Year: 2015

Perhaps not the environment for a constructive conversation – speaker talks for over 40 minutes and individual audience members get to ask a single question – but for me a disappointing evening at LAAG to hear Charlie Klendjian talk on – well – a bag of loosely related topics.

A lot of “whataboutness” and Godwin’s law (!) in evidence – Nazis, Antisemitism, Khmer Rouge, Communism (sic) for a start. Post Paris and Copenhagen a lot of chaotic opinion on freedom of thought and speech as a “right to offend” and post Rotherham about the PC-Paralysis of “not mentioning” religion and/or race. Then there’s Salman Rushdie – we bottled it (?)  Charlie Hebdo and Blasphemy Law (?) – man, what’s that all about? (Blasphemy & Political Correctness) A lot of western-(middle-class)-white-male war-like talk of attacking and victories. Anyway, eventually the focal point, a thesis that using Islamism instead of Islam itself was a veil behind which to hide fears, and deflect accusations of racism.

No doubt fear and courage play a big part in debates and actions around the current slew of knotty topics, and the successful campaign by Charlie and the LSS to remove any Sharia-specific content(*) from UK legal framework is to be applauded. An aberration by The Law Society surely anyway, but also encouraging to see it not only withdrawn entirely, but with an apology too for the initial error. Unusual courage.

But why the constantly repeated references to “not being racist” and being “friendly and open-minded” ? Methinks it can only give the impression of having to protest too much. Better to address the topic(s) IMHO. For that reason we should use every word in our vocabulary to understand the complexity of the human political and psychological processes involved. (Contrast with the sharpness of Anne-Marie Waters’ agenda at the previous LAAG meeting.)

So, to the meat.

First: Active and Atheist in LAAG? “Active” = talking (and campaigning), “Atheist Group” = about critical thinking. What ? A form of critical thinking that rejects and mocks humanism as apologist at every turn, apparently. And yet apparently we need “unity” amongst rationalist campaigns? Atheism is about not believing in god(s) as part of the explanatory workings of the world. Full stop. (ie it’s about what we’re agreed we’re against. Rationalism and Humanism and Liberalism, unlike Atheism on the other hand, are examples of things we might be for.)

Next: Secular in LSS? Secularism is “about ideas being separate from people”. What? Sounds like a concept of objectivism, though as quoted I couldn’t actually agree with it – ideas are absolutely not separable from people anywhere other than conceptual discourse. Secularism is about not having any established religious position in the lawful governance of the land. Full stop.

Full stop, like murdering cartoonists (and Jews) is not just illegal, but evil. Full stop.

I’m not actually a fan of linguistic definitions and gymnastics as solutions to any problem, but we do need multiple tools to have any understanding of the dialogue necessary if we are to achieve any solutions. Different problems require different / multiple solutions. We can jettison definitive language once we have that shared understanding, and only use it lightly even when having the conversation.

Sadly, ironically, the “PC” attempts to massage meaning and language, as Orwellian as any examples criticised (and mocked), display exactly the PC attitudes to the topics pointed out at the last meeting. Pointing in fact to the very problem screaming to be discussed in the questions from the floor – political correctness. Whether driven by fear or pragmatism – perhaps we can agree on that?

No doubt efforts here (LAAG and LSS) are sincere and courageous, just my fear that throwing every issue into one pot and shaking vigorously is unlikely to achieve more than lowest-common-denominator progress, or worse, degenerative developments.

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[(*) And here’s a thought. It’s a simple – no-brainer – corollary of secularism that says there should be no religion-specific privileges or exceptions in established legal arrangements. (Secular Muslims would agree whole-heartedly too, even if islamists or jihadists  would – by definition – disagree.) But, given that the existence of Sharia is a real phenomenon, albeit fragmented and ill-defined with patchy support and rejection even in the Muslim world, it might not be a bad thing to have advice on how to proceed when it presents itself in a real dispute or claim situation. That might actually be useful?]

