5 INSTANT VIRTUE!: THE EASY WAY TO FEELING GOOD

As touched on at the end of the last chapter, people nowadays have a very easy way to look good. Society has changed in such a way that they can now use the R word as a weapon, as a means to slay all around them. It is impervious. It is glittering. It is super strong. It cannot be defeated by anything (reason, argument, history, science) because it is all conquering. It is THE word. Roll up, roll up, you can read it anywhere. Flick open that freesheet on the Tube, it’ll be in there. Scan any edition of The Independent on any day and it’ll be there. And it is often used most by those who fancy getting one up on the next fellow.
Using it has replaced argument. Why bother to think up a coherent, logical argument when you have the R word at your disposal? Debate is reduced to the level of the playground (a somewhat disingenuous analogy, because children do at least possess an innate level of basic good sense and reasoning, until it’s brainwashed out of them). There’s little comeback when you’re branded an R word. Yet while this might in some ways seem harmless, it’s not; it’s very dangerous. Because when debate of what may be frivolous issues is stultified, so it goes that debate of serious issues is too. What kind of debate could the House of Commons have on immigration now? It struggled in the 1970s. The only time a reasoned debate on immigration could have been had on the subject is in the 1940s or early 1950s. The subject poisons itself because the more it grows the less it can be talked about. It’s like having a hole in your kitchen wall and the bigger it gets the less you can do about it. And so as time goes on it will be debated even less. The leap from someone calling someone else the R word because they, say, said that they didn’t like rap music, to the end of Britain as we know it isn’t as big a leap as you might think.
Once again the entertainment media is guilty of propagating the problems. Take the most revolting show on television, Big Brother. On the 2007 series a girl was thrown off for saying ‘nigger’ in a totally innocuous fashion. (Of course it was a sign of the times that the people on that show use the foulest of obscenities without any admonishment but blimey no, can’t say ‘the N word’. It’s reminiscent of Ron Atkinson being caught off mike talking about ‘f**king nigger’ Marcel Desailly. A Sun reader told the paper it wasn’t the swearing he minded, but the R word. I have a similar tale: a couple of years back, a leftie workmate said ‘And I was behind a f**king Muslim on the plane... No, I shouldn’t say “f**king”...’ – because it was casting aspersions on the fact that the man was Muslim, not that he was apologising for swearing! How strangely the world has moved, how inverse our society is compared to our grandparents’ time. Note that my ‘starring’ on words above would likely be transposed if they were in the pages of a left wing broadsheet.) The makers of Big Brother did it to feel good about themselves, to pat themselves on the back and say ‘Hey, we’re right on. We’re at the forefront of the anti-R movement, bless us all’.
Or take criticism of the character of Jar Jar Binks in the most recent Star Wars films. Did everyone who had a go at George Lucas for such an ‘offensive’ character really believe he was that offensive? What was offensive about him? He spoke with a sort of African American voice. So? Does that mean that every non-human character in a movie has to speak with a bland, ‘nothing’ accent? If the character spoke with a Swedish accent would that be offensive? People have been given the licence to get worked up over anything that might be considered ‘offensive’. Mostly it’s not the people themselves who are bothered, it’s their self-appointed guardians.
Steve Coogan, a man of great comic skill (once) and left-wing politics, is someone who likes to mock people who live perfectly normal lives. He can do it with impunity because he is rich and famous. His Alan Partridge character did a lot to puncture the behaviour of many an Englishman, leading to a mockery of actions that those outside the liberal media habitually perform without fear of reprimand. On one episode of I’m Alan Partridge, the character of an eccentric salesman says his area, Acton, has ‘too many blacks’. He is expelled from the social gathering by Partridge, and all around look shocked. The media mirroring life or leading it? We need not pontificate here. All we need to note is that free speech is being blocked. The scenario is not totally unlikely, but why need it exist? To make a point about the R word. It doesn’t matter to Coogan whether Acton does have too many blacks, and whether that is a bad thing; all he’s interested in is demonising such viewpoints, and the white businessman with it. How much more valuable would it have been (not in this show of course) to examine the views of thousands of Londoners who felt that their areas had ‘too many blacks’, why that was a bad thing and what could be done about it. Of course, this wouldn’t even be entertained, because as far as the media goes, it’s either something they don’t touch or they only look at from a singular point of view.
There is a sequence of events that is becoming a regular thing nowadays: a public figure makes a remark, is loudly reprimanded for it by certain bodies, then either retracts or denies it and goes quiet on the subject forevermore. Something similar happened in the mid-1970s when Margaret Thatcher talked about people feeling ‘swamped’ by immigrants. She was attacked and had to backtrack. (During her subsequent Premiership, which was generally a triumph, perhaps she didn’t address the issue as much as she could have done. Immigration controls were made more stringent but in the 11 years she was in power the ghettos grew and the whites flew, so she cannot be judged a success in curtailing the immigration problem (and it is a problem, no one denies that).) Poor John Motson even suffered the wrath of the fascist Left when he had the temerity to confuse one black player with another. There of course would not have been a problem if he’d confused a white player with another white player. One more example of the politicalisation of individuals.
While the R word remains one that is habitually used we are heading for more trouble. They say every time someone says they don’t believe in fairies, a fairy dies. Perhaps when one person says the R word, a little bit of Britain dies too.
Here are a few questions you could ask liberal friends when they howl in indignation at your perceived r-ism: Firstly, do you think Britain would be a worse place than now if it was 99 per cent black? They will witter on about hypothesis. But if they have a shred of honesty or sense they will say, yes, it would be worse. So then go down in percentages, 90, 80 , 70 etc, until you reach a level they are happy with. Then hit them with: well, that makes you a r-ist too (all about numbers, see?). They will protest. But it’s rather like the old joke when the man barters with the woman over the sum of money she will accept to sleep with him: she scornfully rejects £1 and £10 but accepts a million. The man then goes down to £15 again. She asks what kind of a girl he thinks she is. He replies, Madam, we have already deduced what sort of woman you are, we are now trying to agree on a price. So with your liberal friend possibly a little deflated, hit him with questions like: would the Lake District be as nice a holiday destination if it had the same racial make up as Brixton? Would the Cotswolds or Cornwall? Is it good that the local school is now 90 per cent black? If he says it is good, ask why? And be serious: just why is it a good thing, is he saying that white people are bad eggs and, hey, isn’t that r-ist. Ask why this country would not be like Pakistan if it was full of Pakistanis. (This is a key point because the people of your land define your land, they are your land. Different people types will behave as they are prone to, it barely matters what rules and regulations you have to make up.) There are many ways to tie a liberal in knots; those are a few.