Victor Davis Hanson // Private Papers
Part One
A canon of the Left has always been that “words matter.” But do they?
Only sometimes, and selectively so.
So when Trump, for example, insisted on calling the SARS-CoV-2 virus the “China virus”—in a manner of the 1918 “Spanish flu,” or the way the Left did in the first few months of the pandemic or subsequently referred to mutant strains as “the South African virus,” or the “Brazilian virus”—he then became a “racist.” (How ironic that “Wuhan/China virus” may be the most appropriate term, if it is confirmed that Chinese scientists engineered the gain-of-function COVID-19 virus, and if especially their research was known to or overseen by the Chinese military).
Thus, Trump’s words, we were lectured, could be blamed for the epidemic of mostly African-American, younger males committing hate crimes against Asian-Americans. Trump, we were told, “created a climate of anti-Asian bigotry.” Ditto the media using that same tired trope to explain why young men of Middle-Eastern heritage were targeting Jewish Americans during the recent Middle East War. Trump, not those stomping on elderly Jews, you see, was the racist.
Ok, so words matter?
Not really.
For if they did, there would be an iota of outrage at the current systematic rhetoric of anti-white hatred—even of occasion of the exterminationist sort. Yet no one cares what the rhetoric will birth. The hatred is no longer voiced just by the Farrakhan ilk. Nor is it limited to the sloppy venom of the Al Sharpton brand. Instead, it is the talk of elite, well-off, upper-middle-class “diverse” leaders, professionals, politicians, and intellectuals. And because of the source, it is contextualized, exempted, and even admired for its boldness.
Here are just a few examples. Consider the now infamous excerpt from a recent Yale University Medical School speech by one psychiatrist Dr. Aruna Khilanani:
This is the cost of talking to white people at all. The cost of your own life, as they suck you dry. There are no good apples out there. White people make my blood boil…I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a fucking favor.
I think Khilanani’s tirade would be classified by progressive Yale humanists as “hate speech”—only it was, of course, not.
Here is a similar snuff fantasy voiced in a recent novel by Barnard Professor Ben Philippe, one widely reported in conjunction with other of his observations:
When this race war hits its crescendo, I’ll gather you all into a beautifully decorated room under the pretense of unity. I’ll give a speech to civility and all the good times we share; I’ll smile as we raise glasses to your good, white health, while the detonator blinks under the table, knowing the exits are locked and the air vents filled with gas.
I think the Left once called such Treblinka imagery “hatred,” “incendiary” and “inflammatory” and helping to “lower the bar” of acceptable violence. Do we see a pattern among our elites of the diversity industry?
Here is Harvard Law grad Elie Mystal writing in the Nation (as their “justice” correspondent) about avoiding all white people he can, once the quarantine was lifted: “White people haven’t improved; I’ve just been able to limit my exposure to them.”
Would Mystal like to explain the consequences for the country at large, if everyone followed his own example and limited one’s “exposure” to racial groups that they felt “haven’t improved”? (How does one “improve” a supposed racial group? Mandatory diversity training, selective breeding, eugenics, brainwashing, reifying the revolver and gas fantasies of Khilanani and Philippe? Would Mystal care to expand on what he meant by improving to a level that he could tolerate them?
Or was that hatred too subtle? Should we call Joe Biden to suggest all of the above supports his assessment that white bigotry and white supremacist terrorism are sweeping the country
Try a version from Damon Young, a senior editor of The Root and an occasional New York Times contributor. He lectures the nation:
Whiteness is a public health crisis. It shortens life expectancies, it pollutes air, it constricts equilibrium, it devastates forests, it melts ice caps, it sparks (and funds) wars, it flattens dialects, it infests consciousnesses, and it kills people.
Note especially Young’s Hitlerian dehumanizing use of “infests”? (Or for that matter Mystal’s “exposure”—as if whites were some sort of toxic infectious virus). Where have we heard that idea before of a racial or religious group being blamed for bad air, water, forests and, to top it off, the melting of both Antarctica and the Arctic?
You object and counter, “But these are just pampered intellectuals spouting off who have no influence?”—as if most of history’s most lethal ideas did not start in the university as crackpot abstractions.
One final thought: yes, most of this rhetoric is aimed by fellow elites at fellow elites. That is, the white privileged class with whom most often a Philippe at Barnard or a Mystal encounters.
Yet they likely know few poor or lower-middle-class whites, whose children grew up in the post-Civil Rights, post affirmative-action world, and whose incomes, educational levels and opportunities, and material conditions offer no hint of “privilege.” So whereas the NPR white elite may cheaply and in careerist fashion confess to his unearned white privilege from his $150,000 salaried perch—and so fuel further such demands for more repetenance—I am not sure that is true of the truck driver, the mechanic, the lumberjack, the assembler, or carpenter. Will they nod “yep,” when called a racist beneficiary of unearned privileged, not to mention one who metaphorically should rendezvous with Khilanani’s revolver or Phillipe’s gas chamber? And when you compound this language of hatred with the now stock Obama/Clinton/Biden vocabulary of clingers, deplorables, irredeemables/dregs, chumps, and Neanderthals, I think we are in for some scary, perhaps our scariest, times. The point is again that supposedly humane, progressive elites, writing from their sanctuary zones of diversity, inclusion, and equity, are writing some scary, utterly racist and vile things, which according to the Left will “matter” and in the next phase lead to real violence against their rhetoric targets.
