The Herald Sun has reported, just in time for Australia Day, that those who fly Australian flags are more racist than those who don’t. The study was conducted at an Australia Day fireworks celebration last year in Perth, where 513 people were interviewed and asked about their views on a variety of immigration and values related statements.

This study has been cited all around Australia and I’ve even seen some global news sources carrying it, despite the fact that it doesn’t really pass academic rigor and the “conclusions” are really just assumptions, possibly based on the researcher’s own biases.

A self-selecting sample of Australians who live in Perth, attend fireworks displays, and agree to an interview are hardly representative of all Australians. The researcher, Professor Farida Fodzar of the University of Western Australia, specialises in race relations, a field of sociology/anthropology that sets out to imagine racial conflict and racist motivations where there are none. If there were no racism, she’d be out of job, after all.

Furthermore, none of the questions actually ask about racist views. Fodzar and the media are equating patriotism with racism, which is incorrect. Patriotism is the love of and devotion to one’s country. Racism, in this context, is intolerance of others based on their race. Patriotism has nothing to do with racial intolerance in and of itself, though one who is patriotic may be intolerant of those who are undermining the country they love, regardless of the race of those people.

Let’s break down some of the findings of the study which were reported in the above linked article:

Professor Fodzar said the team found that of the 102 people surveyed on the day who had attached flags to their cars for the national holiday, 43 per cent agreed with the statement that the now-abandoned “White Australia Policy” had “saved Australia from many problems experienced by other countries”.

She said that only 25 per cent of people who did not fly Australia car flags agreed with the statement.

Under the “White Australia Policy”, which was non-official government policy until after World War II, non-Europeans were barred from migrating to Australia.

It’s no secret that multicultural/multiracial societies have serious problems resulting from conflicting values and lifestyles. It’s not outrageous that some people might think that the net loss from the conflict caused by racial and cultural diversity outweighs any potential or imagined gain. However, such views do not necessarily make one “racist”. And indeed, it’s entirely possible that many of those who believe that the White Australia policy was a good policy were direct beneficiaries of it themselves.

The survey also found that a total of 56 per cent of people with car flags feared for Australian culture and believed that the country’s most important values were in danger, compared with 34 per cent of non-flag flyers.

If a flag-flyer is a patriot (and if one isn’t, why fly the flag?), then a concern for preserving Australian values is legitimate and expected. The values of yesterday are not the same as the values of today and anyone with open eyes can see them changing right before us. A patriot who loves his country and sees it changing into something unrecognisable will be understandably concerned and upset.

But this doesn’t make one a racist. The implication of the word “racist” is usually that the racist is white. It’s rarely spoken, but always assumed. In fact, a non-white Australian could just as easily be concerned about the decline of important Australian values as much as any white Australian. But even if the person in question is white, race still isn’t necessarily a factor. Most of those leading the drive to destroy traditional values are themselves white, so here it is a conflict of ideology, not race.

Thirty-five per cent of flag flyers felt that people had to be born in Australia to be truly Australian, compared with 22 per cent of non-flag flyers.

Again, not a racist view. Australian immigrants come from every corner of the globe, with the United Kingdom leading the top of the pack. The question here is one of supposed dual loyalty or lack of loyalty to one’s adopted homeland, but not one of race. In America, people who hold this view are called racists and the accusers get away with it because almost all immigrants to America these days are non-white and it makes a convenient red herring in the immigration debate. But despite an end to the White Australia policy, Australia still has significant European immigration and a quarter of Australians are foreign born.

Twenty-three per cent of flag flyers believed that true Australians had to be Christian, while 18 per cent of non-flaggers agreed with the statement.

This is just an example of how non-academic this study is. Not only does Christianity have nothing to do with race, but a 5% difference in opinion may well be covered by the margin of error. We’re not told what that margin is, but considering the sample is small and non-representative, it’s likely that the margin of error is 5% or even higher. We don’t know, but this point seems to be thrown in only to denigrate Christians.

An overwhelming 91 per cent of people with car flags agreed that people who move to Australia should adopt Australian values, compared with 76 per cent of non-flaggers.

This is a statement that even the Australian government endorses. In order to be granted permanent residency or citizenship in Australia, one must sign a declaration promising to adhere to and uphold Australian values. Refusing to do so is grounds for denial. In fact, most governments of the world that allow mass immigration at least pay lip service to integrating immigrants. In order to integrate, it necessarily follows that one must share things in common with one’s host population. In any case, the vast majority of both flag flyers and non flag flyers agreed that immigrants should adopt Australian values.

