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Wednesday 8 December 2010

SUB-RACISM: THE RETURN OF THE REPRESSED

Audio Version

by Colin Liddell


First of all, the dreaded R-word, "racism"! I am not going to spend this entire article shying away from it or going round it. Nor am I going to accept Leftist definitions of it; nor, for that matter, overly defensive Rightist interpretations. Stripped of its connotations and associations, I want it, for the purposes of this article, to simply mean the phenomenon of people consciously valuing and preferring their own race, rather than unconsciously. For this second possibility I have another word, "sub-racism" — the theme of this article.

Whether racial consciousness produces Auschwitzes or polite, well-managed immigration restrictions is entirely another matter. My own belief is that openly discussing race and our natural race-based feelings is the best way to avoid serious unpleasantness; while not to do so is more likely to cause such unpleasantness. Assuming that the Holocaust did in fact happen — I automatically refuse to accept any view of history that needs to be enforced by law — it seems possible that part of the savagery was driven by racial ambiguity, caused by the degree to which Jews in Germany had interwoven themselves in German society, while at the same time remaining a distinct group.

In the excesses of the Nazis is it not possible to detect the mania of self-purification so characteristic of witch hunts, political purges, inquisitions, and hygiene campaigns, rather than an attack on some alien "Other!? Perhaps a clearer understanding of who was a Jew and who was a German, and who controlled this and who controlled that, would have mitigated the brutality of the Holocaust when Germany was put through the grinder.

Turning from a historically-unique and emotionally-charged central European case, let us consider something much more ubiquitous—the Western Cosmopolitan State (WCS for short). Just to be clear, the examples are the USA, the UK, Germany, France, Canada, Australia, Sweden, and some smaller states. But there are also states that are only partially WC, like Italy.

The modern WCS is by necessity "anti-racist," complete with thought-crime laws and punishments, "affirmative action" discrimination, and an incessant flow of "anti-racist" propaganda. Every person reading this probably has a massive metaphorical box full of examples. If so feel free to add them to the comments board.

But the "anti-racist" nature of the WCS is not some transitional stage on the road to a loved-up, multicultural, race-blind paradise. It is a permanent power structure that must remain in place as long as the WCS exists.

Why such a counter-intuitive entity as the WCS should have come into existence often seems baffling. My best guess is that each WCS has unwittingly become a microcosm of the macrocosm of Globalism, something on which all these states are heavily reliant, although it doesn't seem to have yet affected Japan which is even more dependent on the global economy.

The low dependency ratio (the ratio between working and non-working people) that is characteristic of the most economically active states, no doubt also plays a part, as the WCS parasitically relies on mass immigration to "offset" the demographic damage caused by encouraging women to follow careers at the expense of family.

The phenomenon of the WCS may simply be the result of economic overdevelopment and the overextension of capitalism in the countries affected. But once again I have to turn aside from an interesting side issue to pursue my main point, which is the relationship between the WCS and the two forms of "racism" I have mentioned. But let the "anti-racist" nature of the WCS stand as conclusive proof of the ubiquity of the very thing it would hope to deny.

In their earlier stages of development, the WCSs allowed "racism," even when it took on a derogatory and insulting character. Looking at the UK, the example I am most familiar with, anybody watching BBC comedies and even children's programs from the 1970s and '80s might be shocked by the amount of blatant "racism" on offer from an organization that is now notorious for its extreme "political correctness" and pandering to immigrant populations and cultures.

When the BBC was racist.

This was because such "racism" presented no threat to the socio-economic system. Native Brits were an overwhelming majority, while most immigrants were still in the largely deferential and grateful first-generation stage. Indeed, such "racism" may even have helped the development of the WCS and made it easier by allowing people to harmlessly let off steam as the early stages kicked in. Still, as Britain's non-White population kept growing and expected more, and as the British middle classes sought a convenient way to reassert their moral dominance over a working class that had had the whip hand over them since WWII, the cult of multiculturalism and "anti-racism" was launched in earnest.

It was easy and, indeed, convenient for middle class Britons living in their suburbs to accept this cult. Their greater skill in saying the "right thing" and avoiding faux-pas, a characteristic which had allowed them to be portrayed as effete and mealy-mouthed by the cultural swing towards the British working class in the 1950s and '60s, now became an advantage again, while the British working class became increasingly confused, off-balance, and subdued. In the very popular 1990s comedy sketch show, The Fast Show, the working class Brummie character, always ended each sketch by saying "I'll Get Me Coat" after he had inevitably said the wrong thing again.

Although never about race, this gives a clear flavour of the social dynamic of British culture at the time. In more and more cases, the British working class felt just like that character as multiculturalism and its oppressive morality led them into one social faux-pas after another.

While the rise of "political correctness" in the UK has to be seen in the context of class politics, in the case of America it seems to have been powered by elements of its Christian culture—guilt over the "original sin" of slavery and a cringing deference to the Jews as the "People of the Bible," with the consequent acceptance of all their emotional and political baggage, including the "Holocaust" and the one-sided "anti-racism" it fuels. But, alas, the detailed ways in which WCSs develop is another fascinating subject area that can’t be gone into in great detail here.

As they become established, WCSs try to repress all conscious racial feeling, except, of course, that of the immigrant groups (or in the case of ex-European colonies that of the aboriginal inhabitants). Those who have not repressed their racial feelings are made to feel like freaks and outsiders, so that they will at least keep their feelings safely bottled up in their own private hell.

But those who successfully do repress their conscious "racism," do not walk hand-in-hand with the black, brown, yellow, and red sisters and brothers into some race-blind Nirvana. Instead they descend into the vast realm of the "sub-racist" — to use Freudian rhetoric — a vast, subterranean shadow land or an invisible empire that matches the surface world.

