I PROMISE THIS IS MY VERY LAST AND FINAL, THIS IS IT, THERE IS NO MORE, ESSAY ON POLITICS, FOR QUITE SOME TIME, ALLMOST DEFINITELY

PART ONE

I don't mean to say "I told you so", but,

I told you so.

I TOLD YOU SO. 

I SO TOLD YOU SO.

The improbably named Jame Delingpole, writing in the Daily Mail, has explained, and stop me if you've heard this before, that Political Correctness and the BBC are part of a plot by cultural Marxists to destroy civilisation.

Just to be quite clear: this is not something which I am wittily reading into his article. I am not doing one of those clever "deconstruction" things where you take what some one says and show that if you took it to its logical conclusion, it would lead to an absurd place. I'm not exaggerating. I am reporting what this man actually said. HOW THE BBC FELL FOR A MARXIST PLOT TO DESTROY CIVILISATION FROM WITHIN. There was a photograph of Herbert Marcuse and everything.

There are days of the week, I don't mind admitting, where I feel a little like Dave Sim. Why are we still having this conversation, I feel like saying. I have told you what is going on. Are you not hearing me? Political Correctness doesn't mean going out of your way, maybe too far out of your way, to avoid offending the other guy. It never did. It is, and always was, a paranoid fantasy about a Marxist Plot to destroy civilisation, invented by an right wing academic called William Lind and sold to the British press and thus to the British political parties by one-man pressure groups with names like the Campaign Against Political Correctness.

"Gee Andrew, that sure is interesting," you say. "But my sys. admin really did ask us to stop referring to the computers as "master" and "slave" units, which I thought was going a bit far. And heteronormative is a pretty unwieldy word. "

No. No, no. That isn't the point. That isn't what we are talking about.

It might be that it's bad manners to ask a Muslim or a Jew "What is you Christian name"? It might on the other hand be that Muslims and the Jews should bloody well get over themselves and stop worrying about that kind of thing. It might be that Christmas is a mostly Christian festival and it might be that it isn't. If it is, it might be that it's okay to celebrate religious festivals in the public sphere and it might be that it's not. There are probably sensible arguments in favour of slippering serial killers and sending children who talk in the dinner queue to the electric chair. It might even be that "nigger" isn't a very offensive word and never was and even if it is it could be that the whole idea of "offence" is not something which the law can or should deal with. There are two sides to every question, apart from the one about whether Jack Kirby created the Silver Surfer. (If you don't think that there are two sides to every question then you are probably a fundamentalist or a bigot or a twit, and I mean that in a very caring way.)

But those aren't the questions that I'm asking. The question that I'm asking is "has the BBC fallen victim for a Marxist plot to destroy civilisation from within" and the answer is of course it bloody well hasn't.

It turns out that now the BBC has banned presenters from using the designation "BC" and "AD" when talking about dates again. This is another example of the sort of thing we could probably have a sensible discussion about, but aren't going to. It would seem to me that "AD" and "BC" are commonly used in colloquial English, and that we are going to carry on having comic books called "2000AD" and bad movies called "Six Million Years BC" for as long as we say "he was inching up the road" rather than ""he was 2.5 centimetreing along the road" and "and that's worth a few bob" rather than "that's worth between 5 and 15 pence" and "pull the chain" rather than "depress the little button thing on top of the cistern." Americans still have "dime stores" even though you can't actually by anything for 5c cents. On the other hand, we are likely to carry on, in more formal, technical settings like history text books, to say "C.E" and "B.C.E" has we have been for the last fifty or sixty years, because it is, in fact, a little odd to say that Mohammed was born 570 A.D because that's not the dating system that Moslims use. It would be very confusing to say that "Jesus was born 5 years before the birth of Christ" and completely barking mad to say that a particular dinosaur thrived in the year 64,997,989 BC. But it would be a little pedantic to say that the Battle of Bosworth field happened in 1485 C.E because Henry Tudor and Richard of York both called the year 1485 AD.

But that isn't the question. The question is why are we even talking about this. Because the BBC have not, in fact, banned the terms A.D or B.C. They just haven't. This isn't one of those cases where you can say "oh they kind of sort of have" or "Andrew has an opinion that the terms A.D and B.C don't appear on BBC websites any more, but other people think they don't. This is one of those interesting disagreements, and I guess BBC-AD believers and BBC-AD denialists will just have to agree to differ." Go to the page. Have a look. It hasn't happened, in the same way that Birmingham City Council haven't just banned Christmas again and never did. Hitler Diaries; Protocols of the Elders of Zion; Piltdown Man; Holy Blood and Holy Grail; Stan Lee created the Silver Surfer. Not differences of opinion. Lies. Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. Lies.