Only this could be said to have a slight tone of racial or cultural superiority, but it’s unfair to assume that racism is the motivating factor in those holding this view. It’s not inconsistent with the idea that immigrants should try to fit in with an Australian way of life and some may rightly believe that the ways of some immigrants are totally opposed to Australian ways.

Neither are we given any information on the people who agreed with that statement. Some of those who agreed with the statement may themselves be migrants who have made a great effort to adapt to the Australian way of life and expect other newcomers to do the same. One cannot simply assume this belief is based on racism, as people may have a wide variety of reasons for thinking migrants should assimilate.

It does not even mean one is opposed to immigration. In fact, many of these flag flyers might be so enamored with the Australian government’s immigration policies that it has inspired deep patriotism and pride in their country. If the question of whether or not one supported immigration in general was asked, it wasn’t reported upon.

Fodzar is simply engaging in Australian-bashing for publicity’s sake. Her research is shoddy and her conclusions appear baseless. Her conclusions about “racist” attitudes come from a whopping 102 people, about whom we have been given no demographic information. She went into the study with preconceived notions and came out with useless data that serves to validate what she and her ivory-tower colleagues already believe, while they look down their noses at ordinary people who aren’t as “enlightened” as they are.

Flying the flag of one’s nation should be considered a positive thing and patriotic attitudes should be desired from the populace for any number of reasons. If Fodzar (who was born in Brunei) is offended by patriotism for her own adopted country or views it with negative connotations, perhaps she should reconsider her citizenship.

We have finally learnt why England crawls with working-class women willing to complain openly about immigration: it seems the United Kingdom is run by a secret cabal of Nazi sympathisers, lodged deep within the Conservative Party, and close to Prime Minister David Cameron.

On Sunday the nation stood still as the Daily Mail, in an epic and immensely detailed report, made the terrible revelation. Earlier this month, Conservative Member of Parliament Aiden Burley attended a stag party, where 34-year-old Oxford-educated Mark Fournier, who works as an accountant and whose stag party it was, revealed his true colours—in public, in front of gay and Jewish eyes, and of those of respectable French citizens trying to enjoy a peaceful dinner with friends and family. Unable to bottle up his Nazism any longer, and eager to be as transgressive as possible, Mr. Fournier went around in full German Nazi SS uniform, complete with swastika armband, in proud and brazen defiance of French laws.

Fortunately, reporters from the Daily Mail happened to be in the same restaurant on that precise evening and at that precise time, and were able to document the outrage, filming it and photographing it conclusively. This is reporter Matt Sandy’s account [emphases here and further down are mine]:

Mail on Sunday photographer John McLellan and I were in Val Thorens working on an unrelated story last Saturday when we went to Restaurant La Fondue . . .

As we ordered drinks, we noticed a rowdy group of men at a table. Then we saw a man in an SS uniform walk past us to the toilet. We were surprised by the group’s brashness and their taunting of the waiters.

It was a small restaurant, with room for 50 diners, and was two-thirds full.

Watching other British people behaving as this group were in a foreign country was at the very least embarrassing.

Outside, we chatted to the men. Several agreed to pose for photos and, without prompting, did Nazi salutes. I have seen this happen only once before – at a football match.

The group invited us to join them at a British-themed pub later that evening. It was only at this stage that we discovered that one of their number was a Conservative MP.

In the bar, which was packed with holidaymakers enjoying apres-ski, they continued drinking, and their chanting became more frequent and uninhibited. It was hard to believe that an MP did nothing to halt this offensive behaviour.

This offensive behaviour included a toast that ran:

Let’s raise a toast to Tom for organising the stag do, and if we’re perfectly honest, to the ideology and thought process of the Third Reich.

Mr. Burley, who ‘[i]n an entry on [his] website, dated June 21 this year, . . . describes a visit to Israel’, witnessed this act, heard these words, and did . . . nothing. Worse, he was photographed paying the bill.

The British nation need not fear, however, for prompt action has been taken. According to the Daily Mail,

[a] French police spokesman confirmed that an investigation could be launched, and said: ‘Anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi crimes are taken extremely seriously in France. Anyone suspected of breaking the law in this respect can and will be prosecuted.’

The news report clarifies that

[t]his is because under the French penal code it is a crime, unless required for a film, a play or a historical exhibition, to wear or exhibit in public anything reminiscent of what was worn or used by the Nazis.

Meanwhile, Mr. Burley released a statement (through Conservative Central Office), stating,

There was clearly inappropriate behaviour by some of the other guests and I deeply regret that this happened. I am extremely sorry for any offence that will undoubtedly have been caused.

