Wednesday, March 01, 2023


India shows how rotten identity politics can become

Ramesh Thakur

In the UK, where the Conservatives have been in power for over twelve years, the Royal Air Force illegally discriminated against 160 white men in the woke effort to meet its ‘aspirational diversity targets’. Why do we ignore the pathology of sectarian affirmative action policies in the world’s biggest laboratory? After 73 years of constitutionally mandated preferential policies, India is ever more sharply conscious of caste identity at every level of society and in every sphere of public activity.

I am currently with family in India. In my home state Bihar, the most caste-conscious in the country, anytime someone outside the immediate family drops a name into the conversation, it’s accompanied by that person’s caste identity. Where the British divided and ruled, Indians have subdivided and misruled. Politicians find caste identity the most potent tool of mass mobilisation. The president, vice-president, governors, heads of government, party leaders and election candidates are chosen on the basis of caste alignments with constituency demographics. This fuels the victimhood industry among the target group at the expense of merit, application and hard work, while creating fresh grievance among others. What should be earned becomes a matter of entitlement, from school admissions to jobs. Moreover, reservations have steadily expanded to cover an endlessly growing number of subgroups, with even Muslims and Christians demanding quotas for the ‘dalit’ (oppressed) among them despite the caste system being peculiar to Hinduism.

And caste calculations have moved from recruitment to promotion. Over time the dead hand of the state has also intruded into the private sector. Sound familiar with respect to calls for gender quotas in boardrooms, parliaments, cabinets, vice-chancellorships, police chiefs and other high profile positions? But not the low-status, poorly paid, physically demanding and most dangerous jobs.

The very fact of the endless expansion of identity-based reservations is proof of the failure of the scheme. As group-based programs permeate the public institutions of a country, they institutionalise the very divisions they were meant to eradicate. Marketed as temporary expedients, they persist and proliferate. Quotas for the historically disadvantaged castes and tribes were prescribed in the constitution in 1950 for 15 years. Had they worked, they would have fallen into desuetude. Instead they kept multiplying and expanding. On its own internal logic, after more than seven decades of the reservations system being in force, the number and proportion of the disadvantaged has risen alarmingly. If this is not failure, what is? One is reminded of Einstein’s definition of insanity.

Every affirmative action produces an equal and opposite sectarian reaction. The motive underlying preferential policies – to atone and compensate for past group-based discrimination and injustice – is noble. But it implies guilt and compensation are inheritable. By institutionalising affirmative action in favour of some groups, the government effectively discriminates against others, alienates them and feeds their sense of grievance, without necessarily helping the most needy. In conditions of scarcity, the number of aggrieved is several times more than could have got the job or admission.

Every year, about one million Indians apply for the federal civil services, the peak of which are the Indian foreign, administrative and police services. Even after retirement, officials will proudly put IPS/IAS/IFS on their calling cards and house nameplates. In the three-stage process, under one per cent make it to written test, around 2,000 are interviewed and 1,000 selected. The best indicator of their value is the marriage market, literally, in terms of the dowry the men command (long illegal, but that’s another story). Now, consider this. If 1,000 candidates apply for every vacancy and half the vacancies are filled by caste quotas, then for every successful recruit 499 disappointed people will feel hard done by because of the system of reservations. Yet only one of them could have been successful in open competition.

Faced with government-created obstacles to educational and career aspirations, the best and the brightest among the upper- caste ‘elites’ are migrating to countries more hospitable to their talents. India’s loss is the West’s gain. Furthermore, if one’s chances of being admitted into prestigious institutions or getting good jobs are improved by being able to claim a particular identity, the requisite documentary proof will always be available at the right price. The cycle of preferential entitlements and the need to ensure against fraudulent claims lead to an expanding role for government, when the need is to reduce government intrusion into the economy and society.

