The Eye Opener

Multiculturalism under attack – again

Leeds University Lecturer Frank Ellis featured on last Wednesday’s (8/3/06) BBC radio Five Live phone-in chaired by Victoria Derbyshire, the theme of which was whether or not Dr Ellis should be fired for expressing views that challenge the prevailing liberal orthodoxy.

Dr Ellis had dared to question the logic of multiculturalism in an interview he gave to Leeds Student, the Leeds University student newspaper, and in an article that he submitted to the same publication. And for his pains he’s had loony-left students and amongst others the local LibDem MP for Leeds North West Greg Mulholland calling for his head.

This is not the first high profile criticism of multiculturalism. Last year the Chairman of the CRE Trevor Phillips caused something of a stir by referring to it as divisive, but his solution of greater integration made his criticism more acceptable to the liberal elite. Phillips saw the problem of an increasingly fractured society as primarily cultural, and he argued that what was needed was a set of beliefs that everyone could subscribe to and which ‘would confirm what it was to be British’. Predictably he couched his ‘solution’ in liberal notions of ‘tolerance and understanding’ and by doing so he minimised the establishment’s outrage in response to his critique of one of the major tenets of the liberal faith.

The difference between Messrs Phillips and Ellis is that Dr Ellis gets to the crux of the problem whereas Trevor Phillips skates above it. Culture is a function of race, but then that’s not an avenue one would expect Trevor Phillips to go down.

Dr Ellis wrote(i), “Multiculturalism (multiracialism) is doomed to failure - and is failing - because it is based on the lie that all people, races and cultures are equal…” Of course Trevor Phillips makes no reference to the equality idea in his critique of multiculturalism because his whole raison d’etre is the defence of that idea – hence the essentially hollow ring to his argument; he talks about symptoms as if they are causes. The cause of the problem is not multiculturalism as Phillips would have us believe but the equality idea.

As Frank Ellis points out, this belief in equality, “… in the absence of any evidence for it is the psychology of political fanaticism… (and it) requires the same hatred and wilful refusal to confront evidence, logic, and history that characterised the individuals who believed that Stalin had built paradise on earth when in fact he had exterminated millions of so-called class enemies.” That’s what we face, fanatics in the guise of liberal do-gooders who seek to ruin careers and jail innocent people for having the temerity to ask awkward questions of their ridiculous beliefs.

Are you a racist?

Ms Derbyshire opened the phone in programme with the question, “Should a university lecturer be sacked for offending some of his students?”, and continued with an interview of Dr Ellis in which she homed in on his reference to The Bell Curve(ii) and his acceptance of the book’s findings, that Blacks have a lower average IQ than have Whites and Asians.

This was typical BBC stuff; disingenuous and deliberately missing the point. Instead of looking at the findings of the Bell Curve in the context of their implication for Britain as a multicultural (multiracial) society, which is what Dr Ellis’s article was essentially about, Ms Derbyshire ignored the big picture and concentrated instead on the ‘emotive’ aspect of it, that Blacks may be offended.

Far more important to Dr Ellis’s argument than the Bell Curve – which is over ten years old - was the more up to date work by “…the world’s two greatest experts on race and race differences, Professors Arthur Jensen and J. Philippe Rushton(iii) ,” a fact that Ms Derbyshire missed, but of course.

Ellisi, “Virtually all the data and conclusions presented by Rushton and Jensen attack and effectively destroy the comforting idea that all races are equal and that all differences in black and white educational outcomes are due to white racism or colonialism or any other ad hoc explanation, and that they can be eradicated if we just continue spending … One of the more astonishing findings reported on and analyzed at great length in their long article is the finding, first made at the end of the 1970s, of an average IQ of 70 for sub-Saharan Africa.”

The liberals, amongst whom we must include Ms Derbyshire and the BBC, are environmentalists in the sense that they explain away racial differences in terms of environment: “Black societies have not developed their own written languages and mathematics because Whites were nasty, the sun was too strong, and the ambient temperature was too high…” etc. This paradoxically ‘supremacist’ explanation concludes that the lack of Black achievement is everybody and everything else’s responsibility but not that of Blacks.

In order to assist Ms Derbyshire’s understanding, Dr Ellis spelled out his argument for her. He explained that the Bell Curve (and more recently the work of Rushton and Jensen) disproves the environmentalists’ explanation of racial differences, and that the proponents of that explanation are increasingly worried because its failure has profound implications for their idea of equality and for the multicultural (multiracial) society that they have built around it – hence their eagerness to silence dissent. Sadly the good doctor’s explanation fell on stony ground; the best our Vicky could come up with was, “I must ask you, are you a racist?” You gotta laugh!

But instead of going on the defensive, as people usually do when asked this meaningless question, Dr Ellis went on the attack and asked Victoria Derbyshire precisely what she meant by ‘racist’. Needless to say Ms Derbyshire wouldn’t commit herself and instead urged Dr Ellis to answer a question that she refused to define – “I asked first,” she said!

“The word racist is an ad hominem attack,” replied Dr Ellis, “whose sole purpose is to stifle debate.”

Propaganda as impartiality

This programme followed the usual BBC pattern and in the guise of impartiality the British Brainwashing Corporation showed itself up for what it has become, a propaganda vehicle for the liberal left establishment.

