Of Third Rails And Disagreeable Men

Taking Down Woke

'Controversial' is one of those words, regularly deployed in the service of an agenda. Perhaps at some point in the dim and distant it may have been used responsibly in a way that most people could get behind. When the context was a debate as to whether a certain proposition was, in fact, true, the word would only have been justified if there was actually a legitimate reason to question said proposition. However, if it was manifestly true, asserting such could not be considered 'controversial'. Those days, if they ever existed, are long gone.

Now the blatantly obvious, the exhaustively documented can be labelled 'controversial' if a precious narrative is threatened, thus indirectly illustrating just how unmoored we are from reality. In a normal world, facts are not controversial. They are what they are and are treated as such. They don't rub up against preconceived ideologies which do not comport with reality. They are not prejudged. Conclusions flow from them, or are modified by them if they update an existing area of knowledge. But, for those of us obliged to navigate the current Great Pretending, an immense reservoir of facts are held to be 'controversial' by establishment thinkers from all points on the political compass.

It's always been a word that is prone to abuse as it's an ersatz pejorative and a temptation that is not easily resisted by those who seek to impose their views on others. By subtly undermining a contention they pave the way for a more thorough refutation in due course. There's no need to provide evidence to justify the use of a relatively harmless word, which really only signifies that there are at least two sides to a story – even though, on the facts, there can only ever be one. It's a word that can slip by unchallenged but, in truth, it is one of the very first hacks at the underpinnings of objective reality and its use should always be disputed if it is unwarranted.

So, in the modern era, it is tossed around with such abandon that it has lost whatever currency it may once have had. Nowadays it forms part of that tiresome lexicon, uttered reflexively as if by rote. Words and phrases like 'debunked', 'baseless', 'misinformation', 'far right', 'fascist', 'systemic racism', 'reproductive rights', 'toxic masculinity', 'the patriarchy', 'safe and effective', 'most secure election ever' – you get the drift. Whenever I find myself in the vicinity of one of those (or many others), I know with absolute certainty that I am about to be showered with rhetorical excrement. And so, as a general rule of thumb, if some mainstream drone intones the word 'controversial', whatever it is that is being besmirched is almost certainly true.

The misuse and overuse of the word is not just a recent phenomenon, but its use is largely confined to the Establishment which, in the here and now, means the progressive Left. To be completely fair – a compulsion that can frequently do more harm than good – a decent segment of what is purportedly the conservative media is also content to throw shade in this fashion. I never use the word; I think it's a soy boy cop-out of negligible utility, a sneaky device that judges whilst pretending not to.

However, the Right – a designation that I will use (cautiously) to describe those who are at least capable of critical thinking who, I submit, cannot be found on what is currently the Left due to the crippling burden of ideology, but who may be found on the Right – suffers from a mismatch between individuals and backbones; there aren't enough spines to go around. Hence, the unforgivable failure to stand up for self-evident truths that have been banished from mainstream discourse, which circumstance renders the rest of this offering 'controversial'.

The Right has allowed itself to be sucked into multiple pretences because it lacks the courage to tell the truth. Many of us know that a parallel universe could exist, one in which reality is acknowledged and we feel that the odds of leaving this one behind are, at present, somewhat improved, even if we can't quite bring ourselves to believe that it will definitely happen, that we might escape the numbing psychological burden of being awake while most others slumber. We yearn to live in a world where brazen lies and distortions do not comprise the entire narrative of who we are and what value we possess but, if we want to get there, we are going to have to gird our loins and confront some uncomfortable realities, realities that are taboos, instead.

I suspect that some readers may find this fare a little rich for their palates, but I address the 'controversies' for a reason, not because I take pleasure in roiling the waters or causing offence. It is apparent, as is the way with all attempts at problem-solving, that the problem itself needs to be properly understood. Proposed solutions that don't address the underlying problem adequately are doomed to fail yet, in the modern cultures wars – by way of example - the problem of the most poisonous fruit of 'woke' is never properly defined. In addition, the ideology that provides the intellectual heft, whilst attacked, is never dealt the death blow that it so richly deserves.

That's because it's off limits. Anybody critiquing wokism does so with an arm tied behind their back because, without an honest reckoning of its tenets, there is no coherent argument against it. Simply put, if one accepts that “all human populations have literally the same distribution of innate ability, it follows that all group differences in outcome must be the result of environmental factors.”(1) That's the alpha and the omega, right there. That's the equality theory. A belief that, given the same opportunities, all humans have the same potential in whatever field you care to mention. Thus, any disparities that exist do so because of inequality. The nature/nurture debate is done and dusted and nurture has won hands down, because we'll all the same – it's just the degree of nurture that differs.

Both the Left and the mainstream Right accept this empirical premise. On the Left, once this position is adopted, all that flows from it is natural and logical, while the Right wallows in incoherence. For example, conservatives rail against affirmative action, immigration and micro-aggressions based on identity, but their opposition is undermined by their cowardice:

“These views are very difficult to defend if all populations are identical. If blacks, whites, and Asians have the same potential, then a black person with a 1,200 SAT score can be the intellectual equal of an Asian who scores 1,500 if only we put him in the right environment. Why would you be against giving black people opportunities to achieve what they are capable of? If lower black performance is the result of injustices of the past, why would you not feel a moral obligation to take measures to correct this? In regard to immigration, if all groups are the same, they are equally capable of becoming “American” (whatever that involves). If we open the border to Mexico and Haiti, immigrants from these places can be taught in one generation to be just as high performing as Jews, Chinese, or Brahmins. If microaggressions don’t cause tremendous damage to their victims, what’s your explanation for the persistence of racial disparities?”(2)

Whether conservatives really believe in equality of outcome – rather than equality of opportunity – is a moot point. I suspect that many don't, but they find themselves hoist by their own petard. Without having the stones to 'go there', they are always going to be outgunned. Most do their utmost to avoid even attempting a definition of woke and hope that no-one notices. Any disparities between the sexes or between races go unacknowledged and the framework of wokeness is constructed around us. If all humans have equal potential, it would be wrong to not strive to help them achieve it. Such an ideology permits all flavours of inequality in the name of pursuing equality.

