Readers of the print edition of the Australian today will notice that the Higher Ed supplement has published an edited version of Macquarie academic Drew Fraser’s now notorious article - which Deakin V-C Sally Walker directed Deakin Law Review editor James McConvill not to publish for legal reasons, as she was advised it constituted racial vilification. The Australian also carries commentary by Macquarie Uni law academic Simon Rice, who argues that there is no explicit case law on the exemption for academic purposes in the relevant legislation.
The Oz seems to be throwing down the gauntlet for someone to sue them for publishing it.
Given that the allegedly scholarly article contains material such as the quote below - is this a responsible action by the newspaper?
Given the relentless and revolutionary assault on their historic national identity, white Australians now face a life-or-death struggle to preserve their homeland. Whether effective resistance to their displacement and dispossession can be mounted is another question. Unlike other racial, ethnic or religious groups well-equipped to practice the politics of identity, white Australians lack a strong, cohesive sense of ethnic solidarity.
Disgraceful, and Deakin Law Review’s actions in defending this vile and inflammatory hate speech as scholarly research also deserve condemnation in the strongest terms.
Elsewhere: Rob Corr tears apart the academic credibility of Fraser’s article at Redrag. Is it wrong to wish on space hardware? tracks Fraser’s connections with fascist groups. Debate continues at Catallaxy, Quiggin, Redrag and Cut Price Commentariat.
Update: And Liam challenges DLR Editor McConvill to comment, now that Fraser’s article is out in the open.
A newspaper editor at least has an excuse to green-light racist tripe like that and risk the lawyers. It’ll sell a lot of copies of the Australian.
What do the referees and editors of the DLR have to say for themselves?
I dunno, publishing in the Oz could at least disabuse more people of the notion he’s just a run of the mill tory whose genuine scientific research is being trampled by the PC police. Let everyone see what he’s really all about.
What, exactly, is wrong with that quote?
EP, if you can’t work it out, that’s a worry. As Rob points out, when Fraser writes “a life and death struggle” he means it literally - he’s calling for racist violence. I hope you’re not joining the white supremacist crowd.
EP white Australian’s aren’t losing anything and don’t have to defend their homeland. Unlike some seem to think, we aren’t at war. Personally I am very comfortable with my identity as a white Australian. I know when I’ve got it good.
Given the relentless and revolutionary assault on their historic national identity, white Australians now face a life-or-death struggle to preserve their homeland.
Kerrrist! I usually stay away from this nutso stuff and arguments relating thereto. But … Kerrrist, back to the 1930s, and a well-known country with some expansionist ideas in Europe.
Mark, I agree with your post, but I’m confused as to why you think we shouldn’t be giving the Latham diaries airtime, but we should be giving oxygen to crackpot theories about race.
EP,
Don’t the allusions to some non-existent white ‘homeland’ concern you? Of course, at a minimum there is the outrageous misuse of the noun ‘practice’.
EP: it’s what comes next that’s scary. It’s a call for “white revolution,” to impose a new ruling class on Australia. A Patriot King, no less!
One quibble Rob: a new ruling class? Since when haven’t the ruling class been white?
I haven’t read the whole article yet.
But the cited paragraph seems no more extreme than some of the things said by Aboriginal activists in Australia.
It seems inconsistent that one should be condemned and not the other.
Try this section out EP.
I haven’t read anything yet literacy wasn’t essential to get through school!
As a rule I don’t give a toss what anyone says about anything as long it isn’t defamatory.
The scholary input is a reflection of the editor I would have thought.
Kate: he believes that the current ruling class don’t sufficiently appreciate the threat posed by the “rising tide of colour”, and it will take a miracle and a Patriot King to save us.
I don’t see any advocacy of violence in any of those quotes.
Fraser’s piece on Asians at universities, earlier quoted by David Soon, did advocate racial violence and I condemn that.
However, so far there isn’t any discernible call for violence in the quotes from the current article (which I still haven’t read).
I don’t see this as any worse than Maoris or Fijians claiming their own right to ethnic distinction and self-determination — not that I support either of those anti-democratic causes.
Provided it is sought after by democratic means, I don’t see what is so outrageous about the concept of “the restoration of a ruling class rooted in the reinvigorated folkways of an authentically Anglo-American civic patriotism, a ruling class re-attached to the history and destiny of its own people”.
If Maoris and Aborigines can have their own political parties, why can’t Anglos?
Disclaimer: I am not Anglo-Saxon.
Well, “life-or-death struggle” is rather… full on, doncha think?
