by Graham Lister

Firstly sorry once again I seem to have been somewhat ranting impolitely in the comments section. And I don’t mean to be snotty to other commentators but sometimes I’m typing before thinking ‘how might this come across’. However, I thought it might be interesting to give a brief outline of the genesis of my views on some pressing issues.

Basic assumptions

I definitely think that both ontological and normative issues are very important. Any ethical framework that results in voluntary self-destruction cannot be right.  My own baseline view is this – I don’t want to live in a society in which my ethnic group is in a minority or anything approaching that status. Even if those replacing my group were ‘better’ I would not care. At the most basic functional level of analysis the worry is that a formally dominate group will be at a permanent structural disadvantage with regard to political power in shaping their ‘former’ society, which would have new and very deep sources of sociological cleavages/conflict/resentment (and a likely undermining in any notions of the common-good). It could be little green men from Mars, the issue is being systematically disadvantaged by another group which is likely to display intra-group loyalty and inter-group rivalry/animosity. Of course it seems a reasonably good working hypothesis, in my view, that generally the more ethnically distal and undeniably ‘different’ competing groups are, then more intense the cleavages are and the worst any inter-group rivalry would be.

Ethnocentric communitarianism

I’d call my baseline position something like ‘ethnocentric communitarianism’.

Why that? Well in ethnically homogenous societies one major source of potentially destructive and very negative socio-political cleavage is removed. There is only an ‘in-group’ viz ethnicity as a major axis of socio-political variation/friction doesn’t arise. If high levels of linguistic, religious, cultural homogeneity also exist as well then the likely outcome is a more coherent, communitarian society with high social-capital such as Norway. However, the flip side is that if ‘diversity’ is pushed too far along ethnic lines – especially involving groups that are obviously perceived as different from each other and have little cultural/historical commonality - then a major socio-poltical cleavage is opened up with all the negative consequences in terms of intra-group loyalty versus inter-group rivalry.

See, for example, South Africa and its societal trajectory now that different groups have functionally inverted much of the the previous power arrangements and are proactively engaged in battles over economic resources/politics and so on. The result is a dramatic decline of social-capital with the release of those pent-up inter-group antagonisms (crime off the scale – with a particular quasi-systematic and extraordinarily viscous aggression directed towards Boer farmers) and even declining white solidarity (private security etc., for the with enough money but with increasing number of white have-nots thrown to the wolves) also to be matched by a steady ratcheting up of intra-black tribal antagonisms. And that does not even factor in the open question as to Black competency in managing a modern successful society.

What I find appealing about this basic account is that it does not matter if the differences are primarily biological or primarily sociologically/culturally grounded (or some combination of both). Crucially it does need to assume anything or given an account about biological superiority/inferiority of differing groups. I mean, it would and does offer an account, of say the bitter Northern Ireland conflict. The major cleavage in Ireland is the religious/cultural one (and the associated resentments over political and economic power derived from it) produced in the aftermath arising from the unfortunate history of Anglo-Irish geopolitics.  Another recent historical example might be the partitioning of India after independence (and the creation of Pakistan) that resulted in around a million deaths, which was another religiously-informed cleavage.

But obviously ethnically derived in-group/out-group cleavages have been some of the most powerful drivers of human conflict and social strife; once ‘ratcheted up’ they cannot be easily be ‘defused’ peacefully and are likely to result in very negative destructive actions (e.g. the de facto ethnic cleansing of contemporary Zimbabwe). And it seems a persistent feature of human socio-cultural systems to produce in-group/out-group distinctions (some may be trivial such as fans of different sports teams but remember soccer hooligans - hardly a positive phenomenon).

It is a hopelessly utopian species of moral vanity that such in-group/out-group phenomena can be eliminated by liberal fiat and with liberal ‘universal ethics’. A morally responsible politics would attempt to sensibly avoid importing such potentially explosive cleavages and intelligently ease the intensities of those inevitable endogenous cleavages and inter-group frictions that any mass-society experiences, due to factors like economic and educational stratification etc., for the benefit of social solidarity/cohesion.

It seems a well established observation that radically ‘diverse’ heterogeneous societies with major ethnic, religious and other cleavages cannot easily become ‘good’ societies with high social-capital. Contrast Denmark (yes), and Brazil (no thank you very much) as models and let’s not even start on the myriad of issues facing sub-Saharan Africa. Overall it is a wise public-policy choice to minimize such deeply resistant bio-sociological cleavages and folly to proactively seek them out or to generate them unnecessarily.

