Political Correctness: A Vast Left Wing Conspiracy?

During the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998, Hillary Clinton used the phrase “vast right wing conspiracy” to describe and label her husband’s political enemies on the right. While there may have indeed been a concerted effort on the right to bring Clinton down, in point of fact, if any conspiracy in American politics deserves to be called “vast” it would be the “vast left wing conspiracy,” which has at least since the Progressive era attempted to redefine American politics in a leftward direction. While the early Progressives had some success in that effort, the left in America really came into its own during Roosevelt’s New Deal. As I have stated elsewhere in “What’s in a Word?” , the very term “liberalism” was redefined by Progressives during that period to mean something entirely different. As James Burnham so aptly described this redefinition in Suicide of the West (1964), classical liberalism, with its belief in individual liberty, had been transformed into modern liberalism, with its primary principle of egalitarian social justice (based on the influence of Marxism and other socialist doctrines). I’ll risk quoting Burnham again because he so appropriately describes that redefinition of liberalism:

This difference in human character type corresponds to a theoretical conflict within the ideology of modern liberalism: the conflict between the principles of free speech and the other individual freedoms on the one hand, and the principle of egalitarian social justice on the other. Essentially, it is a conflict between individualism and regimentation: the individualism that the liberal ideology derives from its past and the regimentation it has absorbed in the present. This conflict is real, and can be hidden but not solved by discussion, negotiation and compromise. It is a fact that liberalism’s inherited principles correspond to individualism, and a highly atomistic individualism at that. It is equally a fact that the Welfare State and plebiscitary democracy mean a good deal and an increasing deal of regimentation. One or the other must give way; and, on the evidence of the past generation, there is little doubt which is the tottering horn of that particular dilemma. (p. 171)

Of course, why rely on the opinion of a conservative about the nature of that transformation when we have no lesser authority than that perennial candidate for the Socialist Party, Norman Thomas, who said in a speech in 1944:

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of “liberalism,” they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” He went on to say: “I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democratic Party has adopted our platform.”

But it was with the 1960s and the emergence of the New Left that the vast left wing conspiracy really came into its own. The anti-Vietnam War protests really pitted the New Left against the Old Left social democracy of LBJ, while conservatism did not really become a prominent political force in America until a reaction emerged to the excesses of the 1960s New Left and Countercultural revolts. The Political Correctness movement was both a cause and an effect of the New Left in that the origins of the New Left can be traced back to the cultural Marxism that was Political Correctness, and it was the triumph of the New Left that brought Political Correctness to the fore in American cultural and educational institutions such as schools, universities, and the media.

In 2004 the Free Congress Foundation, a conservative think tank, published “Political Correctness:” A Short History of an Ideology, Edited by William S. Lind. Lind, who wrote the Introduction to that work, stated the following:

While some Americans have believed in ideologies, America itself never had an official, state ideology – up until now. But what happens today to Americans who suggest that there are differences among ethnic groups, or that the traditional social roles of men and women reflect their different natures, or that homosexuality is morally wrong? If they are public figures, they must grovel in the dirt in endless, canting apologies. If they are university students, they face star chamber courts and possible expulsion. If they are employees of private corporations, they may face loss of their jobs. What was their crime? Contradicting America’s new state ideology of “Political Correctness.” (p. 2)

In Chapter II of the above mentioned work, “Historical Roots of ‘Political Correctness,’” Raymond V. Raehn has defined the problem of Political Correctness as follows:

America is today dominated by an alien system of beliefs, attitudes and values that we have come to know as “Political Correctness.” Political Correctness seeks to impose a uniformity of thought and behavior on all Americans and is therefore totalitarian in nature. Its roots lie in a version of Marxism which seeks a radical inversion of the traditional culture in order to create a social revolution. (p.1)