EP, we Anglos (I am one) are the dominant culture. Turned on the TV recently? Looked at the parliament recently? Looked at the PM recently? We’re very well represented as it is.
Our culture is THE culture — everything is else effectively the ‘other’, and when you are ‘othered’ in such a way, that fact becomes integral to your identity and your politics. When you aren’t faced daily with your own ‘otherness’ you don’t give it much thought.
And there are degrees of othering too. Non-anglo Europeans are less other than Asians. Asians are less other than Arabic people. Arabs are less other than black people. Etc etc.
True Naomi — the reality is we’re not very Anglo at all, even though the dominant culture has an Anglo face.
EP, it is impossible to separate his article from his support for racial violence. On the internet, he’s free to speak his mind, but when he submits an article for publication in a mainstream journal, he needs to tone it down. Nonetheless, terms like “life-and-death struggle” are code words, and his claim that “Only time will tell whether and how any such constitutional reformation could take place” is an obvious hint that a white revolution might become necessary.
Yeah, I guess I shouldn’t choose David Fraser as the poster-boy for the points I want to make.
I’m more interested in cultural politics than racial politics. I think Anglo-American culture is one of the best there is, and that it can and should be partaken in by people of other ethnicities.
I also think there is a great deal of racial and cultural vilification directed at Anglos and their culture, often by members of that culture itself. Such vilification should be recognised as morally equivalent to the vilification of any other ethnicity or culture, and treated accordingly.
What I really don’t like is the double standard that it’s wrong to criticise “other” cultures or races, but acceptable to criticise “white” cultures or races. I’d like to see some consistency.
The reason why many of us Anglos criticise our own culture is because it’s our own culture. It’s like that thing where you can pick on your family but no-one else can?
Also, if we can’t point out the flaws in our own society, what right have we to point out the flaws in anyone elses? It’s a bit of a ‘glass houses’ situtation.
Crikey there is a seperate party for maoried couples.
I would have voted for them in the last election!
Sure, but non-Anglos are also allowed to criticise Anglo culture — yet when an Anglo criticises non-Anglo culture, it’s condemned as “racism” or “xenophobia”.
White radio hosts have been penalised by the HREOC for making disparaging remarks about Aborigines. Yet Aboriginal activists have vilified whites and called for racial violence, without a peep of complaint from the HREOC.
It’s a double standard.
actually the worst comment I heard was from the late charlie Perkins to the parrot on 2UE but because he was black and the parrot white no-one said a thing!
Mocking and hating the dominant culture is allowable BECAUSE it’s the dominant culture, and it’s a form of resistance against that culture.
If I mock or otherwise say I hate Aboriginal people I’m resisting what exactly? In no way am I oppressed by Aboriginal people. Or Asian people. Or whatever. Despite some people’s arguments to the contrary. (I’m looking at Fraser here).
Kicking those below you is the usual practise in any heirarchical system. Kicking up is a form of resistance. You may not agree with it, but that’s what it is.
BTW I’m not advocating violence or whatever. I’m a bit of a pacifist but I’m pointing out that repressed groups often have a right to be very, very angry with the dominant culture.
Hang on, racism is OK so long as it can be characterised as resistance against the dominant race or culture? Come on Kate, you know you don’t mean that.
It’s like hating a football club because they’re succesful. No point hating the Western Bulldogs….
Well ab, it depends on what your idea of racism is. If it means disliking someone on the basis of colour, then yes, that is regrettable and not to be condoned or promoted.
The place where racism really becomes execrable, though, is when that dislike/hatred becomes action. Now I detest all racial violence, whether it’s ‘cos a bunch of Kooris beat up a white boy or a bunch of skippies beating up on a black kid or whatever the scenario would be. However, it is surely far more important to rail against the systemic, institutionalised racial biases in a society, then the personal, unexpressed ones.
I don;t know if that what Kate was saying, but, it’s what I was thinking.
Well, I’m with Senator Bulworth in advocating a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction.
But don’t the powers-that-be get away with the institutionalised biases precisely because the unexpressed personal ones exist? You can’t have one without the other for any singificant period of time.
You’re reaching, I think, Kate. Mocking cultures is a productive and worthwhile experience for all concerned, especially where the mocker and mocked are the same person, and the funnier the better. Hating cultures, quite a different thing, is a fundamentally unproductive activity which should be stopped in kindergarten or before.
Calling for dominant ruling classes based on race—as Fraser does—is just wierd, wierd shit.
ab, I’m not saying I agree or that I think it’s okay for people to be racist.
