WLP90: Thoughts on Discrimination

This week we honor William Luther Pierce, the founder of Cosmotheism, of the National Alliance, and of National Vanguard on the 90th anniversary of his birth by presenting classic articles of his, nearly all of which haven’t appeared on this site since their original publication more than two decades ago.

by Dr. William L. Pierce

A LOT OF CRAZY THINGS are going on these days, some of which strike us as more obviously crazy than others. One of the more obviously crazy things which has come to my attention recently is a fight between two associations of high school wrestling coaches and referees in Texas on the one hand and feminist groups on the other hand. The feminists are insisting that high school girls be permitted to wrestle high school boys. The Texas Wrestling Officials Association and the Texas Interscholastic Wrestling Association are saying, “No way.” So the parents of a couple of high school girls in Texas, backed by the feminist groups, have sued the wrestling officials, charging them with bigotry, sexism, and all the usual things. The wrestling officials say that they are willing to sponsor separate wrestling matches for girl wrestlers, but no girl-vs.-boy matches. The feminists claim to be insulted by this offer. They are demanding sexually integrated wrestling. The American Civil Liberties Union, among the groups backing the feminists, has announced that the wrestling officials clearly are guilty of “discrimination.”

You know, it used to be that discrimination was considered an essential faculty of every adult person. An undiscriminating person is a person without taste or judgment, a person who does not distinguish between the good and the bad, between low quality and high quality, between what is acceptable and what is not. But nowadays, in this Alice in Wonderland world we’re living in, “discrimination” has become the ultimate sin, and every Politically Correct person must declare himself free not only of any actual practice of discrimination but also of any tendency or desire to discriminate.

Actually, it’s not quite that simple. Politically Correct people do not discriminate between Black and White, between male and female, between homosexual and heterosexual, between crippled and healthy, and a number of other things: The list of categories which are not subject to discrimination seems to grow a bit every year. But Politically Correct people are permitted to be discriminating about some things. They discriminate between “good” people and “bad” people, for example. “Good” people are Politically Correct people. “Bad” people are people who are still discriminating about things which it is no longer Politically Correct to be discriminating about. Actually, the situation eventually will become much simpler, if the trend of the last 20 years or so continues for a few more years. Eventually everyone will be Politically Correct, and no form of discrimination at all will be tolerated. Already we can see broad, new categories developing which will not be subject to discrimination a few years from now. Consider, for example, the difference between bright people and not-so-bright people, or between capable people and not-so-capable people, or between industrious people and lazy people. For years the forces of Political Correctness have been waging a campaign in our schools and universities to eliminate such discrimination. They have been arguing that intelligence cannot really be measured and that IQ tests and other tests of intelligence or aptitude should be done away with.

Now, part of the reason they don’t want anyone to discriminate on the basis of intelligence is tied to their objections to discriminating between Blacks and Whites. But it goes further than that. They really are opposed to making any sort of distinctions between people based on ability: either natural ability or acquired ability. They want to do away with grades in school courses and with examinations. Giving grades makes those who don’t get “A”s feel bad, they complain. And, really, they say, all such distinctions are meaningless, because everyone is born with the same abilities, and if some of us don’t do as well in our school work as others, it’s only because we didn’t get the right kind of potty training or something of the sort. Right? You know, if I’d talked like this ten years ago about discrimination based on intelligence, you would have thought I was going overboard. You would have thought I was being unfair to accuse people who were against discrimination on the basis of race also of being against discrimination on the basis of ability. You would have thought that being against racial discrimination is one thing, but being against discrimination based on ability is something quite different. If we couldn’t discriminate on the basis of ability, our country couldn’t survive; we’d sink back into savagery, you would have thought. And you would have been right about that last part.

