The Ideology of Failure

by Stephen Pax Leonard

  Social justice biases are hardly ‘hidden’: positive discrimination towards women and ethnic minorities is everywhere in the public sector, and is made absolutely explicit in some job advertisements. Women-only short-lists exist for appointments to certain academic posts. There are plenty of women in academia who have benefited from this positive discrimination. Unsurprisingly, this bias is particularly prevalent in disciplines which have historically been more popular with men, such as the sciences and engineering. It is a radical oversimplification of the historical story to say that women have been oppressed and that we now must make amends for it. Throughout history, males have been cannon-fodder in countless wars. They have been coal-miners and worse.

  But now there is in fact a pseudo-war on men in academia, and probably much of the public sector, because the ideology dictates that one must perceive society to be inherently unfair to women. If one is a white, straight male, then the system might perhaps just work against one, because one has no chance of invoking minority status. It is really time for these men to fight back, but do not expect the feminist Swedish men with their handbags swinging from their arms to lead the charge.

  If one disagrees with the feminist ideology — a key component of the liberal groupthink —, one risks being excluded and automatically subject to the accusatory atmosphere. Many students have embraced this hegemonic thinking and wish to increasingly censor people they disagree with, contemporaries or historical figures. This is no longer a righteous question of defending the weak and the marginalised. It is little more than a race to be the most politically correct, sometimes apparently for the sake of being just that: a group of activists who claim to wish to stop bigotry, but are amongst the most bigoted people you will ever meet. Anybody who disagrees with their views risks being labelled a Western imperialist, sexist, privileged or any number of things, even if such a description is often quite inaccurate. Armed with this ‘bigoted tolerance’, these uncritical thinkers tend to resort to a basket of amorphous ideologies and misplaced prejudices, rather than reasoned argument. They do not seem to understand the very basics of critical reasoning with their ‘straw man’ arguments and informal fallacies. They unthinkingly accuse people of racism in discussions on Islam, and thus fail to address the proposition by misrepresenting the opposing position. These so-called intellectuals seem to wish to live in an anti-intellectual world where stereotypes trump critical, independent thinking. They seem to be motivated by an anti-metaphysical imperative which implies they should discard notions such as abstract thought, causality and truth.

  The result is that there is relatively little debate about anything at a time when cultural patterns are being bashed about. Groupthink creates a culture of silence and intimidation in universities and alongside developments such as no-platforming correspond to an anti-intellectual bullying. Nowadays, our universities are no longer bastions of free thinking and open debate, but are instead increasingly the wastelands of groupthink and anti-communication where the key issues of the day are seldom discussed.

  Many academics, most of them educated at the elite higher education institutions, stand apparently for anti-elitism. They shudder even at the sound of the word ‘elitist’ because it encapsulates everything that doesn’t have to do with moral victimhood, and would thus run contrary to the prevailing groupthink. And yet some represent the Leftist cultural elite and are thus the embodiment of another hypocrisy. Intellectually, they want to be an elite but must not be described as such, as their political views and philosophy are completely antithetical to the concept of elitism. Many like to talk down all monarchic structures, but rush to Buckingham Palace to collect their OBEs. Some speak incessantly about equality and social justice, but are educated at the most expensive schools in the country. Schools that are nowadays beyond the reach of almost everybody except the ultra-rich.

  These so-called ‘Champagne socialists’ are in fact the epitome of hypocrisy. They have a tendency to frame discussions in terms of diversity, inequality and human rights, the latter of which is often cited as the conduit for liberalism’s alleged supremacy, even if it is based on abstract and very outdated principles. They are the face of the culture of repudiation that characterises contemporary Western society, and the groupthink that colours the teaching of Humanities (and some of the Social Sciences) in our universities. It is a culture that celebrates a post-Christian era, a penumbra of thought that dismisses the notion that the West was built on Christianity, that it is the pinnacle of human cultural and intellectual achievement, and is worth defending. It is a context which dismisses all kinds of rules and norms, wallowing in the anti-grammar of our time.

