Recent essays here and here and here by the Vice-President of Jihad Watch, Hugh Fitzgerald, yet again display a baffling, maddening and irresponsible myopia about the unremarkably (yet lamentably) mainstream dominance of politically correct multiculturalism (PC MC)—a myopia that has been expressed there for as long as I can remember, going back almost two years now.
Now, lest the reader make the elementary mistake—as have both Hugh Fitzgerald and the director of Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer, done with specific reference to me in my capacity as a pseudonymous commenter in the comments sections of various threads on Jihad Watch (leading the latter to take the extraordinary measure of banning me, twice, from commenting on the site for the crime of purveying this “hobbyhorse” there!)—of misunderstanding the nature and scope of my criticism above, allow me to clarify.
Now, lest the reader make the elementary mistake—as have both Hugh Fitzgerald and the director of Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer, done with specific reference to me in my capacity as a pseudonymous commenter in the comments sections of various threads on Jihad Watch (leading the latter to take the extraordinary measure of banning me, twice, from commenting on the site for the crime of purveying this “hobbyhorse” there!)—of misunderstanding the nature and scope of my criticism above, allow me to clarify.
The persistent myopia with which I am charging the representatives of Jihad Watch (among others) is not a myopia about the problem of PC MC on general principles. With regard to the problem of PC MC on general principles, the official writers at Jihad Watch have been quite perceptive and appropriately critical. No, the persistent myopia I am referring to refers to an inability to detect, analyze and appropriately criticize PC MC as
1) having the nature of being a systemic and sociological paradigm with a specifically analyzable (albeit complex) structure;
and as
2) having the scope of being mainstream and dominant.
While at times Spencer demonstrates a cognizance of #2, he is sorely remiss in appreciating #1—and #2 without #1 is, as they say, like a day without sunshine.
In quite a few previous essays on this blog, I have explicated the nature and scope of PC MC at great length. For the reader interested in pursuing this, here are links to some of those previous essays:
Without a proper appreciation of the dimensions and magnitude of PC MC in our Western societies, essays on Jihad Watch that impinge upon the problem of PC MC tend to acquire a surreal quality—either of undue surprise or impatience or indignation not befitting a social phenomenon as unremarkably (yet lamentably) common as the air we breathe; or of a penchant for strangely misdiagnosing the problem with vague or platitudinous complaints. I have elsewhere taken Fitzgerald to task for his curiously banal and enervated trope of the “Esdrujula Elves”. Today I only wish to examine samples of his more recent writings, which I hereby quote:
“What strikes one is that there was a keen understanding of Islam in the earliest days of the American Republic, but since the 1920s, more or less, there has been a steady falling off—possibly as the result of a decline in the level of intelligence in our political class and the abdication of responsibility by a cultural elite that has itself now been forcibly disbanded by the levelling influences that, for some reason, do nothing about growing banana-republic levels of economic inequality that stagger and dismay, but channel all the levelling impulses into the area where they should never have a place—in the fields of education, art, and culture. The current crew of “taking-a-leadership-role” leaders exhibit all this, as does Bush with his shallow and ignorant messianism—bringing “freedom” to “ordinary moms and dads” all over the Middle East...”
In the year 2007, it is inexcusable for someone as otherwise intelligent, erudite and perspicacious as Fitzgerald to allude to the problem of PC MC with phrasings so fastidiously gingerly and blandly oblique. Either he is tiptoeing too cleverly around it, to avoid getting his white suit sullied by the vulgar vernacular of the rabble and to protect his nose from epistaxis as he condescends from the rarified air on high of his ivory tower lucubratory; or he is really myopic about an elephant in the room that looms much larger than the camel of Islam.
Notice the subtleties of his phrasings which, nevertheless, pack a whallop unintended by the writer:
“...since the 1920s, more or less, there has been a steady falling off—possibly as the result of a decline in the level of intelligence in our political class...”
To which one could say, Gee, ya think? Aside from being unremarkably true, this “possibility” Mr. Fitzgerald proffers is worthless, because it adds nothing to elucidate the problem he is alluding to: it merely rephrases the symptom whose cause he is speculating upon, but shedding no light on. He goes on:
“...and the abdication of responsibility by a cultural elite that has itself now been forcibly disbanded by the levelling influences that, for some reason, do nothing about growing banana-republic levels of economic inequality that stagger and dismay, but channel all the levelling impulses into the area where they should never have a place—in the fields of education, art, and culture.”
Aside from the convoluted little noodle he offers—perhaps as an attractive scrap to those with anti-Capitalist and/or anti-Globalist tendencies—he again offers not even a crumb to those who want some insight into why we are in the circumstance we are in today, where most everyone is dangerously myopic to the problem of Islam. All Fitzgerald will offer is a murkily passive third person “abdication of responsibility”. Gee, thanks for that incisive revelation of our most pressing problem.
Or consider this expression, which I shall quote in pieces, of baffled impatience—again riddled with lacunae about the problem of PC MC—by Fitzgerald concerning why no one in Congress will stand up to do the right thing and boldly enunciate a war upon Jihad itself:
“In Iraq, American soldiers are inhibited from giving the response they could give, even as they risk their lives for a foolish goal, set by foolish men ignorant of Islam.”
Here, we note Fitzgerald’s obstinant penchant for characterizing the PC MC habit with such insipidly vague terms as “foolish”—in this case, a term of redundant feebleness that not only does not help, but positively hinders our task by conveying a situation of natural human foibles where a complex sociology that demands analysis is afoot.
