Hey Lolly, what are your thoughts on this Ganon so far? From what you've seen of him.

weeeeeell- ive seen the opening cutscene. i dont have many opinions yet fsdhjlfshl the murals looked badass, he looks crusty, he looks like he's been dead-not-dead for A While. i think he might be voiced by matthew mercer. i'll get back to you fnsdlfhsdssdfhlsdfh

Racism and the ‘Orchestra of Outrage’: a prologue, part 1.

Racism and the Orchestra of outrage

It is the current year (surprisingly), and by any reasonable metric, you will be forced to conclude that racism in its truest form has been diminishing across our Western civilisation for some decades now. Western countries are the most economically, culturally politically and religiously diverse and open in the history of the world. Bigotry, homophobia, sectarianism, sexism and the rest of the ‘orchestra of prejudice’ has been in full remission for at least three generations, depending on where you live, and with rare exceptions.

This may sound like fuel for the most reactionary leftist firebrands to sound off on the usual hi-explosive hysterical battle cries. Trump is literally Hitler, we know. Nazis are in every Starbucks, transphobes are on every bus, prisons are full of minorities, gay teenagers are still anxious, and college students are still offended by what is reported on the 6 o’ clock news. Yes, Trump exists, yes, racism exists. Yes, you work in a shitty job, and your peers are doing better than you by every standard you judge important. So yes, uncomfortable realities are still a reality. But the hysterical reactionaries are exactly that, hysterical, and I’ll come back to them.

But the fact here remains, and it is a virtually prima facie case on the evidence of living in or even walking through any area in the Western world, that racism is less of an influencing factor in our broad societal discourses than at any time in history. Its not controversial to state, that in real terms, the whole concept continues to becomes increasingly minimised and specialised as people get on with leading productive lives. Yet, as anyone who dwells on the internet, and many others who dwell in the outside world will know, it remains a primary bogeyman of our political rhetoric at every social level. You can still pretty effectively threaten, bully, censor and silence any discussion with an appropriately crafted accusation of racism, no matter how unfounded or unrealistic the accusation may be.

The attraction of keeping “racism” in play is many fold. I will discuss several of the reasons for that as we go forward.

First, racism is an established press magnet. You can use it to sell pretty much any story. The word and the idea are the stuff of gossip columns. Let me put it into context: once upon a time, neighbourhood gossip in the real world would revolve around the finest of lurid insinuations- that someone was committing adultery, cheating on their husband or wife with someone else in the community. But that narrative has been played out in the yellow press. It may have reached its zenith with Bill Clinton or Tiger woods. Except in the rarest cases, the press or news dont care about cheating, or fidelity, or marriage, or anything to do with fidelity or the traditional family unit, they’re far too cynical and nihilistic for one thing. But i digress. Racism is the new best scandal you can sell, and it seems to have maintained its incendiary spark, despite being squeezed and crowbarred into our discourses and news media like a jack in the box for a few decades now. We haven’t grown out of that silly thrill quite yet.

A quick google search on the word “racism” under the “news” category for today brings up a perfect list of examples of the power of the concept to sell narratives. News stories for today include Australia consider its foreign and domestic policy through a lens of racism, when considering how to uphold and maintain their social and political values when Chinese people are buying up and insinuating themselves into large sections of their economy and their education system.  This is a news story about current-year racism in its finest, purest stupidest form. Is it racist to discuss any notion that nominally broaches the issues of nationality and culture in a forthright and honest manner, when legitimate social, economic, political and civilisational traditions investments and values are at stake? Yes, it is, in fact, according to several mainstream interpretations of the concept. The international news media dont care about the Australian people or their livelihoods or the future of their civilisation, but they do care primarily about the puerile and superfluous moral outrage that can be wreaked, like a finger-wagging neighbourhood gossip who spreads trashy half-truths and basks in schadenfreude. So we can see a story like this pop up most days (no hard task for the BBC) whereby they propagate the fallacy of the reputation-ruining racist minefield and then force real people to march through it.