I am saying that on some level I get it and I do think it’s more acceptable (in some ways) for a black person to say “whites are a bunch of idiots” than it is for a white person to say “blacks are a bunch of idiots”. It is still a racist comment, but in the end it’s all about POWER and who holds it.
Racism and discrimination are not just about disliking someone based on the colour of their skin. In most cases, racism and discrimination involves a powerful group oppressing a less powerful group. Therefore, if the less spowerful group practises some forms of the opression against the more powerful group, it can be a legitimate form of resistance.
For instance, for many years bars and pubs and so on were whites only. Now, if a bar or pub suddenly became black only it would be discriminatory, but would it have the same meaning given the power relationships between black people and white people in our society? It doesn’t mean I think having black only bars is a good idea, but that the power relationships complicate matters.
Look, I’m of the opinion everyone should just get along. I don’t think black people hating white people solves anything. Or vice versa. Wouldn’t it be nice to all sit around holding hands?
But it’s easy for me to say that, isn’t it, because I’m white and life’s mostly quite good for me.
And I don’t condone violence of any sort at all. I’m a pacifist and that’s what being a pacifist is all about.
Yes, Liam, I see what you’re saying. Hating people is counter-productive and a waste of energy IMHO, I agree.
But can you see what I’m trying to get at when it comes to power? No?
Definitely, Kate. And the best arguments on this subject are usually illustrated with an ethnic joke. This one’s a famous Austrian one from before WWI.
A man writes to the Viennese Jewish newspaper to cancel his subscription. The editors write back, asking politely whether there was any reason he didn’t want to support the community press? The man responds in a letter that says:
Boom tish. (Is it sad that my jokes revolve around the history of ethnic media?)
Oh look, even I’m not sure right now what point I’m trying to make. Feel free to rip into me, all and sundry.
I do see your point Kate. However my previous comment to that effect has been moderated—even the spaminator hates my humour. If it lets Homercles’s puns through why not a perfectly good ethnic joke?
I’ve set it free, Liam.
Sorry, this is trite, off-thread and irrelevant - but what about an open thread on AFL Grand Final and Australian cricket team selections.
Racial vilification’s all very well, but where’s the discussion of the Barry Hall decision? What sort of blog are you running here?
(Techno-wonder note - I’m doing this from an internet booth in the Townsville city mall. I’ll never get over how wonderful that is!)
Naomi’s way ahead of you, Tony, at least for the football.
You’re on, Tony.
Ok, use it or lose it!
No. He’s an out-and-out racist with neo-Nazi links who’s calling for race war in Australia.
EP, it’s time to play a game the right love: denunciation.
Do you denounce Fraser without reservation?
Correct answer wins the $100,000 showcase and a new car.
I have been gazing in wonder and amusement at the expressions of horror and outrage released by mes amis vers la gauche over the publication of one, not very impressive, rant by a disgruntled academic. They remind me of similar expressions vented by the same folk about a decade ago, upon the arrival of a certain fish and chips shop proprietor onto the public scene.
One can only say, what comes around goes around. For decades the Cultural Wets (constructives, progressives, luvvies, whatever) have promoted, under the bogus guise of multicultural tolerance, a form of ethnic identity politics. Now Fraser and Hanson have provided the theory and practice of native identity politics and the Wets still cant believe whats happening.
The attempt, using the tactics of political correctness, to silence scientific analysis of the problems and prospects of ethnic diversity will lead to cranks like Fraser taking over the field. Then, to make matters worse the highranking Wets make a ham-fisted attempt to censor him, which only gives him free publicity.
Does anyone remember how many extra votes Hanson got after Maxine McKew’s rather unsisterly attempt at humiliating her? (Lots in 1998.) Does anyone remember how many extra votes Howard got after the Wets vented their Howard-hating spleen? (Lots in 2001.)
There must be some kind of political law that regulates such cycles. The elites thumb their noses at the populus. Until some ratbag rabble rouser rises up from the ruck and bites them on the bum.
Thus the elitist cultural revolution (1974-95) that promoted minority ethnicity eventually provoked a populist cultural reaction (1996-200?) that promoted majority ethnicity. The same thing is happening the whole world over, New Zealand and Germany are only the contemporary examples.
Listen up, dear Wets: you will have to lift your game if you want to maintain an Open Society where people of all races obey rules that promote the common good.
This is not my pet obsession. It is fundamental to the way the advanced world is developing: globalization of all states towards a knowledge economy.