How did this come about? Lind and Raehn trace the origins of Political Correctness to the cultural Marxism of the Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci, with his theory that to be successful and dominant in the West, Marxism needed to “march through [take over] the [cultural] institutions” of the West, and Georg Lukacs, a Hungarian Communist who in 1923 with other fellow Communist Party intellectuals founded the Frankfurt School in Germany. Lukacs, stated its purpose was to answer the question, “Who shall save us from Western Civilization?” (Lind, ‘What Is “Political Correctness”’? p. 5). Their goal was to undermine and destroy the foundations of Western civilization: Christianity, capitalism, and the so-called patriarchal-authoritarian family. The Frankfurt School became very influential in American universities after its leaders fled to the United States in the 1930s to escape Nazi Germany. Members of this group included Theodore Adorno (co-author of The Authoritarian Personality), Herbert Marcuse (author of Eros and Civilization and mentor of Angela Davis), Erich Fromm (author of Escape from Freedom), and Max Horkheimer. The Frankfurt School blended Marx and Freud and in the ferment of American universities in the 1960s, gave birth to “Critical Theory” and Political Correctness. The term Political Correctness has a long usage with the Communist Party and is synonymous with “the General Line of the Party” (Lind, Introduction, p. 2). I recall first hearing the term used in the 1970s in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in disputes between various Marxist factions – Maoists, Trotskyites, and radical feminists – as to which group was most politically correct. What Political Correctness as cultural Marxism shares with classical, economic Marxism is the vision of a “classless society”: A vision which, since it “contradicts human nature,” must be forced. Thus, Lind concludes that both classical and cultural Marxism “are totalitarian ideologies”: “The totalitarian nature of Political Correctness can be seen on campuses where ‘PC’ has taken over the college: freedom of speech, of the press, and even of thought are all eliminated” (‘What Is “Political Correctness”’? pp. 5 - 6). In a similar vein, Raehn has concluded: “Political Correctness is Marxism, with all that implies: loss of freedom of expression, thought control, inversion of the traditional social order and, ultimately, a totalitarian state” (p. 5). For those who express disagreement with the politically correct status quo, the left has been masterful at using name-calling – racist, sexist, homophobic – as a substitute for rational argument, especially when their Marxist agenda is exposed.

Another parallel between classical and cultural Marxism is that both “declare certain groups virtuous and others evil a priori, that is, without regard for the actual behavior of individuals” (Lind, p. 6). Thus, white males are automatically oppressors while members of acknowledged minority groups, such as blacks, Latinos, women, homosexuals, the Third World, are automatically deemed to be oppressed victims, and therefore, by race, gender, or ethnicity, granted the moral high ground. This is the morality of victimology: your moral status is assigned according to which oppressed or victim group you belong to and has nothing to do with your personal conduct. As Charles Sykes calls this “politics of victimization” a form of Orwellian doublethink, he poses the question: “How else can one describe the insistence that victims not be held responsible for their personal behavior conjoined with the belief that all members of so-called oppressor groups are responsible for crimes they themselves did not commit?” (A Nation of Victims, 1992, pp. 204 – 05). In other words, if you are a member of a victim group, as O.J. Simpson was, and you commit the crime of murder, you cannot be held responsible, but if you are a member of an oppressor group, you are held responsible for crimes you did not personally commit, such as the enslavement of African-Americans in the nineteenth century. For Political Correctness to succeed, belief in the Rule of Law, defined as equality before the law as principles universally applied to all citizens, must be undermined and eliminated. Both Affirmative Action and Hate Crimes are contrary to the rule of law and equality before the law, because they privilege certain favored (victim) groups.

Despite its championing of minorities, the oppressed, and victim groups, Political Correctness did not originate with such groups. Rather, it originated with Frankfurt School émigrés to the United States, as stated above, and their protégés on American university campuses. Christopher Lasch in The Revolt of the Elites (1995) has argued that unlike the 1930s, when Ortega y Gasset wrote The Revolt of the Masses (1930), which inspired the title to Lasch’s work, the current revolt was a revolt of the elite classes from the norms of Western and American civilization. Lasch has argued that despite Affirmative Action and the pretence of a socially mobile meritocracy of the educated elite, the “New Class” of what Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton, has called “symbolic analysts,” this new class of managers, professionals, and policy makers has become increasingly isolated from the rest of American society (Lasch, pp. 28 - 41):

The culture wars that have convulsed America since the sixties are best understood as a form of class warfare, in which an enlightened elite (as it thinks of itself) seeks not so much to impose its values on the majority (a majority perceived as incorrigibly racist, sexist, provincial, and xenophobic), much less to persuade the majority by means of rational debate, as to create parallel or “alternative” institutions in which it will no longer be necessary to confront the unenlightened at all. (Ibid., pp. 20 – 21)