Essentially Australian politicians, business leaders and academics are trying to figure out how to speak out about the concerns they have without saying what they are actually thinking. The primary fear, of course, is the fear of being misrepresented, and that fear is completely justified. No one wants to lose their livelihoods or their education, or god forbid the future of their educational system because some faceless hack has decided their legitimate concerns are sinful. And make no mistake, in the absence of religion in our social discourse, racism and the rest of the outrage orchestra happily takes its own place on the podium of perdition. (If we don’t have a structured moral scaffold on which to look down upon others, then, my friend, we simply are not journalists. And yes, we can invent our own Higher Power- lets call it “social justice”.)

Further on down the daily racism banner headlines there is a story about a racism row in Swedens world cup team due to one of their players- of Assyrian ethnicity - being insulted online. This is a sports story for people who aren’t interested in sports, but who prefer the off pitch drama and political bolloxology of the racism joust. Without prejudicing the actual story and legitimate personal concerns of the player in question, anyone who has spent any time expressing opinions on certain corners of social media will have been threatened with murder and exposed to racist/sexist/bigoted abuse regardless of whether you’re responsible for getting the team you play on kicked out of the world cup in a humiliating fashion. Its not the wildest thing to experience. Go to any youtube comment section and tell someone where you’re from. Wherever it is, you’re liable to get threatened with all manner of violence. Try uploading a video, and see how that goes.

Regardless, as i said, it makes sports more interesting for people who dont care about the games. UEFA have been on their anti racism campaign for long years now, and for the most part its working, but regardless, you’ll hear about it when it occurs. We can use racism to make anything interesting to people who aren’t interested in a subject for any other reason. Entire academic disciplines rely on this strategy, and again, I will discuss the academic aspect in all the detail it deserves in good time. But it gives sports writers an additional lever arch file to add to their portfolio. They can segway from sports into politics and social policy and wherever they want from there.

The world cup has throw up another few racist nuggets of interest in the last 24 hours, regarding controversial hand signals thrown by Albanian players on the Swiss team which references politics of the former Yugoslavia and the post dissolution wars that followed. Being that these are primarily white skinned persons, directed at Serbians who are white, this is a rather more complicated political issue so naturally its received less attention from the news media. That in itself is another wonderful aspect of the stupid game of musical chairs that media pundits and journals play with the racism issue. Identical behaviour that would be classified as racist if it were directed between persons of markedly different skin tones is an entirely different issue when the colours change. This holds true regardless of the actual context of said behaviour, no matter how legimately odious or replete with violent and perverse insinuations that behaviour may reference. Its too much hard work to sell those types of narratives in the current year.

Its of no surprise to anyone, that rather than deal with the actually potential life and death and complicated issues of ethnicity in parts of the world where the stakes are high, and where the word ‘racism’ remains its original ultra-violent and decidedly less nebulous rhetorical currency, we would rather discuss the netflix story, the beautiful and brave tale of social justice, whereby a netflix PR executive was sacked recently for the use of racist language.

Yes, in the almost exemplary ‘Mad Hatter tea party’ version of reality, this particular executive was fired for using the notorious N Word, in a meeting about words that should be severely restricted and censored when broadcast on their streaming network. While this may indeed have been a cover story of some kind, an excuse to oust a man who was targeted for ousting, the play on this tale is remarkably unironic in a situation seemingly tailor-designed for irony. In this version of reality, the N-Word cannot be discussed, even in the context where it is used demonstrably as a word to be censored. Whether this is the case or otherwise, this is the acceptable version of the anti racism crusade that we are being treated to by the orchestra of outrage.

There are at least four other superfluous examples of journals shoehorning racism into the headlines for outsized clicks on undersized stories which only reach the levels of attraction they do because of the self-propelling artificial hysteria of the racist epidemic shoring them up. But the main points have been highlighted.

We may quickly double back to reference the inherent implication of the earlier Australian story, which overlaps in an appropriate way with the miniature Netflix saga. In this version of reality there is no legitimate context for discussion of certain matters, even when those matters are demonstrably in your best interests and the best interests of your country and/or colleagues, as the Australians are experiencing. However, even in a putatively sterile environment, where the discussion of offensive language is the very intention of the participants, there is no ability to discuss honestly.

 The obfuscation of reconstructed standards and boundaries is unmatched except by the hysteria of the reaction when it has been decided someone oversteps.

I cant wait to get all this crap dealt with so I can get to the heart of the issue. But thats for another day. Coming soon..