Auster on "the greatest single factor driving whites to national suicide"

No, that's not Lawrence Auster in the 70s. It's just my cheeky way of drawing the reader in to a discussion of a particular issue from a recent Auster post on his blog.

Auster writes:

"Why do I focus so relentlessly on these endlessly repeated stories of the massive cover-up, followed by the massive exposure, of black criminality and black failure--which is, we should point out, failure by white standards? Beyond its immediate interest and obvious importance, the truthful communication about black dysfunction and violence also serves the larger purpose of this website, which is nothing less than to save the American nation.

"In my view, the greatest single factor driving whites to national suicide is their false guilt over black inferiority. [emphasis added] Because whites believe--as modern liberalism has taught them to believe--that all groups have equal inherent abilities, they also believe that the actual inferiority of blacks in almost every area of accomplishment and behavior must be caused by something bad that the whites are invidiously doing to blacks, or by something good that whites are selfishly refusing to do for blacks. However expressed, it all comes down to the idea that black failure is caused by white racism--the transcendent sin of the modern world. And because black inferiority continues, and is even getting worse, the conclusion is that white racism is continuing, and is even getting worse."

While Auster has some good points here -- circumscribed within the limits of the point he's making -- more broadly, his formulation is sloppy. He is putting the cart before the horse. The white guilt over black "inferiority" (and, of course, its logical obverse, white superiority) is a subset of a wider historical phenomenon and problem: White Western guilt over the inferiority of all non-white and non-Western cultures.

This wider phenomenon and problem germinated and developed during the long epoch of Western Colonialism, and the consequent mutation of the West into the modern West, with its cultural arc of PC MC which took centuries to develop and strengthen. And, needless to say, it is not about "race" (a mythological symbolism often exploited as a sociopolitical tool) so much as about culture. While one could have said a couple of decades ago that blacks had, over time, acquired, in the perception of PC MC, the privileged position of the #1 Ethnic Minority about which the white West wrings its hands in self-recriminating shame and guilt, and for whom the white West as a consequence bent over backwards to placate, that position has -- particularly post-911 -- been ceded to Muslims. Muslims have become the New Black.

And the Muslim problem is far deeper and broader, and less tractable, than is the black problem. While there are some systemic problems to black culture (to the exent that can be generalized), they are nowhere near as formidable as those we see out of the world of Islam -- in large part because in fact, the mantra people use to defend Muslims does indeed apply to blacks: the vast majority of them are relatively good, decent people (with the usual foibles and faults that any people have), while the problems in their culture reflect a "tiny minority of extremists", so to speak. Major publishing houses don't refrain from publishing, or pull off their shelves, potentially lucrative books for fear that blacks can organize into international cells with the capacity, and willing to, blow up buildings and mass-murder staff and friends and family. Cartoonists don't go into hiding for fear of their lives because they offended blacks. Blacks, even though they also constitute an international diaspora, don't organize into international cells with the capacity, and the desire, to ram jets into skyscrapers in New York, assassinate film-makers in Holland, cause major politicians of different countries to have 24/7 bodyguards for years, compel nearly every airport in the world to spend billions on extra security, foment and perpetuate guerilla wars laced with terrorism throughout the world; etc. etc. ad nauseam. For that's only a very small list to show the contrast between blacks and Muslims.

And yet Auster sees fit to turn reality upside-down (or sideways) and make blacks a problem as dire, if not more so, as that of Muslims. It is important to recognize the differences in degree, both quantitatively and qualitatively, which the two problems present. But Auster's rhetoric often lurches into luridly simplistic exaggeration and hyperbole.