While the evidence, as I have been arguing thus far, contradicts the claim that the left wing elite “seeks not so much to impose its values on the majority,” the point is well taken that they do view the unenlightened with disdain and seek to isolate themselves from contact with this majority. The electoral victory of Obama has given this class new found hope that they can indeed remake America into their own image of what they think it should be. Of course Lasch is not entirely ignorant of the proselytizing tendencies of this new class of upper-middle class “liberals” who “have mounted a crusade to sanitize American society” of tobacco, pornography, “hate speech,” and various chemical additives and pollutants. Lasch continued: “When confronted with resistance to these initiatives, they betray the venomous hatred that lies not far below the smiling face of upper-middle-class benevolence. Opposition makes humanitarians forget the liberal virtues they claim to uphold” (p. 28). As I’ve argued here and elsewhere, there’s nothing liberal about this new elite, at least to the extent that they subscribe to the tenants of Political Correctness and kowtow to the establishment of their peers. So the point being that the new elite, despite their professed belief in radical egalitarianism, do not themselves often rub shoulders with the great unwashed and unenlightened masses, but rather prefer to stay in their enclaves of privilege.

The current phase of Political Correctness is Multiculturalism, which advocates that our own Western and American cultures should not be privileged above any other world cultures, a form of cultural relativism. As undermining as that might be for our own culture, in point of fact, Multiculturalism privileges all non-Western cultures while it denigrates the Western and American cultures it intends to destroy. I will conclude with a statement from a previous article I wrote, “The Clash of Civilizations or the Suicide of the West?” :

Although Multiculturalism claims to promote diversity (of race, religion, ethnicity, and gender), what it does not promote is diversity in thought. Instead, it promotes a New Left, Marxian version of race, class, and gender warfare against America and the West; a new left wing monoculture that excludes, prohibits (when able to), and condemns all opposing viewpoints. As this ideology, through Political Correctness or the idea that one must conform to its tenants or be ostracized, has become dominant in American universities, schools, media, government, and even businesses, one could argue with some confidence that while America won the Cold War with the Soviet Union, she lost the war at home with Marxism.

I hope that I’m proven wrong in the near future.

From common sense to PC nonsense

With Peter Dunne’s one-man United Future Party showing less than one percent support in current opinion polls, the so-called champion of common sense politics has ditched his pragmatic centrism for media-friendly PC waffle.

In a recent press release he’s proposed that New Zealand establish a “Multicultural Act” to give formal recognition to the country’s increasingly multicultural status. Exactly what would be achieved by such a vague sounding act is left unstated.

He also says New Zealand should establish more “family friendly” immigration laws and allow in more relatives of existing permanent residents.

Given that many of the elderly relatives of recent immigrants are unlikely to have pension plans provided by their host countries, especially those coming from third world countries, such a nice-sounding policy could prove very costly for New Zealand taxpayers.

Attacks on students

Aussie political commentator Andrew Bolt points out that the majority of recent "racist" attacks on Indian students are actually non-racially motivated criminal attacks committed by recent immigrants from non-western countries.

Rather than being a sign of racism by "redneck" mainstream Australians, as the mainstream media is suggesting, the increase in attacks is at least partly due to political correctness, with the hamstrung police failing to effectively crack down on the perpetrators for fear of offending other non-white minorities.

It seems that the Australian media is intent on making up for Australia's previous White Australia Policy with a new blame white Australia policy.

A fairly similar situation occurred in New Zealand last year, when Asian shop keepers were involved in a protest against attacks on Asian shops by Pacific Island immigrants, with the protestors claiming the attacks weren't being taken seriously enough by the police.

Putting aside the issue of whether there's been an increase in racially motivated attacks, I'm getting the impression that crime against overseas students is on the increase in many western countries.

From an underclass perspective, overseas students are a tempting target since they are perceived as being easily physically intimidated and often share the same neighborhoods where cheap housing is available. Inevitably, they also tend to be more naive than locals about what areas to avoid and in what sort of situations they are most likely to get into trouble.

When I lived near a student area in Manchester in northern England, there were lots of reports of students being mugged, with one group of young Pakistani men becoming so bold as to hold up individual students at knife or air pistol point and then take them on enforced shopping sprees around various parts of the city.

Domestic students from other parts of Britain were also targeted quite frequently (Manchester has a high population of students from the more affluent south of England) with an increasing number of attacks on female students by taxi drivers, being reported in the local media.

