A sinister trend

[fpb]

We are all, I hope, disgusted, and perhaps grimly amused, at the vile conference convened by Iran's criminal President to "discuss" the Holocaust. Not everyone, however, seems to realize that this is only the last, and not even the worst, of a growing tendency by politicians and rich men to simply refuse the assured conclusions of scholarship and common sense when it suits them.

To my mind, probably the most sinister of these, because of its enormous reach and duration, was the many-pronged attempt by the Indian government, at the time of the BJP, to spread and impose a novel doctrine of early history that said, one, that the Indo-European group of peoples had originated not in Russia and Central Asia, but in India; that there were Sanskrit-speakers in India as early as 3500BC; and that as the other IE nations spread westwards from India, so their languages are derived from, rather than related to, Sanskrit. This is pure nonsense which one lesson in elementary linguistics and language history could easily dismantle; but thanks to the pressure of the government of a great country, supported by widespread nationalism, it has corrupted the whole course of scholarly debate in India and even found footholds in the West. I have in my library a guide to Hinduism, for instance, which is written from this point of view; anyone who buys it and reads without being aware of its essential corruption will himself be corrupted. As I have no intention of encouraging this sort of production, I will not name publisher and author; but the author is one of that small band of Western scholars who have allowed themselves to become accomplices of the BJP in this criminal enterprise. Their motives are easy to perceive in their writings: in general, the words "colonialism", "imperialism", "orientalism" recur at least every second line. These men and women start from the premise that whatever comes from Western culture is ideologically imperialistic and racist and therefore certainly wrong - wrong without need to debate it or to disprove it, wrong because it is the essence of Western culture to be wrong. And they do not even stop to wonder that in supporting the lies of the BJP they are giving their support to something a great deal more imperialistic, racist and aggressive, a genuine fascist movement that hangs like a black shadow over the future of India and all Asia.

We might also consider the astonishing way in which, in the face of all common sense and every single bit of evidence, Mohammed Fayed, the owner of Harrod's, has managed to keep the most inane and insane conspiracy theories about the deaths of his son Dodi and of Princess Diana alive in the British press. Merely because the man is rich (or rather, possessed of large means - in fact, he is heavily in debt), he has always found mercenary scribblers to transform his fantasies into journalistic prose, and publish them, not in little blogs or tinfoil-hatted websites, but in some of the great newspapers of Britain. This could be forgiven as a manifestation of the undying grief of a father who has lost his son; were it not that behind that there is clearly visible something much nastier - the attitude of a man who firmly believes that anything bad that happens to him must be the work of enemies and dark forces conspiring against him, and builds up his monstrous ego by looking for enemies to hound. That a couple of newspapers and several journalists have been willing, merely because of his money (the Princess Di brand has long since ceased to sell newspapers), to support him in this evidently insane quest, seems to me disgraceful. But then, British pressmen are corrupt from the cradle.

My friends will also think, I imagine, of the crazed popularity of seven-eleven denial, especially in America. But there is a serious difference between this phenomenon and the ones I described: no rich person or major government is backing seven-eleven denial. It is a genuinely grassroots phenomenon - a sad one, but not a manged one. In fact, it is an embarrassment to the groups in America that would otherwise be closest to its members, such as the Democratic Party. On the other hand, it is difficult to see that Diana conspiracy theories, Indian pseudohistories, or Holocaust denial, would have any more than a small and marginal life in pamphlets typewritten by cranks, were it not for the support of powerful groups and state governments. And this is a trend of terrible seriousness: no less than the attempt by power groups to rewrite reality, as scholarship has established it, in their own interest.

There is one basic point in which this is the West's fault, however. None of this would have had any opportunity for developing, in any significant way, and the governments and rich men concerned would not even have conceived of giving them institutional life, were it not for the idiot and criminal slogan that is the worst of the many enduring legacies of the sixties: "Question authority". This slogan has encouraged two generations to feel clever merely by being oppositional and programmatically skeptical; it has stood in the way of intellectual progress in every possible way (the encouragement of cranks and crackpots till they became institutional being only one of its evil effects). Ahmedinajad and the BJP parrot lines about Western imperialism, cultural imperialism, and so on, that have first been written and popularized in Western universities. The first thing to be done now, therefore, is to challenge this particular authoritative statement; and not only to challenge, but to bury it.

Comments

[goreism.livejournal.com]

I wonder if you might divulge the name of the book; I take a sordid interest in this sort of skepticism concerning the Indo-Aryan migration, whether of the sort you just mentioned, or the newer books put out by the likes of Koenraad Elst on the "Out of India" theory.

[patchworkmind.livejournal.com]

Everything you point out in this post has concerned me for a while, with the exception of the BJP stuff. (I really did think it was a tiny little crackpot group, nothing more, but then I'm not exactly up on India goings-on.)

These men and women start from the premise that whatever comes from Western culture is ideologically imperialistic and racist and therefore certainly wrong - wrong without need to debate it or to disprove it, wrong because it is the essence of Western culture to be wrong.

I know so damn many academics and others hereabouts in my little relatively backwater area of the U.S. that fit this description exactly. It really is quite frightening.

Our work is cut out for us to curb their efforts.

QUESTION AUTHORITY

[johncwright.livejournal.com]

... Because the authorities have the right answers.

J.R. Dunn has some thoughts on the origins of what he called the 'Imperialist' doctrine of interpritive history, what is more informally called 'Blame America First.' I don't know if this is interesting to you, but just in case it might be, I draw it to your attention:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/12/seeds_intellectual_destruction.html

[bufo-viridis.livejournal.com]

My friends will also think, I imagine, of the crazed popularity of seven-eleven denial, especially in America.

Er, didn't you mean nine-eleven? I'm not sure if there are many people denying the existence of the popular convenience stores, although they may very well believe they're controlled by Judo-Bolsheviks and Masons.

As for the rest, yes... There is a good reading about "Vedan science" promoted by Indian nationalists, in the articles concerned with the Sokal Affair.
I do agree with lots of criticism of Western many-sided imperialism and I appreciate interesting insights which were discovered when not only the findings but also the very methods of social research were questioned. But most of the movement went overboard now, the authority (be it the most innocent and most valid, well-grounded scientifical authority of purely academic character) is questioned for the sake of questioning, and for no other reason at all.
The saddest thing is the mind-blowing guilibility of the most vocal critics of this kind, when it comes to some crackpot theories, dear to their hearts.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

I, too, would urge you to correct the mistake, as I was first puzzled, and then shocked, by it.

As to the conspiracists, what I find most troubling is that they have raised questions that have not been answered. For example, why were both the members of Osama bin Laden's family and the close to 70 Israeli spies arrested in the wake of the attacks quietly gotten out of the country? How was it possible that a passport was found in the rubble when the black boxes from the planes - *all* the planes, mind you! - were never found? Why was a group of Israelis celebrating and filming the twin towers as they fell? Why was the scrap metal from the fallen buildings melted down so quickly, rather than being analyzed to determine what actually stressed it so much? And, most of all, who benefited from these attacks? Not most of us Americans, definitely; not most Israelis; and, most definitely, not most Arabs and Muslims. The overwhelming majority of the people everywhere were shocked by these attacks, but there *were* a few small groups who benefited. Why is it crazy to want to look at such people more closely?

It's also true, unfortunately, that our present government is the most corrupt and power-hungry we have had in years. I do not choose to blindly trust what that government tells me, nor to think what it tells me to think. I do not believe that makes me crazy or foolish, either. Of course, you may disagree.