THEY BURN WITCHES, DON'T THEY?
by
DAVID SOLWAY
______________________________
David
Solway is a Canadian poet and essayist (Random Walks)
and author of The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and
Identity and Hear, O Israel! (Mantua Books). His
editorials appear regularly in PJ
Media. His monograph, Global Warning: The Trials of
an Unsettled Science (Freedom Press Canada) was launched
at the National Archives in Ottawa in September, 2012. His debut
album, Blood
Guitar, is now available, as is his latest
book, Reflections
on Music, Poetry and Politics.
Many people think that universities,” writes Université
du Québec professor Eve Seguin, “are unique places
of freedom that stimulate intelligence, foster independence,
value originality, promote collegiality, encourage pluralism
and treat their members with respect.” Unfortunately,
she finds, “The severity of mobbing in academic settings
destroys that fantasy.” As in the Soviet Union’s
version of distributive justice, “targets are first convicted
and evidence is later fabricated to justify the conviction.”
Seguin points out how contemporary mobbers like to use “negative
communication” – gossip, lies, hateful messages,
disciplinary meetings, public shaming – as a “powerful
weapon of elimination,” thus “transform[ing] aggression
into mock justice” and, as an added benefit, facilitating
the recruitment of those “who would otherwise stay on
the sidelines.”
Or
would they? Peer pressure leavened by threat is a potent persuader,
which issues in a cataract of predictable puppetry. The target
of the mob’s denunciations is systematically unpersoned,
while the academic rabble bray in triumph. Seguin concludes
that “we must ask ourselves: ‘Did I really choose
this career in order to become an academic tormentor?’”
Perhaps none do, at least initially, but that is what happens
to many in the parietal hothouse.
Their
quarry is always vulnerable to insult and persecution. To mention
only a few of the more prominent names, just ask Sir Tim Hunt,
Jordan Peterson, Michael Rectenwald, Rachel Fulton Brown, Bret
Weinstein, Paul Griffiths, Nicholas and Erika Christakis, Jeffrey
Ketland, Rick Mehta, Jeff Muehlbaur, Allen Frantzen, Richard
Ted Lebow, Mark Silinsky, Nigel Biggar, Noah Carl, Alessandro
Strumia and Rebecca Tuvel. These are researchers, scholars and
scientists in multiple countries who have offended the arbiters
of academic groupthink and suffered censure, social ostracism
or expulsion from the ranks.
Among
the most recent targets of professional assassination is Professor
Ricardo Duchense of the University of New Brunswick. Duchesne
is the author of three major volumes, Canada in Decay, The Uniqueness
of Western Civilization and Faustian Man in a Multicultural
Age. These works focus on the historical trajectory of Western
civilization, in particular its critical difference from other
world civilizations in its unique impulse toward scientific
discovery, medical advancement, individual rights, democratic
politics, religious freedom, habeus corpus and the amenities
of ordinary life we all take for granted today. As Duschesne
writes in The Uniqueness of Western Civilization: “The
West, I believe, has always embodied a reflective sense of self-doubt
about what it knows and what remains to be known, a kind of
restlessness that has been both destructive and productive of
new literary style, musical trends, visual motifs, and novel
ideas.”
The West: a "restlessness" that's "both destructive
and productive of...novel ideas.”
While
such a statement would have been considered anodyne even one
generation ago, today it counts as controversial inside the
university. Even more inflammatory to modern-day academe is
Duchesne’s analysis of the tectonic fissures appearing
in the cultural and political landscape of the West owing to
an unrestrained and aggressive multicultural experiment. This
is a movement whose insistence on forced diversification envisages
the replacement of light-skinned citizens of European origin
by immigrants and refugees from other races, ethnicities and
cultures, particularly North African and Muslim countries. “[M]ulticulturalism,”
Duchesne writes in The Faustian Man in a Multicultural Age,
is “an asymmetrical system in which Europeans, and only
Europeans, [are] expected to celebrate other cultures, feel
guilty about their own ethnic identity, and behave as universal
altruists; while at the same time non-Europeans inside the European
homelands [are] being encouraged to practice their I-group ethnic
interests.”
The
result was predictable. Duchesne has been called a racist, a
Nazi, a hater and a white supremacist. The media wasted no time
getting into the act, branding Duchesne a far-right ideologue
animated by racist convictions. Perhaps the greatest damage
to Duchesne’s reputation, ideas and prospects was caused
by The Huffington Post, which last month published a scandalous
and festering heap of lies, misrepresentations, fabrications,
and erroneous attributions designed to eliminate him from the
circle of respectability. As recently as 2012, Duchesne’s
work received a respectful and balanced review in academic literature
(in the linked instance, from an apparently non-white reviewer).
Pro
forma, the cabal of social justice warlocks refuses to enter
into dialogue and debate. Their scope is limited to the bromides
and shibboleths they are comfortable with.
The
Huffpo article made no such attempt at fairness, claiming that
Duchesne is a white supremacist disseminating conspiracy theories
against minority and marginalized peoples gradually. It does
not mention the declared policy of the United Nations in its
report, Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining
and Aging Populations? The UN report envisions, among various
scenarios, the transformation of Europe by up to 700 million
immigrants, eventually reducing the native European population
to a minority, or nearly so. Among the several scenarios envisioned
for France, for example, the report provides one stating, “By
2050, out of a total population of 187 million, 128 million,
or 68.3 per cent, would be post-1995 immigrants or their descendants.”
