Fascist Multiculturalism Rears Its Head In England

Adolph Hitler's brand of fascism, and in fact much of American progressivism even through the Thirties, was built around notions of racial strength and purity. Jonah Goldberg traces this grouping tendency to the Sixties' race riots--specifically the violent black separatist movements, many of which were based on black racial supremacy--and today to the left wing's explicit use of racial politics to divide Americans into groups based on culture and race. Of paramount importance to them is that "white culture" not influence those of other ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds. Even at the large missions conference in Urbana, Missouri, one of my friends heard a talk about racial and ethnic justice, and how healing begins when we learn to take pride in our ethnic backgrounds; this notion, the fascistic undertones of which are obvious, is an obsession on the Left, and especially college campuses. Of course, this typically leaves white Christian males who buy into it still feeling a bit less than racial and ethnic pride--after all, when someone talks about "injustice," it's "his people" who are the offenders. As Jonah Goldberg put it, white men are the new Jews.

Sometimes this notion is revealed a bit more clearly--especially in nations without a Constitution to protect its citizens from intrusive government. So, as Allahpundit reports, a group of police officers in Britain accosted a pair of Christian ministers for dropping leaflets in a largely Muslim area and for talking to several young Asian men about Christ. From the original report: "He said we were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread our Christian message. He said we were committing a hate crime by telling the youths to leave Islam and said that he was going to take us to the police station." As Allah notes: "In America, as far as I know, hate crimes constitutionally can only be charged in connection with another criminal offense. You can’t be charged with hate; you can be charged with assault and have your sentence enhanced if they prove the assault was motivated by hate. Thoughtcrime + actual crime = hate crime, in other words. In the U.K., it sounds like they’re flirting with knocking out that pesky “actual crime” element and just going the whole nine Orwellian yards. " If you think he's being hyperbolic, read this article that Allahpundit also posts to. Orwell: Your version of tyranny, at least, will likely never reach American soil, but your homeland has begun to buy into it.

Set aside the question of whether you think that Christian missions are morally right. (Though I believe they are not merely right, but morally required.) Set aside your gut reactions about ministers speaking about their beliefs to those who hold other beliefs. There is, quite simply, no sense in which the government has the right to go about preventing people from sharing what they believe is true about the world.

But this is what happens when the law becomes a cultural and racial tool: Inevitably, it becomes a hammer with which to strike against whatever group is disfavored at the time. You can thank the Founding Fathers that we in America have the right--at least nominally, though not on most college campuses--to offend whomever we want, to have whatever opinions we want, and to debate about them with anyone we want. In the United Kingdom, such freedom of thought is on the wane.

Choose Your Oppressed Minority

One of the delightful features of the current Democratic primary is the battle between Democratic gender pandering and race pandering. Two columns today highlight the issue.

First, The New Republic's John Judis writes about implicit racism against blacks hurting Obama in the Democratic primary and the general election. Here's a bit of it:

What role, exactly, will that be? No one knows for sure, but the field of political psychology offers some clues. In recent years, scholars have been combining experimental findings with survey data to explain how race has remained a factor in American elections--even when politicians earnestly deny that it plays any part at all. In 2001, Princeton political scientist Tali Mendelberg summarized this research in a pathbreaking book, The Race Card. Her provocative analysis is hotly debated and far from conclusive; political psychology, after all, is not a hard science. Still, her ideas and those of other academics help to shed light on what has happened so far in the primaries and what might unfold once Obama wraps up the nomination. Their findings suggest that racism remains deeply embedded within the psyche of the American electorate--so deep that many voters may not even be aware of their own feelings on the subject. Yet, while political psychology offers a sobering sense of the difficulties that lie ahead for Obama, it also offers something else: lessons for how the country's first viable black presidential candidate might overcome the obstacles he faces.

You can read it yourself--though it's very long--but I can sum it up for you. Before 1970, there was explicit racism on bipartisan lines. After that, there was mostly only implicit racism all from Republicans...why, after all, did they oppose busing and affirmative action? Now, all Republican politicians that attempt to portray a Democratic opponent in a negative light are using racial code words to exploit voters' unconscious prejudices. Barack Obama will have a difficult time overcoming those Midwestern rednecks who don't even know they're racist. (By the way, how come those white blue-collar voters don't see how in-touch the Democrats are?) We've heard it all before, but this time it's backed up by university researchers whose tenured jobs are based entirely on the idea that blacks are systematically oppressed and prove it using experiments with severely flawed methodology and the useful recourse of calling your detractors racists.

What do the feminists have by way of response? Marie Cocco, writing for RealClearPolitics, decries the sexism that she says has ruined the Clinton campaign. She writes about all the things she won't miss, providing a hilarious litany of past anti-Hillary shenanigans. Then, this:

Most of all, I will not miss the silence.

I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven't uttered a word of public outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

Here's the gist of this shorter article: Pundits and politicians are using sexist images like a scolding mother or a nagging wife to exploit voters' implicit biases, and they're getting a pass for it. In fact, they're betraying Hillary Clinton, a distinguished stateshuman who has done a lot for make benefit of glorious party of Democrats. (Instead, her campaign is not success, and she will be execute.) The truth of the matter, of course, is that the Democrats are understandably sick of the Clintons' politics of personal destruction--a tactic which, unlike what Dems would have you believe, was perfected by the pair's machine during the Nineties, long before the name Monica Lewinsky became widely known. But the dark secret that the DNC doesn't want you to know is this: the Democrats have long based their tactics on pandering to demographic groups, and they think they can afford to offend women, but not blacks. They don't think feminists will riot at the convention, the way an Al Sharpton might. (Those racists! Or are they sexists?)

This is the true greatness of this primary season. Clinton and Obama barely differ in their policy stances. They're both richer-than-rich folks who grew up as children of privilege, now trying to use their gender and race identities to appeal to regular Americans. And, magically, it's tearing the Democratic party apart.

Here's to you, Operation Chaos.