Roughly half-way through, about as far as the reformation and the renaissance, Malik’s potted history of moral philosophy, majoring on the theological. As such it’s pretty good. Many sources I’ve already read, so my prejudice against his presumed (narrow) take on rationality in the humanist atheism vs religion wars got in the way of enjoying the read initially. His presumed agenda preceded him.

So, in fact, I need to record that it’s a good read. Whatever his ultimate agenda and conclusions, his readings are broad and sensitive to the human motivations of their times. Recognises the multi-civilisations “Axial Age” of humanity’s quest for understanding life in the cosmos. The real origins of humanism, in the quest to research “human writings” lost by the later domination of church and scripture – put me in mind of Eco’s Name of the Rose, and an excellent reading of Dante’s Divine Comedy in the context of Aquinas writings, and the breadths and depths of thinking that prefaced the renaissance itself – on the shoulders of giants. Good stuff.

[Post Note : Final review on completion here.]

Struck by Nigel Farage responding to questioning from Mishal Hussein on BBCR4Today on the principle of an immigration commission establishing and enforcing bases for entry (*1) being about “maintaining normality”.

Particularly impressed with his insistance that a quantifiable cap on immigrant numbers was a compete red herring, the point being “social quality”. If pushed, yes he could point at stats at what had been considered “normal”, but turning such numbers into targets and caps was to completely miss the point.

The wider meta-point, is the media generally. Even high-quality journalists are part of an establishment that values quantity above quality. The underlying point for governance is that not everything that counts can be counted. It’s a deeply pernicious (scientistic) kind of political correctness – a meme – underlying governance itself, as well as the media as part of our checks and balances monitoring that governance, to be seen to stick with “objective facts”. As if quality itself were some slippery slope to leading to the PC bogey-man of “moral relativism” (*2).

Numbers are a tool, they are never the point.

(*1) Typically the bases for entry adopt another meme – “the Australian points system” – but again the focus tends to be “economic value vs benefit cost” of the candidate. Of course here too, there must also be a more fundamental cultural normality aspect to the test beyond the numbers. Coincidentally a fit with cultural normality is the immigration focus of another UKIP supporter (Anne Marie Waters) here. A cultural melting pot is one thing, but we don’t want to import memes that positively deny values our culture holds as basic freedoms. (Though as one commenter pointed out, whilst this logic is fine, and there is an element of straw-man I acknowledged in the previous report, the scale of “a few bad apples” amongst immigrant numbers is likely to be very small compared to those home grown by degenerate radicalisation – radicalisation toward illiberal, cultural values that deny basic freedoms I’m talking here, not specifically violent muderous (eg Salafist-jihadi) extremism necessarily. But the principle is nevertheless important – the quality of values held individually is fundamentally more important than a count of total numbers, or less still economic value. Numbers must not rule.)

[(*2) Post Note on Moral Relativism.]

[Post Note : Interesting to note the similarities between Farage view and Milliband’s take. Need to read the latter more closely, is he really agreeing, are they agreeing on the qualitative point about fairness? Hat tip to Daniel Trilling @trillingual – though by exploiting their own refugee family status, they cloud immigration with refugees.]

From a BBC picture story:

“Yangon, also known as Rangoon,
in Myanmar, also known as Burma”

They’re NOT “also known as”.
They’re the same effin’ words.
Just different phoenetic spellings.
You need to learn to pronounce ’em right.

Rangoon / Yangon
Burma / Myanmar

You can just hear the British Empire quelling the natives.
Jeez. That’s all folks.

Following up a hit on Stevie Lange I happened to notice that Billy Kristian’s biog page used my photo from The Golden Lion around 1978/9ish.

Fair trade. Having left my own page with “whatever happened to … ” I also noted there were several RnB / Rock’nRoll legends I still needed to name check, and I see Billy gives them all credits.

So as well as Chris Thomson, Stevie Lange and Billy Kristian, the stellar line-up of Filthy McNasty and Night over that couple of years in London included : Geoff Whitehorn, Clive Edwards, Robbie McIntosh, Rick Marrotta, Nicky Hopkins, Michael McDonald, Bill Payne, Jimmy Johnson (!) and Steve Porcaro.

