades: all it needed to achieve total victory for its self-hating lies was for a American-hating president like Barack Obama to emerge. Here's an extract from Janice Fiamengo's review in PJ Media:
Rubin calls this hidden movement — an inchoate, uncoordinated, and de-centralized phenomenon — the Third Left. He argues that it grew from the failures of the two previous Left movements: the first under the Communist Party of the 1920-1950s and the second in the form of the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s. What differentiates the Third Left from the New Left, with which it has many affinities, is the Third Left’s unparalleled mainstreaming of radical ideas. An almost complete infiltration by Third Left cadres of the entertainment industry, mass media, and the entire education system — from kindergarten through university — has normalized what were once shocking ideas, making hatred of capitalism seem natural and desirable, anti-Americanism the only decent response of conscientious citizens, and social inequality a crime for which any level of government control is not only acceptable but necessary.
I'm sure British readers won't need much convincing that pretty much the same thing has happened here. How else to explain a Conservative prime minister forcing through a law on gay marriage despite his own party's almost total lack of interest in the subject - and despite the fact that most homosexuals weren't clamouring for it? Or a Conservative prime minister taking Oxford University to task for not admitting a sufficient number of Afro-Caribbean students, as if places at our top universities are prizes to be awarded to the lucky members of whichever victim group the elite happens to be feeling sorriest for at the time.

The maddening aspect of Cultural Marxism is that it entirely circumvents the democratic process. The most sinister thing about it is that it isn't an organised movement - there are no headquarters to picket, no leaders to topple, no foreign power to blame for organising and financing it. And yet its adherents have managed to infect every public sector nook and cranny with their poisonous, ennervating pseudo-philosophy. Even worse, their takeover of state schools and the universities guarantees an endless supply of brain-washed Marxbots ready to carry on the task of re-wiring our brains in the hope that inapproriate attitudes and the acceptance of "unhelpful" truths will eventually become impossible.

Barry Rubin considered the subject of Silent Revolution so important - so urgent - that he wrote it while dying of cancer, to which he succumbed in February. I think he was right: the malign influence of cultural Marxism is the greatest problem facing the West today. I've ordered the book (available here) and look forward to reading it over the season of good cheer. 

13 comments:

  1. So I write a post about the Third Left - and just a few minutes' later, Britain's leading third leftist - The Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger - announces he's leaving his job. If only I'd realised earlier how much influence I wield! But how long before he ends up as Chairman of the BBC Trust?

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    1. Later that same day ...

      BBC’s biased drama needs a reality check
      Tim Montgomery

      ... And it’s this cultural rather than political bias that is the real problem ... a nation’s long-term values are forged in drama, documentaries and comedy ... could we just occasionally have something a bit more surprising too? Why are villains of BBC dramas nearly always the same? Thatcher. Business leaders. Bent coppers. Tory toffs. Catholic priests. American Republicans. The Israeli security services ...

      The American right may win as many political contests as the American left but they know they've lost the culture wars. And because they know politics is downstream from culture, that bodes ill for their future. The billionaire philanthropist Philip Anschutz has formed Walden Media to even things up ... Anschutz and Walden recognise that there’s a new establishment in place and want to encourage an arts scene that challenges this new establishment’s mores ...

      The BBC could even try a comedy about the leader of a small European country who, despite being rejected by his own voters and being embroiled in a tax avoidance scandal, becomes president of the European Commission ... If paying the licence fee is to remain compulsory it should be compulsory for BBC drama to represent all of its licence-fee paying public. You might even call it public service broadcasting.

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    2. I've often wondered if shutting down BBC News for six months before a general election would make a difference - but I think it would make more sense to ban BBC comedy and drama for that period, because at least some of its journalists are aware that there are rules regarding political bias which they should be sticking to - the drama and "entertainment" mob seem blissfully unaware that they are betraying the corporation's charter: in fact, so unaware are they of their own ingrained leftist bias, I'm not sure they even know that they're churning out propaganda.

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  2. Rubin was right, though I'm not sure the plot wasn't hatched earlier. My memory suggests that the Left's stranglehold on education and the media was pretty much in full swing by the early 1960s, which suggests it began in the 1930s - which, in fact, we know it did.

    I suppose the key is whether the 'Third Left' is actually a discrete thing or just a mutation of the earlier pro-Soviet tripe that was standard fare among so many self-styled intellectuals during the '50s and '60s. If I recall, their reflexive, automatic rejection of anything Western was pretty much identical to that of the Left today. Mau Mau good, Castro wonderful - that sort of drivel.

    As for Rusbridger, could he possibly have more influence over the BBC's hive-mind as Chairman of its ironically named Trust than he has had as editor of that rag? Perhaps your pal Russell Brand could take over the comic? He could hardly be less of a clown.

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  3. I won't know till I've read the book, but I think one difference between the New Left and the Third Left might be that the latter don't give a stuff about bettering the lot of the working classes or putting them in charge, they don't join groups like the SWP and live in squats, they are bloody everywhere and most of them would laugh at the idea that they're part of some sinister "movement" - they're just, you know, good people who happen to think that everyone who doesn't agree with them is evil, i.e. they adopt positions purely on the basis that they will flush out conservatives -e.g. "You're against gay marriage, so that means you hate gays" etc. What struck a chord with me was the idea that the Third Left don't actually care about outcomes - it's mainly about how morally superior their views make them feel.

    You'll no doubt be delighted to discover that Bonnie Greer has written a post for the Telegraph comments section entitled: "Black Americans don't need a messiah – we need justice". I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP!!!!