Closer to home, I recently heard on the radio that Christchurch Police have reported burglaries are up in the student-dwelling areas in the west of the city, with local crims perceiving students to be a bit blase about home security.

Confectionary and liberal autonomy theory

A Canadian Inuit woman on holiday in NZ has taken offence at a piece of kiwi confectionary known as Eskimos, a chewy, baby-shaped sweet popular in the traditional "50 cent mix," and the choc ice cream Eskimo pie.

Apparently the word Eskimo is now considered offensive to Inuit, as it's a Canadian Indian word meaning something like "an eater of raw meat," and Inuit apparently don't like being labeled by their traditional foes from the south.

Anyway, let's consider liberal autonomy theory.

Under liberal autonomy theory, names of peoples should be self-chosen, and no group should have to put up with names imposed on them by others.

This is why Eskimos are now called Inuit and Canadian Indians are known by the highfalutin' title First Nation Peoples.

This also applies to names of places, which is why foreigners can no longer refer to Mumbai as Bombay or Sri Lanka as Ceylon, and why children's knowledge of geography is just sooo good these days.

There are however, a couple of major difficulties in the application of this liberal autonomy principle.

"Powerful" groups such as western whites, have to respect indigenous names, but minority indigenous people don't have to refer to whites using white names. Hence New Zealand Maori are allowed to refer to European New Zealanders as Pakeha, and Canadian Inuit can call Canadian whites Qallunaat, but Canadian or New Zealand whites can't come up with their own names to replace Maori and Inuit.

Another problem is that if you don't allow people to use their own names to describe others, things can get pretty confusing.

For example, in some contexts an Inuit can't call Canadian Indians, Native Americans, since Inuit are a type of Native American and to do so would be to suggest Eskimos aren't indigenous.

However, if he were to call them Indians he'd be using a term imposed on Native Americans by whites, and since whites can't call Inuit Eskimos, why should Inuit be able to call Native Americans or First Nation Peoples Indians - what's the pecking order there, PC theorists.

Given all the problems with applying this PC theory in practice, it might be best if such minor breaches of political correctness were overlooked.

Non-Canadian Whites have adopted the word Eskimo in good faith, and only use in an informal context, and anyway would this woman prefer we called Eskimo pie, Inuit pie. I think not, since that would probably be more offensive, since instead of being a quaint, naive title Inuit pie might be taken as an informed racial slur, referring to the previous Eskimo practice of leaving unwanted babies out on the ice to die during hard times.

An example of "ethnomasocism"

In Saturday's Press under the title "Racial bigots damage Christchurch's reputation" the following letter was published about a small white nationalist turnout in the town square. In between the author's description of events, I've included my interpretation from my own (albeit very brief) observations and reports from others.

"Saturday was the United Nations Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, held to spread the message of peace and tolerance.

I found it hard to tolerate that the white pride constituent of Christchurch hijacked what is supposed to be a harmonious event for their own sick means: a white pride day.

(There is such a thing as racial discrimination towards whites. Many western countries have affirmative action laws that discriminate against whites, and schools and universities regularly prescribe textbooks with a clear anti-white bias. There is even an anti-white academic discipline called whiteness studies).

A clan of white supremacists descended on Cathedral Square, clad in barely disguised neo-Nazi outfits: steel-capped boots, army boots, army uniforms, white pride T-shirts, shaven heads, swastika tattoos.

(A small group of perhaps 20 white nationalists, wearing army boots and white-cross, white pride t-shirts, stood in an unoccupied corner of the square for about 30 minutes. I don't know if any had Nazi tattoos.

They carried New Zealand flags and signs: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." They were extremely intimidating.

(Their appearance was slightly intimidating, but they were pretty much sticking to themselves and weren't engaging with the general public.)

The presence of these people and what they stand for filled me with disgust and embarrassment: they made me feel sick to the stomach. I felt ashamed to be white.

Hundreds of tourists from all over the world came to the square on Saturday and were meet by this sight. They were scared and intimidated I found myself apologising profusely to them in an effort to salvage their impression of Christchurch.

Is this the image we want to present to visitors? An un-welcoming place for hatred for non-whites?"

(It was a cool, wet morning and there were relatively few tourists or shoppers in the Square at the time, nor did they threaten or shout down any members of the public. They were not doing anything that could be construed as "hatred" to other races. Also you would have had to get up very close to them to see if they Nazi tattoos or not).

