December 05, 2009

Prejudice Isn't Daring; It's Boring

So, yes, we all know that Rod Liddle's shtick is to try and be as offensive as possible so that he can chuckle at those po-faced ninnies who dare to be offended by his courageous insistence to tell it like it really is. But like his comrades Clarkson and Littlejohn Liddle confuses being offensive with being provocative. The latter requires that you be, you know, interesting. Here's Rod however:
'The first of an occasional series – those benefits of a multi-cultural Britain in full. Let me introduce you all to this human filth.

It could be an anomaly, of course. But it isn’t. The overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community. Of course, in return, we have rap music, goat curry and a far more vibrant and diverse understanding of cultures which were once alien to us. For which, many thanks.'
My word! How daring! How delightfully refreshing to see someone trot out the kind of tired, stale prejudice you can find in thousands of boozers across the country! Or at any BNP meeting, for that matter.

As Charlotte Gore points out, if you're going to do this sort of thing it does help if you can at least get your facts right. The majority of crime in London is committed by white people. I assume that you know this, which makes me wonder why you didn't limit yourself to saying that young black men commit a disproportionate amount of crime and that the arrest rate for blacks is 3.8 times that of white people? Then again, we're familiar with this and so perhaps limiting yourself to an observation that is, like, true wouldn't be shocking enough would it? And nor, of course, would actually addressing problems.

But it's your suggestion that blackness is somehow the cause of these problems that is shameful. Worse than even that, mind you, is your insinuation that if only we could send Black Britons back to Africa and the Caribbean we wouldn't have any of these problems because, you know, it's all the fault of "multi-culturalism". If that were true one wonders why Glasgow's murder rate is two and a half times that of London. It's not because there are gangs of McYardies terrorising entire communities. I'd also suggest that comparing offending rates between black graduates and those who fail to even sit, let alone pass, their A-Levels might reveal that class, educational achievement and any number of other factors might have a little more to do with crime rates than pigmentation.

(For that matter, have a look at any Victorian edition of the News of the World and you'll find a rich, even loving, catalogue of any number of horrendous crimes that, again, reminds one that skin colour is not a useful metric for measuring man's depravity. Correlation does not equal causation.)

There is, however, one area in which the reactionaries have a point: the left's inclination to see people as members of a group rather than individuals is tedious and, often, less than productive. Which makes one wonder why you insist on doing likewise, lumping all blacks (and all muslims) together as though skin colour or religion reveal, determine or dictate everything. Personally, I prefer to see people as individuals.

Accusations of racism are often too easily made and perhaps you don't care if you're so labelled. But if you do then perhaps you should cease peddling nonsense that a reasonable person might reasonably consider racist. This isn't a question of being "politically correct" it's just a matter of behaving in a decent fashion.

Spectator

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think Roger Liddle used to be a member of a Trotskyite party. Like Peter Hitchens and Gary Bushell he seems to have turned into something that he used to despise. People like him are just "straws in the wind" and whatever the prevailing zeitgeist is, they will accommodate themselves to it. They have seen attempts to make racism and fascism respectable in Britain in recent years have decided to go along with it instead of combatting it. Rumour is Liddle is on very friendly terms with Nick Griffin and maybe the first high profile media figure to declare, openly, his support for the BNP before next year's General Election. His rant about the Black people could have easily appeared on the BNP website. Shameful.

Anonymous said...

"As Charlotte Gore points out, if you're going to do this sort of thing it does help if you can at least get your facts right."

It's not about facts, it's about predjudice. Rod Liddle wouldn't know the truth about anything if it hit him in the face. Rod Liddle, through this article, is attempting to incite racial hatred against Black people. Which I thought was a crime in the UK.

Anonymous said...

What a TWAT.

Anonymous said...

Rod Liddle is a very dangerous man. Rarely, even in the world of right-wing shock-journos, have I ever come across a writer SO self-righteous and provocative as this idiot. This might sound alarmist, but since this hack uses arguments that are identical to BNP propaganda, he's effectively a link-man between "respectable" right-wing opinion and modern Nazism, and the threat he poses should be treated every bit as seriously as that suggests.

As to the arguments themselves - I speak as a white Londoner who's been mugged at knifepoint 3 times - BY WHITE PEOPLE - and the response about Glasgow was interesting. A friend of mine was nearly killed on the Sighthill estate by a gang of lads armed with baseball bats - the victim was white, the attackers were white, they were later jailed for an actual racist murder, and if Rod Liddle really wants to argue against multi-culturalism then he needs to explain to us why all Jews should be deported from Britain as well.

fleetstreetdonkey said...

The fact that Liddle is a BNP member is a not-so-hidden secret. Back in the days of Mosley, prominent journalists were supporters of fascism, and included Daily Mail reporters.

If the media industry doesn't keep an eye on Liddle, he could cast a shadow of shame on the whole industry.

I hope before too long he is sacked from the Times, bearing in mind Rupert Murdoch's Sun newspaper now seems to be strongly against the BNP.

Anonymous said...

"Rumour is Liddle is on very friendly terms with Nick Griffin and maybe the first high profile media figure to declare, openly, his support for the BNP before next year's General Election."

Don't know much about Liddle beyond his boorish column, but I can't see him doing anything that stupid.

One rumour I heard recently that I'm hoping DOESN'T come to anything is of the BBC "Personality" who was warned, in no uncertain terms, off coming out as a Nazi a few weeks ago in the QT aftermath.

Story is, the Beeb don't want the name out there as A) They lose a sleb and B) No-one wants the publicity value that Griffin would get out of it for the Nazzers.

And no, it isn't Clarkson...

Anonymous said...

UAF please note - Rod Liddle used to be in the SWP

Anonymous said...

Liddle's got too much of an eye on the main chance to turn overtly BNP. I have read articles of his with snide well-concealed racism from way back (2001ish) when he wrote in the Guardian. My antennae picked it up - I'm rarely wrong about his type.