And the BBC reports that

[a] Conservative Party spokesman confirmed there would be a full investigation into what had happened.

Unsatisfied with that, shadow transport minister and Labour MP John Zak Woodcock, who is chairman of the Labour Friends of Israel group, has ‘called for Mr. Burley to be sacked’.

Events are unfolding, so we will see where this leads. Mr. Burley and friends have good reason to worry, for some have had their careers ruined for less.

Last month, for example, one Mr. Darren Scully, another conservative politician and now former major of Naas, in Ireland, was forced to apologise, resign, endure days of abuse and public humiliation, and face a police investigation—and a possible prison sentence of up to two years—following a radio interview where he expressed frustration with the bad manners of his Black constituents and his decision earlier this year to direct them to colleagues better suited to take up their concerns.

With so many reports of racists and Nazis coming out into the open, claiming support of the BNP or wearing a costume as the ultimate act of defiance to the system, the inevitable conclusion must be that more ‘education and love’ are needed, because if love for multiracialism is not forthcoming, it must be that we need yet more of the same.

The Node
By Tito Perdue
Nine-Banded Books
258 Pages
(Cover art by Alex Kurtagic)

Literary renegade Tito Perdue’s new novel, The Node, is a dystopian comedy set later this century in an ultra-multi-cultural Third-World America where Caucasians (or “Cauks” as they’re called) are by law a disenfranchised minority.

In this wretched and wasted, yet still consumer-crazed land, pollution has ruined the atmosphere, overpopulation caused by third-world immigration has destroyed all the resources, and the most valued currency is the Chinese Yuan.

Looting, murder, robbery and pederasty are all considered normal, and an infamous prison called The Wedge is reserved for whites suspected of having “ethnocentric tendencies.”

Everything, it seems, in this bad new world is named (or re-named) after Martin Luther King Junior: streets, lakes, rivers, buildings, bridges, and New York City.

The book’s un-named 44-year-old protagonist, forced to abandon his rural Tennessee homestead, makes a dangerous 4-mile trek to “the city,” seeking propane for warmth, and visits a “node,” a covert compound peopled with white men and women endeavoring to illegally repopulate themselves. These “nodists” are part of an ever-expanding network of such groups, or franchises, they call them, that are springing up all over the country.

Here, the hero meets and talks with the movement’s founder, Larry Schneider, an eccentric idealist obsessed with a yen to “turn the world around” and who complains bitterly about their race’s bizarre predicament:

“Odd business, no? We spent a thousand years putting together some advantages for ourselves, and now we’re supposed to give them all away.”

“Yeah. Everybody’s good except us. We’re bad.”

“Precisely. Entirely appropriate that black people, yea and Asians too, should look to their interests. But don’t you try it!”

Sympathetic with their cause, the novice decides to stay among them. Returning home, he later learns, would do no good anyway, since in his absence, the government has given his house and acreage to Cambodians for the sake of “diversity.”

Larry Schneider eventually recruits “our man,” (as Perdue often calls his protagonist) to go on a mission to rendezvous with an out-of-state contingent of like-minded whites and create a new node.

Once he finally finds his comrades, our man and his nuevo nodists, after many mishaps and misadventures, appropriate a piece of abandoned farmland and horde a supply of ammunition, guns, explosives, pharmaceuticals, food, and synthetic water. They then build a twenty-foot wall around the compound and set to work making babies and raising cattle.

Eventually, they win over a large part of the local population (nine counties worth) with their philosophy and create a micro-nation called Peluria, which is to be measured, as the movement’s founder puts it “not by prosperity, but by the quality of men.”

But one is left wondering, will the Cauks prevail? Will the white race survive? Will they be “the winners” who get to write their own history, outnumbered, maligned, and despised as they are in that nightmare state that used to be America?

One can guess that Perdue had considerable fun writing The Node. Though the magical realism, so abundant in his other works, is not as prevalent here, the novel does contain a number of inter-textual references and inside jokes (another characteristic of Perdue’s fiction).

When, for instance, the protagonist overhears a mother “teaching her child the rudiments of what sounded like the old-fashioned English of a hundred years before,” he wonders:

Was this indeed the tongue that held sway in North America once, the dialect of Wolfe, Faulkner, and Perdue?

And later, he happens upon a faded and forgotten manuscript in a drawer titled Morning Crafts (a book of Perdue’s due to be published before the end of this year).

