I just thought that should have a bit of space around it to encourage a mood of contemplation.

That is all.

Oh believe us Jack, we all see the humour in what you’re doing. Maybe one day, you will too.

Self-serving praise is no praise at all. This is one of the many bits of mother’s wisdom that Nabakov has chosen to forget.

I can feel some sympathy for people who took the pee-cee, po-mo, multi-culti line seriously enough in the first place. We are all entitled to the follies of youth.

But people who are still committed to defending these silly ideas into their middle-age, after world-historical evidence and scientific theory have reduced this world view to a smoking ruin, are beyond parody.

Well you’re not giving us much of the substantiative in the first place are you?. For someone that’s always denouncing intellectual and cultural elites, you’re very fond of using lotsa big words to say very little.

Odd, usually the criticism is I have packed in too much substance. My commentary is usually filled with links, facts and quotes, which I usually try to tie into a more general theory. I may draw the wrong conclusions, and be long-winded, but this not being insubstantive.

The artificers and spin-doctors of pee-cee, po-mo and multi-culti are the very last people who should be accusing others of misusing big words.

People have been throwing racial and religious riots, often commingled with turf wars, for thousands of years. Yet all you do is labouredly frame a few recent examples that are incredibly mild by historical standards as proof of the utter failure of some policy.

The London Bombings and Paris Burnings are “incredibly mild by historical standards�? I suppose they are compared to the Holocaust. But this is another example of cultural politickers defining success down.

Also, encouraging ethnic (ie racial and religious) identity politics increases the probability of “racial and religious riots�. Is this what cultural professionals and cultural politicals really want?

Then there is the growth of ethnic underclass caused by bad immigration selection and settlement policies.

And lets not forget the massive decline in the ALP, which has gone from an economic class to an ethnic cult party. Which has empowered the upper class whilst consolidating the retrogression of several ethnic cultures.

Yes, nothing to see here folks. Just move on.

A policy you only seem capable of defining in terms of this weird little theory you’ve invented to drive your feverish attempts to be taken seriously as some kinda online pundit.

My [!] “weird little theory� – the socio-biological theory of culture (ie Darwin) and conservative critique of cultural constructivism (ie Burke) – lives or dies by the evidence, not my ego’s needs. So far, going by grass roots trends and cutting edge science, it looks like I am on the money. If that helps me “be taken seriously as some kinda online pundit� then it only seems fair.

By contrast I could point to any number of liberal intellectuals and elected officials who are now having second thoughts about the kind of intellectual tripe they were served up at uni and swallowed without compunction. I never cease to be amazed at the weakness of Nabakov’s intellectual gag reflex.

Combined with your blatant self-adoration, it makes for a spectacle that would be funny if it weren’t so embarrassing and embarrassing if it weren’t so funny.

I thought my spasms of self-adoration were fairly subtle. It’s a fact that when I am wrong I correct myself. This is not the sort of behaviour typical of a “blatant self-adorer�. Perhaps Nabakov would care to supply some evidence of the more blatant instances. And, while he is at it, point to examples of his modest and humble self-criticism.

“last refuge of the insubstantive�

Well you’re not giving us much of the substantiative in the first place are you?. For someone that’s always denouncing intellectual and cultural elites, you’re very fond of using lotsa big words to say very little.

People have been throwing racial and religious riots, often commingled with turf wars, for thousands of years. Yet all you do is labouredly frame a few recent examples that are incredibly mild by historical standards as proof of the utter failure of some policy. A policy you only seem capable of defining in terms of this weird little theory you’ve invented to drive your feverish attempts to be taken seriously as some kinda online pundit.

Combined with your blatant self-adoration, it makes for a spectacle that would be funny if it weren’t so embarrassing and embarrassing if it weren’t so funny.

“And when the flamer “

I think your stumbling attempt at l’esprit de l’escalier missed a step there.

How true!

Fuck me, that’s the most mangled metaphor I’ve ever read. Ten points and a golf clap, Jack. On your argument: do us all a favour and read up on multiculturalism. Please.

See below. And don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs, especially rotten ones.

Nabakov on 15 February 2006 at 9:30 pm

And for someone with pretensions as a polemicist, you’re surely one piss poor writer honeychile. I haven’t laughed so much since Ma caught her metaphors in the mangle.

Still, look on the bright side. After that last effort you’re pretty much parody-proof I’d say.

Usage flames, like spelling flames, are kind of small and the last refuge of the insubstantive.

The vice is worse when the offending usage was blatantly tongue-in-cheek. And when the flamer

However, for the benefit of certain slow-witted, leaden-humoured and deadly-earnest commenters I will try and be more literal in the future. Meanwhile the last laugh is reserved for the one who is always saying “I told you so”.

Jeez, Jack, I see your unified theory of everything is still unstoppable, even by reality.

There is no shame in striving for empirically-grounded unifying theories. That is what a serious student ought to be doing instead of dabbling in vacuous theories, mindless fact-grubbing or tattling vain gossip.

I am not all that interested in “cultural theory” or multicultural policy per se. This stuff is too obviously “not even wrong” to warrant serious investigation.

