Anger, Insult and Cognitive Failure
Let us suppose you are a newcomer group a minority of whose members are associated with spectacularly hostile actions, both locally (rapes, thefts and bashings) and overseas (Bali, 9/11, London, Madrid …). What is the thing you could do to most piss off ocker sentiment? The biggest iconic insult you could manage?
Hmmm, let me think.
I know, assault a couple of lifesavers on a major Sydney beach who were originally asking you to play nice.
So, far, not so good.
Now, if this was an isolated incident, it would be of no moment. But, as is normal with trigger incidents, it was the context which made it powerful.
The context being twofold [and which, having read Tim Priest's prescient article, allowed me to predict something like this was likely]. First, the NSW police have not done a good job at dealing with crime in Sydney, particularly crime associated with ‘persons of Middle Eastern appearance’. With a particular history in Cronulla area. (With text messages going out to gangs of ‘persons of Middle Eastern appearance’ as well as against the same: as per normal, these latter text messages are the ones Respectable Opinion focuses on.)
Second, racism is avidly denounced in NSW. When it is white racism. Predatory action by ‘persons of Middle Eastern appearance’ leaves officials and the ABC-Fairfax-academic commentariat mealy-mouthed in the extreme. Even willing to explain how it is the fault of Anglo-Celtic Australia really. (See above.)
So lots of folk feel that the police are not on their side (due to incompetence or PC-diffidence) and that public officials and Respectable Opinion are not going to tell them the truth. On the contrary, they are going to insult them. A huge gap for shock-jocks (via jupitah) [as well as, yes, racist agitators] to walk through.
Anger, insult, alcohol, tribalism, lack of confidence in police and officialdom. Not a good combination.
Hence the original “race riot”. It was a race riot where everyone involved (via patchworkkid) was a Caucasian, but let us use the term for the sake of convenience.
As race riots go, even in terms of Australian history, it was pretty mild. But shocking precisely because Australia has enjoyed such high level of social harmony. [But let me repeat my support in an earlier post of Les Murray's hatred of mobs, because nothing a mob does is clean. And the colour or ethnicity of the mob makes no difference to that.]
PM Howard does not deny that ethnic aggression was involved (how could one?). He is just not going to blame (white) racism generally. In other words, he is not going to buy into the PC politics of insult.
But lots of other people were.
To say “Australians are racist”, “Australia is a racist country” is to establish yourself as One of the Superior and to insult your fellow Australians generally. Folk who are Oh So Sensitive about not inferring from some Muslims to all/most Muslims are perfectly happy to infer from some (white) Australians to all/most (white) Australians.
Folk who buy into the politics and rhetoric of insult then typically whine that folk then vote the “wrong” way, which is a basis for further politics and rhetoric of insult.
It has various poisonous effects.
By frustrating the use of information in the development of policy and the rhetoric of Respectable opinion, it makes policy failure and disconnect between Respectable opinion and mass experience more likely. Hence the failure to deal with, and being seen to deal with, a genuine crime issue.
The PC politics and rhetoric of insult also does its bit to worsen integration of a problematic community. You’re a young Muslim in Australia. Considering treating the infidels as weak because their police won’t enforce their law? Considering focusing on an Islamic identity of the jihadi variety? Why not, all the Great and the Good will tell you how racist Australians are, how racist Australian society is, so why try to fit into that? Why not go off and identify with the jihadis since the infidels are so appalling?
One sees the poisonous effects in indigenous policy. We have a group which does much less well than the rest of the community (for example, its life-expectancy is over 20 years lower than the rest of the population). So, what do the Virtuous advocate? A set of policies which maximise the difference in institutional structures between that community and the rest of society. When being as different as possible from the folk who are doing so much better turns out to - Surprise, Surprise - not to work, the Virtuous are absolved from all blame because the problem is, you guessed it, Racism.
Racism is the perfect catch-all excuse and cognitive barrier. If policies fail, it’s because of racism. If rhetoric has bad effects, those effects are because of racism. If people disagree with what you have to say, they’re racist. If people don’t agree that Australia is a racist country and Australians are racist, they’re racist.