Counter-factually imagine if the history of the USA did not include African slavery. Certainly the Africans of the time would have preferred not to be enslaved, a major political-economic cleavage of which a consequence was a bloody civil war would not have occurred, and if the USA was still an ethnically homogenous or near-homogenous society it might be in much, much better shape today.  It could be argued that, in reality, a tiny elite overwhelming benefited from the African slave trade, not Mr & Mrs Average, and in doing so the elites of the time effectively were in game-theoretic terms ‘free-riding’ on the long-term communal well-being of their own society.

To sum up - for any society to avoid increasing the possibility of bitter internal conflicts (by minimizing the scope and type of in-group/out-group antagonisms), it is better for the population to share important cultural assumptions and a common historical background that produces a shared identity. Obviously if a population is ethnically homogenous such a common set of socio-cultural values is much more likely to emerge and be maintained. However even in a society such as Ireland with little ethnic variation major socio-political cleavages (in this case coalescing around religiously derived identities) can result in extremely bitter long-lasting enmity between rival groups.  These is why multiculturalism is potentially so dangerous. To quote Theodore Dalrymple:

“Multiculturalism rests on the supposition—or better, the dishonest pretense—that all cultures are equal and that no fundamental conflict can arise between the customs, mores, and philosophical outlooks of two different cultures.”

So in an age of mass-migration of people from vary differentiated ethnic backgrounds to their ‘host populations’ added to very disparate and deeply held religious identities and/or cultural values is a recipe for creating huge new forms of bio-sociological cleavages – moreover both the ethnic and cultural aspects are likely to be synergistically multiplicative in their effects. Diversity is our strength – really??? Preserving nations is not inherently reactionary. There are good functional reasons for doing so which have nothing to do with militarism, vulgar racism or any other traditional tropes of political nationalism.

Final thought – the minimizing or preventing of the creation of new bio-sociological cleavages is a collective public good – it must be conceived in collective/communitarian terms. It may well be rational to move from the third world to the first but it is not rational for the long term common-good/social capital of those host societies to accept such mass populations transfers. Liberal individualism of both right and left-facing variations will not, and cannot, provide the conceptual framework to understand this.

Liberal disorders

I’m not really a fan of the ultra-liberal world-order we live in. In many ways it’s completely out of control. And yet we seem to live in a culture in which death has no genuine significance – in particular the potential collective death of the European seems to be a non-issue. Like the hippy 60’s song went ‘we all become coffee-coloured people’ and perhaps gently disappear into the night of history – or the even more worrying prospect of the great mass of ethnically differentiated people in a Brazil-like society, with a radical undermining of all forms of social-capital and with all left in a Hobbesian ‘dog eat dog’ world while a tiny European elite of the mega-rich and, inevitably also, Jewish elite elements retreat into their ‘gated communities’ whilst chaos engulfs the rest of us.

I view both the cultural and economic forces of liberalism as deeply dangerous if unchecked, and reversed, but as previously discussed that is a massive undertaking. But that’s why I think the philosophical stuff is really, really vital. Liberalism must be understood to its deepest core both to understand why and what it has got wrong but equally also why is so appealing and nearly all-encompassing across both the, so-called, left and right. It is an ideology that in one form or another – and its plasticity is rather remarkable and I think a key element in its success as ‘deep ideology’ – enjoys ‘full spectrum dominance’.

Perhaps one of the keys to liberalism deep appeal is to a type of utopian fantasy within the human psyche that whispers to us that prior reality is never an impediment to the self or our egocentric wishes and our rationalization that those wishes are ‘good’ and are ‘rightfully’ ours. Moreover because this idea of ‘radical’ freedom is so nebulous that it allows for multiple interpretations within a seemingly ever expanding sea of possibilities. Conceptually liberal thought, at base, utilizes very narrowly drawn premises – yet a a sociological phenomenon structurally produces ever more life-styles etc., with the fragmentation of common identities/values.

In the liberal cosmology history at the macro-level is an asymmetric process with only a long-term trend of improvement possible as this ‘radical freedom’ expands our horizon of wants and justifies our desires (but ignoring if improvement can occur, and has to start somewhere, then decline is possible also and has to somewhere). At the micro-level the liberal self, in egocentric mythos is created ex nilho, as it were. Now let’s examine just how pathological this view can be.