To make this work immigrants should be selected on the basis of utilitarian national interest. And settled on the basis of loyalty to the nation state and the morality of the Open Society.
This will keep native citizens remain relaxed and comfortable about new arrivals (good politics). And ethnic immigrants will learn to integrate into the new land (correct policy).
And that means abandoning the foolish, divisive and occasionally vicious politics of multiculturalism and ethnic identity politics. That way leads to sectarianism, sexism, racism on the part of the ethnics and natives ie national suicide.
Its not rocket science. It was how the Australian immigration program was run after White Australia finished and before the multicultural ethnic lobbying racket got its hooks into it. (Then the New Left started to move from class economic to clan ethnic politics.)
Fortunately Howard has more or less got the cultural policy settings about right - authorising multiracialism but constraining multiculturalism. Thus most Australians are now far more relaxed and comfortable about the settlement program than they were a decade ago.
Agree with Jack’s analysis. We’re not here to be the Centrelink for the world or indulge class warmongers their Sheik Omrans and the like.
Since you like specifics Bill Posters, would you like to cut your teeth on this one here http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,16674935-29280,00.html
Do you think Sartor should resign(I don’t). Presumably Kate thinks he should but Mundine shouldn’t if he had told Sartor to get his ‘white arse’ into gear.
I don’t play the denuciation game myself; I just set the questions for others.
Interesting example of backwards causation there Jack; the SMH reports in 2005 that a majority of Australians support the Government’s policy ‘of turning back all boats carrying asylum seekers and overwhelmingly believe the present level of immigration is “about right”‘ and thanks to that, in 2002 the Age was able to report that “Australians are far more supportive of immigration than they were a decade ago …”
Must be a black hole in the neighbourhood or something. I wonder how the astronomers missed it.
Shorter Jack Strocchi: Ha ha, there’s a Nazi in your university. Therefore, the Left is wrong, immigrants should integrate, and I’m relaxed and comfortable. But it isn’t my pet obsession, oh no…
Gummo Trotsky says: September 21st, 2005 at 6:48 pm
I think that Gummo Trotsky logic, rather than the arrow of time, has fallen into a black hole. A poll taken in 2005 reports public satisfaction with Howard’s alien intake policy. This is consistent with a poll taken in 2002 reporting public satisfaction with Howard’s alien intake policy.
As of 2005, Howard has not radically changed his stance on either immigration or assylum seekers since 2002. He still runs a pretty tight ship: allowing in multiracial immigrants if they are of any use to us, repelling assylum seekers if they fail to go through the proper channels and encouraging citizenship as a settlement policy. Therefore there is no contradiction between the 2005 and 2002 reports.
In fact Howard’s stance on assylum seekers (draconian) and immigration (utilitarian) has been the same since 1996. Which is exactly the moment when public confidence in the settlement program started to rise. Is that direction of causation clear enough?
liam hogan says: September 21st, 2005 at 6:55 pm
Thats not bad, given liam hogan’s pretty abysmal standards of debate. He forgot to mention my attempt to draw a parallel between Hanson, whose antics precipitated a resurgence in conservative populist practice, and Fraser, whose arguments may presage a resurgence in conservative elitist theory.
In both cases I predict(ed) that the attempt to demonise and censor crude and nasty messengers (Hanson, Fraser) would prevent some other useful messages from getting through (from the populus to the elites in the case of Hanson, from reputable scientific elites to cultural elites in the case of Fraser).
For the time being, Howard has citizenship policy under control, and I am fine with that. But if and when the Wets get back into office they had better watch their step. They have a unerring tendency to wander into political areas that are heavily seeded with ethnic landmines.
I stand by my general claim: in an era of globalization towards a common knowledge economy it is vital that elites come to grips with both the realities of ethnic diversity and the unifying principles governing an Open Society culture.
Three points, if I may.
1. Is it really too much to ask that on a thread about Andrew Fraser you try not to be so gleeful about the effects of a Nazi propagandist on public debate in Australia? Ta.
2. Fraser is not a member of any reputable scientific elite. I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. Are there reputable Nazi scientific elites around these days?
3. From the wikipedia article you cited:
Presumably the Open Society culture of which you’re so fond does in fact cater for minorities to maintain, within the bounds of the nation-state, their own heritage and culture. This is the point of multiculturalism. Are you in fact a liberal democrat or a nationalist majoritarian?
Ahhhh, the “wets, luvvies” discourse. Always make me piss myself laughing.
