How did everything get turned around?

Today, to criticise multiculturalism, one is invariably derided as ‘right wing’ or ‘reactionary’. Conversely, to champion multiculturalism, one is invariably perceived as ‘progressive’ or ‘of the left’. But it should be, and historically it has been, the other way around. Multiculturalism represents the antithesis of the Enlightenment principle of colour-blindness and the notion of the universality of humankind – while the fetishisation of ethnic particularism is a quintessentially Tory ideal. The liberal-left’s love affair with multiculturalism today is a betrayal of what it used to stand for.

That’s for sure. That realization is starting to trickle through, but dang it’s taking a long time. Hurry up, folks! Get a clue. The fetishization of … Read the rest

Maryam won! Maryam Namazie is Secularist of the Year. Ya-hoooooo. Sorry to be so American, but I’m really really pleased. As a matter of fact, I’m also damn smug. Here I’ve been publishing her articles like mad all this time, which I haven’t noticed the Guardian or the Independent bothering to do. Well? Well??! Wouldn’t you be smug? Wouldn’t you? Who has the better judgment? Eh? Eh? Which would you rather have published – Dilpazier Aslam, or Maryam Namazie?

Well maybe now they’ll start publishing her. Maybe this will be the push they need. Kenan Malik said, you know. Remember that? In the Guardian (she said pointedly). All the way back in January.

It also creates a climate

Some more on that terrific Simon Blackburn article ‘Religion and Respect’. So much of it is so exactly what I think myself, and have been saying here with tedious iteration – naturally I think it’s terrific. But it is, all the same.

But, I argued to myself, why should I
“respect” belief systems that I do not share? I would not be expected to respect the beliefs
of flat earthers or those of the people who believed that the Hale-Bopp comet was a recycling facility for dead Californians, and killed themselves in order to join it. Had my
host stood up and asked me to toast the Hale-Bopp hopefuls, or to break bread or some
such in token of