And actually, the reason we are sinking back into savagery, the reason our country already has been half destroyed, is largely because we stopped discriminating on the basis of race and sex and sexual orientation and a number of other things some time ago. And now the campaign to stop discrimination on the basis of ability has gained enough ground that you realize I’m not exaggerating when I talk about it. If you examine your own feelings, I’ll bet that you’ll find that the media brainwashing campaign against ability discrimination already has had an effect on you. I’ll bet that if you are a teacher you will feel a little squeamish about opposing those who want to do away with grading. You’ll flinch at the thought of the torrent of hatred and abuse you know the anti-discrimination types will pour on you. I’ll bet that if you are the personnel director for a company, you’ll be hesitant to initiate a program of intelligence testing for new job applicants. I mean, after all, doesn’t it seem somehow . . . not quite “democratic” . . . to make distinctions based on ability or intelligence? Isn’t that a little like racism?

You wouldn’t have believed me if I’d told you ten years ago that the people opposed to the concept of racial discrimination also would oppose the concept of physical beauty. You’d have thought me crazy if I’d told you that the racial equality people eventually would be arguing that it’s not fair to judge people on the basis of physical appearance or to deem some people as better-looking than others. You would have thought me completely out of touch with reality if I’d told you that beauty contests soon would become Politically Incorrect.

And when the feminists really began to get noisy with their demands for “equality” 20 or 30 years ago, I’ll bet you didn’t believe that the government and the media ever would go so far as to force military academies to accept women as cadets and integrate women into our armed forces right alongside the men, subjecting them to rape by Black drill instructors. And I’ll bet some of you slow learners out there still don’t believe that the government will be sending women into combat within the next three or four years.

One can see the same sort of progression in the matter of discrimination between homosexuals and heterosexuals. Ten years ago the anti-discrimination people offered a carefully limited view of what they wanted to achieve in ending discrimination involving homosexuals. They just wanted to get rid of the laws making homosexual activity illegal, they said. They just wanted homosexuals to be able to have their gay bars and their gay bath houses and to be able to kiss and fondle each other in public without being harassed by the police. Then, after that, they wanted laws making it illegal to refuse to hire a homosexual or to refuse to rent an apartment to a homosexual couple. A little later they wanted the armed forces to scrap their rule against homosexuals in military service. And now they are demanding a total lack of discrimination between homosexuals and heterosexuals — and also an end to discrimination between homosexuality and heterosexuality as paradigms, as models for life. Now the Politically Correct position is that homosexuality is just as natural and acceptable an orientation and lifestyle as heterosexuality, and that we should not distinguish in any way between the two.

And it wasn’t too long ago that the anti-discrimination people began pushing their program for equalizing women and men in sports and athletic activity. At first the demands were only for giving women whatever men had: If a school had a men’s football team, then it had to have a women’s football team also, with all of the same facilities; just having a women’s volleyball team wasn’t good enough. Then women journalists had to have access to the locker rooms of male athletes, just the way male journalists did. And now, in Texas, we’re seeing the next phase of the program, with the demand that we pretend that there’s no difference at all between men and women, and so we must sexually integrate wrestling matches: We must let the girls wrestle the boys.

Now, there are several lessons for us in all of this craziness. First, it’s easy to see that this compulsion to be undiscriminating is a progressive disease: It doesn’t stop at any point; it just gets worse and worse. It starts off as a mildly wacky denial of reality and progresses to total insanity.

Second, it is a disease to which most normal, otherwise sane people are susceptible. They don’t ordinarily develop the disease by themselves, but it can be induced in them by a sufficiently skillful and prolonged brainwashing campaign. What I’m saying is that ordinary, reasonable people can be made to believe the most extraordinary and unreasonable things, if they are subjected to prolonged brainwashing. Of course, it must be done in stages. If you want to convince a group of people that all-male wrestling matches ought to be made illegal, because they discriminate between men and women, you don’t start out with that proposition. If you do, you’ll be laughed out of town — or better yet, ridden out of town on a rail after being tarred and feathered. You start by persuading the people that it’s not fair for schools to spend more money on athletic programs for boys than on athletic programs for girls. After you’ve done that, you persuade them that equally funded but separate athletic programs for boys and girls are inherently unfair to girls, that the programs ought to be integrated. And so on. You get the picture.