It is truly the modern delusion par excellence that the Right conceives of itself as “tough”. When, from where I sit, they’re just a bunch of lily-livered, frightened, subrational little school boys, fretting over imaginary bogeyman round every corner, turning the real achievements of our society to shit overnight in headless woosy panic over a few lunatics in caves. Or *terribly worried* that our wealthy, powerful nation is being “invaded” by a few asylum seekers, fleeing the very dictators they allegedly oppose.
Show some balls for God sake! Stand up for individual rights. Stand up for the rule of law. Stop surrendering every time a friggin video tape arrives. Those fruitloops must piss themselves laughing at your spineless capitulations.
Fraser’s article is clearly a load of shite; five minutes of Googling can find ample evidence to completely contradict some of his supposed scientific evidence. Shame on any peer-reviewed journal that would publish work so error-laden.
However, I have to strongly disagree with anyone who argues that using the instrument of criminal law to shut up even a racist idiot like Fraser is a good idea. Do you want the right calling for the prosecution of, say, Peter Singer for inciting violence on the basis that he has advocated legalising infantcide? Then maybe some anti-war academics, perhaps, for sedition?
It is my strong belief that forcing racists to grizzle privately to each other just plays into their conspiracy theory mindset; far better, instead, to apply the full force of our collective logic to their fallacious arguments. Surely we’re not afraid of losing the argument? If Fraser is the best they can do there’s not much to worry about.
liam hogan says: September 21st, 2005 at 7:47 pm
That is a lie, and pretty bald-faced even by liam hogan’s depraved standards of discourse. Although, more charitably, it could be simple intellectual confusion. Its always agood idea to read what someone says before one criticises it. Its also important to learn to read first.
I did not become “gleeful about the effects of a Nazi propagandist on public debate in Australia”. Pr Q published a Fraser-critical blog, partly on the strength of my message, it is fair and reasonable to assume I was also critical of Fraser.
In fact I have repeatedly said, in this and other forums, that I disagree with Fraser’s scientific analyses and his policy precriptions. In the comments section Jack Strocchi criticised the substance of Fraser’s actual intervention, saying I rejected a genetic determinist science and a Caucasian chauvinist politics:
But I gather fair and reasonable are not liam hogans strong points.
I am amused by the fact the Wets have fashioned a self-created pickle in this issue, which has the potential to cause a major blowback. What I said was:
My amusement at Wet discomfiture over their exposed hypocrisy and iniquity in the whole field of cultural policy. I will spell it out for liam hogan, to give him less opportunity for mendacious paraphrase:
1. The Wets claim to be preeminent defenders of free speech, except when it does not suit them. (What metteleuropean political movement of the mid-20th C does that remind me of?)
2. The Wets attempt to censor a politically incorrect expression will exert a chilling effect on free speech. This will leave the field open to cranks and deter more scientificly reputable analysts from making a contribution to the debate. It has also made a sort of martyr, or at least notoriety, of Fraser, which was his intended purpose. This is what helped Hanson.
3. The Wets partial bungling of ethnic settlement policy (from the late seventies through early nineties) has created a self-inflicted wound on the Australian body politic, which has made it more difficult than otherwise would have been to settle ethnics. It is a rich irony that Howard has more or less repaired the damage the Wets have done to their ostensible project.
I must say I enjoyed rubbing all this in. The Wets have made most of this mess themsleves, they have only themselves to blame.
Liam Hogan is sure at what I am getting at, alright. He is just playing the hackneyed game of asserting his opposition to Nazis and insinuating that his opponents are Nazis. I believe that is a Godwin’s law violation, which means automatic loss of the debate.
I did not say Fraser was a “member of a reputable scientific elite”. I said he was a “crank”. I used the phrase “from reputable scientific elites to cultural elites in the case of Fraser” to contrast messages sent by “reputable scientists” to those sent by (non-reputable) Fraser. This might have been a little unclear, more likely liam hogan’s head is so full of rubbish that even Betrand Russell would have made heavy going getting the message through.
There are, however, reputable scientists who are currently studying the realities of ethnic differences, in both biological and sociological domains. And no, they are not “Nazis”. The list is distinguished and includes Arthur Hu, Richard Lynn, Linda Gottfredson, Gregory Cochran, Henry Harpending, Neil Risch; Marcus Feldman and Sarich & Miele.
I am tempted to add the names Charles Murray, Hans Eysenck and Arthur Jensen. But that might get me marched off to a pee-cee detention centre. So I will not succumb.
