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In case anyone's wondering why there was no web.scan last month: No, I wasn't abducted by aliens, audited by a gang of Scientologists, dissected for human cloning experiments, or killed by a malfunctioning Tesla coil. Rather, the simple explanation is that I completely forgot that I had to write the column, and I'd used up the pile of pre-written items.
And the cause of my excessive distractedness? Well, basically my employers assigned me to a more external role. That is, I was offered the chance to spend more time with my family. I received the gift of additional leisure time. I was given a horizontal promotion. I was able to assist the company in rightsizing itself.
Circumlocution. Obfuscation. Euphemism. In a way, the subject of this month's column. But I'm going to start off with a simple and straightforward statement, by way of illustration:
Amnesty International are a pro-human-rights organization.
I'm fairly sure nobody is going to want to take me to task for that assertion. It's an honest description, and it's honest for two reasons. Firstly, it accurately describes the purpose and motivation of the organization. Amnesty is indeed all about campaigning for human rights for all people, without exception, as written in the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
But the second and more subtle reason why it's an honest claim, is that its logical converse is also true: Amnesty's opponents are torturers and murderers and the bureaucrats who support them, people whose actions are against the cause of universal human rights. They are people who deny others the right to freedom of religious belief, deny them a fair trial, detain them without legal cause, and otherwise act against international human rights declarations.
Contrast this with Focus on The Family and the Family Research Council. They describe themselves as "pro-family" organizations. It's arguable that they are at least being partially truthful, in that they are in favor of family life themselves -- although Free Inquiry magazine would disagree. When Focus on the Family tell you that your gay brother's life is "empty and destructive", and that he's most likely taking drugs and trying to catch AIDS, is that really going to improve your family life?
But even if we accept the argument that Focus on The Family and the Family Research Council are a positive force in family life, they are still engaging in sophistry when they call themselves 'pro-family' -- because they are implicitly suggesting that their opponents are anti-family. The phrase is an attempt to force acceptance of the idea that atheists and liberals are destroying families and tearing apart the social fabric of society. If they can push acceptance of the phrase 'pro-family' as an accurate description of their organizations, they automatically gain ground in the debate.
I think you can tell a lot about an organization or political movement by examining how honest it is when describing itself -- and, implicitly, its opponents. Look at the abortion debate, for example: Those who describe themselves as "pro-choice" are honestly in favor of allowing pregnant women to choose whether or not to give birth, and their opponents are genuinely against allowing women that choice. (Talk of the embryo's 'choice' is a smokescreen -- we don't accept the idea that babies can make their own choices, let alone fetuses.)
Meanwhile, abortion opponents use the phrase 'pro-life' -- an ideologically loaded phrase which attempts to implicitly smear those who disagree with them, suggesting that they are in some way in favour of killing. Worse, there are zealots who call themselves 'pro-life', but who would rather risk seeing both mother and fetus die than see the fetus aborted. A few even set out to deliberately murder doctors and others involved in providing abortions.
Sadly, those who could accurately be described as anti-abortion seem to have succeeded in pushing the media to accept the term 'pro-life'. Their success has clearly been noted by other extremists -- and I don't just mean the Family Research Council. Last month WIRED News published an article about racist organizations and their use of the web. I was reading through the article when I was stopped dead by an astonishing turn of phrase:
The Net has transformed the way white supremacists spread their message. The archaic methods of newsletters and phone calls have been replaced by an efficient network of slick Web sites, newsgroups, and online merchandising, according to Vincent Breeding, director of the Nationalist News Agency, a pro-white Web site.
No quotation marks, no apparent irony -- "a pro-white Web site". What's more, WIRED had even toned down the blatant racism of the organization's name -- if you check their web site, you'll find that they call themselves The White Nationalist News Agency. The phrase "pro-white" was used with apparent seriousness later in the WIRED News article as well -- but there was worse to come:
Others find that the Net provides white supremacists with a kind of virtual family.
"People for years have felt alone, like they're afraid to tell their friends what they believe, and the Net allows them to express their ideas and connect with others" said Breeding of the Nationalist News Agency.
"It's for people who just want to be around more of their own kind."
There it is -- that 'f' word again. I thought being a white supremacist was all about racial slurs and violent lynchings, but no -- at last WIRED News have explained that it's about building a virtual family!
Now, maybe I'm too skeptical, but I can't help suspecting that the family values involved here are Manson Family Values. But I suppose if I'm utterly opposed to the agenda of a "pro-white" organization like the White Nationalist News Agency, I must be anti-white, right? WIRED News reporter Lindsey Arent apparently thinks so, accepting the chosen terminology of the white supremacists -- and helping their cause by doing so.