Another Western tool of oppression: The Wright Brothers take
their maiden flight in 1903.
As
Janice Fiamengo, a professor of English at the University of
Ottawa and producer of a video series of social commentary,
states in one video, the boundaries of academic discourse have
been so narrowly circumscribed that “criticism of the
ideology of multiculturalism and mass immigration is now conveniently
defined as hate speech.” It is no accident that 100 of
Duchesne’s colleagues at the University of New Brunswick
(out of about 750 full-time academic staff) signed an open letter
attacking his scholarship and denouncing his views. This led
the university administration to launch an investigation into
Duchesne’s teaching, political positions, philosophical
principles and ultimately his tenure.
Among
the ragbag of accusations he has had to face, Duchesne’s
adversaries also contend that he is a rogue outsider who does
not publish in peer-reviewed journals. They do not mention that
such journals are dominated by social justice warrior types
and committed socialists who would instantly toss his submissions
into the garburator. Such has been the fate of his later work.
Duchesne knows he is no homedawg. He has had more than his share
of experience of the tactics of exclusion practiced by the votaries
of inclusion.
The
closing of the University of New Brunswick’s mind: embrace
multiculturalism or else.
A typical
example of the campaign against Duchesne is furnished by the
leftists who populate the Canadian Historical Association, which
advances benign multicultural myths. They have eagerly joined
in the blood sport, claiming that Duchesne’s works are
“racist and without merit.” This suggests they have
little or no familiarity with his world-class trilogy, which
is far from surprising. It also suggests they have no interest
in learned and impartial, if controversial, dialogue and deliberation.
Similarly,
Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network
– the title itself gives the game away as a smear factory
reminiscent of the far-left U.S. Southern Poverty Law Center
– comments: “We consider Duchesne to be part of
the alt-right neo-Nazi movement.” Utter nonsense, of course.
Balgord sounds like he is part of the alt-left neo-Bolshevik
movement for whom any deviation from the party line is proof
positive of fascist sympathies. For such fellow-travelers, any
expression of dismay at the unraveling of the country’s
European heritage can only be a sign of “white supremacy,”
“racism” or “hatred.”
As
Duchesne writes in an essay responding to the charges against
him, “The playbook of the establishment is very simple
and very effective: claim that questioners of diversity are
driven by plain hatred, that they are poorly-educated hicks
who can’t stand losing their white privilege, and are
too parochial to understand the progressive cosmopolitanism
marvelously spreading through the West.”
Enlightenment
philosopher Vico: ideas, and a whole era, now too dangerous
for the University of New Brunswick.
Duchesne’s
essay examines the cyclical view of human history, citing Enlightenment-era
Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico’s theory that “the
underlying mechanism behind recurrent cyclical phases was the
changing psychological state of human being in response to different
realities.” Decline is inevitable because as civilizations
grow wealthy and secure, “prolonged comfort, peacefulness,
relaxation and a lack of stress and tension weaken the human
character.” Duchesne also quotes 19th century English
philosopher John Stuart Mill, who saw a rising tide of “moral
effeminacy, an ineptitude for every kind of struggle”
overtaking a nation. “This torpidity and cowardice,”
Mill writes, “is a natural consequence of the progress
of civilization.”
Such
is the case with the contemporary West, Duchesne concludes,
which has grown “dissolute in luxury and incapable of
the discipline and seriousness required to sustain a civilization.”
The traditional culture of hard work, respect for law, self-sufficiency,
intellectual vitality, scientific rigour and preservation of
its traditions has surrendered its patrimony and, as in the
signature poem of the Greek-Alexandrian poet Constantine Cafavy,
welcomed the barbarians through its gates.
Duchesne’s
sweep of reference in the essay is impressively wide-angle,
covering the centuries and featuring an informed discussion
of Cato the Elder, Plutarch, Polybius, Sallust, Livy, Hume,
Hobbes, Marx, Spengler, Adam Smith, Franz Boas and others. He
commands a field of view and exhibits an intellectual energy
that few academics, mired in their specialties, could ever hope
to emulate. Perhaps that is part of the problem. Pro forma,
the cabal of social justice warlocks refuses to enter into dialogue
and debate. Their scope is limited to the bromides and shibboleths
they are comfortable with.
Ricardo
Duchesne takes early retirement from UNB after being labeled
a white supremacist for his views about Western civilization.
Instead,
as mobs do, they will attack the messenger of complex and unpopular
ideas and strive to destroy him professionally and personally.
And it works. Journalist and author Robert Stacy McCain summarizes
the issue as follows: “How odd is it that disciples of
Marx and Lenin – advocates of revolutionary socialism
– are tolerated in academia, but a professor who makes
reference to Plutarch and Livy is condemned as [a] Thought Criminal?”
McCain observes that, “There is a totalitarian tendency
in academia that now seeks to silence certain perspectives by
labeling them ‘hate speech,’ and it’s never
the Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries who are silenced.”
The
curtain has now come down on this wretched piece of theatre.
The university vice-president last week circulated the following
smarmy announcement: “I write to advise members of the
University community that Dr. Ricardo Duchesne, professor in
the department of social science, has provided his notice of
early retirement to focus on his own pursuits as an independent
scholar. We respectfully accept his decision and thank him for
his 24 years of service.” In the animal farm of the modern
university, the wolves howl, the weasels take care of things.