Preferential policies create and nurture vested interests. Caste is used in India today for capturing political power and distributing political spoils. Meant to reduce and eliminate intergroup disparities, these policies create dependency of group leaders on the perpetuation of perceived disparities. A solution of ethnic or gender problems would deprive the leaders of a platform and a role. Upping the ante by raising ever-expanding demands enlarges the role of group activists and gives them a bigger stage from which to manipulate still more people. Benefits are captured by the better educated, more articulate and more politically skilled urban elite among the ‘disadvantaged’ groups. With regard to gender quotas in politics, for example, there’s been a proliferation of the ‘bibi, beti and bahu’ (wife, daughter and daughter-in-law) brigade. When I was at Otago University, one of my students with a parent who held one of the country’s top three public offices won a scholarship for Maoris to a highly desirable American university. Disadvantaged background? Yeah, right.

Preferential policies foster the values of solidarity based on the cult of victimhood – instead of thrift, hard work, self-improvement and property ownership. Resting on the assumption of superiority in non-target groups, they reinforce the sense of inferiority in target groups. There’s another distasteful consequence. The quota beneficiaries can never escape the taint of unmerited preferment. With the recent Project Veritas exposĂ© of the Pfizer practices on Covid vaccines, how many people thought ‘diversity hire’ without the courage to verbalise this in the current censorious climate?

Like tinpot dictators who rob and bankrupt their countries but send their own kids to Western schools and park themselves in Western hospitals when ill, the top echelons of the Indian ruling elites too have made provisions for education and health services in the West, of course at public expense. If I had my way, they would be forced instead to use the domestic public education system and consult the quota-qualified doctors and specialists for all health needs for their families. Let’s see how long the preferential policies last after that.

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Christian college takes Biden admin to SCOTUS

Although the Biden administration continues to brazenly mandate gender identity ideology on Christian college campuses, one brave college has just asked the U.S. Supreme Court to protect its rights.

The College of the Ozarks is a religious school in Missouri, and the Christian faith is integral to how it operates.

Not surprisingly, the college believes that sex is created by God and unchangeable. And it runs its dorms accordingly.

Why is the college asking the U.S. Supreme Court for justice?

We’re asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the college’s case because a radical Biden administration mandate would FORCE colleges and universities to open their dorms, bathrooms, and showers to members of the opposite sex.

Colleges that refuse to comply—the ones that hold to fundamental values and refuse to bend the knee to the Biden administration—risk paying massive fines and, in extreme circumstances, even prison.

This is blatantly unconstitutional. And the College of the Ozarks has stood up against this edict.

But three lower court judges have said the college does not even have the right to ask courts for an order protecting their students from this illegal mandate. So the college has just appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to give the college its day in court.

The federal government’s directive that Alliance Defending Freedom is fighting applies to dorms at all colleges where any student can apply—even private, religious colleges, whether or not they accept federal funds.

This case is about countering the Biden administration’s agenda that is at direct odds with religious freedom. It’s about ensuring that a radical gender identity ideology isn’t forcefully imposed on anyone.

The outcome of this case could be a landmark decision for the right of Christian institutions to operate according to their beliefs, not the government’s ever-changing demands.

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Political correctness in sport contributes to obesity

For a country crippled by obesity, it's not hard to see where Australia might be getting it wrong. Aside from a tendency to shut down playgrounds and lock every citizen indoors, the discriminatory state of our sports should take the brunt of the blame. In NRL, religious beliefs have practically become grounds for termination, with offending athletes subjected to ridicule and public shame for any case of wrongthink. Even choosing to sit aside while Pride gestures take place has become unthinkable within the game after the abhorrent treatment of seven Manly Eagles players who refused to wear LGBTQ+-themed jerseys.

Not be undone, the A-league recently forced children playing friendly kick-arounds to wear rainbow colours too. Any child that refused was excluded in order to make the event more inclusive [sic]. The prevailing message hammered by our sports has become clear; talent, work ethic, and ability count for nothing if your beliefs don't align with Woke corporate forces.

