RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/17/trickle-down-racist-antiracism/

Elected governments were rare in the past. They did not appear until over four millennia after civilization first emerged in the Near East. Constitutional systems were fragile at birth. And they are on the wane today. Nation after nation seems to be devolving into autocracy. Multiethnic, multiracial consensual governments have been even more brittle and sporadic in history.

The Roman, Ottoman, and Soviet empires were multiracial. But they were not consensual. Instead, they required a degree of force to ensure calm among rival tribes and warring peoples—violence that we would find incompatible with our notions of modern democracy.

Today, India and Brazil are large multicultural and multiethnic democracies. But neither, so far, has guaranteed their citizens either prosperity or security.

So present-day multiracial America is a great experiment in the unknown. Can its various tribes, and races unite around the Constitution? Or will they inevitably revert to form and give their first loyalties to those of shared superficial racial or ethnic affinities?

Regressing to the Color of Our Skin

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/04/08/why-the-experts-keep-getting-it-wrong/

One of the most intimidating things about being a ‘heterodox’ thinker is having to constantly say that ‘the experts’ are wrong.

If, online or at a cocktail party, you point out something as obvious as the fact that very few black Americans are fatally shot by police, you can expect to be deluged with citations to articles bearing titles like ‘Know their names: black people killed by police in the US’ and ‘How unjust police killings damage the mental health of black Americans’. Best-selling and critically acclaimed books on race in America have titles like Open Season: The Legalised Genocide of Coloured People.

More broadly, if you express doubt about the idea of ‘systemic racism’ – perhaps because six or seven of the 10 most financially successful ethnic groups in present-day America are not white – you will no doubt be reminded to read famous books arguing that severe racial oppression is everywhere, like Ibram X Kendi’s How To Be An Antiracist or Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility.

Similarly, should you criticise modern gender theory or the bizarre idea that human biological sex is complex and hard to define, you will inevitably be referred to an authoritative-sounding article, packed with data and infographics, like this one in Scientific American.

While I write from the centre-right, the same fate awaits those who ask difficult questions from the left.

This phenomenon has no doubt existed for millennia: the entire priestly class of Christendom cruelly mocked doubters of the existence of God during the Medieval and Renaissance eras – and gleefully enforced penalties against them that were far more intense than any ‘cancellation’ today. Worries about self-preservation aside, novel thinkers face a tough question whenever confronted with what the experts say: how can all of these very intelligent people be wrong? Surely it must be me who is wrong instead?

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/04/18/the-working-classes-are-a-volcano-waiting-to-erupt/

“What is clear is that neoliberalism, which once promised gains for all classes, now means for most people an inevitable diminishment of living standards in ways not widely seen since the 1940s. We do not know when or if the volcano will erupt, but the prospect of it erupting will be with us for the foreseeable future.”

Whatever the final outcome, the recent French elections have already revealed the comparative irrelevance of many elite concerns, from genderfluidity and racial injustice to the ever-present ‘climate catastrophe’. Instead, most voters in France and elsewhere are more concerned about soaring energy, food and housing costs. Many suspect that the cognitive elites, epitomised by President Emmanuel Macron, lack even the ambition to improve their living conditions.

The French elections reflect the essential political conflict of our time. On one side, there is a powerful alliance between the corporate oligarchy and the regulatory clerisy. On the other, there are two beleaguered and angry classes – the small-business owners and artisans, and the vast, largely unorganised service class. The small-business class generally tends to favour the populist right, whether in America, Australia or Europe. These people want the government out of their business and to be left alone. Meanwhile, workers tend towards the populist left, which promises to relieve their economic pain.

The common feature is the politics of anger and resentment. In the first round of the French elections, a majority voted either for Marine Le Pen and other rightist candidates, or for the old Trotskyist warhorse Jean-Luc Mélenchon and other candidates of the hard left. The establishment parties, like the centre-left Parti Socialiste and the Gaullist Républicains, were left way behind. The ultra-green Parti Socialiste mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, won less than two per cent – a pathetic performance from the onetime ruling party. Intriguingly, voters under 35 went first for Mélenchon and then Le Pen, leaving the technocrat Macron in dismal third place among the young. Macron only won decisively among voters over 60.