What? The Jimmy Johnson, guitar of the Swampers? Suspect he could have been on the Night recordings, but maybe not at the Bridgehouse and other London gigs – I’d have noticed, surely. Geoff, Robbie, Rick and Nicky I recall.

There’s an irony in accepted commentary around “extreme Islamism” that people are very PC around avoiding conflating “racism” with opinions about religions. There is of course a minefield of offense to be avoided in offensive presumptions linking ethnic and cultural appearance with religious positions so careful un-prejudiced correctness does not go amiss. However there are also parallels that need to be recognised for what they are, and addressed accordingly – ie correctly.

This Quilliam piece by Haras Rafiq on CNN uses the expression:

“extremism of all kinds as social ill, comparable to racism”.

So in the next breath that we, in liberal western secular democracies, might say there is no such thing as protection of religions from blasphemy to be defined by rights in law, we would also strongly defend laws that protect race, gender and sexuality from any kind of “blasphemy”. ie not just actual expressed, incited or active hatred, but even any implicit prejudice against such freedoms and equalities would get short shrift. Maintaining such positions would be considered offensive, even vicariously offensive on behalf of fellow humankind. So much so that we are happy that such freedoms are protected by rights in law and offenses in criminal law. We hold these things sacred, and consider it sacrilege to oppose them, non-PC to raise arguments against; might even expect to be considered irrational, mad or beyond the pale to even suggest such arguments exist.

If we put the boot on the other foot, there is a world of difference between believing that religion is irrational (by western objective scientistic standards) and believing that Salafist-jihadi-ideology is positively offensive to civilised human values. The former is open to debate and discussion, but doesn’t in itself demand a high-level of engagement, it’s even possible to “not care” in many a context. But the latter is an offense that should be challenged for what it is, spoken-out and acted against individually and institutionally.

The not caring position is well captured by Quilliam’s Maajid Nawaz here.

The individual and institutional challenge to the offensive position is the point of the Haras Rafiq piece. We mustn’t wait for institutional enforcement in response to hateful incitement or murderous acts, but must simply reject the position held. It should be on a par with race, gender and sexual prejudice.

Political correctness must not be allowed to paralyse our ability to identify and act on the issue.

Interesting watching the polarisation of opinion around Mohammed Emwazi (previously “Jihadi John”) – that anyone suggesting “victimhood”, that MI5’s intervention around the time of his deportation from Tanzania has anything to do with the outcome, is given short-shrift and ridicule. In fact, things that alienate angry young men enough to take violent action is a recurring topic around Islamic extremism – and it’s very old news that rebels with a pretext in the absence of a cause attract their gangster’s molls. As I always say, life’s just complicated enough. It’s scientistically simplistic – greedy reductionist – to seek simple “causes” involving existing “subjects” or “objects” to “blame” for events. Longer term outcomes that involve chaotically evolving histories influenced circumstantially by many small choices. None of which is “the” cause. Political (jihadi) ideas aired (freely expressed) at Westminster College were another part of the story. Alienation is still a bad idea. Radicalisation toward extremism is another. Conspiracy or cock-up, they’re called evil. Islamic culture, built on Quranic and other texts apparently requiring human practice beyond the social pale, is also part of the problem.

Blasphemy is invalid as a legal concept simply because of the principle of secularity says religious belief should not form part of society’s governance arrangements. Freedom of thought and expression is enough. Extremism is the evil that society must point to as beyond the pale.

Political correctness must not be allowed to paralyse our ability to consider and act on all the issues. All extremisms are social ills, beyond society’s pale.

[Post Note : I didn’t mention the “Cage” response that materialised at the weekend. They are one of the commentators pointing out the establishment agencies and security forces actions as triggers to alienation and radicalisation, as reasons or causes, even justifications for Emwazi, rather than condemning the evil actions. Fine diatribe from Boris in response:

A response which also picks up on other conflations and generalisations prompting the knee-jerk PC reactions.]

Posted Saudi 1 : Russia 0 late last year, and the strategy continues.
(Paul Mason is the common point on twitter.)

An event that passed me by in London last week. Reported here in THE.