Fitzgerald continues:
“Those men are ignorant apparently of anything outside of the theatrum belli of Iraq, and even there so misunderstand things as to squander the lives of better people than they are, because they cannot even conceive of how removing American troops will accomplish exactly what needs to be accomplished—to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam.”
Again, Fitzgerald characterizes these men as merely “ignorant”, implying that nothing more substantial and concerted is guiding their obstinant choices which reflect an ignorance not only of the proper strategy with which to deal with the Camp of Islam—but an ignorance of that Camp of Islam itself.
Fitzgerald again:
“They're just too stubborn, too dumb, and too unimaginative.”
Again, Fitzgerald treats us to uselessly anodyne and normative descriptors that point only to universal flaws in human nature, diluting the problem into generalized mush. Of course stubbornness, dumbness and lack of imagination are features of the problem, but deeper than that, Fitzgerald never stops to consider and meditate upon why these ordinary flaws are so endemic. Our problem in the West, larger than the problem merely in the Bush White House, larger than the problem among the political leadership in America, larger than America to include the majority of people in the West—both elites and common folk—is a sociocultural problem indicative of a major paradigm that guides thought and feeling among millions of people, not a mere problem of flawed individuals.
Again, Fitzgerald:
“It disgusts. It is madness. Una follia. American policy is now a runaway train, with a madman in the engine car, who will not stop, will not listen to anyone except himself. It is the most incredible situation in American history.”
Fitzgerald here is evincing that surreal frustration that would only be appropriate were one to be myopic of the mainstream dominance of PC MC that unremarkably explains why Bush and his men pursue their policy. The highly antagonistic differences between Bush and his opponents are far less important than the PC MC paradigm both sides share. The difference between Bush and his hysterical opponents is on the level of tactics only, not the level of strategy—where both sides are guided by the same PC MC paradigm which forever dictates that Islam itself and the vast majority of Muslims are good, moderate, harmless and amenable to modern Western values. Fitzgerald, in his intractibly impracticable muleheadedness, ignores the forest for the countless individual trees he condemns, leading one to ask: How many trees does it take before people like Fitzgerald pronounce it a forest?
Fitzgerald again:
“And that others do not see it as such, or do not attack the policy for the right reasons, is likewise madness. For god's sake, isn't there a single person in Congress who can stand up and say, “I want to defeat or weaken the forces of Jihad, and the way to do that is clearly to remove the troops”? Is that so hard to do?”
Fitzgerald’s angry frustration here is precisely triggered, and shaped, by his obviously implied assumption that there is no PC MC paradigm, no mainstream dominance of PC MC that unremarkably moves and guides the vast majority of people in the West (including members of American Congress); and so, Fitzgerald is faced with a vacuum of causation: there is no reason left—when one has eliminated from consideration the PC MC paradigm—why all these people should be behaving the way they are in ignoring the Problem of Islam, and this drives Fitzgerald mad. But there is a reason why they are all behaving the way they are, why they persist in ignoring the Problem of Islam, and that is the phenomenon on which Fitzgerald should be concentrating his considerable intellectual talents, rather than spinning his wheels with redundant descriptions of the symptoms of the problem, and endless permutations thereof, and never getting to the nitty gritty of the continually vital cause of that problem.
And today, a Fitzgerald essay expands on the general problem of PC MC (though he of course does not analyze it as such), exemplified by a recent episode in England, where, as puts it:
“We recently learned that a British children’s concert banned the three little pigs, renaming them the three little puppies, for fear of offending Muslims.”
In this piece, Fitzgerald yet again broadens and thins out the problem so much, he might as well as be tilting at the weaknesses of human nature of itself; in this case, the problem is “pusillanimity” and “Westerners cravenly eager to please”—but again, Fitzgerald offers not one whit, jot or tittle of a theory as to why this is so widespread in the West in our time. A further brief remark he makes to a Jihad Watch reader’s comment that raises the widespread problem of PC MC a bit higher into view than do Fitzgerald’s prolix essays, indicates that Fitzgerald is simply deadset on not ever probing for a theory to explain this most exigent problem of our time.
“...liberals or whatever you want to call them...” is how the reader alluded to that mainstream problem, and Fitzgerald responded:
“How about dividing the world, not between so-called “liberals” (which liberals? John Stuart Mill or Jimmy Carter?) and so-called “conservatives” (which conservatives? Edmund Burke, or Pat Buchanan?), but between the intelligent, and the un-intelligent. That's the kind of division that is most useful.”
While Fitzgerald’s point about liberal and conservative is well taken, in easily dispatching that subsidiary point, he again totally misses the chance to address the far more important point that the reader, in perhaps a bungling manner, was nevertheless noticing with far better perception than Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald’s “most useful” division of the world between intelligent and unintelligent, is worthless—and is, in fact, deleterious, for it forces our attention away from a sociopolitical problem that is systemic, mainstream and dominant and which, through that systemic mainstream dominance has been effectively hampering the West’s efforts at analyzing and taking rational action against the problem of Islam. We will likely not be able to deal adequately with the problem of Islam, unless we first deal with PC MC; and we will likely not be able to deal with PC MC if we continue, like Fitzgerald, to avoid it like eggshells or the Plague.
Fitzgerald refuses—either out of ignorance or stubborn fastidiousness—to notice the massively mainstream dominance of PC MC all around us. And his boss, Robert Spencer, while noticing it, seems blithely unconcerned about pursuing the question of why it has become so dominant and mainstream.
Minds like these two could offer much on the interesting and important question of how this dominance has come to pass in Western societies; but first, minds like these would have to notice the mountains of data around them along with their prevailing atmosphere of interpretation that prompt the question in the first place, and that perhaps hold the key to useful answers.
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