Dr Ellis’s argument is that Rushton and Jensen’s work confirms the existence of racial differences and thus a society based on racial equality (in other words racial sameness) is doomed to failure because it is based on a falsehood. Five Live ducked the issue and shifted the debate away from the implications that these findings have for multiculturalism (multiracialism) and instead focused on the issue of freedom of speech and on whether one should say things that Blacks and other minorities may not like. As Frank Ellis told Ms Derbyshire, “…the environmentalist argument is lost and its proponents are frightened,” and the BBC’s sleight of hand proves him right.

And in what can only be seen as a crass and patronising effort to convince listeners of its impartiality, the BBC had as its studio guests two people who on the face of it presented mutually exclusive viewpoints; one in favour of giving Dr Ellis his say, the other in favour of denying him it. But needless to say both set themselves against the notion of racial difference and thus conveniently avoided the central thrust of Frank Ellis’s argument. And as if this wasn’t bad enough, both guests were themselves minorities! Manira Mirza lecturer in multiculturalism at the University of Kent and Hanif Leylabi student union leader and member of the United Against Fascism organisation at Leeds University.

Lecturer Manira Mirza argued that the best way to counter Frank Ellis was with argument; by giving him his say his opponents are given the opportunity to defeat him and thus defeat racism. Somewhat surprisingly for a lecturer in the joys of diversity, Ms Mirza wasn’t sufficiently confident in her beliefs to counter Frank Ellis’s thesis with her own argument, preferring instead merely to state that everyone knew he was wrong anyway!

Student union leader Hanif Leylabi was more realistic in his approach. Members of UAF know that they can’t defeat the critics of multiculturalism (multiracialism) with “…evidence, logic, and history” and so they resort to terrorism and the “no platform” approach. They are defeated before they begin and so as you’d expect Leylabi and his ilk are in favour of silencing Dr Ellis.

The dozen or so phone-ins that appeared on the programme were split more or less 50: 50 along the lines of Mirza and Leylabi. But since they’d been carefully corralled by the BBC into discussing Frank Ellis’s argument in the context of the freedom of speech, the issue of race and multiculturalism (multiracialism) remained untouched. Such is the establishment’s faith in its own beliefs.

And Victoria Derbyshire dutifully played the game, jockeying between freedom of speech and the feelings of others yet ever careful to avoid the thorny issue. Sceptical Five Live listeners can’t help but be aware of the station’s pretence; whilst poking fun at the more extreme manifestations of political correctness it is nevertheless always mindful of its dictates. Frank Ellis writes , “PC offers a custom-made palliative to the traumatized utopians who have watched the Potemkin villages of socialism collapse before their eyes.” Political correctness is Five Live’s comfort blanket.


The end of equality

In private most non self deluding Whites are scornful of political correctness, doubtful about the alleged marvels of multiculturalism (multiracialism), and concerned about mass immigration. But of course in public the majority of these very same people, especially those whose livelihood depends on conformity, pay lip service to political correctness, celebrate diversity, and agree with the (alleged) ‘necessity’ of immigration.

This contrast between public and private opinion exists also in academia and in the media and, one suspects, even in establishment politics too. Publicly there is no such thing as race; racial differences are functions of social and environmental factors, IQ is culturally specific and therefore an inappropriate measure of intelligence for anyone other than middle class Whites in White society, and multiculturalism is still the ideal. Privately, well that’s a different matter.

Political correctness still rules the public arena, but behind its back, people are beginning to snigger. Ellis writes(iv), “The fundamental flaw in the psychology of PC is the belief that social and economic justice can be purchased by denying or hiding unpleasant facts…” It is head in the sand stuff; pretend that what you don’t like isn’t happening and, so liberal logic goes, it won’t happen. This is the politics of wishful thinking.

The problem is, once one becomes aware of the contradictions of political correctness, in other words of the equality idea, its credibility is shot - once and for all, and it’s only a matter of time before private opinion becomes public opinion. It can’t be stopped.

In fact it is already beginning to happen. Who would have predicted say just five years ago that the head of the CRE would question the logic of multiculturalism? What an astonishing about turn! Phillips did this not because he wanted to, but because he had to out of necessity; even he can see the contradictions of the multicultural society. The liberal world view is beginning to look like a circus hall of mirrors; people can’t help but comment on the distortions, because they are impossible to deny!

Five years ago who would have imagined that an academic of such politically incorrect credentials as Dr Frank Ellis would have been given air-time on BBC Five Live to argue that multiculturalism was a fraud because its foundation stone, the equality of man, has no basis in fact.

The BBC’s disingenuousness in its coverage of Dr Ellis’s argument hardly matters. It was only to be expected; the BBC is PC whereas Frank Ellis is non-PC. The important thing is that the BBC’s behaviour was counter productive - it added weight to what Frank Ellis was saying. Those that didn’t pick up on the BBC’s trickery either were not looking or preferred not to see. But in the case of the growing minority that is feeling increasingly uneasy at the direction British society (and the West) is taking the BBC’s lack of honesty merely legitimised its concern. And it is that growing minority that really matters; it is that the BBC and the political establishment are worried about.

The ground is shifting beneath the establishment’s feet; it has to move whether it wants to or not – otherwise it’ll fall over.

Notes

1. The original text of Dr Ellis’s article can be found here:

ii.‘The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life’ – 1994 by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray – notorious for its discussion of race and intelligence in chapters 13 and 14.

iii. J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur R. Jensen, ‘Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability’ – 2005 which summarises and analyses the findings on the subject over the last thirty years.

iv. http://www.investigatemagazine.com/apr3pc.htm