From Opportunities in Alabama Agriculture, to The Sweet-Scented Manuscript, to The New Austerities, to Lee, to Fields of Asphodel (and a number of other yet to be published novels) Perdue’s entire oeuvre involves a fictionalized version of his ancestors, his family, and himself (as his brazen alter-ego, Leland Pefley).

But The Node is the first work in which the American South’s most luminous radical reactionary ruminates upon and prognosticates about the future of the white race and the fate of his (and also our) descendents.

For a long time, Left-leaning satirists and comedians have owned funny. Credit it to nepotism or closed doors, but the best humor you could hope for Right-of-center was the occasional libertarian toker or cartoonish redneck self-parody. Blogger Jonathan Chait congratulated the Left for their mastery of satire in a post for The New Republic only a few months ago.

The Left cheered for new media and the end of gatekeepers, but it was their own women (and men) were stationed at the gates.

The old Right always seemed to be made up of cranky, carb-faced old men. The new Right is fast, young and far handier with Photoshop.

After an Ohio University student group called Students Teaching Against Racism in Society was cheered on by the media for creating fussy, humorless thought policing posters for its pet minority groups, Youth for Western Civilization fired back with some “gotcha” tit for tat that were right on the money.

The cultures that the anti-racists chose to solemnly protect (suicide bomber culture?) were so selective that it was downright racist. The Right was right.

Either it’s OK to make fun of someone else’s culture or it’s not.

Passionate advocate for hillbilly rights Jim Goad spoke truth to power with his own poster.

My pal Kevin I. Slaughter fired up his cosmic joy buzzer and came up with this zinger for the Church of Satan.

Now it seems like everyone is having a laugh at the expense of the uptight  Left.

A Facebook page for the comedy just started up, and there are already Klingons, self-rightous dinosaurs, and offended Klansmen.

And the Internet wouldn’t be the Internet without some unamused cat posters and cute dog posters.

There have also been a ton of great parodies of the “we are the 99%” meme, associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement. My favorite is the cookie monster.

Right now, the Right spends a lot of time doing self-analysis. I guess that’s what you do when you’re on the outside, trying to find your footing. What the Right needs now is more funny. The Left is becoming increasingly hysterical and absurd. Its narratives are as tired and irrelevant as those of any tone deaf, tuned out old coot who holds out hope for a return to Mayberry.

The Left deserves to get trolled, and trolled hard.

Not to fix it, but to help it fall apart.

Four years after the event, singer and former Smiths frontman, Steven Morrissey, has decided to sue the New Musical Express (NME) magazine for libel in connection with an article where he was criticised ‘for allegedly telling a reporter Britain had lost its identity due to high levels of immigration’.

According to The Guardian,

Lawyers for the former Smiths frontman told the high court on Monday that the singer “continues to suffer” reputational damage from a controversial interview he gave to NME magazine four years ago in which he complained about an “immigration explosion” leading to a loss of British identity.

In a written submission, Morrissey said his comments received “a barrage of press” at the time, and added: “Question marks over my being a racist have never since receded”.

This is the latest instalment of a

bitter standoff that spans almost two decades – in 1992 NME accused him of “flirting with disaster” and racist imagery after he wrapped a union flag around himself while on stage in Finsbury Park, north London . . . .

In the opposite corner, however, Catrin Evans, acting for the magazine, takes the view that:

“[t]he fact that [Morrissey] has spent the three years since March 2008 recording albums, touring, promoting his new work and presumably doing well enough commercially to be able now to contemplate funding this libel claim, shows that his reputation has been unaffected. His fans apparently still love him,” Evans told the court. She pointed out that the offending interview had never been published online and continues to exist “only in Morrissey fans’ bedrooms”.

In 2007 Morrissey was quoted by the NME as saying

Although I don’t have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears. So the price is enormous.

If you travel to Germany, it’s still absolutely Germany. If you travel to Sweden, it still has a Swedish identity.

But travel to England and you have no idea where you are

Following which, in a follow-up interview, he

is alleged to have added that he did not think his comments were inflammatory, but were “a statement of fact”.

It says something about the Left, and indeed about the politics of the mainstream music industry, that even Morrissey’s perfectly reasonable and accurate observations were deemed, according to Tim Jonze, the journalist who interviewed Morrissey, ‘offensive’, and according to the NME, racist. These people are so far to the Left that they will only be seen when instruments able to detect the cosmic gravitational wave background are invented. (The predicted redshift is in excess of z > 10²⁵.)

Be that as it may, one cannot help but wonder why, if Morrissey believes that successive governments’ policy on immigration has had a negative impact in Britain, he cares about the opinions of those who supported that policy.