For a description of ethnomasocism check this link from Mild Colonial Boy.

Another of my rants about PC science

When it comes to writing popular science about human behaviour, it's amazing the dodgy arguments you can get away if you write from a politically correct perspective.

Take for example, David Berreby's 2005 book Us and Them: Understanding your tribal mind.

Starting with the reasonable assumption that people have a psychological disposition to want to belong to groups, which Berreby describes as "human kinds," he then makes a huge leap of logic and claims real-world, long-standing groups can easily be replaced by newly invented groups, as long as they satisfy our tribalistic urge to bond with others that we perceive to be similar to ourselves.

Thus identification on racial, religious or national lines could just as easily be replaced with other possible sources of identification such as left-handedness or temperament.

While many sources of identification do change over time, some sources of identification, such as being a Muslim or a Jew appear to be much more durable than others, yet Berreby fails to explain why such sources of identification are so persistent, and he continually attacks the idea that traditional forms of identification, such as race, religion or gender, are any more significant than potential sources of identification like left-handedness.

Nor does Berreby suggest any logical reason why adopting other sources of identification would be more rational than those we currently have - would a society of left-handers for example be more prosperous and cohesive, or less corrupt than a society composed of say, Irish Catholics or ethnic Japanese?

Are far as races are concerned, Berreby adamantly states that they don't exist as a significant biological concept and they only account for a few minor characteristics such as hair type or skin colour.

The logic behind this claim is that there are few, if any, genes unique to particular races.
However, race realist scientists already concede this and focus there investigations on the frequency of particular genes within races, and given how new this gene science is, wouldn't it be unwise to make categorical statements about whether races do or don't exist, based on preliminary findings from studying the human genome?

Berreby also pulls out the tiresome "fuzzy boundaries" argument to refute the validity of different races.

This argument is based on the idea that because there are people on the margins of continents who have no clear racial identity, race can't be a valid biological category.

But if you follow the logic of the fuzzy boundaries argument, then any human condition that exists along a continuum, such as depression or being overweight, can't be biologically valid either. Only in the politically sensitive area of race or gender relations could an intellectual get away with making the claim that because something is difficult to define at the margins, it therefore can't exist.

Berreby's ignorance of scientific research into racial issues appears to be highlighted by his claim that race realists like Philip Rushton argue that a smaller brain equals less intelligence, and that Blacks are less intelligent than White and East Asians because they have a smaller average skull size.

"...The evidence for a connection between brain size and intelligence is not there. Women's heads are generally smaller than men's, but women do not score lower on intelligence tests."

Now I'm certainly no scientific expert in intelligence research, but I think the claim is that a smaller brain relative to body size tends to correlate with less intelligence.

Hence the common sense observation that women, although smaller, have about the same intelligence as men, and nerds with relatively big heads and weedy bodies tend to be smarter than smaller-headed muscular jocks.

For a leading science journalist to misinterpret or deliberately misrepresent this argument is a sad indictment on the current state of academic discourse.

Liberalism and its enemies - the old and the working class

Considering that left-liberalism is traditionally associated with standing up for the underdog, you'd think that under-privileged groups like the elderly and the working class would be worthy recipients of liberal support.

Unfortunately, given liberalism's obsession with minor points of language and "saying the right thing" the grouchy, apathetic elderly and the "rough around the edges" working class are at a distinct disadvantage in modern liberal society.

Witness the increasing number of older white guys in the media, from sports commentators and talk-show hosts, to politicians and noble-prize winners, who've had to "retire early" for blurting out politically incorrect statements at inconvenient moments.

Like radiation seeping out of a concreted-over nuclear powerplant, pre-1968 thoughts leak out into the open as the aging frontal lobes begin their inevitable decline.

Meanwhile the working class are increasingly finding that their un-enlightened voting patterns and talk radio statements, are also getting them into a lot of hot water with the liberal establishment, with liberals getting their own back by encouraging liberal-approved immigrants to take over previously working class neighborhoods (note that the working class should not be confused with the underclass, who are doing much better out of liberalism, thank you very much).

However, if tactless, politically incorrect statements are a crime in themselves then where does that leave those who suffer from disorders of impulsivity? Hence all this intolerance of un-PC speech got me thinking about whether liberalism will start reigning its otherwise tolerant attitude towards those suffering from the likes of ADHD and Tourette's Syndrome, where saying the wrong thing pretty much goes with the terrority.