The thing about these people is that, far from being Nazis, an extremely high proportion of them are either Jewish, Asian or married to Asians. Funny old racists, they!
Not quite, if those “ethnic heritages and cultures” are inconsistent with the requirements (ideological norms - liberty, equality, community - and institutional practices - subsidiarity, transparency, accountability) of the Open Society.
And this is very often the case, if ethnics wish to maintain ancient vendettas over here. Or if they wish to practice customs which are sexist, racist or sectarian. No names, no pack drill.
In fact the point of multiculturalism has got nothing to do with maintaining “ethnic heritage”. It has got everything to do with providing a pork barrell for ethnic lobbies to roll. Especially in moribund party machines, as class economics gives way to clan ethnics as a form of special interest group politics. And to provide a never-ending source of bureaucratic sinecures for otherwise unemployable Arts graduates spawned by our debauched humanities faculties.
I am neither “liberal democrat” nor a “nationalist majoritarian”. I dislike ideological pigeonholes, and institutional straitjackets even more. I think that we should all work towards building the Open Society, whose ideals and rules I have already indicated.
This may require being an “unscrupulous opportunist” (Einstein) when it comes to politics and policy. Sometimes this may require being elitist - sometimes populist; sometimes regressive - sometimes progressive; sometimes conservative - sometimes constructive; sometimes authoritative - sometimes autonomonist; sometimes statist - sometimes capitalist; sometimes nationalist - sometimes globalist; sometimes individualist - sometimes communalist.
It all depends because its morality is relative, except the absolute Holy Grails of being smarter about the world and being nicer towards people.
I’d have thought personally that the threat of legal action was the least of the Deakin Vice-Chancellor’s problems. If it had been me I’d have pulled it whether or not there was a Racial Discrimination Act or not.
How good does your university’s reputation look when you, as VC, don’t step in to stop one of the house journals noisily brain-exploding?
“The Wets claim to be preeminent defenders of free speech, except when it does not suit them.”
I think you’ve missed the point Strop. He can publish any number of places. We’ll tear his shoddy ideas apart. Publish and be damned, I say.
But, please, lets not pass it off as peer-refereed ‘research’. Thats simply an abuse of academic freedom, not an exercise of a cherished liberty.
At least Deakin Uni had the good sense and human decency to can this crap, which is more than can be said for The Australian. And to add intellectual insult to racist vilification, they have the gall to publish huge slabs of this garbage in their Higher Education section!!!
I’d watch yer language here Senator. Yer could well trigger another Strocchi. And no one wants that except Jack.
Thanks for clarifying that Jack. Now perhaps you can explain how a survey taken in 2002 can be taken as an indication of current attitudes to immigration; to the extent that it justifies an inferential: “Thus most Australians are now far more relaxed and comfortable about the settlement program than they were a decade ago.”
If you’re looking for your logic, I think you’ll find it somewhere near the event horizon, a little to the right of mine.
Gummo Trotsky says: September 22nd, 2005 at 4:09 am
Oh for goodness sake! Because, as I said in comment # 52 above - and as would be taken for granted by anyone else not committed to nit-picking as a mode of logical validation:
Jack
Of your list, Arthur Hu isn’t a scientist. He’s some guy who collects statistics from the press and puts them on spreadsheets. Richard Lynn is the nutter who thinks the entire population of sub-saharan Africa has an average IQ that would put them in those homes for ’slow learners’. I suppose that’s how they survived the rigours of rainforests and civil wars for so long.
And trumpeting this old canard about some of these people being Jewish, Asian or married to Asians doesn’t cut it. Jews and Asians can be racist too - Chinese can be particularly racist against blacks and darker skinned peoples and there is a particular species of racist who thinks that Asians and Jews are ‘OK’ and blacks and Aborigines are ‘not OK’ because the latter are subversive and troublesome, whereas the former can be expected to be compliant and conform. Sorry but I don’t care for the patronage of such people.
Lefty Elitist says: September 21st, 2005 at 11:58 pm
Oh, please! In about two hours down the local uni library I could find a hundred, a thousand, articles in “peer-reviewed journals” that are equal to, or below, in intellectual value to the stuff put out by Fraser. Mostly these articles are consigned “to the Dustbin of History” (a remark no doubt coined by a disgruntled academic!).
Now the Wets come accross an unreconstructed promoter of the White Australia Policy (Fraser is not a “Nazi”, Curtin, Chiffley and Calwell were all WAP’s and were all resolute anti-Nazis), which they find offensive. But they cannot ban on public health, safety or vilification grounds.