  There is nothing wrong with elitism providing it is based on academic ability (and not wealth) and providing there is meritocratic mobility into it. At a political level, elitism must have national accountability, and not supra-national oversights. Throughout history, there have always been elites of some kind. Elitism provides society’s next generation of leaders. The best and brightest should rule. So I am afraid that is Jeremy Corbyn out.

  But to describe such opinions as unfashionable would be an understatement. To be a member of the liberalist groupthink, it is important that one is signed up to the multiculturalist agenda and to victim support. Academia and the Civil Service are no longer meritocracies; they are meritocracies gone too far. A system of positive discrimination is in place for those people who were perceived to be discriminated against in the past even if, relatively speaking, they are the new arrivals. Within this insular world, the value of what is said depends on who said it, and not on what was actually said. The orthodoxy of nihilism is at work, and the result is that we are moving towards a perverse minoritocracy, not a bona fide meritocracy.

  It should be borne in mind that such ideology is grounded in psychological mechanisms which when left unchallenged can function to hide social reality. I believe this is the current state of affairs. We live in a world of warped paradoxes, but the social reality is concealed. As an example of this, in a society that claims to be built on free speech, it is more or less impossible to talk about the things that matter. A topic we will return to in the essay entitled ‘Freedom of Speech’.

  In such a blurred context, these terribly important thoughts about the ‘big issues’ become internalised because the omnipresent ideology has rendered them illegitimate. Internalised ways of thinking risk falling deeply at odds with the official mantra operationalised by the managerial liberal regime. This is ideology in the Marxian sense: false ideas representing the consciousness of the liberal elite used to legitimise its power. The ideas are false because they claim to represent everybody, but are in fact just the views of a group with control over the ideological mouthpiece. As with any effective ideological discourse, it has a subtle indirectness to it and belongs to the unconscious of a society. Ideology is apparent in the mass media, as we will see in Sweden, and in the language code used to generate these messages.

  Monolithic liberalism with its claim of universality underpins so comprehensively the way all our public institutions function, it has almost become some kind of invisible film, a pernicious layer of imperialistic ideology that is so omnipresent in the West that some have forgotten what was there beforehand. And yet its effects are anything but marginal, innocuous or insubstantive. They are there to be seen in the education of our students. The totalitarian mindset is approaching some kind of sovereignty over language with regard to these issues. It might be assumed that liberalism stands above moral debate and argument by claiming to have a monopoly on legitimacy, and eudaimonia or ‘human flourishing’.

  Allow me to focus briefly on the question of diversity as a key feature of the liberal groupthink — ‘diversity’, the magical word that seems to be perpetually on the lips of the bureaucratic primus pilus whose battalions have taken over the management of our universities. Diversity is a particularly important part of this ideology that has been institutionalised with every institution having a ‘di
versity statement’. In the case of university diversity statements, an attempt is made to cover every thinkable variable which might be grounds for discrimination.

  For its advocates, ‘diversity’ has become a sort of religion, some kind of intellectual creed based on a perverse self-hatred of the West, providing of course it is not diversity of thought. People are told ‘diverse’ workplaces are more ‘productive’ even if there is no good evidence for it, and frankly who cares if they are? Surely, the objective must be simply to employ the best people irrespective of their ethnicity and gender. Diversity has assumed the mantle of some kind of irrefutable truth, a celebration of tolerance, but its implementation is totally intolerant. We will see subsequently how the objective of this ‘tolerance’ manifests itself in the words of European Commissioners and former Heads of State such as Sarkozy. They wish to destroy the notion that a nation represents one culture. They have been absolutely explicit about this, and so it is wrong to equate liberalism with inaction and laissez-faire politics. In the words of our political leaders, diversity collocated with so-called ‘tolerance’ is cultural abandonment and ethnic dilution.

  In practice, the sub-text regarding diversity states, ‘It is fine that you don’t look like us, but you must think like us’. You can be black, disabled or lesbian, but if you are a conservative thinker, then that is not ‘diversity’. ‘Diversity’ is another Leftist catchphrase which provides a quid pro quo advantage to a particular person based on political considerations. It is part of the overall socio-political agenda that is the subject of the essays in this book.