Cleverer, or at any rate calmer, people than me have already pointed out that what the Daily Mail is objecting to is that people on the BBC are permitted to use the secular designation if they want to (Jeremy Paxman tends to; Andrew Marr tends not to) and that what the extreme right is saying is that they shouldn't be allowed to. The terms C.E and B.C.E should be banned and the terms B.C and A.D mandated, on ideological grounds. The Daily Mail is in fact doing precisely what it's fictitious political correctness brigade would be doing if it really existed, which it doesn't -- it just doesn't -- banning words banning words which it doesn't like.

BUT THAT ISN'T THE POINT. The point is that they are talking about an IMAGINARY ban which they made up out of their own head in order to promote their EQUALLY IMAGINARY story about how COMMIES are trying to DESTROY CIVILISATION.

And isn't it only fair that we should be a bit more considerate to the sensitivities of other races, religions and creeds? No, it's an act of cultural suicide. Most of us may not realise this but the ideological Left certainly does, for it has long been part of its grand plan to destroy Western civilisation from within. The plan's prime instigator was the influential German Marxist thinker ('the father of the New Left') Herbert Marcuse. A Jewish academic who fled Germany for the US in the Thirties, he became the darling of the Sixties and Seventies 'radical chic' set. He deliberately set out to dismantle every last pillar of society – tradition, hierarchy, order – and key to victory, he argued, would be a Leftist takeover of the language....

My old sparring partner from the Yorkshire Evening Post the "rev" Peter Mullen is a more straightforward

To be honest, I don't think the BBC's undoubted loathing of our Christian heritage is the main issue. They just loath anything that smacks of tradition and value and Englishness, of all that most of us were brought up to respect. Like Stalin or Pol Pot, the BBC would like to abolish all reverence for the past and for the institutions created by that illustrious past, and to make policy from year zero - a desolate, heartless, rootless public realm dominated by the banal celeb culture, pop music and the banal display of depravity which fills the air wave....

Just how many history shows has the BBC put out over the last twelve months, you pathetic little arsehole?

The made up fact about the new dating system is only one of large number of made up facts which the Common Sense Brigade have made up this week. Melannie Phillips assured us that (sit down, please) that "Christmas has been renamed in various places Winterval". It is, I suppose, just possible that Liz Jones really believes that there is no recession because a waiter wouldn't give he the seat she wanted in posh restaurant and lose fitting trousers caused the riots. You can be stupid without being dishonest. But it is not possible that Mel really believes in Winterval. She is circulating a lie which she knows to be a lie. she must be be.

We have also had this kind of thing:

Yet Britain’s response [to the pacific economies] is to adopt the faddish fixation with man-made global warming, for which no shred of reputable scientific evidence exists, and thus to sacrifice prosperity on the altar of New Left green ideology along with Old Left class war.

I said above that there were two points of view about every question. But when there is complete unanimity among experts (about highly technical and specialist subjects) you do have to say "the is complete unanimity among experts about this highly technical and specialist subject" which is very close to saying "this is true". But not if you are part of the Common Sense Brigade. If you are part of the Common Sense Brigade you make up a story in which all the real scientists agree with you but the MARXISTS are suppressing the real truth. (Mr Delingpole's article assuring us that homeopathy works and the scientists who keep explaining why it can't are a bit like witch-finders is worth hooting with derision at, as well.)

The Marxists. Herbert Marcuse. The Frankfurt Group. Stalin. Poll Pott. End of civilization.

I told you so.

I TOLD YOU SO.

For no particular reason, I thought it might be nice to see what I was ranting about almost exactly seven years ago to day. 

-o0o-

 

Arr, it be international talk like a pirate today, apparently, arr, and you may lay to that etc etc

P.S

This sort of thing isn't unique to the Nasty Mail, either. 

