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To PSN & WSN:
Apologies to those who are getting this twice.
I'm also among those thousands, or tens of thousands? who received a free
copy of the book by J. Philippe Rushton. Rushton is an especially crude,
gutter racist, who writes in a popular style and uses his academic credentials
to promote the most simple-minded, pro-Nazi "Master Race" propaganda about black
people supposedly being a "lower form of animal" than whites. (If my
language seems extreme to you, it is only because you either haven't seen
Rushton's work or you don't grasp the "extreme" murderous consequences of this
ideology.) I won't go into the specifics of all his theory, but
apparently, thousands, if not tens of thousands of copies of his book were sent
out across North America to professors.
As a propaganda blitzkrieg effort it is very clever. It will likely
result in some people, not trained in the social sciences, becoming
advocates for that book because it appeals to their superficial knowledge
and deeply rooted racism. It's a way for Rushton to become "the talk
of the campuses" and try to gain academic legitimacy, talk show invitations,
etc.
One strategy might be to ignore it, but I think that would be a big
mistake. The cat is out of the bag. Here's another suggestion, off the top
of my head.
Every single person on these lists, and anyone else we know who receives a
copy of this book should write a very sharp, sarcastic review for their
school newspaper, condemning the book as a piece of racist mythology worthy of
Hitler's propaganda machine and pointing out how massive funding from
racist foundations can get even the worst trash published in "professional
looking" books. But the book should not only be slammed. It should be
done in a way that gives it the disrespect and contempt that we would have
if a Ku Klux Klan newspaper were published in the form of an
academic-looking booklet.
If 300 or 600 school newspapers have articles like that, it could very
quickly discredit this pro-Nazi trash that pretends to be social science and
make it a laughing stock and an outcast. Don't be afraid that such a
strategy might bring out his supporters. Let them come! Don't be afraid to take
them on politically -- better to get them out into the light and expose them.
(However, I wouldn't DEBATE the specifics of Rushton's book in a regular debate
format because that would give too much respectability to his racist myths by
putting them on the same plane as genuine social science.)
There is an old Chinese saying about how to kill a dangerous snake:
First, chop off its head. Then cut it into pieces. Then crush the pieces
with stones. Then take the remains and burn them. Put the ashes in a sack, fill
the sack with stones, and throw it deep into the ocean.
My point is to do this thing right. Let's find out who is funding this
book. Let's create a big stir around it. Let's make Rushton and his supporters
the outcasts that they deserve to be by taking his blitzkreig and turning
it back on him with the force of hundreds of sociologists, who can use this even
to broaden, deepen and sharpen the critical thinking skills and the
anti-racist understanding of hundreds of thousands of students.
Those are some ideas off the top of my head. I am interested in other
ideas.
Alan Spector
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