With over 50 per cent of Australians holding religious views, this means more than half of our population is no longer welcome in our national sports, while public voices continue to ask why obesity or sedentary lifestyles are so prevalent. It's hardly a mystery - if children cannot aspire to reach the same level as their idols on merit, why would they spend time training or practicing? Worse yet, no loving parent would encourage their child to pursue a career path at odds with their values and identity in the first place.

Blocking the prospect of fame and success only disincentivises future generations from leading an active lifestyle, especially in low-income demographics where religious beliefs tend to be stronger and the risk of obesity is higher. Sadly, trusting the Science is not an option on this one; there is no room for medical advice or empirical evidence that dares to question the behaviour of LGBTQ+ activists, a replica of the silence among health experts during the Monkeypox outbreak.

While preventing obesity is possible without farming professional athletes, there is little hope of Australia improving public health if we continue to put politics ahead of practical solutions. Religious beliefs have prevailed through war, genocide, and systemic oppression for thousands of years, they will not cease at the will of hard-Left voices in our sports. Governing bodies must learn to put their bigotry aside and tolerate religious players as a condition of the generous public funding they rely on. There is no reason why taxpayers should continue to subsidise institutions that discriminate against them.

In the meantime, progressive zealots should learn that dress codes and public uniforms share an indistinguishable history with fascism. Mandating Pride colours for the sake of a cultural statement is no better than mandating oppressive religious garb for the same purpose. Such tribalism has no place here.

In freedom, democracy beats culture. It's time for Australia to put true progress ahead of Pride and open our national sports to the entire country.

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Is ‘woke’ dead?

If you don’t live online, you may have missed the controversy over "Hogwarts Legacy", the latest computer game to have been spun out of the multi-billion Harry Potter franchise.

A small but amazingly vocal band of activists launched a vicious campaign against the game because of its connection to ‘transphobe’ J.K. Rowling. Then the game came out and was instantly a phenomenal success – the most popular game ever on the streaming platform Twitch, physical sales of 12 million in its first two weeks of release, earning its makers $850 million (£709 million) in revenue. These cold, hard, commercial facts are like a glass of cold water in the face. The balance sheet shows that we have a very skewed understanding of the popularity and reach of ‘woke’.

Pandering to the young is always a pitiful, undignified spectacle

Elsewhere, we see the smash West End success of Steven Moffat’s play The Unfriend, despite its star turn by notorious ‘Terf’ (‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist’) Frances Barber. A friend showed me a hilarious social media post from a true swivel-eyed woke believer who apologised to his followers for attending, and said that, though he’d loved the show, he’d made a point not to applaud Barber at her curtain call. Outside the worlds of showbiz and entertainment, we have recently witnessed the spectacle of Nicola Sturgeon self-destructing after her gender reform bill smashed into reality.

One dares to hope: is woke dead? We keep waiting for a tipping point that never tips. There have been so many false dawns, hefty straws that you think will surely break the camel’s back then don’t.

A global pandemic, it was believed, would make people appreciate that gender pronouns are not humanity’s most pressing concern. But Covid-19 quickly established its own culture wars, as keyboard warriors began arguing about which marginalised groups were suffering most. A major land war in Europe should have been serious enough to bind the progressivist fist for a month or two. But the conflict in Ukraine has barely touched the sides. Even the recent possibility of an alien invasion doesn’t seem to be having much effect on concentrating the crazed human hive mind.

But hang on. Maybe it’s a case not of sudden death, but of a gradual recalibration, a slow unwinding of the sense that ‘woke’ matters that much.

According to a recent YouGov survey, only a small majority of British people say they know what woke means while 30 per cent say they have ‘never heard the term being used’. The same poll showed that, as public awareness of the word has slowly risen, the number of people who consider themselves not to be woke has increased. Of the quarter of respondents who admitted to using the term, around three-quarters said they employed it in a pejorative way. So, for all the undeniable media Sturm und Drang, most Britons don’t think much of ‘wokery’ if they think about it at all.