So they cite their high-minded intellectual scruples about academic standards as justification for bringing down the axe. This in the era of post-modernism, which is defined by a complete collapse in academic standards in the humanities. Give me a break! I am splitting my sides laughing.
The real reason why Wets are suddenly all up in arms about academic standards in this case is because of the frankly racist arguments, and national chauvinist politics, in this article. But Wets have tolerated “classist” arguments, and communist politics, on campus for generations. With barely a squeak of protest, let alone a howl of outrage.
In fact, a good many of those self-same Wets, in the Cold War era, went in for a bit of class warring themselves. And Soviet sympathising. Did that earn them a quantum of shame? Not on your nellie! They managed to get published, and even lauded, for their efforts.
The Wets pay lip service to the ideal of free speech. But when it comes to the crunch they resort to bureaucratic legalisms - commercial-in-confidence, academic standards, inaappropriate peer-review - in order to find a way to chill the speech that they find offensive. That is a soft-core form of Stalinism - a beautiful looking constitutional principle (free speech) gutted in practice by a nasty bureaucracy (wrong speech).
Foot Note: I am a self-confessed cultural conservative. I have to, practically everytime I save pixels to file, endure some ill dill spouting malice and nonsense in my direction. I rarely complain, preferring to use rational techniques - facts and logic - to make mincemeat of my opponent. This is the reason for the inordinate length of my post - garbage disposal is a time consuming business.
Why don’t the Wets try the facts-logic form of response, instead of “point and splutter” or “outright ban”? They might learn something.
“The Dustbin Of History” coined by a disgruntled academic? Hardly. Google it and you might be surprised who you find at the end of it.
What Jason said. You’re only embarrassing yourself.
As with Jason, not from my experience, and which groups did they find to have higher intelligence?
And on Sarich and Miele, for example, as a fairly snug, on topic, description:
Intellectual turds Jack, can’t stack ‘em can’t polish them.
“I rarely complain preferring to use rational techniques - facts and logic - to make mincemeat of my opposition”.
Plus a few techniques that are nowhere near the rational discourse ball park such as:
Coining your own jargon - such as the the pejorative “Wets” you’ve employed consistently when referring to Fraser’s critics in this thread. Pure humpty-dumptyism, as your extended diatribe on the sins of past generations of Wets - such as Soviet sympathising - demonstrates. Invent your own language, it’s a killer debating technique, as long as you keep your meaning one step in front of the readers.
Invoking “Godwin’s Law” to award yourself “victory” in the debate, ignoring the fact that Godwin’s Law originated as an empirical, positivist observation on what happens to on-line discussions once the Third Reich was mentioned.
The obligatory side-swipe at post-modernism and the crap state of the modern academy;
The ad-hominem argument that the real motivation of the “Wets” has nothing to do with any genuine principle, followed by a direct insult “The Wets pay lip service to free speech”.
Whiney footnotes about how much crap you have to put up with because of your self-confessed cultural conservatism.
Rational? Factual? Logical? My arse.
So, you reckon Fraser isn’t a Nazi, just a dyed in the wool White Australia Policy supporter like Curtin, Chiffley and Calwell. Have you actually taken a look at Fraser’s article Jack? He nails his colours to the mast pretty early, in his introduction:
… since the end of the Second World War a strange alliance of Communists, Christian churches, ethnic lobbies and other pressure groups working through the corporate sector and within the centralised apparatus of state power set out deliberately to flood the Anglo-Australian homeland with a polyglot mass of Third World immigrants.
Chief among the ideological weapons deployed in that campaign have been the interwoven myths of equality and universal human rights [4]. The official ideology of the globalist regime has been enshrined in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
Got that? Equality is a myth, propagated by a sinister conspiracy out to flood the Anglo-Aussie homeland with immigrants. So is the notion of universal human rights. It doesn’t sound like Fraser would be a big fan of your vision of the open society, does it?
Now skip forward to the conclusion, which I’ll precis: ordinary Aussies don’t have a “strong, cohesive sense of ethnic solidarity”; as a consequence there’s no way to stem he tide through democratic means. They need a new ruling class to protect their ethnic identity. Fraser might not be a Nazi but he’s sure as hell no democrat; let’s settle on Fascist as an appropriate compromise.
I don’t need a couple of hours in a uni library to find material of equal caliber to this; A Google for Mein Kampf will get it in less than a minute.
Incidentally, what’s your high-minded (if culturally conservative) reason for that last spray at “the Wets”? A term I’d strongly suggest you drop until you’re prepared to commit yourself to giving it some identifiable public meaning.
