Don Lemon couldn’t contain his delight when a commentator on CNN said that Kanye West is ‘what happens when negros don’t read’. West supports Trump and so is deemed the ‘token negro’ of the Republican Party, implying that he is not thinking for himself but obeying his white masters. Racism, you know, is funny and appropriate when the victim is on the other side. Once you ‘leave the plantation’ you are fair game.
In the UK, the left hardly behaves any better. Shaun Bailey, the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London and a black man from an underprivileged background, faces the now sadly expected slurs of being an ‘Uncle Tom’ and a ‘coconut’. Of course he was also labelled a ‘token ethnic’ as black Tory MP James Cleverly has also been, implying that he only got his position as a way for his party to disguise their assumed vile racism, which the candidate is too naïve to see for himself.
But behind closed doors the left is even worse. In a rather shocking blog post, Colin Appleby, a Jewish Labour member, recounts his experiences at the recent Labour conference. The now cliché accusations of being loyal to Israel over the UK pales in comparison to hissing sounds resembling gas leaks, being told ‘Hitler was right’, being labelled a child killer and wild conspiracy theories about Jewish control of not only the media but the Bank of England, ISIS and the slave trade. Crazy stuff. But not too crazy for the modern Labour Party, who is busy calling everyone on the right racist. But could anyone imagine a similar treatment of a minority at the Conservative Conference. Of course not.
The left has long treated minorities with condescending paternalism (as we point out here). In the 2017 British general election, Labour took it upon itself to ‘unlock the potential’ of those groups who apparently couldn’t do it themselves. Countless are the white social justice warriors who take it upon themselves to be the protectors of minorities they seemingly do not trust to speak up for themselves.
In truth, the left treats racism as a political tool. They have an affinity for minorities because they need their votes and historically have been able to rely on them as minorities were overwhelmingly working class. But old voting patterns are shifting. To mobilise the minority vote, the left has taken to calling opponents out as racists while portraying themselves as the (somewhat distasteful) white saviours of the ethnic victim class. This has increasingly become the modus operandi for the left as identity politics has taken over from class warfare. The identity politics merchants know that nothing is more dangerous to their ideology than non-conformity. The success of their agenda relies on unquestioning loyalty to the group – which of course means to the elite spearheading the group. But when constituents reject the imposed narrative, the mask slips and the anti-racists resort to surprisingly conspicuous racism. In reality this is the logical consequence of collectivist ideology, of group loyalty over individualism. Racism is of course the antithesis to individualism: judging people by their group affiliation as opposed to their individual character. Free market capitalism is the only system where only your ability limits your potential success, where your group affiliation truly doesn’t matter because no political power grants special privileges to certain groups while restricting the rights of others.
The left has for far too long been able to pull the wool over the public’s eyes, proclaiming themselves the beacons of anti-racism in inherently racist societies. They have catered for minorities because they sought their votes and mostly got them. But it is easy to celebrate and sympathise with someone who you expect agrees with you. The test is how you treat them if they turn out to disagree.