In another of those non-alarmist nothing-to-see-here stories, a British government minister tentatively raised the matter of severe birth defects among the children of Pakistani Muslims. Some 57 per cent of Pakistani Britons are married to their first cousins, and this places their progeny at increased risk of certain health problems. This is the only way a culturally relativist west can even raise some of these topics: Nothing against cousin marriage, old boy, but it puts a bit of a strain on the old health care budget. Likewise, it’s not the polygamy, it’s the four welfare cheques you’re collecting for it.
But this is being penny-wise and pound-blasé. What does it mean when 57 per cent of Pakistani Britons are married to first cousins and 70 per cent are married to relatives? At the very least, it tells you that this community is strongly resistant to traditional immigrant assimilation patterns. Of course, in any society, certain groups are self-segregating – the Amish, the Mennonites and whatnot. But when that group is not merely a curiosity on the fringe of the map but the principal source of population growth in all your major cities, the challenge posed by that self-segregation is of a different order. There are now towns in northern England where cousin marriage is the norm: Pakistanis aren’t assimilating with “the host community”; the host community has assimilated with Pakistan. Again, if you had told a Yorkshireman in 1970 that by the early 21st century it would be entirely normal for half the kindergarten class to be the children of first cousins, he would have found it preposterous.
But it happened. By “alarmist”, The Economist and co really mean “raising the subject”. Last year, the British novelist Martin Amis raised the subject of my book with Tony Blair and asked him if, when he got together with his fellow prime ministers, the Continental demographic picture was part of the “European conversation”. Mr Blair replied, with disarming honesty, “It’s a subterranean conversation.”
“We know what that means,” wrote Amis. “The ethos of relativism finds the demographic question so saturated in revulsions that it is rendered undiscussable.” The “multiculturist ideologue”, he added, “cannot engage with the fact that a) the indigenous populations of Spain and Italy are due to halve every 35 years, and b) this entails certain consequences.”
Whether or not it’s “alarmist” to ponder what those consequences might be, under Canada’s “human rights” kangaroo courts it might soon be illegal. All Section 13 cases brought to the federal “Human Rights” Commission end in defeat for the defendant, so, if Maclean’s fails to buck the 100 per cent conviction rate, it would be enjoined from publishing anything that might relate to the “hate speech” in question – in other words, we would be legally prevented from writing about Islam and the west, demographic trends in Canada, and many other topics.
What would we be permitted by the state to write about? How about Nazis? It’s been years since I’ve run into one, but apparently they’re everywhere. A British blogger, pooh-poohing my book, said there are more Nazis than Muslims in England. Really? In Canada, meanwhile, defenders of Section 13 of the Human Rights Code – the one that makes “criminals” of Maclean’s – warn that if the private member’s motion of Keith Martin, MP proposing its repeal were to succeed, Nazis would be free to peddle their dangerous Nazi ideas to simpleminded Canadians who might lack the fortitude to resist. As evidence of the Nazi tide waiting to engulf the Dominion once Section 13 is repealed, Liberal spin-doctor Warren Kinsella posted on his website a photograph he’d taken in a men’s room stall showing the words “WHITE POWER” and a swastika scrawled on the wall at knee height. Why Mr Kinsella is photographing public toilets on his knees I don’t know, but every guy needs a hobby. At any rate, Warren sees this loser’s graffiti as critical evidence of the imminent Nazi threat to the peaceable kingdom.
As I often say, I’m a phobiaphobe. I don’t subscribe to the concepts of “homophobia” and “Islamophobia”. They’re a lame rhetorical sleight to end the argument by denying it’s an argument at alclass="underline" “Why, you poor thing, you don’t have a philosophical disagreement with me over gay marriage or sharia, you have a mental illness! But don’t worry, we can give you counselling and medication and your ‘phobia’ will eventually go away.”
Yet “Naziphobia” is the real thing – an irrational fear of non-existent Nazis. And so Canada’s leading “human rights” hero is Richard Warman, a man whose Naziphobia is so advanced he hauled the “Canadian Nazi Party” before the “Human Rights” Tribunal even though, as the Tribunal was reluctantly forced to rule, no such party exists.
Our heroes pursue phantoms as the world transforms. Is sharia, polygamy, routine first-cousin marriage in the interests of Canada or Britain or Europe? Oh, dear, even to raise the subject is to tiptoe into all kinds of uncomfortable terrain for the multicultural mindset. It’s easier just to look the other way, or go Nazi-hunting in the men’s room. Nobody wants to be unpleasant, or judgmental, do they?
What was it they said in the Cold War? Better dead than Red. We’re not like that anymore. Better screwed than rude.
“ALLOWING” SPEECH
First they came for the giant space lizard conspiracy theorists…
WHAT DOES Maclean’s have in common with a labiaplasty and blood-drinking space lizards from the star system Alpha Draconis?
Well, they’re all part of the wacky world of Canadian “human rights”.
First things first: What is a labiaplasty? Well, it’s a cosmetic procedure performed on the female genitalia for those who are dissatisfied with them. I think I speak for many sad male losers living on ever more distant memories when I say that I find it hard to imagine ever being dissatisfied with female genita…
What’s that? Oh, it’s the women who are dissatisfied are them? Ah, right. Well, there’s the rub. The Ontario “Human Rights” Commission is currently weighing whether or not to become the (at last count) third “human rights” commission in Canada to prosecute Maclean’s for the crime of running an excerpt from my book. The Globe And Mail’s Margaret Wente was interested to know what Canada’s vast “human rights” machinery does when it isn’t sticking it to privately owned magazines, so she swung by the Ontario “Human Rights” Tribunal to check out the action. And it seems the reason they haven’t yet dragged Maclean’s into court is because they’re tied up hearing the case of two women who claim they were denied their human right to a labiaplasty by a Toronto plastic surgeon who specializes in that particular area. The women proved to be post-operative transsexuals who were unhappy with some of the aesthetic results of their transformation, and Dr Stubbs declined to perform the procedure on the grounds that he usually operates on biological females and is generally up to speed on what goes where and, when it comes to transsexuals, he had no idea what he was, so to speak, getting into. Had he done it and it had all gone horribly wrong, the plaintiffs would have sued his pants off. So, as a private practitioner, he chose to decline the business, and as a result now finds himself in “Human Rights” Commission hell.