In my working life I have interacted with a fully transgendered person - and they had an aura of deep sadness. Witness the massive rise in the availability and acceptability of this procedure for adults (for example they have this on the British NHS with approval from a psychiatrist now only taking a few months rather than the previous 10 years or so). Now is this not one of the most extreme denials of reality in contemporary society? A man is not a woman and vice-versa. Yet to the liberal mind-set that is, in extremis, not true. The genuine, honest and imaginatively sympathetic response to someone that wants a sex-change is to tell them that mutilating their bodies will not solve there problems and to think so is a dangerous, harmful and delusional fantasy. The problems and obviously deep distress/confusion of such a person is a psychological malady, not an anatomical one. If they require anything, it is patient and sympathetic therapy to regain some semblance of sanity. And ultimately to be told ‘no’ as it is both self-destructive and moreso it is socially damaging as it will legitimatize and hence amplified the demand for this perverse procedure. Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should. Wants are not needs. And some appetites are only increased by feeding them so they should not be fed at all (I think this wisdom is simply invisible to liberal individualism – not all ‘repression’ of our egocentric desires is bad for the individual or indeed for our collective life).

Another simple but interesting example is the decline (certainly in Britain) of families eating together. In a simple way the tradition of eating a shared meal together, regularly at a set time of day, educates one in both social civility and that ones own desires must be modulated and controlled. Sometimes you might have not been completely hungry, or totally enthused by the menu, but we learn as to put aside selfish considerations, sitting together and seeking each others approval and company and taking time to re-enforce our bonds through conservation about our daily activities.

Now in England ‘table manners’ is something of a lost art (not a class thing - I’ve been witness to some very posh upper-class people with appalling table manners). Worse still is that many families now do not even own a dining table in England, so communal meals never occur in many households. Instead the liberal mass-consumerist ethos holds sway - that of consuming whatever food whenever you like and it’s OK to eat as messily as you like (at home, in the street) privileging our own egocentric desires quite unconcerned if we appear like an unlovable greedy pig to others. But perhaps this new sensibility is not a superficial matter and just might have something to do with the massive explosion in obesity?

Political emotions

One last thing that I’d like views on. It seems to me that much of what is termed our post-modern ethical life is in fact not about helping those around us but rather about striking the right ‘standpoint’ in a virtual ‘moral economy’ – I’m a good person because I loudly believe X, rather than I try to live a good life by quietly doing Y.  Virtue is in a posture and having the ‘correct’ view not in actions – which is an issue in this ‘psychological cost’ idea I think. Also there is the issue of loss of social status from deviations away from acceptable norms too (and isn’t it interesting that this white-guilt thing is most pronounced in a culture (the USA) shaped by radical Protestantism such as Calvinism - but that’s a thought for another day).

Now I think this can be observed in some of my video nasties I found on ‘white privilege’ (like the rural white poor of the Appalachians are privileged – good grief what nonsense).

Please find the time and stomach to watch - I’d appreciate it.

Clip 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOVJ6QwFmDI

OK just watch the woman from around 19 seconds in to 1.49 (don’t bother with the rest).

I think she is obviously insincere – it’s a cynical posture for presumed social status (let alone her example is, at worse, a very mild example of cultural insensitivity rather than the ‘evil’ she suggests).

Clip 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-E4aqOs1_0

OK the woman from 8.29ish to 9.24.

I think she is in the middle of the spectrum between mere cynical social posturing and earnestly believing that you can only be a good person if you are ‘anti-racist’ – along with a dollop of moral self-aggrandisement.

Clip 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsylE79Hm30

OK the man from the start to 1.20ish

I think he is at the non-cynical extremely earnest end of the spectrum. He really has genuinely internalized the notion that being white is a problem and that he needs to have the right viewpoint on this topic in order to give himself ‘permission’ to consider himself a ‘good’ person.

Understanding the generative mechanisms of what might be dubbed psycho-political emotionality and how to even consider, let alone hold, certain beliefs comes with too high a price in ‘psychological costs’ such as of the self-image of being a ‘good’ person, is I think, an important issue. Additionally it also goes back to questions of how narratives of normativity are being formed.

How is any ‘pay-off’ matrix for political beliefs constructed? How can the acceptability of a belief be increased or decreased? Probably facts are not central, but emotions might be. The role of imaginative sympathy is important here. To really try and understand why a person with a differing view holds that opinion from within their perspective and not your own is, perhaps, the first step to understanding how to shift their views closer to your own in a way they find acceptable and/or reasonable. The great communicators do not directly have themselves and their immediate needs/wants as the focus – rather the focus is on what does the person(s) need/want from my efforts to communicate. Harshly hectoring people with ‘facts’ rarely wins people over in political and social debates.