And it's specious on its face – obviously so. Danny DeVito was never going to play professional basketball, after all. Further, how did we get to a place where we hold that our genetic makeup is wholly irrelevant? That nature plays no part whatsoever and that environment is everything? Especially when we are surrounded by evidence that demonstrates otherwise. Notably, there is no desire on the part of the wokesters to delve too deeply into the origins of their belief structure, especially the Holy Grail of racial homogeneity as it pertains to abilities:

“Liberals insist that no racial differences exist. But they do not seem to believe it. If they did, they would favor a massive and careful regime of testing to prove their point. Instead, they strenuously resist investigation Why, other than fear of likely results?”(3)

That seems the most likely explanation, the ramifications of which I'll come on to shortly. But we already know that physical and mental abilities are affected by genetics - if we want to evidence the obvious, we can turn to dog breeders:

“Some facts, unwoke but demonstrable: Both intelligence and behavior are largely determined by genetics. Any dog breeder will tell you that Border Collies are smarter than beagles. They learn faster and learn things of greater complexity. He will further tell you that dogs can be bred for higher intelligence by mating unusually smart dogs with other unusually smart dogs. And he will tell you that traits such as protectiveness and aggressiveness are in the breeds and that these traits can be changed up or down by selective breeding. This mutability appears all through the mammals...”(4)

Given the fact we are also mammals, it would be not be a huge leap of faith if we assumed that the same processes were at work with us. But we don't have to assume that we are born with different skills and abilities and that our potential is, at least partially, defined by our genetic heritage. Darwin taught that natural laws applied to men as they did to animals, that we were the result of millions of years of random evolution. Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) “demonstrated the inevitable link between the biological characteristics of one generation and the next.”(5) Taken in isolation, these concepts are not 'controversial' – however, when they were developed in a particular direction, they did give cause for concern.

The progressives of the late nineteenth century, as restless as their latter-day brethren, embarked on an intellectual journey that led to an embrace of eugenics. Darwin's contention that only the fittest survived and prospered fitted the elite mindset like a glove – the fact that they were superior beings explained why it was that they were rich and powerful. Darwin believed that “evolution not only explained social hierarchy but justified it. It would be folly to try to raise the pauper to the level of the merchant if the pauper did not have the necessary biological endowment.”(6) He certainly didn't believe that races had the same average levels of intelligence or that environment played any real role.

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) took matters a stage further with his development of 'Social Darwinism', which held that government should stay out of the people's struggle for survival – nor should it tax the productive so that the unproductive might be subsidised. He wasn't overly keen on perpetuating a society afflicted by inferior genes, either:

“To aid the bad in multiplying is, in effect, the same as maliciously providing for our descendants a multitude of enemies.”(7)

The eugenics movement was the inevitable apotheosis of such thinking and was enthusiastically embraced by the socialist elite. Eugenics laws were passed in most American states, as well as England, Germany and the Scandinavian nations. It had been proved that “selective breeding had vastly improved the stock of domestic animals; eugenicists believed that people could be likewise improved.”(8) It is just about possible, if you squint really hard, to see that advocates believed that they were benefactors, attempting to improve the lot of the genetically disfavoured and turbo-charge the progress of the human race. Messing with the natural order of things, a terminal condition for Leftists, was thus garnished with a dash of humanity.

Then came Franz Boas (1858-1942) and his disciples, many of whom were Jewish, who argued – without ever providing any evidence to back their claims – that environment was key. The data itself never changed; only the explanation did. The concept was ideological to its core, with advocates teaching that there was a ““desperate need” to counter the fact of race with the doctrine that all behavioral differences were governed by “culture” rather than heredity. “Desperate need” and “the hope of improvement” do not make for scientific detachment.”(9)

It may well be that the Jewish leaders of the movement were motivated by the persecution that Jews had experienced in Europe and “were eager to beat down any idea that might justify treating peoples differently. At the same time, social “scientists” feared that if social problems were thought to be biological, the better off would see little point in trying to lift up the lower orders.”(10) They'd won the argument, somehow, by the beginning of the 1930s. Then came Hitler and that was that. Eugenics, even in theoretical non-applied form, was toast.

Yet the evidence showing the primacy of genetics – and, concomitantly, the paucity of the environmental thesis – lived on, inconvenient, unacknowledged and radioactive, especially as it pertained to race. The Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study is one such tranche, launched by scientists who wished to test their own ideological hypothesis.

It had long been accepted, by both sides of the debate, that there were substantial IQ differences between American blacks and whites. This was first recorded during WWI when military conscripts were given IQ tests and the average difference was 17 points;(10) “this difference had been shown repeatedly in later studies. The difference has never been in dispute. The problem lies in its causes and what part, if any, genetics plays.”(11) The Adoption Study was intended to prove that environment, not hereditarianism, was the deciding factor. The scientists found 29 black babies adopted at an early age by white college graduates. They found another similarly adopted 68 babies with one black parent and one white parent and, as a control sample, they monitored 25 adopted white babies.

While the initial reports were encouraging – for the environmentalists – there was a good deal of statistical sleight-of-hand in evidence. The children were tested again at age 17 and the report, for some reason, went unpublished for six years. When it finally saw the light of day, and a three point adjustment was made for an out-of-date test, the results were very much not what had been hoped for – 89 for the black children, 98 for the interracial children and 106 for the white children. An 18 point difference, closely mirroring the original studies and every study in between. At the time, the average IQ for blacks from the northern states was 91 so, if anything, there had been a reversion to the mean and then some.(12) Whilst even hereditarians had believed that there would be some environmental effect – perhaps a third of the difference – the study's results indicated that environment had no positive effect.

And, while the progressive types obsess solely about the black/white disparity, there are also differences between other races.

Figure 1

Missing from this chart are the Ashkenazi Jews, Jews of European descent, with a mean IQ from 111 to 115.(13) Quite why these discrepancies should exist is, unsurprisingly, a matter of ideological agonising and I lack the expertise to reliably sort the wheat from the chaff and, on a subject as delicate as race, a cavalier approach to conclusions is – obviously - unwise. Head and brain size does correlate with IQ, but the reasons why some races have bigger brains than others are not unimpeachably established. 'Cold winters' theory, which holds that those who migrated north out of Africa had to problem solve on a more advanced level than those who remained behind and gradually acquired the mental ability to do so is problematic, to say the least.

