In 1692, there were no witches in Salem, Massachusetts. Yet many people were convinced that witches were all around them. An elaborate theory of witchery, both popular and elite, had been developing for decades, and this pseudo-scientific infrastructure helped to bring anti-witch hysteria to a crescendo. It lent a veneer of credibility to the proceedings, and convinced many of their righteousness.
Today, there are about as many ‘white supremacists’ and genuine racists in the academy as there were witches in Salem in 1692. That is to say: virtually none. Academics, including myself, are vetted by thousands of hours of conversation with dozens of experts before they get to the point where they receive a tenured position. Any hateful or irrational tendencies would be vetted long before that person received a PhD, let alone tenure.
The rise of social media has created a curious cultural phenomenon, remarkably similar to the Inquisition of old. Today’s analogue to Salem ‘’Witches’’ is the ‘’Racist’’ or ‘’White Supremacist.’’ A small but earnest clique of students (and, sadly, of academics who ought to know better) now derive as much pleasure from outing closet ‘’Racists’’ as the Red Guards did with ‘’Capitalists’’ in Mao’s day. No matter if you’ve never had a racist thought in your life—theory can make any statement sound racist. And the threat is real: many colleagues have confessed to me that they stand in fear of being accused of ‘’white supremacy’’, should they accidentally say any one of a hundred possible things that could trigger a so-called ‘’woke’’ reaction in the classroom.
It is time that we begin to take back the centre ground, by holding those who accuse good-faith Centrist or Conservative scientists like myself of ‘’racism’’ strongly to account for the reputational damage they intend. Otherwise, we risk losing the academy to a culture of fear, accusation, self-censorship, and pseudo-science.[1]
Today’s accusers operate by embracing the tried-and-true paradigm of the ‘’thought crime.’’ Thought crimes, as everyone from Inquisitors to the Stasi well knew, are incredibly easy to make stick. One merely has to accuse the person in question of violating the zeitgeist, and whether that person is guilty or not, a large proportion of the population will assume that they are guilty, simply because they have been accused.
My accuser has chosen to remain anonymous. This further smacks of the methods preferred by secret police, because it gives the victim no realistic chance to prove themselves innocent in a public forum. Even if I did prove my innocence, the thought crime mechanism means that irreparable damage has already been done to my reputation—all on the strength of a single accusation. This strongly reeks of the ‘’guilty until proven innocent’’ methodology—legally known as the ‘’presumption of guilt’’ favored by ‘’Inquisitorial systems’’ of law.
Further, I stand accused of writing a ‘’white supremacist and capitalist’’ book—when that book has not yet even appeared in print. My accuser is quite literally judging my book by its cover, plus a few blurbs on Amazon not written by me. (They also claim I am off the mark by accusing my opponents of academic Marxism, yet they mention white supremacy and capitalism in the same breath, as though these were equally offensive.)
Finally, my accuser decrees it ‘’problematic’’ that I want to talk about my new book on European Colonialism. They suggest that the administration should censor any attempt to discuss it, because this will simply serve as an advertisement for the presumably dangerous ideas contained in the book. In other words, they want the luxury of accusing me, and defaming me in public—while wishing also to forgo the unpleasantness of having me make a case in my own defense. Apparently, my accuser does not believe in public debate of any topic they subjectively deem ‘’problematic,’’ or in the notion of a fair, evidence-based trial.
Do they not realize that the zeitgeist will not always be on their side? That by destabilizing our democratic, scientific methods of free speech carefully built up after centuries of trial and error, they risk, like Robespierre, falling under the very device they now set for me?
The question before this public tribunal today is: should historians be free to question ‘’woke’’ interpretations of history—especially the more novel and radical interpretations—without fear for their careers and reputations?
You see, my anonymous accuser’s ‘’truths’’ about history simply did not exist 15 years ago. They assume that an ‘’Indigenous Holocaust” and an ‘’Indigenous Genocide’’ did, in fact, occur. Yet in the six-volume, 3000+ page Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas (published 1996-2000) the world’s leading authorities on Indigenous history mentioned ‘’genocide’’ precisely—twice. Both times, they mentioned it only to say that the term did not apply to European colonialism in the New World.