Politically incorrect tactlessness was certainly an issue for an ADHD-sufferering South African ex-truck driver I meet a few years back, who'd be lucky to last 30 minutes if he were ever let loose in a modern liberal workplace.

An amusing example of the irony of liberalism's support for disabilities and intolerance of un-PC impoliteness was provided in a recent VDARE column where Peter Brimelow exchanged words with liberal radio host and ADHD advocate Thom Hartmann who strongly supported the replacement of "Merry Christmas" with the culturally neutral "Happy Holidays".

Clearly the irony of Hartmann's liberal hypersensitivity over the Christmas issue and his advocacy for an impulse control disorder (a significant symptom of which is blurting out tactless statements) was lost on him.

Interestingly, liberal society's most polite and diplomatic demographic - educated middle class women - also happen to be disproportionately well-represented among liberal work places and in liberal politics, funny that.

Condemn first, read later

I've recently been reading through a couple of books from three controversial academics - DNA by James Watson and the infamous Bell Curve by Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein.

One of the most striking things revealed in both books is that none of the three academics are particularly pre-occupied by race issues, despite all three being condemned for rank racism by the mainstream media.

When the Bell Curve was first published in the mid 1990s, various critics in the media were quick to condemn Murray and Hernstein for suggesting there were significant IQ differences in the U.S between Blacks and Whites. However, only one chapter in the book is actually devoted to race issues. Most of the book deals with IQ differences among whites, and the many policy implications of the unchanging distribution of IQ scores after over half a century of universal public schooling.
Nor, does the book necessarily advocate right-wing approaches to dealing with the social and economic problems caused by IQ differences. Despite the fact that Charles Murray is a self-confessed libertarian, in the Bell Curve he doesn't necessarily advocate reducing government spending on public education or other right -liberal policies. A 1920s-style Fabian socialist like George Bernard Shaw would probably be less offended by its public policy discussions than the majority of today's neo-conservatives and libertarians.

Arguably the most interesting finding in the book, in my view, is the declining level of education among high IQ students, rather than those at the bottom of the Bell Curve. As the authors point out, dumbing-down modern schooling has actually improved the academic performance of most average IQ children, but at the same time it's undermined the education of the smartest pupils, who are now no longer challenged as much as they used to be.

If the book had been written in 1904 instead of 1994, the press would have no doubt spent more time talking about its relevance to the decline of elite education rather than its single chapter on racial differences.

In the same way that Samuel Huntington's Clash of Cilivisations was simplistically criticised as a work of Islamophobia, the Bell Curve has been written off as a white supremacist book about racial IQ differences. Indeed, in some ways the Bell Curve is something of a anti-managerial work, in that it questions the value of the one dimensional BMA- type education criticised in more left-leaning books like John Ralston's Saul's Voltaire's Bastards.

Reading through half a dozen chapters of Watson's DNA (first published in 2003) he certainly doesn't give the impression of being the far-right racist he's been labeled in the popular media over his recent African IQ comments. For example, he describes the early-20th Century eugenics movement in the U.S as a "pseudo-scientific vehicle for the notably unscientific prejudices of men like Madison Grant and Harrry Laughlin," and criticises the 1924 Immigration Act (unfairly in my view) for restricting refugee immigration in the 1930s.

About the only right-wing comment I noted in the book was Watson's interesting observation that despite the popular perception, Republican administrations are no stingier than Democratic ones when it comes to investing in scientific research.

Nice scenery, shame about the rednecks

Like the war on Christmas, the new film Australia seems to be a muddled, but no doubt profitable, combination of rampant commercialism and left-liberal political correctness (see Spiked on the former, and Oz Conservative on the latter)

As a Hollywood-style historical epic the film is already commercialised enough, but the instigators of the film have to go one better and explicitly market it as a tourism promotion vehicle. Sure, movies often do make good promotional tools for tourism, as in the case of the Lords of the Rings trilogy, but usually as a by-product of a film's popularity, not as a reason for producing a film in the first place.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed in New Zealand because the scenery suited the movies, not ( as far as I know) because the New Zealand tourism board thought filming orks and hobbits running around Fiordland would be a good way to capture the authentic essence of New Zealand.