“How does it stand up to examination? Poorly. For example, does cold weather really account for intelligence? Eskimos, with a mean IQ of 90, survive quite well in what may be the harshest cold weather on the planet, categorically contradicting the idea that high intelligence is needed to live in cold climes. This also casts doubt on the idea that cold weather promotes intelligence. It does, except when it doesn’t.”(14)

There must be reasons for different brain sizes and fluctuating IQs, of course, but what they are seems to be anybody's guess. And I'm not sure that it really matters, other than in dry, academic circles. People lived in different parts of the world, in different climes and, whilst largely separate from each other, developed at different rates. Not simply in intelligence, but also in physical characteristics. However, the intellectual successes of the Ashkenazi Jews are startling in number and breadth of endeavour and offer evidence of a powerful cause and effect dynamic which illustrates why focussing on IQ is not simply an arcane enterprise beloved of white supremacists but, instead, an indicator of far more than abstract smarts.

“The most striking finding is the very great similarity of Jewish achievement everywhere. Without exception, Jews outperform their non-Jewish neighbors by very large multiples. Whether in education, in professional and managerial positions, in prestigious awards, in income, and in musical and artistic fields, Jews are on average five times more successful than Gentiles.”(15)

Jewish immigrants into the United States between 1880 and 1924 generally could not speak English. By the end of that period, they compromised 3.5% of the population, but by 1919, 13% of the students at Yale were Jewish, as were 20% at Harvard.(16) It was the same elsewhere – in Vienna, the Jews made up 10% of the population and weren't accorded full civil rights until 1867, yet in the period between 1873 and 1910, they were “40 percent of the graduates of the Gymnasium (elite high schools), 62 percent of the lawyers, 50 percent of the doctors, 57 percent of the journalists, 40 percent of the bank directors, and 70 percent of the members of the Vienna stock exchange.”(17)

There is no doubt that Ashkenazi Jews seriously over-perform in many high status professions – however, they also dominate the film industry and, in the golden era of Tin Pan Alley (1920-1960), about half the leading songwriters were Jewish. Many of the most famous movie stars of the time were also Jews who had changed their names – Douglas Fairbanks, Toby Curtis and Judy Garland to name just three. Their successors – Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman, Barbara Streisand – didn't feel the need for subterfuge.(18) The question, then, is this; is this racial homogeneity specific to Jews? Well, why would it be? And why would it only relate to one specific genetic marker and not others?

The problem comes when ideology is inserted, especially ideologies that are malformed and the fruit of wishful thinking. The equality thesis is one such. As is frequently the case, words are twisted in ways that advance an agenda that is the polar opposite of what it should be. 'Equality' is a case in point; if one uses it injudiciously, it can be pressed into service in two entirely ways:

“Are all men truly created equal? Are all races and ethnic groups equal? Are men and women equal? Are all religions equal? Or do we simply agree to accept that as true — and treat them all equally? All Americans, we agree, have the same God-given rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the same constitutional rights in the Bill of Rights, and the same civil rights, enshrined in federal law. But where is the historic, scientific or empirical proof of the defining dogma of American democracy that “all men are created equal”?”(19)

I'll grant that the original intent of the declaration was almost certainly concerned with rights, rather than human potential, but the question remains; where is there evidence to prove the foundational belief of wokeness? The evidence of our lying eyes would indicate that each of us possesses different skills and abilities that won't simply be ironed out if we are all exposed to the exact same environment. In addition, identical twins, separated at birth and reared apart, can be compared to identical twins who grow up in the same household, a study that sheds light on the role of the environment in influencing any variation in personality traits. As you can probably guess by now, the hereditarian hypothesis is, once again, confirmed:

“One of the genuinely surprising conclusions reached by many twin researchers is that differences in family background may have no effect on how people turn out as adults. The strongest evidence for this is that identical twins reared in the same household are no more like each other than identical twins separated at birth and reared apart.”(20)

But the separated are more similar than fraternal twins raised in the same household. Further evidence of a genetic component to personal attributes has been unearthed in studies that have identified specific patterns of gene distribution which correlate with traits such as inquisitiveness, psychological stability and individualism. These differences are also unevenly distributed according to race (21) and seem to offer at least a partial explanation for why – despite a superior average IQ – Northeast Asians are historically less inventive than Europeans.

So, intelligence and personality – not entirely separate traits, obviously – are largely (if not overwhelmingly) determined by genetics, with any difference thought to be largely attributable to the effects of childhood diseases and traumas, not between-family differences such as social status, income or the quality of education.(22) We also know that the numerous well-meaning uplift programmes do not raise IQ, but instead teach specific skills which would carry over well to tests, without embedding any permanent improvement on school performance or IQ.(23)

And we know that physical gifts are also bestowed unequally, even though we are supposed to not notice. By way of example, a chronicler of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics made some trenchant observations as to the ethnicity of those who excelled at different athletic endeavours. Nearly all were of African descent – in the shorter distances, it was West African and in the longer distances it was East African:

“At the Barcelona Games, blacks of West African descent dominated the shorter distances...In 1988, at Seoul, they won every medal in the men’s 100m, 200m, 400m, 110m hurdles and 400m hurdles, and the gold in the 4 × 100m and 4 × 400m relays. At the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, of the 52 medals won by Americans in track and field, 42 went to blacks — and the events they won were all sprints and jumps....At the 1988 Olympics, East Africans won the gold in the 800m, 1,500m, 3,000m steeplechase, 5,000m, 10,000m and the marathon. In the 1988 World Cross-Country Championships the first 10 finishers were all from Kenya or Ethiopia. Kenyans have won the last seven World Championships. In the 1984 Olympics Kenyans won the 800m, 1,500m, 3,000m steeplechase and the 5,000m... In 1960, the Ethiopian entrant in the marathon, Abebe Bikila, had virtually no training and did not even run in shoes. He won a gold medal and set a world record. Only natural ability can account for success like this.”(24)

At the time, of the 50 fastest men in the 100 metres, 44 were racially West African. In a competition at a Kenyan high school, the Swedish champions at 800-metres and 10,000-metres were beaten by hundreds of 15 to 17 year-olds.(25) Sixty per cent of all NFL players were black, as were 75% of all pro basketball players. These numbers may have changed a little, but not by a huge amount, I would wager. Why are these disparities apparent? Because different races have different physical capabilities and, in sports rewarding explosive power or elite endurance, West and East Africans genes clearly have inherent advantages. There are plenty of other examples I could have used, but they would only have added extra meat to what is obviously a bone. But to acknowledge that there are athletic differences between races would also lead to questions about race and success in other areas and that would never do.