Recent research from Policy Exchange shows very clearly that woke corporates are viewed with cynicism. Only 10 per cent felt that such entities made political statements because ‘they genuinely believe in them’.

And there was extreme distaste for the practice of firing employees for expressing legal political beliefs on social media out of work hours, with only 12 per cent in support. Again, we see the chasm between the executive class, which takes woke concerns seriously, and the punters, who do not.

Lots of us would like to reclaim our culture from the insane progressivists who have hijacked it over the past two decades. But there remain big obstacles. The biggest is that almost every western institution, public or private, big or small, has a cell of woke activists in it, enabled by their elders.

Our increasingly ageing population is, bizarrely, characterised by this deference to youth. Older people seek out the political validation of teenagers and young adults, even children, when it really ought to be the other way around. Think of middle-aged people wearing ‘ally’ badges, burly policemen shying away from upper-middle class Extinction Rebellion protestors, or the publishing execs who tell authors: ‘We couldn’t get it past our junior members of staff.’

Pandering to the young is always a pitiful, undignified spectacle. The formulation ‘the wrong side of history’ is a factor here too. Netflix has shown the way ahead, letting staff go who noisily objected to the money- spinning output of Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle. As Douglas Murray and others have argued, giving in to these people only encourages them.

Things seem to be changing at the macro-level; the micro-level, not so much. In the past couple of weeks we have seen the cancellation from an arts festival of a show by comedian Samantha Pressdee because two ‘queer’ comedians said they find her ‘very scary’. The suspicious stifling of the new album from Morrissey, which features an angry song about the Manchester Arena bombing; Waterstones shortlisting for its Children’s Book Prize a graphic novel (Welcome To St Hell by Lewis Hancox) in which a teenage girl’s naked breasts are labelled ‘fatty lumps that need to be gone’ and her vagina ‘my imaginary willy’. Chunks of Roald Dahl’s books being rewritten by idiots. If woke is receding, it is a slow and painful process.

But the reason these things continue to happen is that we can’t deal with the reality of the actually tiny numbers of aggrieved activists – in the low hundreds of thousands at most, and existing almost exclusively in the highly developed world. The power of the internet is that it amplifies small but noisy groups and makes them sound like public opinion. We are allowing ourselves to be dictated by a handful of hooligans, a gang that even the other kids don’t like.

Perhaps the best cause for hope is simply time. New things will be needed to stimulate the new young. Firebrand wokeists who came of age in the 2010s are now in their forties. Those junior publishing staff will be senior staff soon, and maybe they’ll have to deal with young upstarts who think (often correctly) that they are barmy and bigoted.

In the UK, an incoming Labour government might be a factor in the dying of woke. You may think this unlikely, given the party’s love of taking the knee and diversity ‘training’, but let me explain. The defenestration of Margaret Thatcher and the coming of Tony Blair led to our pop culture, populated as it is by middle-class bien pensants, unclenching its socially concerned muscles and expressing itself. Look at the joy of daft Reeves and Mortimer after the grim Ben Eltony political shoutiness of 1980s comedy. And not for nothing were the scabrously incorrect League of Gentlemen and Catherine Tate Show the products of a time when the Tories had been ‘seen off’. That’s a silly way of looking at the world, yes, but it’s how TV commissioners think.

Right now we stand at a crossroads. Let’s consider two futures. In Future A, people look back on the 2010s and early 2020s with bemusement. ‘How mad that time was!’ celebrity talking heads will tell the nostalgia shows of 2043. ‘What were we thinking!’

Or we might get future B: the gradual degradation and collapse of western civilisation as this cultural awfulness snowballs through it, as personal liberties taken for granted for centuries evaporate, as crazier and crazier grievances are indulged, as the pillars of the institutions rot, as the state becomes nothing but a gigantic simultaneously totalitarian and crumbling HR department.

I’m very much hoping for A. The numbers are very definitely pointing to A, after all. If it’s B, what a sad society it will turn out that we were, to have been brought down by such a negligible bunch of ninnies

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/is-woke-dead/ ?

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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