In Part Two, I’ll offer a few other sick examples and explain why this deplorable new hatred and why now.
In the old days, the process of the victorious Progressives forming the Blood Bond of the Party with the People involved a quota of 5% liquidation of those present as Class Enemies. This number grew though the years. The Khmer Rouge did two 20% liquidations, one in South China under Mao, one in North Vietnam under Uncle Ho. Progressive Doctrine in the Media and in Congress was that they would not do it again and Communism in Cambodia will mean a better life. Has it ever been resolved what percentage of the population was liquidated as Class Enemies? Was it as high as 30%?
What percentage of U.S. citizens voted for Trump in the last Presidential election?
Is the expansion of contemplated Class Enemies responsible for some of the more demanding Progressive in Hollywood calling for industrialization in processing Trump folks by using banks of guillotines?
I am concerned that the 1619 project is as Marxist as Black Lives Matter. Both believe that America is irredeemable and will have to destroyed and rebuilt.
BLM says they are burning America one city at a time. Mr. Biden’s political slogan was “Build Back Better.” Do you think he advocates complete destruction of America? His policies and spending seem to indicate that he might. Even Alan Dershowitz thinks the US is becoming Marxist.
In my 90 years, I have never seen it so bad. This will not end well. It is the Alinsky playbook which is for the first time gaining traction.
Professor,
We’ve been living for a long time with this. And you, as a believer in deterrence, know why: that in a day when even such an anodyne statement as “It’s OK to be white” is considered racist, and all the Right thinking pundits like yourself are too afraid to defy that directive, black race-haters know they can aggress all they want. There is no pushback, no viable threat of reprisal. Certainly no counter-attack.
So you will continue to list all the appalling examples of black race hatred against whites in your ironical way which accomplishes nothing. Then you will finish your comments with a warning of what this can lead to, which likewise stops none of it and only creates an enervating depression among your readers. So sad, so unnecessary all this rage and resentment is. So counter-productive.
But you won’t write an essay explaining why it IS OK to be white, at least not without saying how much we flawed whites have tried to be better, almost as good as the sainted Dr. King. Blacks are the touchstones of virtue, after all.
You devote inches of column space to the ugly words of people who hate you and never attack them directly. You refuse to fight back and then wonder why the attacks keep coming.
You surrender the Sudetenland and worry that the territorial demands might not cease.
Bill Hickey
Typical White Man, gross!
Victor,
We are in Greece on vaca right now were having a conversation With three girls from Cuba now living in Miami about governor DeSantis how much they loved him and Trump similarly having escaped Communism. Then another woman from California jumped into the conversation and said well what the hell did Trump ever do, in an attempt to shut down the conversation. My wife was confounded as was I to offer up the list that I’ve heard you recite so often on your podcast with Jack Fowler. Would you be so kind to point us to your top 10 list. The Abraham accord comes to mind of course after the fact, given what’s going on in Israel at the moment. We would just like to have a ready list for future encounters with non thinking folks.
On another note I’m sure you’ve seen Biden’s claim at the G7 summit the global warming is our single biggest challenge and in his words it’s no joke. I’m reminded of Thomas Sowells refrain – no data offered, no data asked for when you consider the myriad factors that go into turf wars in history. I’ve heard you speak of many and the biggest one that I can think of as you have pointed out on many occasions is a display of weakness on the global stage. The example you gave on the second world war was Chamberlin’s response to Hitler or rather Hitler‘s distain for Chamberlin’s weakness. So here goes good old Joe, Talking loudly and carrying a little stick.
And at the same time Kamala making a fool out of herself an Guatemala.
It is stunning that thes 2 are our best and brightest.
The schizophrenics will be the vanguard of the counter-revolution. Now can we only find one with the brains and the guts to lead the cosset-craven in their comfort lux to get out of bed?
Excerpted from the article: “Whiteness is a public health crisis. It shortens life expectancies, it pollutes air, it constricts equilibrium, it devastates forests, it melts ice caps, it sparks (and funds) wars, it flattens dialects, it infests consciousnesses, and it kills people. ” What utter nonsense, ignorance, blinding hatred. These people ought to read Charles Murray’s seminal books on societies, “The Bell Curve” and “Human Accomplishment” and McNeill’s book, “The Rise of the West”; there are many more (Include the works of Dr. Hanson.) but all the latter will provide enough factual information to wet their fires. These ignorant beings are apparently unaware of the fact that 99.9% of all the science and medicine (science) that we enjoy, benefit from, was discovered/developed by White people. Said sciences saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people of every stripe and color over the past couple of centuries. If it were not for these White people the aforementioned ignorant beings would not likely be alive.
PS – If these ignorant beings want a race war, let’s have it. To paraphrase Bernard Louis, “The lessons of technology are learned on the battlefield.” White people own technology. The “ignorants” will have to make do with wooden and stone weapons .