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  4. Ah, yes - Bonnie Greer: and just what the hell is that career professional Afro-American doing in the Telegraph? I saw her name on the page. That was enough. Not so long ago the only place I had to avoid her nonsense was on the BBC.

    I think you are quite right about the amorphous nature of this Third Left and also its defining characteristic. I saw it referred to recently as 'conspicuous compassion' and I think that has it nailed. Apparently it comes from the writer Patrick West.

    'Cooler than thou' would do, too.

    What we do about the bastards.. well, that's another matter. I fear it won't end without civil unrest of quite major proportions and I am under no illusions about how unpleasant that could be..

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    1. I think the emergence of UKIP and the growth of social media - together with innate decency - has made violence from traditionalists, conservatives and right-wingers far less likely. Also, while PC is obviously an article of faith for the BBC, even the corporation has been forced to air (albeit heavily weighted) discussions about immigration, free speech, climate change and leaving the EU. It's not much, but it helps.

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  5. Thank you for the Breitbart link.

    You are, of course, correct in your statement about the Left's employment of moral superiority as political camouflage. This is also related to status - seeking.

    For example, every media and academic useful idiot knows what sort of political thought on ,say, racial matters raises his status ('he' embraces 'she' as in normative amatory pursuits) and what sort of political thought lowers his status.

    The status raising is effected by active promotion of the ethnic/genetic group interests of immigrants. At the same time,status lowering is avoided not just by simply ignoring the legitimate ethnic/genetic interests of indigenous Whites but by actively pathologizing them.

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    1. I hope somebody, somewhere, a genuinely heavyweight commentator, is writing a book or making a documentary about the number of careers and lives - particularly in the media and academia - destroyed by liberal fascists. They could start with the appalling treatment of Bradford state school headmaster Ray Honeyford after he wrote an article attacking multiculturalism in The Salisbury Review, which I wrote about here: http://scottgronmark.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/its-time-someone-put-up-statue-of-ray.html
      The writer could do a companion volume about careers and lives destroyed because they voiced left-liberal opinions - which would consist of nothing but blank pages.

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  6. According to an article in the Telegraph today, John Humphrys: Sheltered, liberal BBC staff did not interrogate immigration for fear of appearing 'racist':

    A spokesman for the BBC said: “John Humphrys was merely echoing other senior BBC figures who have previously acknowledged that we were slow to reflect changing opinions on immigration. This was a historical issue and we now believe our reporting is in the right place and we cover this complex issue in depth.

    Whose fault is it that the BBC was "slow to reflect changing opinions"? Oxford and Cambridge graduates, apparently.

    Why did it happen?

    The review also heard evidence that the BBC is hamstrung by a "fundamental niceness" and reluctance to give offence.

    It happened because the BBC is fundamentally too nice and reluctant to give offence.

    The perfect way to admit your guilt is to blame yourself for just being too nice? That way, anything you do wrong is actually a virtue.

    The BBC is happy to be perfectly beastly about Conservatives, Margaret Thatcher, Israelis, policemen, judges, soldiers, the royal family, British history, the US. They're spectacularly selective in choosing the targets for their excessive niceness.

    This is epic self-deception. Shall we have another try?

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    1. ... and Christians. How did I forget the Christians?

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    2. You're spot on about their selective "niceness". Reluctant to give offence? God almighty!!!
      The thing that really annoys me about the likes of John Humphrys and Jeremy Paxman in particular is how they wait until the twilight of their corporation careers before revealing themselves as crusty Tory clubmen, having spent decades acting as the Liberal Left's twin attack dogs (although Paxman has seemed more like a poodle with haemmorhoids in recent years).

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  7. Remember Sony

    The BBC's Justin Webb, writing in today's Times newspaper, America’s left is losing touch with its roots (£), moves the story of the 'Third Left' forward:

    America has a liberal elite that would boggle the mind of a Ukip voter. It is an elite endowed with staggering wealth, staggering power, and deep-seated self-belief. It is an elite in which favours are bestowed and debts called in.

    The example he gives is a New York Times article about Amy Pascal. Maureen Dowd, the "fearless left-leaning columnist", promised that the article would cast Ms Pascal in a glowing light and seems to have allowed Bernie Weinraub a preview. He is a former NYT writer and is Ms Pascal's husband.

    Mr Webb's point is that the American left is led by a rich and powerful clique divorced from the real world headed by Hillary who complains how poor her family found itself when Bill left the Whitehouse:

    That boggled minds among some Democrats and has led to a search for a real feisty lefty who might have had only one holiday a year or maybe been on a bus.

    Mr Webb's intelligence comes courtesy of the Sony hack – Ms Pascal chairs Sony Pictures. Among other things, the hackers published the mutual admiration emails exchanged by Ms Pascal and Ms Dowd.

    ----------

    My tangential interest is in the hack itself.

    Sony have the same desire as any other organisation or individual to keep their communications private and confidential. They have the same desire to make a profit as any other organisation and to protect their intellectual property.

    The desire may even be enhanced – they have suffered from hacking before.

    And yet they were taken apart by the hackers. They tried hard to achieve web security and they failed. Utterly.

    If they can't succeed, who can?

    No-one.

    Anyone offering you a service based on a secure website is lying. Remember Sony.

    There is no such thing as a unicorn. And no such thing as a secure website.

    My prediction is that 2014 is the last year in which any upright organisation will offer a service that relies on a secure website. Any organisation trying it on will look at best old-fashioned and more probably untrustworthy.

    Remember Sony.

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