[When Australians were polled about who they find to be undesirable neighbours the percentage of people who identified various categories as undesirable were:
Drug addicts 74%
Heavy drinkers 60%
Political extremists 45%
Criminal record 45%
Emotionally unstable 38%
Homosexuals 25%
People with AIDS 15%
Immigrants 5%
Different race 5%
Australians came out very much on the low end of anti-immigrant and anti-different race sentiments. Percentage who identified immigrants as undesirable neighbours by country were:
Austria, Belgium 20%
Japan 17%
Norway 14%
Germany, France, Italy 13%
Denmark 12%
UK 11%
USA, Finland 10%
Netherlands 9%
Sweden 7%
Canada, Switzerland 6%
Australia, Ireland 5%
Percentage who identified people of different race as undesirable neighbours were:
Belgium, Finland 17%
Italy 12%
Japan, Norway 11%
France 9%
USA, Germany, UK, Austria 8%
Netherlands, Denmark 7%
Ireland 6%
Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland 5%
Results taken from here. Even if we think some of the poll results might be, well, understated, it gives a sense of where Australia lies in the spectrum among developed democracies.]
In the history of the last 100 years, attempts to build various forms of socialism have killed, starved and tyrannised far more people than racism has. But racism is an overt challenge to the Virtuous norm of equality and accusations of the same function as a clear statement of superiority. The free use of the accusation of racism is the perfect instrument of cognitive failure, of a crippled epistemology (pdf). Adopting the PC rhetoric and politics of insult nowadays proclaims that
I get off on insulting my fellow Australians.
I am not interested in awkward complexities.
I am insulated from considering the possibility of failure by the politics, policies and rhetoric I support.
Consider border control. For 30 years the Respectable politics of immigration in this country was the politics of insult. Immigration was ‘bipartisan’, meaning that ordinary voters got no say. Why? Well, because they were too stupid/ignorant/inherently racist to have a say in a fundamental way their country was being changed. As the issue of how much say Australia had in who came here become more and more salient, border control policy got tighter and tighter.
For the first time since Whitlam campaigned in 1972 for lower migration levels, Howard shifted the politics to one where folk did have a say. This had two effects. First, popular resentment of migration levels dropped dramatically. Second, the outrage of Respectable opinion, helped to define Howard as the person who did not engage in the politics and rhetoric of insult of his PC critics. As someone who in fact stood against it.
Which gave Howard the political space to run the least-Eurocentric migration policy in Australian history and let the majority of boat-arrivers stay while successfully deterring new boat arrivals.
Howard’s migration policy is not racist. But those addicted to the PC politics and rhetoric of insult keep insisting it is so and saying how outrageous it is that popular opinion is listened to. The whole point of we will decide who will stay here is to express having a say and not being excluded.
Since the prime function of accusations of racism is to state one’s own superiority, connection to reality is tenuous. You don’t have to justify the accusation from careful examination of evidence: any simplified, or even massively distorted, “fact” will do. The whole PC rhetoric of superiority-and-insult is based on this self-referential game based on comparing the alleged behaviour of the Right with the intentions of the Left (the Right being, by definition, incapable of good intentions because that would get in the way of the superiority game). It is also based on treating the adopted mascots of the moment differently than the folk who superiority is being asserted against. And persons of non-English-speaking background are very much mascots of the moment. Which is back to policy and rhetoric failing to convince large numbers of folk that their aspirations and concerns count. See the scenes on Cronulla beach when the NSW Premier finds folk lack basic confidence in police and public officials.
Not that the Virtuous will notice or care. The whole point of the PC rhetoric and politics of insult is you don’t have to consider alternative opinions, you don’t have to confront awkward facts and you certainly don’t have to consider the possibility that you might wrong. Or your rhetoric or politics might have problems with them. The warm inner glow of superiority is all that is needed, blinding as it is in its self-satisfaction. Because it is so good to be so sure that the racism of the vulgar explains all.