I certainly don’t. Do you?

On the other hand, it is difficult to ascertain Morrissey’s real attitudes an intentions, given that in 2004 he was a founding signatory of the violent terrorist group United Against Fascism, and that the year following his ‘offensive’ remarks he donated £75,000 (some $150,000 at the time) to a campaign sponsored by the aforementioned group, Love Music Hate Racism.

As to his politics, Morrissey is known to have criticised conservative politicians and to have been rooting for Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry in the U.S. presidential elections of 2004.

Thus this seems the case of a Leftist suing other Leftists for using Leftist reputational weapons because of his criticism of Leftist policies.

Put another way, this seems a case of Leftists seeking to redistribute wealth among themselves and contribute a big chunk to fattening their lawyers.

I hope the legal process proves detailed and comprehensive, and that they spare no funds, and leave no stone unturned, unearthing every document, taking as many years as are needed, in their search for the truth.

The popular YouTube commentator known as "RamZPaul" joins Richard to discuss the impossibility of parodying PC and contemporary American mores.

RamZPaul's work can be seen and read at YouTube.com/RamZPaul and www.RamZPaul.com.

Everyone who hopes for the best but fears the worst cannot escape finding himself afflicted with a rather jarring, almost schizophrenic sense of psychic discombobulation from time to time. One who has fully abandoned himself to pessimism, on the other hand, has no such problem; since he always expects the worst, he isn’t in the least shaken when bad things happen. But the persistence of hope can have a devastating impact upon a person’s psyche. Hope leads to mental dislocation, because it muddles one’s perceptions. Hope springs eternal, entirely of its own volition; one cannot choose to do without it, because—being a force of nature—it won’t be ignored. Hope causes a person to wonder if things really are as dire as they seem, even when they clearly are, since (as hope seductively whispers), “Surely it’s not that bad.”

Every epoch is haunted by ubiquitous sinister spirits which plague the minds of men. It is useless to pretend otherwise. An earnest assessment of human history will reveal that certain types of people have always been prone to a certain moral hysteria, a fear and loathing of “dangerous” ideas and behaviors that are viewed as posing a kind of unhygienic threat of contagion to all that is good and decent. These sort of men tend to make their influence felt in various ways; they are nothing if not persistent; their crusader spirit fires them to lobby for their cause mercilessly, and the squeaky wheel, as ever, is the one that gets the grease.

Of course, most people are not crusading busybodies. Instead, the mass of men are the sort who want to avoid trouble, whose first and enduring impulse is to “get along” with others. They are, in other words, conformists. This sort is quite willing to mouth the mandatory slogans and repeat the pseudo-sacred shibboleths of the Zeitgeist, since they know instinctively that doing so will help them avoid attracting the wrong kind of attention.

The typical conformist is certainly not a “bad” person, by any stretch; he is simply not a terribly bold or brave person. Everyone must pick his battles, but the conformist nearly always passes on this prospect. He is, in Burke’s dictum, the good man who allows evil to prevail by doing nothing to stop it.

But just how prevalent is the conformist class’s cowardice? And how totally ruthless are the crusaders whose routinely cow the conformists into docility? These questions provoke confusion in the mind of the nonconforming Zeitgeist-defier, the one discussed above, who hopes for the best but fears the worst. “Surely,” hope again seductively whispers in his ear, “it can’t be that bad.” There may be tons of cruel fanatics and legions of worthless cowards in the world, but after all isn’t reason still a force to be reckoned with? Don’t most people still see the wisdom of such qualities as moderation and restraint?

Hope, as always, springs eternal. But then reality intrudes, spoiling everything. 

What witches were to 17^th Century Salem and Communists were to 1950s America, so are “racists” and “homophobes” within the current dispensation. I put these names in quotes because they mean little in a definitional sense—they are, in fact, little more than slurs, terms by which outsiders are marginalized and held up for ridicule and contempt. But names can never hurt us; rather, it is the stigma attached to such odious labels that does us in. This holds particularly true if you happen not to be incredibly rich and require gainful employment in order to support yourself and your family.

I have two particular recent cases in mind which illustrate the fearsome persistence of social stigma, demonstrating the power it has to wreck careers and put livelihoods in peril. They are two examples out of possibly hundreds, to be sure, but they are illustrative of a general trend, which is but the latest manifestation of an age-old proclivity to shun, spit upon, and otherwise cruelly castigate those considered outside of the circle of social acceptability. 

