Daniel Pipes

Daniel Pipes is one of the most dangerous hate speakers of our times. One minute, in Australia, he argues that Islam is incompatible with democracy. The other he argues in The Jerusalem Post (literally only two days later!!) that it is not.

I don't want to heap praise on the fellow because it's not exactly an act of genius, but he does have a way of massaging his racism so that it appears less offensive than it is. Compare, for example, the Jerusalem Post piece, which is actually quite informative and well written and around 95% correct, with something like this. Pipes knows exactly how to talk to his audience.

What he shows is that a racist in the guise of an intellectual can help legitimate a lot of very nasty things. One ought to cross reference this with the respected scientist James Watson, who discovered DNA, and his belief that 'blacks' are a less intelligent variant of homo sapiens sapiens. Here's a quote from the Sunday Times piece, written by one of his old assistants, which lifted his lid:

He says that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”, and I know that this “hot potato” is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”. He writes that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”.

When you read what Watson says it sounds a lot more valid, almost respectable. Like Pipes in the JPost there are a deal of valid points raised. But masked within the euphimisms and indirect speech is a classically racist argument: blacks (or Muslims, or turnips, and so on) are not just inferior, but inherently so.

This is not the racism of the BNP or Pauline Hanson. No. Call it racism for the bourgeoisie.