Two trolls in mud time

The two Canadian  ethno-nationalists arrived last night to continue trolling everybody in the country -- as they've been doing so well for the last month -- and if I had been give their hundred-dollar ticket price* every time I've been asked if I'm going tonight to their hoe-down, I'd have been able to pay for my own lawyers, with enough left over to hire a hall to put on an alternative show.

The radio this morning reported they are here to argue against multiculturalism. That's not quite correct. They're here simply to attract attention to themselves, in which end their opponents here have been enormously helpful, not just in the endless free publicity given them (these are people who are building a career on the Streisand Effect) but in generating the mistaken notion these people have something important to say (there's nothing that screams "important" like being able to say "these are the ideas they're trying to ban!"). Yet all they really are is simply a caricature of everything every "right-thinking" person says you can't be. ("We say the things 'they' don't want you to say!") And because every right-on thinker says multiculturalism is the duck's nuts, then it's their job be anti-multi-culti.

Shame they misunderstand it.

Because multiculturalism is not simply a celebration of a multitude of cultures -- which is how many folk take it. Which is fine. More exactly, however, it is the idea that all cultures are equal, no matter how barbaric, or how benevolent: it is all simply a matter of subjective choice. In practice, what this means is the specific injunction that all cultures have value -- except, of course, western culture, which is the only culture open to criticism. (Which means the true multiculturalist must blind themselves both to western cultural achievements and to non-western cultural barbarities; one reason an deserving blind eye is turned to turned to cultural practices that should have disappeared with the Dark Ages.)

The correct way to critique the doctrine is not simply to beat your chest on behalf of your tribe, but to recognise, as Thomas Sowell has argued, that all cultures are not equal, that every culture is not life-supporting or life-enhancing; that cultures are not simply museum pieces among whom we can pick and choose, but that culture is "the working machinery of everyday life," and we should therefore judge a culture by how well it supports (or doesn't) the lives of those within the machinery. Because it's those individuals within the machinery who matter.

Cultural judgement, therefore, is an objective process, not simply a subjective whim. And western culture, by this standard, should be seen as objectively superior -- not least because at least it still values the twin virtues of self-criticism and self-improvement.

Note however that, in opposition to the Canadian visitors, that culture says nothing at all about race. As Sowell is always at pains to point out, race and culture are distinct. One is chosen, and important; the other is neither. Indeed, one of the measures by which we can estimate western culture's value is that (as I outlined yesterday) western culture is open to anyone, of any race. Indeed, among the highest of its virtues is the universalisability of the culture -- a culture that is blind to race or origin, and open instead to achievement. As George Reisman explains:

The truth is that just as one does not have to be from France to like French- fried potatoes or from New York to like a New York steak, one does not have to have been born in Western Europe or be of West European descent to admire Western civilisation, or, indeed, even to help build it. Western civilisation is not a product of geography. It is a body of knowledge and values. Any individual, any society, is potentially capable of adopting it and thereby becoming "Westernised."

This is not however however how these two trolls oppose the doctrine. For them, culture is dictated by race. And since their tribe is white and western culture is white (they say, blinding themselves both to history and geography) then it's their job to defend their white tribe against the others' brown invasion; their job to say the white tribe is supreme and to come join them (with pots of your money) on their barricades.

And saying that these days ("when 'they' won't let you say it") guarantees them bums on seats and a guaranteed Patreon income.

But it doesn't make it right.

But since it's just the more offensive flip-side of the left's same tribalism, the protestors aiming to picket tonight's whing-ding have got nothing exceptional to say about it. So all they're left with is force -- blackshirts outside; white sheets inside.

The beginning of a correct response to them is outlined by Robert Tracinski, saying:

If you think people are fundamentally defined by the colour of their skin and by their ethnic and genetic background, then you are a racist, because that’s what 'racism' means. If you think that your most important cultural and political priority is to defend the supposed interests of white people in opposition to the interests of other racial groups, then you are a white supremacist, because that’s what 'supremacy' means. Dress it up however you like, but that’s what you stand for...

Dress it up however you like, but white sheets are not a defence of western civilisation; they represent everything to which civilisation is and should be opposed:

The central theme of the Western intellectual tradition is about rising above tribalism to arrive at universal values... Tribalism, by contrast, is the default state of every culture and can be found among every people in every corner of the world. There is nothing distinctively Western about it, and it runs against the whole grain of the Western intellectual tradition.
    Dressing up economic protectionism, white supremacism, and tribalism isn't a defence of western civilisation.

Of course, these are not easy questions to ask or answer. They do not lend themselves easily either to bumper-sticker slogans or to noisy chants.

Arguing for the value of western civilisation and its freedom and tolerance however is not simply take the opposite side to the argument of those who seem opposed.

You don't do it by confusing culture for race.

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* To anyone still tempted to waste money on a ticket, may I suggest instead simply digesting this post  to give you some background; this post to see what one troll represents; and this twitter thread to see what they both said at their rallies in Australia (the judicious reader can easily remove the opinion from the reportage and, just as easily, see in what way it will undoubtedly be altered for a NZ audience).

Read those three and you've saved yourself a hundred dollars and several hours of your time. And you won't have to disinfect yourself afterwards, either.

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