Diversity snobbery substitutes insult for argumentation and persuades by appealing to people’s vanity rather than their reason.
Conservative pundits are justifiably indignant about media bias in the current election. Victor Davis Hanson catalogsthe numerous failures to take Obama to task over his questionableassociations, his inconsistent positions on the issues, and his unwiseredistributionist fiscal proposals. Meanwhile, the media have castMcCain and Palin as racist, authoritarian demagogues, despite the factthat they have shunnedcontroversial positions on race, suppressed valid criticisms ofnon-whites among their followers, and betrayed the Republican base bysupporting a “path to citizenship”for illegal aliens. As Hanson says, Sarah Palin “in the space of twomonths, has been reduced from a popular successful governor to abackwoods creationist, who will ban books and champion whitesecessionist causes.”
The bias Hanson complains of is a product of the fundamental misconception of American society that I discussed in The Myth of the Fascist Establishment. We are a society that is not only tolerant of minorities, but recklessly indulgent. America lets millions of immigrantsinto the country every year and allows them to change the complexionand culture of our nation. Once they are here, we give them affirmative actionand put criticism of them, no matter how justified, under a severetaboo. However, mainstream political commentators do not deplore ournation’s indulgences towards non-whites and its disregard for theinterests of American natives, but rather its xenophobia and racism.Even as white Americans allow themselves to be dispossessed with nary agrumble, they find themselves pilloried as intolerant, bigoted, andeven proto-fascist.
What is the source of this grotesque scapegoating? Why does themedia and academic establishment insist on blaming the victim? Manywritings on The Inverted World clarify the question. The myth of the fascist establishment is clearly a manifestation of leukophobia,or fear and loathing of white people, which casts whites as uniquelyracist and authoritarian. Moreover, the myth is rooted in the hostility towards white ethnocentrism and infatuation with diversity that characterizes American elite ideology, particularly that of the so-called “creative class.”
Though social attitudes always have many causes, I think the majorreason for the myth of the fascist establishment is simple snobbery.For the elite, friendliness to diversity is the hallmark of tolerance,open-mindedness, courage, and intelligence. Consequently, not only dothe elites boast of their own courageous embrace of diversity, butfabricate a fictional fascist white majority as a foil for their ownsuperior tolerance. To this combination of boastfulness andscapegoating, I give the name “diversity snobbery.”