Hate Traffic
A curiosity in my webtraffic stats has brought something to my attention: a recent post on a racialist hate site has lifted the race-related comments of Hume, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Kant* that I’ve collected here and posted them in a radically different context. The post, to give an indication of the level of discourse involved, is entitled What the Greatest Philosophers Said about Nigger-Animals and is accompanied by an equally offensive (not to mention infantile) photoshopped image.
Placed in a context where there is no attempt at evaluating or critiquing the passages involved, we can see just how powerful an endorsement they can appear. All we have is a slavish appeal to authority: famous philosopher Y said X, therefore X is deemed to have some particular merit. This is, of course, a fallacy, but it shows very clearly how much weight a ‘big-name endorsement’ can provide.
Just to clarify, the fact that a famous historical figure appears to share one’s prejudices doesn’t make them any more true. The veracity of a statement is not ascertained by the recognizability of the name making it, especially when none of the individuals involved had any particular expertise in the topic at hand (not to mention that the entire discourse on the subject at the time was hopelessly skewed by ignorance, fear and cultural chauvinism). Even the greatest thinkers (and Hume and Kant are undoubtedly two of the most accomplished) can be utterly wrong, and have all-too-often repeated and reinforced the prejudices of their time. Simply printing what they say with absolutely no discussion is a sign of intellectual sloth, and gives a good indication of the sophistication of racialist propagandists.
I’m not sure there’s any point commenting on the site in question as any comments from opposing points of view seem to be systematically culled—you can see evidence of a dissenting voice being silenced. [That gives us clear evidence of prejudice, intellectual complacency, close mindedness and moral cowardice, if you're keeping count.] I’m not particularly happy to have helped provide material for hate-speech, but I also don’t think we can deny that various philosophers have made such comments, and it’s important to remain aware that no-one is infallible or beyond criticism, no matter how great their accomplishments in other areas may be.
*If you wish to see the relevant posts on Hume et al., just click on ‘Race’ in the categories section to the left.
Comments
5 Comments so far
Indeed, mr. “Friedrich Braun” had no other choice but to censor similar comments made about -his- people by other famous philosophers who lived at a time when -his- people weren’t particularly known for their intellectual prowess or cultural sophistication. I guess he took offence when he found out that his people were regarded as ‘natural slaves’ long before he could spout any “innanities (sic)” about “niggers”. History is there to teach us not to repeat such mistakes: didn’t the “northern peoples” proved beyond a doubt that they are fully intelligent beings, fully capable of philosophy, mathematics and everything else that they were accused of being incapable of?
Of course, had someone censored his quote farm, mr ‘Braun’ would have screamed something along the lines of “teh j00z are keeping the white man down!!!”.
Hypocrisy? You can’t expect much from bigots, I suppose.
Oooh, it makes one wish you could put some racism-meter on the entry to your blog. Thinking about it, I guess evolutionists have similar thoughts about proponents of Intelligent Design.
Oh, I had one of those – the Delicate Liberal Sensibilities Supa-Protector 2.0.
Unfortunately, it short-circuited after a couple of months; it just couldn’t stand up to the combined onslaught of the German Idealists.
Indeed, mr. ‘Chris Mathews’ had no other choice but to censor similar comments made about -his- sub-human [ ... ] animals by other famous philosophers who lived at a time when -his- sub-human [ ... ] animals weren’t particularly known for their intellectual prowess or cultural sophistication. I guess he took offense when he found out that his sub-human [ ... ] animals were regarded as ‘natural slaves’ long before he could spout any insanities about white trash bastards. History is there to teach us not to repeat such mistakes: didn’t the Africans prove beyond a doubt that they are not fully intelligent beings, that they are fully incapable of philosophy, mathematics and everything else that they were told they were capable of?
Of course, had someone censored his quote farm, mr ‘Mathews’ would have screamed something along the lines of ‘whitey beez keepin us black men down’!!!.
Hypocrisy? You can’t expect anything else from black racist [ ... ], I suppose.
[Note: the above comment has been edited, with the single word excisions marked by brackets. I haven't changed the meaning of the comment in any way or removed anything of substance*, but there has to be some limit to how much blind bigotry I allow on this site—at a certain point it becomes gratuitous.]
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Congratulations, you’ve just provided a wealth of ammunition for people like me who think that white supremacists are simply ideologues blinded by their prejudice. Your key assumption is simply ridiculous: someone who argues against racism can only be black themselves? Well, sorry to disappoint you, but my name is not a pseudonym – I’m exactly who I present myself to be. And even if I weren’t, pretending that something as irrelevant as a person’s skin color had any bearing on the strength of their arguments would still still be completely fallacious. And the claim that I’ve censored philosophers’ comments on the matter is simply false – I’m the one who collected them all in the first place!
And FYI, a ‘quote farm’ (or ‘quote mining’) is when one takes the comments of a writer out of their context and puts them in one in which their meaning is intentionally misrepresented, which is not at all what has happened on this site. Each one of the quotes was originally presented here in the context of a post devoted to debating it. It was the racialist site which assembled them in a ‘farm’, devoid of context or discussion. So sorry, but wrong again.
*primarily because it contains nothing of substance.