The first recent case involves Frank Borzellieri, a colorful and outspoken NYC-born goombah gadfly.

A few years ago, this curly-haired spitfire had caused quite a stir for a number of articles he wrote for the Leader-Observer, all of which weighed in on various forbidden subjects regarding the biological reality of racial differences; Borzellieri asserted, inter alia, that Whites were on average more intelligent than Blacks and Hispanics, and that Blacks and Hispanics were more prone to violent crime than Whites. His style of writing, however, wasn’t dryly academic in tone; he didn’t display charts or graphs and discourse in a professorial manner; instead, he wrote satirically, with a tone of mischievous insouciance, like an edgier Dave Barry.

I recall meeting Borzellieri briefly at the 2004 American Renaissance conference, where he gave an amusing talk about his experiences with various community activists who wanted to shut him up and intimidate his publisher into ceasing to carry his columns. At the time, Borzellieri served on a Manhattan school board and worked as an adjunct professor of journalism at New York Community College. I asked him if, living in the Bronx as he did, he had a lot of students who were Black and Hispanic. He owned that he did, indeed. I asked if they ever complained about the content of his columns, and he indicated that it hadn’t become an issue with them. “I tell them, ‘diversity’ is good, so how about let’s have some diversity of thought!” he exclaimed.

From our brief conversation, I saw that this fiery, funny little guy probably had a superb rapport with his students, whatever race they were. His down-to-earth, no-nonsense manner, combined with a twinkly-eyed amiability and good humor, no doubt made him a fine teacher. I could easily see his kids immensely enjoying his company. (Truth be told, I rather envied this quality about him, being a teacher myself, but one with no such easy rapport with students, or with people in general, for that matter…)

In the intervening years, Borzellieri was able to advance in the educational establishment. Most recently, he’d been appointed principal of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic school in the Bronx. But then his past, apparently, caught up with him. After the school weathered a barrage of complaints from—who else?—“community activists,” for his controversial writings, Borzellieri was dismissed from his post in August.

Apparently, it was assumed that refraining from parroting rote multiculturalist dogma can only mean one is unfit for a position where one presides as administrator over an ethnically “diverse” population. I’m not sure what Borzellieri is doing with himself now, and I’m sure he has no memory of our abovementioned exchange a few years ago, but I wish him well. 

The charge of being a “racist” lands one in roughly the same position as Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter, with a bold “R” on his chest for all to see, signifying his unworthiness to be a part of polite and civilized society. But when it comes to degrees of official ignominy, those tagged with the scarlet “H” of “homophobe” aren’t much better off today. Soon, in fact, their persona non grata status may well exceed that of the “racists,” if current trends are any indication.

On a purely aesthetic level, I personally find the “homophobe” slur even more risibly absurd. “Racism,” at least, actually used to sort of mean something—i.e., “unreasonably prejudice or malice towards members of a different race”—before it became an all-encompassing means of shaming ideological heretics and thus lost all definitional bearing in reality.

But “homophobia” has never been anything but an intellectually dishonest nonsense word whose sole purpose is to cast aspersions on anyone expressing dissent from mandated PC-norms regarding homosexuality. The -phobia suffix is in fact, completely inaccurate and misleading, even if one is trying in good faith to understand what makes some people dislike gays. Who actually fears the homo? What’s he going to do that’s so menacing? Will he break into your home at night and redecorate your kitchen? Hold you at gunpoint and give you a bad haircut? Tie you up, force your pupils open, and make you watch old black-and-white movies starring Bettie Davis until you wretch and beg for mercy?

Gays flatter themselves to think that we straights find them the least bit intimidating. The truth is, we simply tend to find gay sex gross. That’s all. Repulsion is not fear. If our disgust hurts your feelings, O noble queer brethren, please know we’re not trying to be rude, just honest.

In any case, the fact that “homophobia” is a term patently devoid of meaning didn’t stop Florida high-school history teacher Jerry Buell—a 22-year veteran in his field—from getting suspended from his post at Mount Dora High School last month for posting a comment on his Facebook page regarding New York legalizing gay marriage. Among other things, Buell said that the sight of two men kissing on the news made him want to throw up, and he likened sodomic unions to “cesspools.”

Someone somewhere anonymously complained—it is still unclear who this person was— and the Lake County school system responded by pulling Buell from his post and placing him in administrative duties. Later, Buell contended that he was “tossed into a blender” at a moment’s notice by administrators, simply for speaking his mind on his private social network page.