Nonetheless, the effects of our genetic endowment are the primary determinant of our IQ, athletic ability and personality. It would be confounding “if genes did not play a central role in intelligence and if the races, which differ physically in so many ways, did not differ in brain function.”(26) And, as we shall see, IQ is a reliable predictor of more than intelligence alone; it's also shorthand for what are admittedly subjective (but traditional) measures of success (and failure) in life – provided merit, rather than identity, is rewarded.

Individuals with lower IQs are more likely to commit crime, to be unemployed, illegitimate, poor or living on welfare. Not because of environment, although if their parents are also low IQ, one wouldn't expect the environment to be a net positive. Because of genetics. Which is not to say that all low IQ people commit crime and high IQ people don't. And, interestingly, the low IQ explanation for criminal tendencies may help to explain the ongoing epidemic of lawlessness characteristic of the black population of the US:

“...population differences in g [a proxy for baseline IQ] alone explain differences in crime rates... criminals of all races have IQs that are some 10 points below those of their siblings... within the same ranges of IQ, blacks and whites have essentially the same crime rates.”(27)

IQ scores in childhood predict adult socio-economic success better than the class status of the family. Even within the same families, the children with the higher IQs tend to do better and, overall, “smart people tend to make more money, get more education, commit fewer crimes, have fewer illegitimate children, stay healthier, and live longer than dim people.”(28) Not particularly elegantly phrased, perhaps, but the meaning is clear enough.

I fully understand that the reality of hereditarianism is unsettling, mostly because the tsunami of misdirection and outright lies have poisoned the well and have brought us to a place where honest conversations are impossible. The topic is possibly the biggest third rail out there, even though the actual data demonstrating racial disparities is voluminous and compelling and the experts (I appreciate that we must now be on our guard with them, given that many of them have forfeited their integrity) are as one, quibbling only as to degree. There ought to be no shame in acknowledging truths – and, as a white person, I am part of a demographic that is pretty much meh at everything – but that's not how it is.

I have belaboured the point somewhat for three main reasons. Firstly, evidence of racial disparities is rarely the subject of an article and, as a consequence, public awareness of same is scanty - that being the case, assuming much in the way of residual lore is unwise and it's likely that a degree of aversion may have to be overcome. Secondly, so much of the woke canon flows from its practitioners' evidence-free insistence that the oppressor/oppressed dialectic is the fundamental driver of inequality, instead. And, thirdly, those of us who have retained the ability to think clearly often assume that the wokesters motivation is wholly toxic and, whilst I'm not going to claim it isn't, it does have some internal consistency once you've made the initial, ideological leap-of-faith.

We wouldn't have affirmative action and its first cousin DIE were it not for the equality theory. We wouldn't have the concept of 'disparate impact' – the Trojan Horse of Civil Rights Act. Activist judges and administrators (ably assisted by the Supreme Court's decision in Griggs v. Duke Power in 1971) saw any failure by minorities to achieve a standard as prima facie evidence of discrimination - rather than a lack of ability - and used that justification to force quotas onto entities without admitting that they were doing so, thus entirely subverting the intention of the Act. Through that interpretation alone, it makes it de facto illegal not to be woke.

We also wouldn't have been subject to the long-drawn out throttling of Western meritocracies, whereby excellence is displaced by what feels very much like a caste system, with those of a diverse persuasion most favoured. Few examples better illustrate the inversion of traditional, successful measures of merit than the selection practices of American universities, Harvard being symptomatic of the custom:

“...without racial preferences that give Harvard a student body that is 43 percent white, 19 percent Asian, 11 percent black, and 10 percent Hispanic, it would be 43 percent Asian, 38 percent white, 0.7 percent black, and 2.4 percent Hispanic.”(29)

It ought to be apparent to us that nibbling around the edges of woke isn't going to cut it. Conservative media is currently patting itself on the back, as it is wont to do, because various companies are allegedly backing away from DIE and abandoning wokeness, ostensibly due to boycotts and customer pushback. It's almost certainly more likely that they are simply rebranding DIE, instead, because it's not a policy that exists in a vacuum. Neither was it randomly plucked from the ether. All 'diversity' initiatives are the spawn of the theory of equality and, if we want to really get out from under the woke tyranny, we need to use a chainsaw, not a hedge trimmer.

There is, of course, another consequence of failing to acknowledge reality, to which I alluded earlier in this piece. A refusal to challenge the assertion that all people of different races are, effectively, the same if given the same opportunities, leaves us in a spot of intellectual bother when arguing against mass immigration of whatever flavour, whether illegal or otherwise. Complaining about black and brown people from what are said to be war-torn countries allegedly seeking asylum isn't necessarily a good look, even if the vast majority are economic migrants, some (but by no means all) of whom are fleeing the chaos that the West has done so much to stoke – not that the wokerati would ever put themselves within the same zipcode as that assertion.

But, in Europe at least, the migrant stock isn't predominantly from countries which have been the subject of Western military interventions. The three biggest groups are from Algeria, Turkey and Morocco.(30) And, in the US, the world and his wife has rocked up to pour over the southern border – in vast numbers.

Figure 2

I don't propose to provide chapter and verse on the whys and wherefores or to dwell upon the Great Replacement hypothesis, although the fact that the name Mohammed (in its many iterations) is now the most popular name for baby boys in the UK and has cracked the top ten in America would tend to suggest that a such a replacement is well underway.(31)(32) Nor shall I wade into the recent H1-B visa spat between the Tech Bros and those who aren't solely out for themselves (a visa system that permits a kind of inverse colonialism, whereby intellectual talent is plundered from afar), although it is apparent that Musk and Ramaswamy have forgotten that their misrepresentations can be fact-checked in real time – either that or they think the MAGA base really is as stupid as the Democrats say it is. I focus instead on the cultural effects of this strain of wokeness.