  As with so much of the language that makes up the liberalist speech code, diversity means in fact the opposite to what it should connote. When one hears people talk about ‘diversity’, one can be sure that they are promoting a hegemonic discourse which is completely intolerant of any ‘diverse’ opinions. They are the face of an ideologised public consciousness, a closed politicised mind that uses this kind of language to create and enforce a common sociality. According to the globalist, multiculturalism has nothing to do with ensuring the existence of a multiplicity of cultures. Get beyond the hermeneutical legerdemain, and one realises it is entirely antithetical to that, seeking to toss every ethnicity and identity into the cauldron of global consumerism. What is served up is homogeneity, and not heterogeneity. ‘Multiculturalism’ and ‘diversity’ are key terms in a dialectical process supported by multinationals and globalist politicians. It is a process which sets out to rule and dictate to a globalised, consumerised mass of people stripped of national identity, but endowed with secularism and a façade of fake, humanistic values. We no longer need heritage, culture or any sense of nationhood. Now, we have Hollywood, McDonald’s and MTV. Now, we have one size that fits all, but in a typical nefarious manner we will call it the opposite.

  In totalitarian regimes, language tends to be manipulated to the point that words signify the opposite of what they are meant to refer to. It becomes a kind of anti-syntax. With code-words such as ‘diversity’, ‘progressive’ and ‘racist’, the language of the liberalist regime sounds like a repetitive, totalitarian monologue with its ideological phraseology. It is becoming stagnant and denies any individual spirit. It connotes a teleological view of social development by coupling the positive connotations of the word ‘progress’ with any grouping of people who are ‘ethnic’ (i.e. not white). It operates therefore in a totalitarian fashion because it attempts to eliminate the scope for questioning or critical evaluation. If the scope for questioning something is suppressed, then it is reasonable to assume that a totalitarian mechanism is being employed.

  Totalitarian language is built on implicit, axiomatic oppositions. Polarisation is mandatory for totalitarian discourse. ‘Diversity’ is part of this herding, polarising lexicon of ideological principles (every ideology has a group of labels which it uses for ideological purposes); institutions and the ‘institutionalised’ use it to herd up the unthinking sheep into the ideological pens. People accept these terms mechanically and unconsciously once the discourse becomes omnipresent and repetitive, especially when, as in the case of Sweden, the authority of an external editorial voice has been subverted. The alarm bells should be ringing, but they are not. Perhaps because talk of ‘diversity’ seems entirely innocuous, and of course as compared to the objectives of previous totalitarian regimes, it most certainly is. Collectively, such terms can reinforce an institutionalised authority by obeying the linguistic mantra. In the new totalitarian discourse, key words such as ‘diversity’ act as clever forms of virtue-signalling as they are seen to be a conspicuous expression of moral values. The modus operandi is hostile towards any other kind of reality which is by definition of being different, ‘deviant’ and thus politically incorrect.

  One must sing the triumphalist paean of diversity. It seems that diversity advocates simply obey the rules in order to gain one another’s grace; it is almost a crime to question diversity’s apparent benefits, and nothing seems to spook the diversity advocates. In a secular society, it is surely a sense of community, togetherness and belonging that they seek. In a godless world, they long for the fraternity of shared abstract values, or at least are willing to appear to long for them. There is a need to be recognised as adhering to the new universal truth because that is the ideological blanket of the day. ‘Be diverse, but not ideologically diverse’ might be the slogan. But, of course, diversity is part of the social justice ideology, an ideology that is meant to act as an appendage to our consciousness.

  Diversity is played out as a sort of competition to prove who is most opposed to racism, sexism etc. According to the new religion, ‘diversity’ is irrefutably correct and LGBTQPIA or whatever the latest all-inclusive group acronym is, is a fashionable obsession. Held as a transcendental truism, the anarchic implication is that the group that has no claim to marginalisation is in some sense culpable for ever having resisted the deprioritisation of their own cultural make-up, for ever having believed that being heterosexual was the default sexuality, for sanctioning gender distinctions and privileging heterosexual marriage. This aspect of our ‘cultural grammar’ is becoming increasingly ingrained, washing away our freedom of expression on such matters. With an expression of puzzled compliance, we have effectively lost the right to even comment on such dramatic changes and victimologies because the new cultural grammar forbids us from doing so.