It is worth noting that no one ever complained about Buell’s actual behavior in the classroom towards gay students; his mere expression of his beliefs was enough to land him in hot water with his higher-ups. The man obviously has strong religiously informed conservative opinions, but then so does a large portion of the citizenry; indeed, if everyone who shared Jerry Buell’s disgust at the sight of two dudes in lip-lock were forced out of his job, the unemployment rate would skyrocket to previously unheard of proportions.

Buell’s story, however, has a happier ending than Borzellieri’s. He has became a cause célèbre of the religious right, and even won an endorsement from the left-leaning ACLU. Following a two-week suspension, the Lake County school board has allowed Buell to return to his classroom, albeit somewhat grudgingly, and now the superintendent has moved on…to giving him grief for mentioning Jesus Christ on his class syllabi. 

Personally, I hope he writes a book about his ordeal, makes a ton of money, and tells the worthless bureaucrats who dicked him around to go sodomize themselves in Hell. That’s what I would do, anyway. But something tells me that Buell will stick with teaching; like Borzellieri, it seems, this recently elected “teacher of the year” truly enjoys the company of his students.

In the wake of cases like Borzellieri and Buell, a dark question lingers ominously: how many more will be threatened with dismissal from our professions for the offense of expressing un-kosher opinions in our private time? How safe are any of us confessed and incorrigible thought-criminals, really? How stout are our supposed allies, who may not agree with us, but think we should have the right to say what we speak out without forfeiting our ability to feed ourselves and our families?

Hope springs eternal: surely, it’s not that bad, we reflect. We tell ourselves that people don’t really like the type of heavy-handed, ideological browbeating on display in cases like this, that even liberals are discomfited by such grinding totalitarian tendencies found among some in their own ranks.

But… we can never be sure. We hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and try to find a way to behave prudently without lapsing into obsequious cravenness, to be bold without being foolish. And we pray, if we feel so inclined, as we wait patiently for the guillotine blade to drop on our necks. Whatever will be, will be.

Readers of AltRight are typically well aware of the sham nature of the Left's commitment to "tolerance," "diversity," and all their other favorite buzzwords. But the reaction of the One People's Project, a kind of left-wing parody, to the news of Elizabeth Wright's passing really drives home the point of what the cultural Marxist Left is really about. Like their Stalinist forbears, no dissent or genuine independence of thought is permitted, not even from those on whose behalf they claim to speak, whether workers or blacks. Here's some "anti-racist tolerance" for you:

ROT IN HELL!

ELIZABETH WRIGHT
CALLING HER A 'SELLOUT' WOULD BE CHARITABLE
d. 2011
How bad was Elizabeth Wright? She was a black woman, and we heard of her death via American Renaissance, complete with tribute to her written by Jared Taylor! Wright was one of those utterly despicable black conservatives that didn't just cover for white racism, she was a total apologist for white supremacists. In 1985, she started publishing the newsletter Issues & Views, and although she had this mantra that it "was derived from the wisdom of earlier generations of American blacks, like Booker T. Washington, who attempted to steer their people towards greater economic self-reliance," but to her that meant being concilitory and a segregationalist in many respects. She was no fan of multiculturalism, but that didn't stop her from defending neo-Confederacy. She was also a supporter of Holocaust deniers David Irving and Ernst Zundel while they were in jail, railed against the Civil Rights Act as "forced intergration", supported the stunt being promoted by white supremacists that the Republican Party focus only on reaching out to white voters and not anyone else and also had time to cry about the American Renaissance Conference being shut down in Charlotte, NC this year (we didn't even know she had written about that until we started writing this). Elizabeth Wright lived in New York City, which is probably why she made herself such a shut in. There were never many pictures of her, and DLJ did meet her once at a Black Conservative conference in 1995 in Washington DC, the week of the OJ Verdict (and a week before the Million Man March), and that's just as well. As we write this, the news has spread, but only to other white supremacist blogs. Seriously, if your legacy as a person of color has people who downright despise black people mourning your death as a collegue, it is probably pretty wise to hide your face. This woman will not be missed.

Wow. Robert Moore, Joey Vento and now Elizabeth Wright. Three Rot in Hells in one week. Pop the champagne and keep 'em comin'! The sooner these scumbags shuffle off this mortal coil, the better for the rest of us!

Surely, only a Western academic leftist could come up with something as stupid as this. This is reminiscent of when the late televangelist yahoo Rev. Jerry Falwell suggested the Teletubbies were really just a bunch of closeted homos working subversively to turn good Christian children into fudge-packers. Totalitarian humanism is the fundamentalist theocracy of our era. Burn the universities!