Multiculturalism, as a concept, has been given a free pass for a very long time. Why was creating cultural pluralism (or diversity) ever thought to be something that Western societies needed to do? What is the moral argument in favour of importing other cultures and diluting one's own? I don't remember that discussion ever being had; my recollection is that, once again, Leftists (for the most part) simply adopted another mantra – 'diversity is our strength' – on the basis of absolutely no evidence that this was a truism, flying in the face of common sense. Even relatively sensible people reflexively say that “cultural, religious and ethnic heterogeneity or pluralism)...is a very laudable objective to pursue as such diversity creates a richer social tapestry.”(33)

Is it really? Isn't the culture in question at least somewhat important? Is it not possible that, instead of “a richer social tapestry”, one can get the exact opposite, instead? The progressive types think that all change is good – yet another saying that has crept up on us over the past several decades – but this is patently untrue. When an imported culture's values are incompatible with the native culture, the resultant clash is not likely to produce a result that's favourable. And, when too many newcomers arrive within a short time frame, another fissure in multiculturalism's edifice becomes apparent:

“Assimilation tends to occur when people enter a new culture, in small numbers, and experience social pressure to blend into their new communities. Assimilation tends to make it easier to get along in one’s newly adopted homeland because it eliminates barriers to economic success, like being unable to speak the local lingua franca.”(34)

That assumes that any real degree of assimilation was ever the plan, which could only be an aspiration if bathing in the new culture was the purpose of the relocation and, in any event, multiculturalism explicitly does not require it. It is also perfectly apparent that when it comes to some cultures, the objective is to fleece the existing taxpayers whilst retaining an alien culture and then imposing it on others. In this regard I speak of Islam in particular, a whole-of-society religion that seeks to conquer, not coexist. However, because it is sold as a religion alone, criticism is muted, despite the fact that any belief system which permits its adherents to treat women as second-class citizens and throw homosexuals off tall buildings,(35) whose holy book includes 123 verses calling for the slaughter of “anyone who does not agree with the statement “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet””(36) is wholly incompatible with any Western society and, if those positions formed part of a political manifesto, the party responsible would be banned.

Instead, Muslims are coddled and native populations are discriminated against. In Denmark, immigrants or their descendants from MENA countries (Middle East and North Africa) are convicted of violent crimes at a rate up to six times higher than native-born Danes.(37) In the UK, one particular subset – men of Pakistani origin – have, over a period of at least 25 years, been grooming and raping young white girls with impunity and still are. The numbers are astronomic – in all probability, well in excess of 250,000 victims, possibly as many as a million.(38)(39) This is, perhaps, not entirely unexpected, given that imams at British madrasas are known to encourage Muslim boys to assault white girls “because they want it. That's why they come out looking like they do”.(40) That attitude ensures that their communities won't turn them in and the police and social services have shown themselves to be as much use as a chocolate fireguard. The following graphic highlights some of these gangs, but by no means all.

Figure 3

When called to a house containing seven naked Pakistani men and two naked and drunk 13 year-old girls, the police arrested the girls for drunkenness.(41) A father attempting to rescue his daughter was also arrested. When questioning a victim who had been abused since she was five, police asked if she had 'consented' to sex at any stage. No less an eminence than Jordan Peterson has had thoughts on this epidemic:

“… there are certainly doctrines in Islam that are very, very difficult to square with free liberal Western Christian democracies...” [talking about the rapes by the Pakistani Muslim community] “It was like one in seven of the men in some of these communities was directly involved. And that meant everyone knew about it. Absolutely everyone on the Pakistani Muslim side. And the moderates were certainly silent and complicit.”(42)

When a self-made journalist (Tommy Robinson) reported on the rape cases – against the wishes of the judiciary - he was arrested and has now been jailed.(43) In Birmingham, Brits are a minority and Pakistanis comprise 20% of the population.(44) In Luton, Robinson's home town and a hotspot for the grooming gangs, white British make up only 32% of the demographic, while Pakistanis tally 18%.(45)

I appreciate that, beyond the woke justifications, other explanations for mass migration are also offered up, not the least of which is the perceived need to address labour shortages due to demographic changes in Western societies. On the one hand, there is no doubt that birth rates across the West have been in free-fall for some considerable time, largely due to circumstances that have been engineered by the same ruling class that is responsible for mass migration (see the Surplus To Requirements series) – there isn't a single country across Europe and the Anglosphere achieving the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman.(46) So, the argument is that we need to bring people in to work, there being insufficient number among indigent populations.

Except for the fact we are continually being told that AI is going to replace workers by the millions and that, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, by 2030 “at least 14% of employees globally could need to change their careers due to digitalization, robotics and AI advancements”.(47)(48) And we know that, across the EU alone, there are around 13 million unemployed and that the actual reason for importing low-skilled workers from the Third World is to depress wages and increase corporate profitability.(49) In addition, despite the propaganda, MENA men (in particular) aren't predisposed to making a legitimate living and are a net drain on public finances. Many countries fudge the data, but Denmark – to its credit – isn't one of them.

Figure 4

There, on 2018 numbers, “immigrants from non-Western countries and their descendants drained from public finances a net 31bn krona ($4.9bn). Immigrants from Western countries, by contrast, contributed a net 7bn krona”.(50) In the US, the tens of millions of illegal immigrants cost $150 billion in government services per annum (officially which, given the chronic manipulation of data the Biden administration has engaged in, is very likely to be a huge underestimation) whilst contributing a mere $25 billion in taxes. About 47% of them didn't complete high school – as against 8% of native-born Americans -(51) and, of the 2022-2024 arrivals, 54% do not have jobs.(52) In the UK, 1.7 million migrants are on the dole.(53) In Germany, 47% of the recipients of government largesse are illegal aliens.(54)

That same benighted country has a serious problem with gang rapes of German women, with at least 50% being committed by foreigners, despite their share of the population being 'only' 14%. Syrians and Afghanis are to the fore.(55) Denmark, once more, has comprehensive data on serious crime and their data gives the lie to any myths relating to integration, not that it should be necessary given the fact that cultural enrichers from foreign parts were actually supposed to provide 'diversity' rather than assimilate:

“...for murder, non-European first-generation migrants are 279 percent more likely to commit murder, 464 percent more likely to commit rape, 220 percent more likely to commit assault, and 53 percent more likely to commit drug trafficking. However, Denmark goes even further and analyzes second-generation non-European migrants as well, and that is where even more troubling statistics are revealed. While the assumption is that these children of migrants would be better integrated than their parents, the opposite is found. For murder, this group is 850 percent overrepresented, with astounding figures also for assault (443 percent) and drug trafficking (304 percent). The only category where this group is lower is in regards to rape (158 percent).”(56)

Sweden's problems in this regard are well-documented, although publishing evidence of same will lead to prosecution.(57) Swedish police ceded stewardship of numerous no-go zones to Muslim gangs as long ago as 2015 and they weren't the only ones – there are similar zones in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Italy and elsewhere. Naturally, authorities are unwilling to acknowledge that they have lost control of Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods which are a law unto themselves – sharia law, that is – but it's the inevitable consequence of decades of 'multiculturalism'.(58)

Islamic religiosity, when combined with the low IQs that are endemic across the Muslim world – by my calculation, the MENA countries together with Pakistan and Afghanistan have an average of 73.5, not helped by widespread consanguinity –(59) and policies that have encouraged the creation of parallel Muslim societies result in culture wars that should never have been allowed to come about. And the actual practice of multiculturalism is wholly at odds with the wokesters foundational myth as to equality – there is, in reality, no attempt to provide the opportunities that (they claim) would result in equal outcomes.

