Look, I think His Yatesburyness has a clear head on his shoulders and, without personally knowing him, suspect he is in many ways one of the more righteous dudes, certainly drudes, around. And for one, I think I can safely conclude the man's *not* a racist. Which is exactly why his constant racist insinuations begin to get on my nerves. It's almost worse to hear racist crap from a non-racist than from a racist.
But let me try to explain.
I don't have the energy to go through all the other drudions illustrating my point, but take for instance January's. I fully support his horror at the whole child bride issue and his constant use of such examples to illustrate that indeed, still, "woman is the nigger of this world" - a fact for which one can find ample evidence simply by watching commercials, if I may add. One cannot be enough in favour of women's rights. *Any* person's rights for that matter, don't care if it has tits. Now, read this:
"No indeed, this reprobate is smiling because his is the kind of society where girls of primary school age can be taken as wives, to be sexually assaulted again and again, totally legally and without dishonour to this bigamist."
First of all, it *is* illegal in Afganistan to marry anyone under 16, so who's responsible for making it so, We The Great West? Our Western Values? That's running in circles. True, you talk about "society", so if I give the drude's often dumb rants the benefit of doubt (considering his, like mine, extreme anti-religious-order-ness, which is always a good point of view), I could kind of fill this in as "the religion-inspired Taliban-tradition". But the point is, he doesn't explicitly fill it in like this and I think he does that on purpose. It is exactly the "this kind of society" where he goes horribly, etnocentrically, and xenofobically wrong. Because what it actually suggests, in the context of other drudions is: "This is the type of shit that really shows how completely backward islamic culture is and until all those pijama people mend their ways and adopt our fantastic western culture, they deserve to be hung by the nuts."
There's a lot of assumptions about the drude in that pseudo-quote, so again let me elaborate by making 3 points and then shut up:
1) Yes, I know about the lack of humanist individual rights-centered revolution in many non-western cultures, and I realise that often this is a core difference. Recently it's been a very fashionable often adopted crucially non-politically correct argument amongst intellectuals. But what disturbs me is that El Drudio always kind of ends up suggesting that ours is the only way one can *ever* reach respect for individual rights. Preferably, it would help if you live at this latitude and somewhere worshipped a goddess. Apart from the utter blindness for the massive disregard for individual rights in our society (the illusion of rights doesn't mean you have them, and what about our regard for the third world individual's rights?), nor for the negative consequences of this individual-cult, what strikes me the most is his *utter* etnocentric point of view. I will bet my left testicle that the drude's knowledge about different cultures and the difference between their power systems on one hand and the people's mindsets on the other is mainly gotten from forums, readings and discussions that are all looking at any problem from his own western point-of-view. Nothing wrong with that, but his etnocentrism weakens his argument. I guess he's never been much of a philosopher anyway, but that's no excuse. I mean, fuck drude, haven't you *ever* heard of the influence of economic instability on people and societies' fundamentalist reflexes? And may I point out that much of the economically instable countries are that way (and kept) by our Friendly Latitude Humanist Revolution Respect For The Individual Great West? That's no excuse for their behaviour, but still - are you simple drude?
2) Almost *always* he aims his arrows at islam. Yes, I know he sometimes makes the point explicit by mentioning women-unfriendly societies and violations of human rights in general. Cool. But still. "Islam sucks ass" is his main message. Do you really think that women are so much better off in non-islamic cultures? Do you think that women would have gotten anywhere in our humanist revolution if this revolution hadn't been driven by an economic growth that stayed in the west for several centuries? Islam has a high visibility at this moment, but again, focusing on them, combined with his need to go against he politically correct "embrace all cultures"-wave kind of blurs the drude's vision. Related to the above point, he simply does not see any redeeming possibility in the middle eastern and islamic culture as a whole. True, as long as religion is involved with anything state-wise apart from actualy church-going, we have a Wrong. But that does not have to be the case per se. Better economy, the idea that you're getting somewhere and have something else to be proud of other than a 1500 year dead prophet may do wonders. Related to the following point, "this kind of society" kind of makes it clear that the whole thing sucks. So to the next issue...
3) The essence of my point: he generalises. Now, I have the same reflex at times when I learn yet again an abhorring fact like the child-marriages. Almost everyone has that reflex. Generalisation is one of our more essential cognitive and social processes. You imediately attribute negative actions of a any set of outgroup individuals to the superordinate outgroup. When your judgement does the same, this is called racism. Congratulations Drude, you've actually managed to deploy the same degree of insight as the US demonstrate when waging a war on any point in the axis-of-evil (the axis being a concept which the drude seemingly has wholeheartedly embraced, whith a few nuaces). The point being that, apart from not being aware that in Afghanistan marrying an 11 year-old is officially as illegal as it is here, the drude suggests by his "this kind of society" that no islamic person will be against child brides. All those beardos in pijamas are paedophiles. Pijama paedophiles, what a title! - a song about it Jules, now! Shock value 11 out of 10 and you can always cover your racist generalisation up with some statement about women rights and chit chat about how your tower bows humbly to the goddess. It remains a xenophobic over-generalisation.
And then I'm not even criticising his use of emo-politics, like imagining the life of the girl, the humiliations, etc. Why not put on a maximum emo-impact pic of a torn hymen? Anyway, without emo we'd all end up fascist swine, so nothing principal against that. Still, it weakens his point.
Now, I refuse to believe that a righteous dude as the drude is, can be anywhere near racist. Unfortunately, this leaves me with only two conclusions: (a) the least bad, that he is simply too dumb to grasp the complexities underlying the issues he rants about - which I find as hard to believe as his being racist; or (b) the worst, that he knows he's being less subtle than he could, but that he either thinks he makes a better point by using sloganesque rhetoric or simply believes it sounds way more rock 'n' roll, odinist or whatever to really go bashing against a culture as a whole. Well, no Jules, it just sounds dumbass, especially from you.
Crucify me for it, but just as being rock n roll has never been an excuse for misogyny, it has never been an excuse for being xenophobic. Furthemore, as I suspect he's got the brain, and I know he's got the platform, and furthermore he seems to see His Course as A Mission To Bring Us Some Real Head-On Motherfuckerness, I think he should quit this dovetailing close to racism and try to make a subtle point.
Skip the sideways and head straight for it for once.
Arf!
I'll edit a small PS here: the fact that Le Drude works with different measures for his in- than for the outgroup is nicely illustrated by his condemning Blair in this same drudion, specifically stressing that Blair does *not* represent the whole of Britain or the West. Well, I can imagine islamic people going apeshit over the picture in the same way, as they want to stress that this pijama pedophile does not represent them as a group. True, one of the issues in the islam-crisis is exactly the lack of strongly voiced opinions against ilsamic fundametalism from the islamic side, though I am equally convinced that this has a lot to do with media focusing on the negative issues. I mean, would a picture of a perfectly balanced islamic country inhabitant who condemns and fights fundamentalism and misuse of power/religion make a cool picture? No. But I disgress. The point is, this nuance in the ingroup, which he completely fails to see (or at least doesn't show it) in the outgroup, is a typical psychological process, which is analogous to "infrahumanisation", i.e. seeing outgroup people as having less subtle emotions as you or your ingroup members. Cope is on a dangerous slope.
|