Jason Soon says: September 22nd, 2005 at 9:14 am
No. Arthur Hu’s resume records that he is a computer scientist - a soft-ware designer and engineer, educated at MIT. He is also teachs of computer science at various colleges.
He has published many fair and reasonable articles in decent magazines on the explosive topic of ethnic diversity. Thats not peer-reviewed in a scholarly journal. But its a good start.
His statistical compilations show that he is at least interested in data, rather than “point and splutter”, modes of analysis. That will pass for “scientist” in my book.
Richard Lynn is a Professor of Psychology has published peer-reviewed articles in Nature and the British Journal of Psychology. Lynn’s bio records some of his scientific achievements:
His web page indicates that he published pathbreaking research into the Flynn effect, which proves he is not a hard-core genetic determinist. I have strong reservations about Lynn’s theories co-relating ethnic IQ to national economic performance. This is because human beings are complex systems where faulty (nurturally/culturally) “environed works” can do great damage to performance, whatever the state of the (naturally) “endowed spanner”.
This is particulalry true in regard to the sub-saharan African regions where poor nurture (foul water, malnutrition) and bad culture (kleptocratic tribalisers at nation state level, low parental investment at household level) are the strongest retardants of economic progress. We do not, as yet, have an empirically grounded theory of the natural (molecular genetic) factors involved in expression of human intelligence.
Still, it is an unavoidable fact that IQ performance is important for economic progress. It is the reason that so many gates to professional advancement are kept by the IQ testers. So any measures that could improve the intellectual peformance of people who are in the process of catching up would be useful. But I feel that IQ-obsessed cultural elites would rather die than admit to their dirty little secret in public.
No doubt everyone can be a little bit racist, at times. But it is oxymoronic to denounce X as a racist when X marries a person of a different - purportedly “inferior” - race. Racial classification is a function of sexual selection. Exogamy is the surest proof of non-racism - what are you going to believe, politically correct boilerplate or evidence of ones own ‘lyin eyes?
Personally I distrust people who are always bandying around the term “racist”. In my experience these are exactly the kind of people to freeze up and radiate the “funniest vibes” when confronted with an actual and existing person of another race.
Jack Strocchi has dominated the debate in this thread.
Only old Gummo has even tried to refute his points — a good effort, though still stuck with the ineffectual “my opponents are Nazis” argument.
Game, set and match to Strocchi.
“good many of those self-same Wets, in the Cold War era, went in for a bit of class warring themselves. And Soviet sympathising. ”
Who the hell are these Wets you keep referring to, Jack? Do any of them in fact overlap with the people you’re addressing like LE or Liam Hogan? I generally agree with these mythical Wets everytime I get into a debate which you’re in and I’ve had 2 papers published by the CIS, spoken at a HR Nicholls Society conference, and attended countless CIS functions. I’ve got more hard-right credentials than you’ll ever have, Mr Crank. Red-baiting coming from the guy who thinks that the financial services sector doesn’t perform a useful economic function is just pure chutzpah.
“The Wets pay lip service to the ideal of free speech. But when it comes to the crunch they resort to bureaucratic legalisms - commercial-in-confidence, academic standards, inaappropriate peer-review - in order to find a way to chill the speech that they find offensive.”
Well that IS the point, Jack. Finally you get it. I for one am opposed to vilification laws and I’ve made it clear on Catallaxy many times. And as I’ve said in a similar debate on Catallaxy, it‚Äôs not clear whether Deakin was citing the vilification law as a reason for pulling the article only in order to save face or because it was sufficiently deterred by the law, given that there is an academic exemption. Most people agree that the only reason Fraser could have had a forum in an academic journal is because of lax standards of peer review. As per above its unclear whether but for the vilification law, Fraser would still have this forum or the VC overruled publication because it was piss poor shite and was too embarassed to say so.
So your argument boils down to - Andrew Fraser and every other crank has the right to have peer review standards dropped in any academic journal just so they can be published.
“..when it comes to the crunch they resort to bureaucratic legalisms - commercial-in-confidence, academic standards, inaappropriate peer-review - in order to find a way to chill the speech that they find offensive.”
Strop - you forgot “national security” & “operational reasons”.
“Jack Strocchi has dominated the debate in this thread”.
That’s for sure - check the word count. He’s got a real eye for quantity.
“Game, set and match”.
Thanks EP. You were, of course, our preferred choice of umpire in a left/ right stoush…