I am certainly interested in getting at a true general theory of institutional organization and change (evolutionary socio-biology), quickly fashioning useful inventions (revolutionary technology) whilst trying to remember how our ancestors constructed and conserved moral individuals (“ethico-logyâ€?). These are fundamental questions. But “with-it” people seem to be obsessed with cultural frills.

What amazes me is that such people can make a laughing stock of themselves (to ordinary folk and cutting edge scientists) by riding an intellectual hobby-horse into an ideological dead-end. The Larva-Prodders should know better. That is why I come down so hard and so often on them on this issue.

But why have to many other well-meaning thoughtful people fallen for this con? The Culture War was revived by disaffected New Left ideologues at a loose end after the loss of the Class War and Cold War. They at least had an excuse since an agitator wanting to move units in a slump needs a volatile constituency. And unmeltable ethnics are nothing if not excitable.

For some reason the recent onset of globalization has prompted cultural elites to try and replace two and a half-millenia of philosophy with a simple-minded exegesis of the week-end colour supplements. Are they serious or just trying to impress their friends?

There are far more important ideological fish to fry. Social institutions and technical inventions are becoming less accountable to human agents as the victors of the Class War continue to rake in the spoils. Meanwhile we are all aging and people are dying.

That was the same bloody point I made on this thread only 10 or so comments before you claimed I hadn’t considered it.

Perhaps, but I can be forgiven for being confused given that this statement seems to be at odds with the initial Nabakovian speculation.

the whole thing has been deliberately inflamed by various vested interests who see discrediting “Danish multiculturalism� (just typing that phrase makes me chuckle) as just a fringe benefit in a much bigger game.

This I took to be a reference to the theory that the cartoon brou-ha was whipped up by Danish national assimilators seeking to undermine Muslim multicultural “diversifiers”. No doubt two can play at that game. Nabakov believes that both natives and ethnics are deviously waging Culture War for the benefit of their various constituents.

Personally I would not lean too heavily on any conspiracy theory for either party. Cock-up rather than cover-up explains most political follies.

But if Nabakov’s bi-lateral conspiracy theories are true then this is a good reason for silly people to stop waging the politics of the Culture War. The more seriously one takes multiculturalism the worse the social outcomes, the more violent the fall-out and the more pressing problems go unaddressed.

In any case, persons currently “seeking to discredit multiculturalism” have a pretty light workload (apart from me). The routine functioning of seriously-taken “actual and existing” multiculturalism is turning into one long train-wreck. Rarely a week goes without some new outrage reminding us of the folly.

No need to engage in any political shenanigans. Just sit back, relax and wait for the next round of cultural fireworks. Then enjoy a “quiet chuckle” as the desperately struggling Larva-Prodders twist in the wind.

“Moreover the cartoon brouha was deliberately inflamed by… Muslim Imam’s playing to and inflaming their ethnic constituents…”

That was the same bloody point I made on this thread only 10 or so comments before you claimed I hadn’t considered it.

And for someone with pretensions as a polemicist, you’re surely one piss poor writer honeychile. I haven’t laughed so much since Ma caught her metaphors in the mangle.

Still, look on the bright side. After that last effort you’re pretty much parody-proof I’d say.

Jack, Denmark’s policy towards immigrants has been assimiliative—and therefore highly illiberal—at best. The demographic fact of polyethnicity is one thing; a workable multicultural policy is another.

Wrong. There is no such thing as a “workable multicultural policy”. There is only slow to fast train wrecks carrying that signage.

“It is the mark of fools to judge social systems by their formal constitutions.” Karl Marx

Liam is a fool to believe official governmental rhetoric.

Socio-biological evolution works more by selection than by assimilation. It is the quality and quantity of individuals selected for entry, rather than the type of civic education they are exposed to, that is more important in producing citizens. This thesis is stronger the more alien the originating culture.

By this criteria Denmark is more multicultural than Australia.

In any case, assimilation of sundry ethnics into a Open Society is by definition more liberal than appeasement of the more reactionary and divisive cultural rackets associated with some migrant communities. The US’s liberal experience during and after WWII is proof of the assimilation concept. The post Vietnam War experience of the UK, US and AUS more or less demonstrates the wrong-headedness of multiculturalism.

The only time multiculturalism “works” is when conservative governements co-opt ethnic religious and racial leaders to act as spies, trusties and counsellors to constrain hot-heads in their community community. This is not the basis for a peaceful and prosperous community.

Liam on 14 February 2006 at 12:52 pm

do us all a favour and read up on multiculturalism. Please.

Paul Sheehan and Alan Jones on average days have greater comprehension of cultural theory and better ideas for cultural policy than all the Larva-Prodder egg-heads rolled into one.

Liam, Mark Bahnisch, Nabakov et al are simply clueless about how cultures are organised and evolve. The po-mo theory of cultural organization has ruined whatever useful tips they might have picked up from Weber. And they are conspicuously leeery about applying Darwinian concepts towards cultural differentiation.

If I was a Larva-Prodder I would ask for a refund of the HECS fees paid on my Arts degree.

It looks like a case of property vs human life as the bank was in about to be torched.