And if you want to persuade a whole race that it is unfair and unreasonable for it to use its schools and its universities to pass on its traditions and its history and its myths to the next generation of the race — if you want to persuade them that it would be wrong to teach young people that their history is more important or relevant than the history of the Tutsis or the Zulus or the Hottentots, and so the schools either should teach no history or they should devote equal time and emphasis to the traditions, history, and myths of every race — you don’t start out with that proposition. You gradually work up to that over a period of 20 years or so, taking the people one step at a time.

And, of course, if you want to persuade a nation’s people of something that really goes against their grain, something that is completely at odds with reality and contrary to common sense — for example, that there’s no difference between Blacks and Whites except skin color — you really need to have a powerful brainwashing tool at your disposal: something like television, say. But if you and your fellow brainwashers own Hollywood and constitute the most powerful single group in the radio and television business and besides that own the three or four biggest and most influential newspapers in the country, and if you are willing to spend 20 or 30 years at it, you can convince people of just about anything, no matter how absurd or outrageous. You can even convince them that discrimination, instead of being a faculty necessary for human survival and progress and the maintenance of a civilization, is an “evil thing” and ought not to be used at all. It’s possible to do this, because most people desperately want to be like other people. They want other people to think well of them, to approve of them. They want to behave in a way they believe is expected of them. This need to conform is so strong in most people that it can override reason. It is a much older and more primitive, more deeply rooted faculty than reason. This need to conform, this need to believe whatever you think other people believe, is what lies behind the social phenomenon known as “fashion.” It is what causes everybody to hum the same popular ditty at the same time, and then to forget it at the same time. It is what makes so many children want exactly the same type of toy, a Tickle Me Elmo or whatever, at the same time. It is what made people cheer the burning of witches 300 years ago. It is what makes people today parrot the idiotic notion that more racial and cultural diversity in a community leads to greater strength.

Now, this need to conform that most people have is not a bad thing in itself. In fact, it is a necessary social trait. Just as the ability to discriminate leads to progress, the need to conform leads to social cohesion and stability. It poses a great danger to us now, however, because the development of the mass media during this century and the concentration of the control of the mass media in the hands of a small, tightly cohesive, alien group makes it possible for this alien minority to manipulate people, to manipulate their beliefs, in destructive ways.

The Jews who dominate the mass media understand the dynamics of manipulating public opinion. The brainwashers understand that they don’t have to convince people that something is right or good; in fact, they don’t even try. They just convince people that other people believe it is right or good. They convince people that a new idea is becoming fashionable, and that in itself is enough to make the new idea actually become fashionable, if the campaign is kept up. Thus, for example, if the aim is to persuade White Americans that the government should not try to halt illegal immigration — that it would be bad to do anything really effective to halt illegal immigration, such as telling our Border Patrol to shoot anyone seen trying to cross our border illegally — the brainwashers don’t actually argue the pros and cons of illegal immigration. Instead they’ll insinuate the idea into people’s minds that other people don’t approve of using strong measures against illegal immigrants. For instance, they’ll focus news coverage on a case where the police chase and catch a truck full of illegal immigrants and are a little rough in arresting them. And then they’ll have some politician say that the police were too rough. And then they’ll report that the police have been reprimanded by their superiors. And thus the idea will be formed in the public mind that the behavior of the police is disapproved by many people. And then they’ll use another incident in a similar way. And then another and another and another. And gradually they will build up the idea in the public mind that most people disapprove of getting tough with illegal immigrants. And so, in order to conform to this artificially manufactured perception, they themselves will disapprove of getting tough with illegal immigrants.

So if you’re a person who still has a little contact with reality and you believe that it’s crazy to force high school wrestling teams to be sexually integrated, you can understand now that the right thing for you to do is not waste your time arguing that it’s not good for boys and girls to fight against each other on the wrestling mat. The right thing to do is help me to continue building alternative media for reaching the public. We cannot win the struggle to save our civilization and our people from the craziness that is overtaking us until we regain control of our mass media. We must take them out of the hands of the Jews and return them to our own people. And a step on the way to doing that is to support this program, to tell your friends about it, to send donations, and to do everything else you can to help us reach more people.

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Source: National Alliance