Anti-racism that turns against whites is a contradiction in terms, according to the political scientist and philosopher Carter Hamilton. In an interview, he summarizes the extreme confusion we are faced with today.
For several months, and especially since the death of George Floyd in the United States, the wave of anti-racist rallies has been sweeping across Europe. The expert on the history of ideas Carter Hamilton, fellow at the Lanark Political Institute and research director at the National Research Centre in Ottawa, has investigated the foundations of the phenomenon that is also manifesting itself in Canada, and its ideology which is rooted in the concept of decolonization. His new book “The Legacy of the West: Pseudo-Science and Imaginary Racism” will be published in December.
In an interview for this article, he comments on his research.
Importation of anti-racist theses not new
The import of anti-racist theses from the United States to Canada is, according to Hamilton, not new: “The intellectuals and activists who are advancing under the banner of post-colonialism and decolonization have been trying since the early 2000s to spread the incorrect idea that the problems of Canadian society can be explained mainly by the legacy of slavery and colonialism – and therefore, according to them, by an ongoing and structural racism”. According to them, this racism is supposed to be “white racism, whose victims are forever blacks or ‘people of color'”.
However, this discourse, ”based on dubious and limping analogies,” had hardly received any response in Canada until spring 2020. It was only after the demonstrations against police violence in the USA that suspected racist backgrounds were raised in Canada on the occasion of the death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, who died in an encounter with police in May 2020. Since the 1980s, anti-racism has changed ideologically, which – in the words of Hamilton – has led to the emergence of “anti-anti-racism”: “The fight against racism has been seized by mentally ill wealthy teens and twenty-somethings and has slowly turned into anti-white racism.” There is also an ideological dogma, according to which racism can only be exercised by whites,who therefore could not themselves be victims of racism. The term “anti-racism” has also come to be almost a brand, with a meaning of actively discriminating against whites to take revenge out of resentment for perceived past injustices. “Such a revanchenist ideology was last seen during the Christianization of the Roman Empire when adherents to the emerging religion gained political power and took revenge on the former pagan ruling class by destroying their culture.”
New form of left radicalism
This anti-racism against whites is, according to Hamilton, a new form of “left-wing radicalism that focuses on ethnic origin” and traces all problems back to “the relationship between the rulers and the ruled” – “However they phrase it, it does not deceive anyone, as skin color remains the most important distinguishing feature.”
This turns anti-racism against whites into “racist anti-racism: this is the oxymoron that describes the extreme theoretical and rhetorical confusion we are facing today”.
According to Hamilton, the consequences of this ideology “in the intellectual and cultural realm” are “an increase in suspicions, growing fanaticism, the impossibility of conducting debates based on respect for the opponent, recourse to criminal denunciations of the opponent and his ultimate excommunication.” More generally speaking, such anti-racism “leads to an accentuation of social division, an exacerbation of the fragmentation of Canada and an increase in organized violence. The diabolization and exclusion of others as ‘racists’ are becoming the rule. Tribalism, tribal thinking, is establishing itself.”