There is no way of verifying this, but it seems quite possible.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know how the people who died in the rioting actually died? Where they bystanders, rioters killed by other rioters, killed by responding security forces, or non-Moslems deliberately targeted?

In this case killed by responding security forces, it seems, Bernice.

At least 400 people joined the latest protest, some of them burning vehicles and hurling stones at police who tried to block their way to a US military base, local police chief Abdul Bari said.

Police initially responded by firing into the air, but were forced to then fire into the crowd, Mr Bari said.

As well as demonstrators injured by gunfire, a number of Afghan soldiers and police were hurt by flying stones.

The first deaths in Afghanistan happened when the locals tried to overrun the Danish NATO post in a town near the NW border, from memory. The locals were said to have attacked with mortars. A unit of Brits was rushed there as reinforcements.

At least one died in Somalia, but I don’t know any details. I think most of the deaths were in Afghanistan.

His “hermeneutics of suspicion� watchdog is barking up the wrong tree, faux sophistry winding up as po naivety. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Fuck me, that’s the most mangled metaphor I’ve ever read. Ten points and a golf clap, Jack. On your argument: do us all a favour and read up on multiculturalism. Please.

And Jack, if you’d been following the timeline and checking the dance cards of the various players since the cartoons were first published, you’d realise the whole thing has been deliberately inflamed by various vested interests who see discrediting “Danish multiculturalism� (just typing that phrase makes me chuckle) as just a fringe benefit in a much bigger game.

Nabakov is right. But, hilariously, for all the wrong reasons.

His “hermeneutics of suspicion� watchdog is barking up the wrong tree, faux sophistry winding up as po naivety. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

In fact Danish intellectuals have been menaced by Islamist extremists for some time and decided to fight back. Moreover the cartoon brouha was deliberately inflamed by… Muslim Imam’s playing to and inflaming their ethnic constituents, not the so-called far-right wing Danish conservatives. The cartoon brouha was indeed “just a fringe benefit in a much bigger gameâ€?. One that Nabakov is obviously not match fit for.

“A conspiracy of silence speaks louder than words”

Dr. Winston O’Boogie

In any case all this silly conspiracy theory is beside the point. Divining individual intentions is for mind readers and therapists, occupations perhaps more suitable to some of our cultural elites. What counts are social consequences. The social consequences of instituting multiculturalism is the slow erosion of the Open Society - the institutional authority that guarantees individual autonomies. This is now obvious after the London Bombings, Paris Burnings, Sydney Rapings, Cronulla Bashings and Danish Bullying. This is evil and all those who support it are occasioning evil, whatever their self-righteous delusions or self-serving effusions.

Nabakov on 14 February 2006 at 12:43 am

Incidentally we’re not seeing much rioting in countries like Australia and the UK that have taken on multiculturalism (whatever the fuck it really is) as an official policy.

Correction. Nabakov is not seeing much rioting because he is, per usual, fixing the glass to his ideologically blind eye. This is an intellectual vice of Nabakov, not a virtue of multicultural policy.

Back in the real world we have seen any number of race riots and terrorism in (”w.t.*.i.r.i.”) multicultural US, UK and now AUS. Bradford Riots, London Bombings, West Sydney Hate Crimes, Cronulla Bashings, etc. Not to mention the Paris Burnings.

And so far the death toll is pretty pissweak compared to say the Gordon or Rodney King riots, or regular sub-continental escapades, all which were driven by racial and religious issues.

How typical of the incorrigible cultural theorist to brag about the (current) low death toll of their policy! We are not yet at Beirut or Sarajevo so everything is just fine and dandy. This is defining success down, don’t you think?

Reference to the US is meant as a defence of laissez faire migrant selection and settlement policies? Monoculturalists seek to defuse the inevitable conflicts that occur when people of different colours and creeds come into contact within the same jurisdiction. The only know way to do this is by following a conservative policy of national integration ie proper selection and settlement of ethnic immigrants. There are long periods of US history when it was not exactly the poster boy for this kind of policy. That goes a long way to explain the ferocity of the US’s racial and religious conflicts.

More generally, the blatant hypocrisy of the Cultural Wets is staggering. Imagine the liberal-Left hoo-ha if redneck Christian Evangelicals threatened to murder the editors of the New York Times or Hollywood producers every time they published another work ridiculing Christianity! Three cheers for the Danish government and its frothing at the mouth right wing coalition partners for finally sticking up for Open Society values.

Not to mention the intellectual stupidity and ideological perversity of their position. Contemporary cultural theory is grossly at odds with two and a half-millenia of Canonical philosophical thought about society, state and the individual. Who would you believe, Plato, Aristotle, Kant or…Al Grassby and Andrew Theophanous?

Moreover it is political poison for social democratic parties. The workers and battlers love the nation state not some cockamamie hi-falutin’ wank-fest of a theory and racket of a policy. That is why there is an outbreak of flag waving at this time. Or is this bleedin obvious fact beyond ones deconstructive powers to analyse?

“It takes an intellectual to believe that. The ordinary person would not be so stupid.”

George Orwell

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know how the people who died in the rioting actually died? Where they bystanders, rioters killed by other rioters, killed by responding security forces, or non-Moslems deliberately targeted?