Illegal immigrants from Muslim countries are the most obvious mismatches with Western cultures, but they aren't the only ones. There are other societies that are also wildly incompatible, yet their citizens are the recipients of vast numbers of visas and may migrate legally. This, from an Indian CEO, was an eye-opener:

“There is some degree of pleasure that Indians take in the pain suffered by others....Doing your job may be seen as effeminate by those above you. If you can shirk your responsibilities, you’re considered macho...Fairness, justice, trust, empathy, and impartiality are alien to many Indians. They have a hard time telling the difference between right and wrong. They are indifferent even when no cost is associated with being fair...You are either higher or lower — therefore, you are either abuser or abused. Equality is impossible. A visitor learns very quickly that saying “please” and “thank you” is seen as a sign of weakness and is reserved for those who wish to demean themselves... When someone in a society without trust is cheated, he rarely seeks justice against the cheater. Instead, he cheats others. Men abuse women, women abuse children, and children abuse animals. Animals attack whatever they can...It is a perpetual cycle of mistrust and arbitrariness...Every transaction is a zero-sum game — or perhaps a negative-sum game, for sadism may be a part of the equation.”(60)

There is much more in a similar vein. I had no real idea, but the article was written by a man who grew up there and who struggled – for decades – to realign his personal values when he came to the West. I assume that he knows whereof he speaks and, that being the case, why would the West be so enamoured of Indian migration? The same author speaks of most Indian immigrants (he was referring to the UK) having “a compulsive need to recreate India in the ghettos they moved into. They sought the familiar smells, noise, and constant hustle and bustle. They recreated never-ending emotionalism, fruitless conflicts, chaos, and intellectual inbreeding.”(61) And our ruling class thinks that this is a good thing?

No politician is courageous enough to strip issues back to the bare essentials and then ask the questions that should have been asked at the outset. Instead, assumptions are glibly offered and accepted; 'diversity' is blindly labelled a boon in any and all circumstances, cultural admixing is mandated, dissent is 'racism' or Islamophobia. Even Farage, for all his bullishness on immigration, cannot resist throwing Robinson under the bus on the grounds that he's been arrested (and imprisoned) on numerous occasions, a cop-out inasmuch as that line of reasoning doesn't seem to preclude him being buddies with Orange Man Bad, who is also a 'convicted felon' who's been subjected to lashings of lawfare.

And life wouldn't be complete without constant carping about 'sportswashing' whenever the Saudis splash the cash, buying football clubs and hosting boxing events, or talk of boycotting cricket matches with Afghanistan due to the Taliban's 'crackdown' on women's rights (which is exactly what they did last time they held power) –(62) carping from the same people who assure us that we must be respectful of all other religions that we import. The reason the Saudis have a less-than-stellar reputation for human rights (especially those of guest workers) is because Islam is their motivating force. The same goes for the Taliban, but none of our esteemed leaders have the cojones that would be required if that observation was to be even murmured. The hypocrisy of the chattering classes is of epic proportions.

But there is a second unmoored article of faith for the wokesters – it's not just that all races have equal potential given the same opportunities. There's also the assertion that differences between men and women are either minimal or non-existent -with all that this entails in both the working and personal parts of life - and the not insubstantial attack on the female of the species by the trans abomination, an attack that feminist luminaries are facilitating. Not forgetting toxic masculinity and the patriarchy, of course.

I don't intend to give an exhaustive breakdown of the rival contentions, on the basis that if you've found your way here you are, in all likelihood, a well-informed critical thinker. Instead, I'll mostly focus on a few lesser-known nuggets which get the point across without inducing tedium – hopefully – and the first observation to be made is that we have been down this road before as a species; many times in many different eras in many different parts of the world.

We simply have no cultural remembrance of the fruits of previous manifestations of feminism, probably because the gatekeepers of today would rather we didn't know. As I set it out, it may very well be that some of you really don't want to know. It makes for uncomfortable reading. In fact, most of the truths about the undeniable, well-evidenced differences between men and women are also now third rail topics, which says more about the culture we are suffering through than it does about the truths themselves. You are, as ever, at liberty to shoot the messenger.

That there was a patriarchy – for centuries, off and on – cannot be denied. That it was necessarily a bad thing is up for debate, as it depends upon the criteria adopted. The earliest hunter-gatherer tribes, of ten to fifty strong, may well have been egalitarian and non-monogamous, but as mankind fanned out across the planet, change was inevitable:

“In more dangerous environments with scarce resources, men’s strength and size would become disproportionately valuable and societies would become more patriarchal, granting more polygamous rights to men but not to women. In safer environments with abundant resources, men’s comparable size and strength would become less economical and these societies would become more egalitarian and sexually promiscuous.”(63)

The onset of agricultural life wrought more revisions, as the more adept farmers gained an advantage and class systems began to take hold. Women were gradually marginalised due to the physical nature of the work and they become more subservient as a result. As men struggled to accumulate wealth, they become more concerned with guaranteeing the paternity of their inheritors; female chastity was valued highly, as was fertility. Women were traded on the open market, as marriages were arranged solely as a means of social advancement. Divorces and remarriages were the order of the day. Women had very little in the way of rights.

It wasn't until the advent of Christianity that the concept of a lifelong marriage took hold. With the collapse of the Roman Empire in 476AD, the Catholic Church became the leading political entity and new, strict rules were enforced upon Charlemagne's accession to Holy Roman Emperor in 800AD - “no polygamy, no divorce, no remarrying, no marrying members of one’s own family, and illegitimate children cannot inherit.”(64) In Medieval times, women's status was somewhat improved as life was harsh and female toil was needed within the home. Promiscuity was still out, chastity was very much in.