Are the Smurfs crypto-fascists?

Editor's Note: The following article comes from Worldcrunch, an innovative, new global news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. This article was originally published in Le Nouvel Observateur.

By Tristan Berteloot, Worldcrunch

The stars of an upcoming summer blockbuster, the world-famous Smurfs are once again the talk of the town – though not necessarily for all the right reasons.

Known as Schtroumph in the original French, Puffi in Italian, Pitufos in Spanish, Stroumfakia in Greek, Kumafu in Japanese and Schlümpfe across the Rhine (since “schtroumpf” means “sock” in German), the little blue imps have been going strong for more than half a century, entertaining children the world over in comic books, animated cartoons and feature films.

More recently, however, the Smurfs have also caught the attention of a controversial French academic who says there may be more than meets the eye when it comes to the pint-sized characters. Hidden behind their charming veneer are some pretty dark undertones, argues Antoine Buéno, whose work “Le Petit Livre Bleu” (The Little Blue Book) accuses the Smurfs of being maybe just a bit fascist.

Buéno, who is both a senior lecturer at SciencePo University in Paris and a novelist, never set out to destroy the magical energy that emanates from these blue-colored characters. Nevertheless, he analyzes their society and ideology – Smurfology – through an unforgiving political lens.

“Le Petit Livre Bleu” focuses specifically on the man behind the cryptic cartoons, original Smurf author Pierre Culliford, aka Peyo. Whether he meant it or not, Culliford endowed his magical little creatures with some Stalinist, racist and anti-Semitic leanings, argues Buéno.

Read: Here comes the McBaguette.

Buéno first questioned the Smurfs' biological nature and sexuality: by the way, why is there only one Smurfette? Then, he tried to show that Smurf society is the archetype of a totalitarian utopia marked by Stalinism and Nazism.

Peyo came up with the word “Smurf” while dining in 1958 with his friend André Franquin. Peyo reportedly asked Franquin: “could you pass me the Smurf?” He meant to say “could you pass me the salt?” The rest is cartoon history.

The spirit of an era

Born in 1928 in Brussels, Peyo lived in German-occupied Belgium. As an adult, he did not look back fondly on that time in history. Nonetheless, Buéno thinks that “a piece of work can convey an imagery that the author himself does not support. Thus, the Smurfs seem to reflect more the spirit of an era than Peyo's political leanings.”

The Smurfs are self-sufficient. Smurf society is collectivist and interventionist. Its only leader, Papa Smurf, is all-powerful. And, like Stalin, his favorite color is red.

They all eat at the canteen and are all ridiculously puritan. In “The Black Smurfs” album, racism is obvious: blood purity becomes something vital and the dark brown Smurf is referred to as "the ugly one." In another album called “Smurfette,” Buéno notes how the Aryan blond is idealized.

The Smurfs are also united against a sworn enemy called Gargamel, a large-nosed, black-haired possibly anti-Semitic caricature, and his cat Azrael.

Smurf lovers have been quick to challenge Buéno’s “Little Blue Book,” saying his arguments are neither serious nor credible. “Generally speaking I’ve gotten two types of knee-jerk reactions: people saying that I’m either an idiot, or a crook,” says Buéno’s.

“But my analysis isn’t just coming out of nowhere,” he goes on to say. “People from other institutions have been looking at [the Smurfs] before me. People in the United States at one point suspected Peyo’s Smurf albums of being socialist propaganda, going so far as to say the word Smurf was actually an acronym for ‘Small Men Under Red Forces.’”

After Peyo died in 1992, his son, Thierry Culliford, continued to draw the Smurfs. Culliford's albums offered a much more educational approach. According to Buéno, that explains why “the Smurfs' village becomes more explicitly a metaphor for reality.”

The Smurfs make their next big appearance this summer in a 3D live-action movie directed by Raja Gosnell. The blue-colored creatures will besiege New York City for the occasion.

But before the movie is released, the Lombard Editions will publish a 29th album called “The Smurfs and the Golden Tree,” and in November, “the Smurf Encyclopedia”.

Matthew Lyons is a leftist writer of  the "watchdog" variety and has in the past worked as a co-author with Chip Berlet. He currently operates a blog called "Three Way Fight" which previously featured a critique of AlternativeRight.Com from a hard left perspective. More recently, Lyons published an extensive critique of the ideas and work of yours truly on the socialist New Politics website. I have since produced a three part response. See Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. Lyons has posted a very brief reply to my reply. Readers of AltRight may find the exchange interesting or at least amusing.