Following some highly controversial events in the USA, such as the killings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, 2014 saw the rise of what has since become known as The Great Awokening. A substantial constituency of progressives began obsessing over identity issues, almost to the exclusion of all other considerations. One well-known example was the Smithsonian graphic on ‘whiteness’. This publication reported that bland aesthetics, punctuality, rational thinking and hard work are all values that are particularly associated with white people.
It seems unlikely that associating various attitudes and personality traits with specific ethnic groups, will effectively deal with racism. However, the woke scolds issuing censorious missives about their ever more arcane views on racial identity, were often less interested in actually addressing racism and more interested in self-important posturing. This was not about solving problems for minorities, but rather about play-acting a moral superiority. In their pursuit of pretexts that they could use to pompously allege bigotry in others, their performance outrage extended across an incredible list of new purported manifestations of racism. This is one example list that includes scores of things that have been deemed racist, and I was especially disappointed to hear the bad news about Hawaiian pizza. Of course, the best slice always offsets the ham umami with the acid sharpness of a little pineapple.
Ireland was not immune from this kind of pseudo-intellectual gibberish. The most vapid and tedious people on this side of the Atlantic also competed with each other to offer ever more pretentious vacuities, each ‘problematising’ the banal using absurd and twisted logic. The celebrated Irish writer Tim MacGabhann offered some prize examples, among a very competitive field. Happy tenth anniversary then to the tweet below from our very own ersatz Robin DiAngelo, who admonished us that atheism is “inherently racist”.
We can assume that at least Ta-Nehisi Coates would have been surprised to learn that atheism is “inherently racist”. The suggestion that “improving” religious ideas must be condemned, is also striking. What’s wrong with “improving”? Is “improving” not a good thing? When I was young it was not unusual to hear the line, “spare the rod and spoil the child”, which is repeated in various forms within the Book of Proverbs. I felt the weight of that line in school more than once or twice myself. Indeed, secular educationalists at the time were also routinely in favour of the strap. Today though, even conservative Roman Catholic school patrons in Ireland describe how their faith requires them to oppose corporal punishment in our education system. Whereas this is widely perceived as a contemporary improvement by secular and religious parents and teachers alike, why would “improving” in this way be wrong, let alone “racist”?
Unburdened by either logic or coherence, Tim MacGabhann then went on to explain that suggesting religious faith can involve supernaturalism, is “a violent statement”.
The line that Tim MacGabhann quotes in his tweet illustrated above, is from the Atheist Ireland web site. Many Roman Catholics in Ireland have previously disagreed with Atheist Ireland on many occasions, but never like Tim MacGabhann. I grew up in West Belfast during the 1970s and 1980s, and I don’t believe that I require instruction from Tim MacGabhann on what anti-Catholic violence looks like. I feel confident though in stating that most Roman Catholics would reject the idea that associating supernaturalism with their faith is “violent”, not least because the Roman Catholic Catechism itself describes faith as “supernatural” in both Catechisms 92 and 153. It seems that Tim MacGabhann may not have been quite as well informed about “the lived habitus of faith” as he liked to pretend.
Tim MacGabhann gives away the game though, when he makes clear that he has a particular problem with “improving” the beliefs and attitudes of Muslims specifically. For some reason he is especially motivated to shield from all criticism, those Islamic ideas that can cause immense harm to others. While he seems keen to reflect on what is wrong with traditional Irish Roman Catholicism, it is really the criticism of Islamic teachings that he deems to be beyond the pale and “racist”.
This Tim MacGabhann tweet was written when the Charlie Hebdo attack was still fresh in the mind. To give him some credit, at no point did Tim MacGabhann suggest that it is untrue to propose that most Muslims are opposed to religious cartoons. Of course that is demonstrably true. There are mountains of evidence to demonstrate the prevalence of this teaching within Islam, along with the support for this teaching among Muslims internationally. For example, the Pew Research Report titled the Great Divide, was based on extensive research on attitudes across the Muslim world.
Tim MacGabhann never suggested that it is not factually correct to state that most Muslims oppose religious cartoons. He simply appointed himself as the ‘cultural commissar’ who would conduct the ‘struggle session’ for anyone who noticed this inconvenient fact about the chosen sacred class. Neither did Tim MacGabhann feel obligated to address any of the attendant paradoxes or hypocrisies, such as why those who purported to be most concerned about “discursive violence”, might spend so much of their time comparing people they don’t know to “racist neo-Nazis”.
Opposition to religious iconography is not uncommon across many contemporary theologies. Irish Jehovah’s Witnesses knock on my door quite regularly and they are always extremely polite. This Christian denomination also opposes religious iconography and the depiction of religious figures in cartoons. Of course, nobody will be compared to a “violent neo-Nazi racist” by Tim MacGabhann for pointing out that most white evangelical Jehovah’s Witnesses oppose religious cartoons. It is only when embassies are torched across the Middle East in response to some religious cartoons (with at least 200 people killed) that The Great Awokening blames the victims for noticing the Islamic motivations for the violence. However he might view those who have sought to ‘improve’ Roman Catholic and other schools that allowed for a rap on the knuckles, those who would ‘improve’ the Islamic ideas that allow for the murder of cartoonists are denounced as being akin to “racist neo-Nazis” by Tim MacGabhann.
Kathleen Stock is a philosopher who was one of the victims of The Great Awokening. Dr Stock was a professor at the University of Sussex before she was cancelled for transgressing woke shibboleths about men transitioning into women. When reflecting on her antagonists, she recommended that if we ignore the “serious reputations, the swagger, and the rave book reviews”, we can judge clearly from the ideas they promote that some people are “really quite stupid”. Stock’s Law would have been an informative aphorism to have in mind when people like Tim MacGabhann chastised us that sensus fidei is violent; that atheism is as inherently racist as Hawaiian pizza; that men can turn into women; and that anyone who notices the problems caused by Islamic teachings can be compared to a neo-Nazi. Notwithstanding his reputation, his swagger, and his rave book reviews, many of Tim MacGabhann’s ideas are just incredibly stupid.
After bringing his wisdom to Twitter, Tim MacGabhann has since brought his very impressive moustache to Serbia, where he was recently appointed the Irish Writer in Residence in Belgrade for a time.
I view this as a very positive development. As a non-profit that receives substantial public funding, Literature Ireland is doing the Irish State a service by finding remote positions where our most tiresome woke ideas can be inflicted on someone else instead.
On this tenth anniversary of the tweets illustrated above though, it is encouraging that much of the country now seems to be losing its patience with this kind of pseudo-profundity. I can clearly recall that ten years ago there was a substantial constituency who read the tweets above and concluded that they were engaging with a deep and erudite thinker, who was identifying bigotries that others were too shallow to appreciate. Now, I think that a great majority of Irish people can already apply Stock’s Law for themselves and immediately realise how deeply stupid these woke ideas really are. Roll on The Great Dewokening.