The next notable step-change was prompted by the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth century, which enabled many men to make enough income to support the whole family. Women were, once again, of less utility, but as they were no longer necessary for purely economic reasons, “for the first time in world history they are pursued for emotional purposes.”(65) However, it wasn't until the late 1920s that human courtship occurred without the woman's family's involvement. Recent history is, of course, more familiar, and the creation of the birth-control pill, in 1960, meant that – for the first time ever – women were able to have purely recreational sex.(66)

I suspect it would be difficult to find anyone who decries the general direction of travel, even if they may quibble with some of the waypoints. Feminism, in its purist form, must surely be a good thing, mustn't it? How can the emancipation of women be anything other than a moral imperative, not discounting the modern feminists' insistence that the patriarchy is still very much alive and kicking? Well, it turns out that when we've been here before there are unintended (or, in some quarters, intended) consequences.

It transpires that 'enforced monogamy' is correlated with civilisations at their zenith. These are societies in which “the wife is taught to submit to her husband in all things ; it is her duty to serve him and to obey him.”(67) In virtually every case, these societies practised Kaufehe (purchase marriage) and, for the man, the purchase price “secured for him the exclusive possession not only of her sexual qualities but also of the products of her labour. The result was that a wife's goods, and even her life, were at her husband's disposal.”(68)

And these weren't marginal civilisations; as well as eighty tribes, Rome, Babylon, Athens, the Anglo-Saxons, the British Empire and the Sumerians all followed the same pattern. The rise of feminism, “of female sexual selection resulted in the collapse of fertility and population.”(69) Every time. Which is very inconvenient, especially as it pertains to our current circumstances:

“200 years ago, in our own civilization, marriages were certainly more arranged...Women could not vote, and they could not own property except in specific circumstances. Slowly, divorce laws have widened, marriages have shifted toward the “consent” end of the spectrum; the rights of women are indistinguishable or greater than those of men, and as in tandem, fertility is down and the West is falling.”(70)

The demographic disaster that is slowly overtaking the West is not solely the fault of this phenomenon. There are many environmental factors that are also hastening the decline in fertility – of both males and females – but it does seem that repeatedly doing the same things over again over thousands of years and expecting different results is, indeed, madness. It may simply be the way we are wired and the ebb and flow of human civilisation must follow these patterns. Although we may consider that an unwelcome outcome, our ruling elites do not; in the words of noted anthropologist Cameron Diaz, “we don't need any more kids. We have plenty of people on this planet.”(71)

That looks to be the macro picture; the micro, the remainder of the baggage from this modern strain of feminism, is much more malleable if we have the will to improve our lot in the short term. There is much that can be called out without being black-balled for some antediluvian theories of civilisation that are easy to dismiss in these end days, when evidence has been abandoned in favour of invective, although there will still be much wailing and gnashing of teeth by progressive types. Their world view consists of a constellation of dots that exist in isolation and woe betide anyone who wants to connect them as they should obviously be connected.

So, they can wax lyrical about the alleged link between testosterone and male violence and criminality – the link is, instead, between excess oestrogen and aggression (which also lowers cognitive ability and impulse control) -(72) but they aren't prepared to acknowledge that the different levels of the male hormone present in males and females might have any other effects. The fact that, on average, men have fifteen times the amount of circulating testosterone at any age is not held to be of any significance.(73)

This is just more of the habitual ideological drivel that infests all woke ideology. We are all familiar with the dramatic transformation wrought by puberty – after which males testes produce 30 times more testosterone than previously -(74) but the fact that testosterone levels are as high or higher than this when the unborn child is in utero is less well publicised.(75) As is the mini puberty in the first six months of a baby boy's life:

“In the male fetus, testosterone secretion (measured by RIA) peaks in the first trimester of pregnancy between the 11th and 14th gestational week. Fetal testosterone also influences sexually dimorphic brain development.”(76)

“The existence of minipuberty has been known for >40 years, but we still do not fully understand why it takes place...it seems to influence the infant’s body composition [and]...it affects cognitive functions.”(77)

Neuroimaging of unborn children has consistently demonstrated what the pointy heads in lab coats refer to as “robust sex-specific differences in human neural anatomy and function”.(78) We even know that males exposed to higher levels of testosterone in the womb are more likely to play full contact sports like rugby and to go on to be self-employed.(79) And these effects are apparent when males are compared with each other – even the lower testosterone individuals will have levels that are far in excess of the fairer sex.

Thus, in further shocking news, we find that “men run faster than females even when both identify as non-binary”.(80) This might explain why the US women's soccer team lost 12-0 to a team of retired Wrexham players in 2023.(81) It could also be a factor in the 19-0 drubbing that the first 'trans men's' side was handed when they played a side made up of 'cisgender' men.(82) Differences in male/female testosterone may be responsible for disparate levels of interest in sports in general, especially female sports.

The WNBA has never made a profit, even last season when a phenom called Caitlin Clark was pulling in record crowds. It's subsidised by the male league, the NBA, and the loss was $40 million in 2024.(83) Not enough tickets sold, not enough merchandise shifted, failed advertising campaigns. And, predictably, Clark was physically targetted week in, week out, something that her teammates seemed to be okay with, which doesn't appeal to the male of the species. Men understand the 'one and all' concept and do not accept assaults on their colleagues – women, not so much.

The WSL (Women's Super League) in England attracted an average of 7,363 fans per game in 2023/24.(84) The average for the male equivalent was 35,951.(85) None of this reduces the periodic demands for 'equal pay', which some governing bodies have caved to. And men (or women, for that matter) are not permitted to point out other obvious conundrums.

There has been an epidemic of ACL injuries in women's sport, particularly soccer – one side, Arsenal, had four players out at the same time last season and Olympique Lyonnais lost more than half their squad to the injury in a single season -(86) but sports like rugby and cricket are also suffering. Naturally, this phenomenon is confounding the great and the good, who consistently fail to explore the possibility that the problem lies in the female physique. It's not a particularly challenging conundrum:

“Science has shown that women are at higher risk of certain injuries, especially in sports like soccer. For example, women are two to eight times more likely than men to suffer anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries....Research has also noted that women’s injury risk fluctuates with their menstrual cycle, highlighting the unique physical challenges faced by female athletes.”(87)

Progressive ideology has attempted to fast forward evolution and come up short, inevitably. The refusal to acknowledge reality in a sporting context is one thing, even if it results in debilitating and painful injuries. But when the feminist ideology, in the guise of DIE, is imposed upon the military, outcomes are much more deleterious. More specifically, allowing women to serve in combat units is the mother of all clusters and, in my judgement, one of the cruellest manifestations of the woke psychosis. It's also a perversion of traditional gender roles, which is exactly the point. And extremely dangerous. As usual, the West is in the vanguard (dark green signifies no restrictions on servicewomen in operational positions and combat roles). The next logical step – 'draft our daughters' - is now on the horizon, in the US at least.(88) Not calling out nonsense, making like a tribe of caitiffs, has consequences. Who'd have thought it?