Before 2013, then, the idea of an ‘’Indigenous Holocaust’’ was confined to a tiny fringe of radical historians such as David Stannard, whom few took seriously. With the rise of social media and the BLM movement in the 2010s, however, these fringe ideas became amplified.
At the same time, defenders of these formerly fringe, radical interpretations of European colonialism have concocted an elaborate theory of ‘’white defensiveness’’ as another convenient way to shut down scientific debate on points they know they would lose. This bit of sophistry operates precisely like Mao’s Little Red Book, or King James’ Daemonologie. The Wikipedia page on White Defensiveness defines it as:
a term to describe defensive responses by white people to discussions of societal discrimination, structural racism, and white privilege. The term has been applied to characterize the responses of white people to portrayals of the Atlantic slave trade and European colonization, or scholarship on the legacy of those systems in modern society. Academics and historians have identified multiple forms of white defensiveness, including white denial, white diversion, and white fragility, the last of which was popularized by scholar Robin DiAngelo.
Robin DiAngelo has been roundly criticized by the African-American intellectual John McWhorter, whose Atlantic article ‘’The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility’’ points out the obvious.[2] Concepts like ‘’white fragility’’ and ‘’white defensiveness,’’ McWhorter argues, are an attempt to prevent anyone who happens to be white from participating in scientific and historical debate on any ‘’woke’’ topic. McWhorter says that this in itself is arguably racist, because it assumes that black people are too fragile to stand up to criticism, or intellectually incapable of conducting their own logical defence.
(By the way, most of what my accuser says about my abilities as an historian is taken from a hit piece written by a video-game specialist and Twitter activist several years ago, which I debunk in a youtube video.[3] That piece is so ridiculous, its few arguments so garbled, as to be hardly worth my time. In any event, my book-length refutation of its claims will appear in a few weeks.)
Allow me to end this short piece by stating the obvious: I am not remotely racist, let alone ‘‘white supremacist’’. I challenge anyone to find anything in my forthcoming book that is any of these things. I am not arguing for ‘’white innocence’’ (what kind of a serious historian would dream of arguing such a thing?) but rather for historical balance. Yes, I believe in the Obama/MLK doctrine of ‘colorblindness’ and ‘assimilation’ of all people into a harmonious society—and helping those from historically oppressed backgrounds where necessary.[4] This is what pretty much everyone on both sides of the political aisle believed prior to the rise of BLM in 2013. It is only since 2013 that many have been swayed to the Malcolm X/Ibram Kendi notion that assimilation merely perpetuates ‘white supremacy.’ And this bleak worldview is ultimately what my book is arguing against.
Malcom X and Kendi are social theorists who use history to justify their arguments. One of their main justifications is to assert that colonial history was endemically racist, with racism driving oppression and even genocide. In order to prove this nihilistic and harmful vision of society wrong, to have a chance of proving Obama and MLK correct, historians must be free to make reasoned arguments, as I do my forthcoming book. We must be free to present the ample evidence that colonial history was not an unending tale of racism-driven oppression. In this way, we will reveal the ‘’white fragility’’ industry for what McWhorter says it is: a bunch of anti-scientific guff that will look as silly in 10 years’ time, as King James’ witch-hunting treatises looked in the air of the Enlightenment.
By Dr. Jeff Fynn-Paul
[1] See the prescient warning by African-American Princeton historian William Chester Jordan in the American Historical Review https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/september-1993/confronting-the-afrocentric-obsession
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizing-condescension-white-fragility/614146/ https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/september-1993/confronting-the-afrocentric-obsession
[3] Part 1 is at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HTeeMHiVOQ&t=15s
[4] For Obama’s rejection of the concept of ‘’systemic racism’’ see his speech against Reverend Wright, transcript at: https://www.npr.org/2008/04/29/90040477/transcript-obamas-speech-on-rev-wright
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