Theories about what caused last month's outbreak of extreme naughtiness are many and varied: from the usual suspect like Poverty, Unmarried Mothers, Grand Theft Auto, The Secret Elders of Frankfurt and Rap Music to more outre suggesstions like Jamaican Dialect and (my personal favourite) the Introduction of Decimal Currency in 1972. Liz Jones is, as ever, beyond parody:

But the problem started when the likes of Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein and Gap commandeered hip-hop clothing and sold it back to young people. The style became self-perpetuating and, to be honest, it rotted young people’s brains. Look at the footage of the young people rioting in London and Birmingham and so on, and it’s like looking at a commercial for American Apparel. Sloppy clothes lead to sloppy minds. The biggest disservice fashion superbrands have done is to relax a generation, for huge profit, and not equip them for the real world. Just as drawstring trousers never emit the warning sign that you might be getting fat, so sportswear means you will never be smart, disciplined or employable.

But I was rather more creeped out by a piece in the Guardian, yes, the Guardian which interviewed parents and yoof leaders in the ruffer parts of London after Teh Riotz to try to find out What Went Wrong and What Should Be Done About It.` The people who spoke to the Guardian feature writer were all of one voice. The reason that the younger generation had risen up as one a set fire to things was, yes, "discipline".

Parents are fearful about how they chastise their children.....

Stirling wondered whether weakened parental authority might have something to do with it.....

London's mayor said adults and teachers needed to be given back the right to impose authority.....

Stirling....believes parents have become afraid to discipline their own children....

....Teachers are scared to punish children.

Chris (who did not want to give her surname) said she felt under pressure not to discipline her children

People here will call social services if they hear you disciplining your children.

It's all very well trying to be liberal, but parents need to be given back their right to parent.

Who are these people who call social services if you make your child sit on the naughty step for five minutes? What do we suppose would happen if a child told Childline that dad had said "No Simpsons for a week because you poured the pepper over your kid sister's head?" What sound does being banned from youth club or losing your allowance make?

Most politicians are reluctant to say that the majority of their voters are child abusers and therefore take the line that the occasional very light blow is a tool which some responsible parents use responsibly. But these people weren't talking about tools or techniques or parenting styles or light blows. No-one appeared to be saying "It's inconvenient that I am no longer allowed to slap Johnny lightly on the wrist, and have to use Time Out instead". They appeared to take it for granted that "discipline" was synonymous with "hitting" and now that parents were not allowed to hit their children, it followed that they were not allowed to "discipline", or "punish" or "impose authority" or indeed "parent" at all.

Except that, er, it hasn't. Some people think that parental hitting ought to be banned. Some people think that there is a jolly difficult balance to be struck between on the one hand it being an obviously bad thing for private citizens to hit other private citizens and on the the other hand it being a bad thing for the state to interfere in how private citizens order their private lives and anyway, how would  you enforce such. I understand that the NSPCC thinks that you should make the law but not actually enforce it. It would, as practically all polticians say about practically everything "send a  clear signal".


That's a good model of 21st century politics, actually. Don't do anything. Just send signals. We may return to this point.

What fascinates me is how deeply enmeshed people are in the fictional universe where the Political Correctness Brigade has already won; how firmly they believe that and all forms of discipline – along with conkers and bent bananas and indecent seaside postcards and Christmas  – have been prohibited,  even though they quite clearly haven't been.

I don't understand how any of this impacts on Teh Riotz in any case. It's a little far-fetched to suppose that some violent, sub-human feral hoodie, half-crazed by exposure to Grand Theft Auto and American Apparel, who has always existed in a violent gang culture in which black youths, and white youths with black accents, who think of each other as soldiers, and don't know how many pence there are in three-and-six-pence, routinely engage in lethal territorial knife fights, might sit out an orgy of looting because they're afraid that Mum might give them a slap when they get home.


But it's a good deal more convincing than Call-Me-Dave's theory:

"Are you going to come out looting and spreading anarchy on Monday night, innit?" (I have it on good authority that this is really how young people talk.)

"That sounds swell, but you will have to tell the cats that I can't, innit. If I were caught, the beak might keep me in after school on Tuesday and make me write 'I must not engage in sheer criminality' on the blackboard, one thousand times, innit.

"Haven't you heard, innit? The Cultural Marxists have abolished discipline, innit. They wouldn't be allowed to put you in detention until Wednesday night, innit."

"That's, like, way cool, and also wicked and safe, and possibly lush and mint, innit. Let's go and set fire to the bloomin neighbourhood  innit. Pass me that blimey molotov, innit."