Using a movie as a marketing video presents problems though, because satisfying modern liberal sensibilities means the producers had to get around the problem of knocking Australia while promoting it. However, using a liberal female immigrant as the heroine was a master stroke - instead of just admiring the scenery and cringing at bigoted outback whites herding around the local Abos, overseas tourist, er movie-goers and urban Aussie liberals can identify with the enlightened new-comer on her mission to bring light to the dark heart of rural white Australia (eat you're heart out Peter Reobuck).

Conveniently, the heroine character also happens to a Brit, with a saintly indigenous understudy, a combination which allows the producers to show they're not into passe Mel Gibson-style Pom bashing (or shooting themselves in the foot by alienating a key tourist demographic) and are fully signed up members of the Sorry generation.

Thus not only do the producers manage to knock rural white Australia while promoting Australian scenery, but they also get to promote urban liberal Australia and indigenous Australia at the same time.

Now that's marketing.

Lets play bash the populist

Following New Zealand First deputy leader Peter Brown's comments about the latest figures on Asian immigration, the Press has come out with the usual self-righteous cliches that the mainstream media likes to use to confirm its adherence to fashionable middle-class views.

What's particularly depressing about this is that the Press isn't a dogmatically liberal paper by New Zealand standards. Like CNN with Lou Dobbs, the Press at least manages to allow for some unfashionable views by publishing populist and traditionalist letters to the editor on a fairly regular basis. By contrast, I can tell you from personal experience that the type of material I publish in this blog wouldn't stand much of chance of getting into the Sunday Star Times or Dominion (the later being NZ's equivalent of the LA Times).

The Press's official editorial piece on the topic, entitled "Contribution, not colour, is the best judge of a migrant" (Saturday, April 5 not online) starts reasonably, but soon gets sanctimonious:

"Playing the race card has become something of an election year ritual for New Zealand First. So much so that the only uncertainties this year were when the card would be produced and which NZ first MP would deal it. These questions were answered this weak when the party's deputy leader, Peter Brown, cited a Statistics New Zealand forecast that Asians would outnumber Maori by 2006 because of short-sighted immigration policies. This was anathema to Brown, who argued that Asian migrants would not integrate into New Zealand society and that this would create division, friction and resentment. Not only are Brown's views plain wrong, but the majority of voters will not be duped by this cynical tactic on polling day."

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but hasn't periodic immigration restrictionism had a pretty good track record of hastening rather than blocking integration ( as far as is practical when immigrants are from totally alien cultures). One reason why the grime predictions in Enoch Powell's famous "rivers of blood speech" didn't happen was because the UK government wisely decided to reduce immigration from Britain's former non-white colonies during the late 60s and early 1970s.

In New Zealand, the relatively high unemployment rate among East Asian immigrants is finally starting to sort itself out precisely because Labour's tougher English language requirements have lowered East Asian immigration in the last few years, thereby reducing tensions with established immigrants and giving employers time to absorb the labour influx.

You also have to wonder why the Press feels the need to take such a strident line against Brown if it believes his populist stance is unlikely to have much influence on voters anyway.

The Press also suggests Brown has no right to a view on Asian immigration because he is an immigrant, and that it is "richly ironic" that he should be questioning Asian immigration. I'm sorry but, I don't get the irony. Immigrants are entitled to have an opinion on immigration just like everyone else. Many people have come to New Zealand precisely because it's a lightly populated country which has traditionally been cautious about immigration. What's "richly ironic" is that the Press seems to advocating colour blindness on the one hand (people from all cultures should be able should be able to come) , and snobbish nativism on the other (only native whites and indigenous Maori's should get to debate immigration policy).

Then of course there's the further irony that it's a British immigrant who is being attacked for questioning non-western immigration, in what is arguably the most British country outside Britain.

While the writer of the article does make a point that NZ first has tended to exaggerate Asian crime levels, and should be precise when talking about immigrant groups, they drop another howler in talking about immigration and education by citing an Afghan refugee as a "prime recent example" of a high achieving Asian student. Now I've got nothing against giving credit where credit's due, East Asian students in western countries do have an excellent academic record, but Afghans? I'm sorry but this isn't a "prime example," of academic success, it's a very atypical one. According to the field of psychometrics, East Asians have an average IQ of 105, Afghans a likely average IQ of about 83.

If the Press can't recognise that Afghan and East Asian levels of academic achievement are wildly different, then you have to question whether the paper should be assessing the relative contributions of perspective migrant groups.