I'd have liked to believe that it was an attempt at wry humor, perhaps akin to describing Bill Clinton as "ethically challenged"... The problem is, white supremacist groups appeal to, let us say, a certain demographic. And it's a demographic that wouldn't recognize facetious irony if it was tied to the back of a pickup truck and dragged screaming through the town square. Let's face it, if you can take seriously the idea that porcine pasty-white American redneck bigots are God's chosen people, you obviously can't have much of a sense of humor.
In short, the phrase "pro-white" didn't look like a joke to me. I wrote to WIRED News, basically asking them what the hell they thought they were doing. The author of the piece replied that he was using the terminology of the racists so that they could speak in their own words. Sounds reasonable -- except that the phrases weren't part of a quotation; they were in the body of the piece. It's one thing to quote the KKK saying that they're just a family social club; it's quite another thing to say it yourself on their behalf, and to phrase your article as if their claim were true.
The article did describe the KKK and others as hate groups. So, the argument goes, shouldn't it also use their vocabulary as well, to provide "balance"? If you think that sounds reasonable, consider another example: if you use the phrase "African-American", does that mean you should also use the phrase "nigger" to provide "balance"? It's an asinine argument. I'm going to be generous and assume it's not what the author meant, and that there's some other kind of balance at stake here.
Sometimes true balance is to ask about the very framing of the debate. Imagine it's 1940 and you're writing an article about Nazi Germany. Would it provide 'balance' to talk about the "Jewish problem" and "final solution" in your article -- and not put the phrases in quotation marks? Of course not -- you would be implicitly accepting that the "Jewish problem" was something real, a problem that needed solving. By accepting the Nazis' terminology -- even in part -- you'd be allowing them a chance to frame the debate. Quoting their opponents would not mitigate that; "Should we solve the Jewish problem?" is not fair reporting.
Similarly, I'd expect an intelligent article about allegedly "pro-white" groups to make an honest examination of that claim, before describing them in those terms. It could also examine the motivations of the other debate participants, of course -- I'm quite prepared to believe that the opposition have a hidden agenda. But it should certainly do more than just present a kind of boxing match between "pro-white" and "anti-defamation". (Again, notice which of those terms is the more honest.)
Of course, plenty of web.scan articles have openly mocked someone's point of view, so am I not being a little hypocritical? Well, yes -- except that web.scan doesn't claim to be news reporting, so news journalism's standards of neutrality don't really apply. At best, this is an opinion piece; and sometimes it's not even that, it's more of an extended joke...
I don't accept that there's any seriously debatable question about whether the KKK is actually a hate group or really just 'pro-white'; and if that means I'm being biased, then fine, I'm being biased. If you don't want to call them a hate group, think of a euphemism like "racial separatists" -- but please don't just use their vocabulary. Adopting racists' vocabulary in editorial comments does not provide 'balance'. I know that probably seems painfully obvious, but apparently it's not obvious enough. [Lindsey Arent was given advance notice of this article, and I have offered to publish links to any response.]
The danger of hate groups is real. After the Columbine Massacre, idiot politicians were quick to suggest that those children need not have died, if only the Ten Commandments had been posted in every classroom. The theory was somewhat spoilt a few weeks later, when Buford Furrow opened fire on children at a Jewish community center. The problem is, he was inspired to do so by the Bible -- and specifically, by the Ten Commandments. The Christian Identity movement he belongs to believe that the commandments forbid interracial marriage, and that to purify God's chosen race -- white Americans -- we must kill all the Jews. That's the problem with the Ten Commandments -- everyone seems to have a different set...
I decided to have a look at some of the community-building pro-white messages I'd read about on WIRED News. Their social gatherings are famous the world over, of course. Take the upcoming Unity Gathering in Kentucky, for example -- a gathering for "Faith, Folk and Christian Nation". Fun for all the family, complete with cross and swastika lighting. Don't forget to pick up T-shirts and souvenirs for your friends!
In fact, one of the sister sites of the White Nationalist News Network is the Stormfront White Pride for Kids site. They also have a web-based discussion forum, where topics range from how Jews caused the Bubonic Plague to Christian Identity heroes to denouncing the Jewish-controlled Christian Science Monitor [shurely shome mishtake?]. Don't miss the thread where Christian Identity believers explain that Jesus wasn't Jewish... (No, his father wasn't Naughtius Maximus.)
Browsing this stuff is like falling into a parallel universe; it's hard to believe that these people are serious. So, I'm going to leave you to ponder the astonishing "Jew Watch" site: it lists the ACLU under "Jewish Hate Groups", and lists the Vatican under "Zionist Occupied Governments". There's even an entry for atheism, under "Jewish Mind Control Mechanisms". I'm at a loss for words.
mathew
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Last updated: Wednesday, 30-Nov-2005 17:06:10 CST