ADDENDA An email correspondent makes an excellent point: I am not sure I'd take those poll results at face value -- people know what responses are respectable. But I agree that when public policing fails, people fall back on group loyalties -- which are a short, direct way of sorting out who is and who isn't a potential threat. To describe everything as "racism" is just silly -- or sinister.
Hmmm, let me think.
I know, assault a couple of lifesavers on a major Sydney beach who were originally asking you to play nice.
So, far, not so good.
Now, if this was an isolated incident, it would be of no moment. But, as is normal with trigger incidents, it was the context which made it powerful.
The context being twofold [and which, having read Tim Priest's prescient article, allowed me to predict something like this was likely]. First, the NSW police have not done a good job at dealing with crime in Sydney, particularly crime associated with ‘persons of Middle Eastern appearance’. With a particular history in Cronulla area. (With text messages going out to gangs of ‘persons of Middle Eastern appearance’ as well as against the same: as per normal, these latter text messages are the ones Respectable Opinion focuses on.)
Second, racism is avidly denounced in NSW. When it is white racism. Predatory action by ‘persons of Middle Eastern appearance’ leaves officials and the ABC-Fairfax-academic commentariat mealy-mouthed in the extreme. Even willing to explain how it is the fault of Anglo-Celtic Australia really. (See above.)
So lots of folk feel that the police are not on their side (due to incompetence or PC-diffidence) and that public officials and Respectable Opinion are not going to tell them the truth. On the contrary, they are going to insult them. A huge gap for shock-jocks (via jupitah) [as well as, yes, racist agitators] to walk through.
Anger, insult, alcohol, tribalism, lack of confidence in police and officialdom. Not a good combination.
Hence the original “race riot”. It was a race riot where everyone involved (via patchworkkid) was a Caucasian, but let us use the term for the sake of convenience.
As race riots go, even in terms of Australian history, it was pretty mild. But shocking precisely because Australia has enjoyed such high level of social harmony. [But let me repeat my support in an earlier post of Les Murray's hatred of mobs, because nothing a mob does is clean. And the colour or ethnicity of the mob makes no difference to that.]
PM Howard does not deny that ethnic aggression was involved (how could one?). He is just not going to blame (white) racism generally. In other words, he is not going to buy into the PC politics of insult.
But lots of other people were.
To say “Australians are racist”, “Australia is a racist country” is to establish yourself as One of the Superior and to insult your fellow Australians generally. Folk who are Oh So Sensitive about not inferring from some Muslims to all/most Muslims are perfectly happy to infer from some (white) Australians to all/most (white) Australians.
Folk who buy into the politics and rhetoric of insult then typically whine that folk then vote the “wrong” way, which is a basis for further politics and rhetoric of insult.
It has various poisonous effects.
By frustrating the use of information in the development of policy and the rhetoric of Respectable opinion, it makes policy failure and disconnect between Respectable opinion and mass experience more likely. Hence the failure to deal with, and being seen to deal with, a genuine crime issue.
The PC politics and rhetoric of insult also does its bit to worsen integration of a problematic community. You’re a young Muslim in Australia. Considering treating the infidels as weak because their police won’t enforce their law? Considering focusing on an Islamic identity of the jihadi variety? Why not, all the Great and the Good will tell you how racist Australians are, how racist Australian society is, so why try to fit into that? Why not go off and identify with the jihadis since the infidels are so appalling?
One sees the poisonous effects in indigenous policy. We have a group which does much less well than the rest of the community (for example, its life-expectancy is over 20 years lower than the rest of the population). So, what do the Virtuous advocate? A set of policies which maximise the difference in institutional structures between that community and the rest of society. When being as different as possible from the folk who are doing so much better turns out to - Surprise, Surprise - not to work, the Virtuous are absolved from all blame because the problem is, you guessed it, Racism.
Racism is the perfect catch-all excuse and cognitive barrier. If policies fail, it’s because of racism. If rhetoric has bad effects, those effects are because of racism. If people disagree with what you have to say, they’re racist. If people don’t agree that Australia is a racist country and Australians are racist, they’re racist.