The evidence of "sub-racism" is everywhere. I have written about this in an earlier article at AltRight, but perhaps no clearer or more vivid example exists than the race maps of America that were published recently. Whether they do so consciously or unconsciously, people tend to act in ways that are "racist," gathering together in racial and cultural enclaves, largely associating with their own kind — whether at the country club, on Facebook, or in prison — and, given the chance, they will send their children to schools where they can be educated mainly with others from the same group. This is just the way the world works, as anybody not tied in knots by "political correctness" knows.

"Post-racial" America.
The great irony is that the only truly race-blind people likely to exist are those who live in racially homogenous societies, where they do not come into contact with other races. But the racial diversity that is imposed in the WCSs means that race is never forgotten. It is all around us, all the time. It is in the very air we breathe. But we are told to breathe silently and keep a secret that everybody knows. We must ignore the elephant in the room and even repress our perception of it until the elephant becomes invisible. This is the climate of "sub-racism."

But like so much in modern society, the existence of something as big as "sub-racism" also presents many opportunities for the entrepreneurial or attention-hungry. Playing to people's "sub-racism" is an instant ticket to get noticed, sell something, get a message across, or make a career.

If you still don't know what I mean, just ask yourself why is Kim Kardashian so much more famous than thousands of equally or more beautiful women? The answer, of course, is that she plays to America's "sub-racism" to get noticed. Her widely distributed sex-tape with Black singer Ray J and her relationship to Black sportsmen Reggie Bush and Miles Austin play the old game of activating racial jealousy (one of our women playing away from home!!!), but the dominant culture ensures that the "racism" that is being blatantly activated in this way is not allowed to surface, crystallize, or assume conscious or expressed form.

This kind of woman makes a career out of constantly prick-teasing every man around her just by the way she dresses and presents herself. But the conventions of society mean of course that most men play it cool, pretending not to be so interested in her. In the same way she prick teases our racial instincts. We feel the surge of aggression created by racial jealousy and the apparent invasion of our prerogative, but hide our feelings either by pretending that we don't mind or that she's not beautiful, or that she's not one of us. We may even transmute the essentially race-generated anger we feel into a ridiculous, prudish disapproval of her inability to stay faithful to one man (regardless of his race) with coded words like "skank." Other responses include, "yes, I do feel a bit racist about this, I better get some counselling or listen to more soul, jazz, or gospel": it all becomes a little too much "Kim Kardashian, how do I hate thee. Let me count the ways."

The test of whether sub-racism really does exist in this case is to consider how famous KK would be if Ray J and Reggie were White. No doubt she would just be another glitzy, forgotten groupie. The closest parallel to KK is the equally vapid and untalented Paris Hilton, but there the frisson is created by the idea of an upper-class heiress slumming it with down-at-heal Bohemian types. Frisson is the name of the game because, in a society where the mass of the people live in a state of zombified sensory overload, being able to stand out and get noticed is important.

The exploitation of sub-racism in culture is nothing new. Perhaps the most famous examples date from the 1980s, when Madonna consistently exploited it in her live shows and pop videos, like the well-known Like a Prayer, featuring a Black Jesus whose feet she then proceeds to kiss. The image of the White female pop singer surrounded by half-naked, gyrating Black dancers was one of the many attention-grabbing innovations she used to gain undying fame for her mediocre music in the first wave of MTV and is something that has been widely copied.

But it's not just show business that exploits "sub-racism." It's also the U.S. navy. One reason I decided to write this article now was because of the item on AltRight, "The Military's Miscegenation Propaganda," which featured a sexual health poster with a Black man and a White woman.

This is one of the most commented items on AltRight, which is significant in its own right. While many saw the poster as part of a purposeful propaganda campaign by a leftist-leaning federal government to brainwash us into unthinking acceptance of such unions, I remained unconvinced. First of all, the theme of the poster was sexual disease. Secondly, an example of in-your-face contact theory like this is more likely to generate or strengthen conscious racial awareness than the opposite. It certainly did so among the readers of AltRight (though they may not be a typical group.)

Instead, I saw it as yet another example of exploiting "sub-racism" in order to get noticed. The design of the poster is essentially boring and easy to ignore. If the two models used were both Black or were both White, the poster and its message of putting your STDs "on the table" would be easily forgotten. Putting a Black man and a White woman on it is a guaranteed way to raise its profile by tying in to the vast "sub-racism" of the WCS.

But why was it not a White man and a Black woman? There are several possible explanations. Black men may need to be made more aware of these issues than White men, and being a military poster this is no doubt aimed more at men than women. Also, a Black man with a White woman is a lot more common than the opposite. Furthermore, White males have been more conditioned to accept something that might be considered racially insulting by other races or groups. Imagine how this would look if it were a White man with a burka-clad Middle-Eastern Muslim woman. Black males, too, wouldn't take kindly to a White man with a Black woman. So rather than a poster attempting to influence the conditions of race, it seems more likely to be a poster reflecting conditions of race and using them to get its overt message—sexual hygiene—across.

But while public bodies, celebs, and the rest continue to exploit "sub-racism" in this way to grab attention for their various messages, products, and other ends, they little realize that they are in fact raising the possibility at some point of triggering a general, mass racial awakening onto the conscious level.

Cited in the Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, Vol. 8, No.1/2, 2018, Alt-White: Conceptualizing the “Alt-Right” as a Rhetorical Bridge between White Nationalism and Mainstream Public Discourse by Stephanie L. Hartzell

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