For every age its orthodoxy, for every age its heresy. In Galileo’s day it was having the temerity to suggest that the piece of rock we live on may not be the centre of the entire universe. In pre-civil war America, it was arguing that the black dude doing your laundry was your moral and legal equal.
Heretics challenge the lazy conceit of the majority, that certain ideas are inviolate, preordained by God or nature. And they pay for their heresy – in the days of the Inquisition their ideas literally went up in a puff of smoke.
Well, one could get a whiff of smoke and hear the crackle of kindling this week in Aotearoa. A bonfire was being readied for two modern heretics – Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux. Their chief heresy is to challenge the religion of multiculturalism. And the mad, mad multicultural mullahs who patrol society looking for any deviations from its doctrines were ready and waiting.
A coalition with the ridiculous title, Love Aotearoa Hate Racism, combining self appointed leaders of "Maori, Muslim and migrant groups", talked of fighting the pair's "racism" and "hate speech". Slander is the gasoline of their heretic bonfire. Auckland Peace Action has announced a "Rally Against Racism: a peaceful protest at a fascist speaking event". They’re fascist racists? I wonder if their mothers know?
The mad mullahs in the media have followed the party line – labelling the pair either "far right" or "alt-right" with no examination of what these terms mean or whether they are accurate labels.
So, what have the pair done to earn the mullah’s ire? Lauren Southern has been prominent in Generation Identity, a group opposed to mass immigration into Europe and involved in attempting to expose the complicity of some NGOs in smuggling refugees. She also likes to challenge the "Islam is a religion of peace" bromide, be it by distributing "Allah is a gay God" pamphlets or merely by attempting to walk through Muslim majority areas of western cities (check out her latest attempt to take a stroll in Lakemba, Australia). So, she’s a controversialist, prone to stunts and publicity courting. But in exposing the cracks in the multicultural facade (to take but one example: 47% of British Muslims believe homosexuality should be outlawed, Pew Research) she’s doing us all a service.
Molyneux’s deadly sin is daring to care about intelligence. Specifically, the data suggesting there are differences in average IQs between the races. Strike one against the multicultural tenet that all races (and cultures) are completely and uniformly equal in all human characteristics. For this he’s routinely dubbed a "white supremacist" although if one looks at the scientific literature he should really be an "Asian supremacist" as these guys come out on top. The phrase "Asian supremacist" doesn’t really strike fear into the heart – perhaps because they’d never look good in braces and doc martens. But it also punctures the hysteria that surrounds even discussion of this topic – intelligence is not the only, or even best, measure of man – as any one who has spent ten minutes with a university professor could tell you.
As the mainstream media would have it, these are extreme views held by the kind of people who wander the streets slack jawed and raving, carrying the entirety of their personal belongings in shopping bags. This is the fakest of fake news. There are many doubters when it comes to the multiculturalist religion. In Britain, 32% of the population disagreed with the statement "Britain has benefited in many ways from becoming a multicultural society" (a 2015 Guardian poll). There’s no reason New Zealand wouldn’t have a similar number of dissenters.
Open discussion such as that taking place this Friday – at an undisclosed location (I love this secret squirrel stuff by the way) – makes the mullahs of multiculturalism nervous. On Friday, no doubt the flames of the heretic bonfire will be the highest yet. So, come along (tickets are still selling) and help douse them with your open, free thinking, questioning, and diverse-opinion-loving minds.
Don’t let the mullahs win.