  Anybody who questions the gospel of diversity in the world of academia will be hung out to dry, but the truth of the matter is that diversity does not necessarily lead to more intellectually stimulating student communities. In many British universities, the Chinese student community who number in the thousands have on the whole very little to do with the Home students.4 Diversity does not lead inexorably to seamless integration and cultural enrichment. Diversity is the dogma, and thus it is back to the problem of the pervasive groupthink and ideological dogmatism. One cannot debate the values of the robotically repeated speech code — diversity, tolerance, social justice etc. The speech code is the groupspeak, and must be employed unthinkingly. It is motivated reasoning. It is the utopian multicultural vision that matters, not the facts. At least with regards to student bodies, ‘multicultural’ is for once being used in its proper sense.

  Diversity is the slogan, the unqualified truth, whose value must never be questioned. But, of course, it is not really about diversity as understood in its unconditioned sense. It is about bestowing a preferential value on minorities who are assumed to somehow be victims. Making people feel like victims is crucial if one wants to rack up votes as a ‘progressive’ politician. If it were about diversity, then we would respect the anti-gay legislation of Uganda. But, as it is about victims and not diversity, the gays of Uganda might instead be good candidates for asylum. And it is not multiculturalist either; it is the promotion of non-Western cultures and religions (typically Islam) and the undermining of our own. If it were multiculturalist, we would be encouraging Buddhist Monks, Masai warriors and the Ma
ori to settle in the West. We would be celebrating polygamy, child marriage, honour killings etc.

  The most enthusiastic advocates of diversity are those on the Far Left, such as members of the respective European Green Parties. In their public announcements, they tend to try and conceal their real objectives. They masquerade as tree-hugging environmentalists. If only they were that, then their efforts should be applauded. Instead, many of them have a much more sinister objective: to make our nations as ‘multi-ethnic’ (i.e. non-white) as quickly as possible and to replace a withering Christianity with a flourishing Islam. They are using mass immigration as a mechanism to capsise the current social order.

  Sweden has been heavily influenced by this variety of post-modern nihilistic groupthink, which has become the common denominator for any politically correct discourse. In Sweden, and to a lesser extent in the UK, society operates increasingly on such scripted thinking. Codes and taboos are fabricated by an in-group, in the case of Sweden, a liberal elite of academics, journalists and public sector officials that continue to confuse nationhood with nationalism. Groupthink is powerful because the out-groups are, according to groupthink, unacceptable in some way as they have been coupled with stigmatised labels such as most obviously ‘racist’ or ‘politically incorrect’. As a society that is thought to be more or less classless (even if that in no way applies in the major cities), there is a sense of co-dependency in Sweden and thus not to conform and be part of an ‘outgroup’ is disproportionately stigmatised. Huntford (1971) has shown how individual identity is weak in Sweden. He describes an ultra-conformist society where dissent is not tolerated, where very considerable power and control has been handed over to the State, but where on the whole (up until now) that control has been used benevolently.

  Until recently, there was a conspiracy of silence surrounding immigration and multiculturalism in Sweden and some other west European countries. In Sweden, it is right to speak of a militant anti-racist cult for whom egalitarianism and multiculturalism are the axioms of the moment. There is their groupthink, which spawns socially patterned defects, and there is ‘badthink’. This is the context in which people in Sweden, the UK and elsewhere in the West are engaging in self-censorship, because they do not want their careers destroyed. Even faintly unpleasant ideas can now cause great upset. This ‘manufactured’ hypersensitivity is another means of restricting an open debate by constantly guilt-tripping one’s opponents. The hypocritical ‘language police’ who wish debate to be nothing more than a representation of a mono-perspective are the same people who expound the merits of living in an open society. As we will see, this is particularly the case in Sweden.