[When Australians were polled about who they find to be undesirable neighbours the percentage of people who identified various categories as undesirable were:
Drug addicts 74%
Heavy drinkers 60%
Political extremists 45%
Criminal record 45%
Emotionally unstable 38%
Homosexuals 25%
People with AIDS 15%
Immigrants 5%
Different race 5%
Australians came out very much on the low end of anti-immigrant and anti-different race sentiments. Percentage who identified immigrants as undesirable neighbours by country were:
Austria, Belgium 20%
Japan 17%
Norway 14%
Germany, France, Italy 13%
Denmark 12%
UK 11%
USA, Finland 10%
Netherlands 9%
Sweden 7%
Canada, Switzerland 6%
Australia, Ireland 5%
Percentage who identified people of different race as undesirable neighbours were:
Belgium, Finland 17%
Italy 12%
Japan, Norway 11%
France 9%
USA, Germany, UK, Austria 8%
Netherlands, Denmark 7%
Ireland 6%
Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland 5%
Results taken from here. Even if we think some of the poll results might be, well, understated, it gives a sense of where Australia lies in the spectrum among developed democracies.]
In the history of the last 100 years, attempts to build various forms of socialism have killed, starved and tyrannised far more people than racism has. But racism is an overt challenge to the Virtuous norm of equality and accusations of the same function as a clear statement of superiority. The free use of the accusation of racism is the perfect instrument of cognitive failure, of a crippled epistemology (pdf). Adopting the PC rhetoric and politics of insult nowadays proclaims that
I get off on insulting my fellow Australians.
I am not interested in awkward complexities.
I am insulated from considering the possibility of failure by the politics, policies and rhetoric I support.
Consider border control. For 30 years the Respectable politics of immigration in this country was the politics of insult. Immigration was ‘bipartisan’, meaning that ordinary voters got no say. Why? Well, because they were too stupid/ignorant/inherently racist to have a say in a fundamental way their country was being changed. As the issue of how much say Australia had in who came here become more and more salient, border control policy got tighter and tighter.
For the first time since Whitlam campaigned in 1972 for lower migration levels, Howard shifted the politics to one where folk did have a say. This had two effects. First, popular resentment of migration levels dropped dramatically. Second, the outrage of Respectable opinion, helped to define Howard as the person who did not engage in the politics and rhetoric of insult of his PC critics. As someone who in fact stood against it.
Which gave Howard the political space to run the least-Eurocentric migration policy in Australian history and let the majority of boat-arrivers stay while successfully deterring new boat arrivals.
Howard’s migration policy is not racist. But those addicted to the PC politics and rhetoric of insult keep insisting it is so and saying how outrageous it is that popular opinion is listened to. The whole point of we will decide who will stay here is to express having a say and not being excluded.
Since the prime function of accusations of racism is to state one’s own superiority, connection to reality is tenuous. You don’t have to justify the accusation from careful examination of evidence: any simplified, or even massively distorted, “fact” will do. The whole PC rhetoric of superiority-and-insult is based on this self-referential game based on comparing the alleged behaviour of the Right with the intentions of the Left (the Right being, by definition, incapable of good intentions because that would get in the way of the superiority game). It is also based on treating the adopted mascots of the moment differently than the folk who superiority is being asserted against. And persons of non-English-speaking background are very much mascots of the moment. Which is back to policy and rhetoric failing to convince large numbers of folk that their aspirations and concerns count. See the scenes on Cronulla beach when the NSW Premier finds folk lack basic confidence in police and public officials.
Not that the Virtuous will notice or care. The whole point of the PC rhetoric and politics of insult is you don’t have to consider alternative opinions, you don’t have to confront awkward facts and you certainly don’t have to consider the possibility that you might wrong. Or your rhetoric or politics might have problems with them. The warm inner glow of superiority is all that is needed, blinding as it is in its self-satisfaction. Because it is so good to be so sure that the racism of the vulgar explains all.
ADDENDA An email correspondent makes an excellent point: I am not sure I'd take those poll results at face value -- people know what responses are respectable. But I agree that when public policing fails, people fall back on group loyalties -- which are a short, direct way of sorting out who is and who isn't a potential threat. To describe everything as "racism" is just silly -- or sinister.