Figure 5

The military is the acme of maledom – or should be. Its requirements are coterminous with male characteristics and completely antithetical to female's. This is neither a good thing or a bad thing – it's just a thing. This writer puts it succinctly:

“For men, the positive virtues include physical bravery ranging towards aggression; self-reliance; protection at any cost of his family, friends, and others deserving of protection; the handling and use of physical things; the creation of order; tight control of emotion; provision for his family; and bold, quick action. For women, the positive virtues include nurture; kindness; grace; empathy for people and creatures; the creation and formation of life; counsel before action; cooperation; and passing wisdom down through the generations.”(89)

That sentiments such as these are so rarely expressed is symptomatic of the cultural stranglehold the woke have us in. Square pegs do not go well with round holes, but we have failed to point this out on too many occasions, largely because we have not had the courage to address the basics. Women in combat units are a disaster, for reasons that even those not in possession of a towering intellect could readily foresee. Some of the anecdotes are off the charts and, in many instances, it's difficult not to feel sympathy for the females themselves, most of whom are victims as well as offenders – they've been sold the 'go girl' propaganda.

In no particular order – they're not fit or strong enough which makes it impossible to hold a standard and build cohesion and discipline, they often game the system to avoid running and marching, thousands avoid combat tours by getting pregnant, those that don't start crying when bullets are flying, they are undisciplined with regard to men and alcohol and prostitution rings are not uncommon, they continually receive preferential treatment, and “it only takes one woman saying she is uncomfortable to force commanders to bend to their will. No one in the military is brave enough to tell a woman to put her big girl panties on and just deal with it, with regards to anything that offends their sensitivities, no matter how benign it may be.”(90)

If you placed men in an environment that is woefully unsuited to them – but well-fitted to females - you would expect similar levels of carnage. It's not about dumping on the female of the species; it's about pegs and holes. Common sense, not ideology. The ascent of women in the workplace has also led to consequences that were, no doubt, intended. Institutions, in the middle-ranking positions, are now dominated by those of a female persuasion and the men at the apex of the pyramid are those who possess the ability to navigate female morality and are willing to invest in “the stamina-requiring logistics” demanded by female social codes.(91) The result is not unexpected:

“Men, historically, have wanted to do everything with a few signatures (or a few strokes of a scimitar) and then have lunch. Women are more tenacious: and their tenacity means that they are making our institutions boring and bureaucratic (and safe) and also a bit morally intrusive and domineering: and this, in turn, means that most men with any spirit prefer to wander off and do something else rather than try to prosper within such a system.”(92)

Men (especially white men) are checking out in unprecedented numbers, both of the workforce and of life itself;(93) “the current employment rate of men in prime working years mirrors that of the Great Depression.”(94) American men are killing themselves at higher rates than at any other time.(95) The US military is, once more, leading the way – in the twenty years after 9/11, over 30,000 active-duty personnel or veterans died by their own hand, which is four times the number lost in combat.(96) It turns out that vilifying men at every opportunity and denying them upward mobility at the expense of DIE hires isn't particularly good for morale. It's also an effective way of decimating the dating pool:

“The answer to why American men are killing more of themselves every year is the same as to why the liberal woman can’t find a good man. Our society is so focused on ensuring women can achieve everything a man can that we’ve given up on raising worthy men.”(97)

Not that today's liberal women would necessarily want to tie the knot were they to snare a member of the opposite sex, because marriage “should not be saved” (98) as it is “antiquated bullshit”.(99) One might, however, have thought that an overdose of emancipation would have resulted in a permanent dopamine rush for today's young ladies, but one would be wrong. Gen Z's legions of female Leftists are in the grip of a crisis, with 56% of white liberal American women from this age group having been diagnosed with a mental health condition.(100) It seems that convincing these poor unfortunates that the patriarchy has got it in for them fosters a depression that cannot be offset by a promotion in HR or by assuming responsibility for determining everyone's behavioural norms (73% of HR management is female, as are 57% of compliance officers).(101)(102)

Despite all the Longhouse maven talk, women don't actually appear to be happy being in charge. Or, perhaps that observation should be formulated slightly differently – being in charge doesn't necessarily make them happy. Feeling some sort of responsibility to support the sisterhood and, perhaps, do jobs that they don't really want to do isn't going to make women happy, either. The most enlightened approach, characterised by the Swedes' egalitarian policies, is to provide genuine equality of opportunity, a practice which then illustrates what makes men and women different when the pressure is off. These are the biggest documented personality differences between men and women, worldwide. By way of example:

“...if you draw a random man and a random woman from the population, and you bet that the woman is more aggressive/less agreeable, you’d be correct about 40% of the time. But if you walked into a roomful of people everyone of whom had been selected to be the most aggressive person out of a 100, almost every one of them would be male.”(103)

To oversimplify egregiously; men are more interested in things and women are more interested in people and, because many choices are made at the extreme (not at the average), the vast majority of Swedish engineers are men and the vast majority of nurses are women.(104) This is not a tragic outcome; it's simply an outcome. But women have choices to make, in a way that men don't. Prioritising career over marriage and family is not, for the majority, a winning combination, but that realisation is often arrived in their mid-thirties or later, when time is either very short or expired. In the meantime, young women have been inculcated with a belief that abstaining from parenthood and marriage is, somehow, a safer bet, because those sorts of commitments will compromise their autonomy and independence and that, seemingly, is what life is now about. “The politics, and the personal preferences, of single young women are increasingly defined by fear. “(105)

But could it be that purpose and meaning in life are now elusive? That human nature is actually a thing? That millennia of what feminists might instead characterise as cultural conditioning cannot be tossed aside without consequences? Because it certainly seems that way. Nobody is happy – not even the wokesters, as they are incapable of satiation – and Western societies are circling the bowl. Men and women are growing apart ever more swiftly and the nuclear family will soon be an anachronism, if it isn't already.

There was a time when women were prized, when men opened doors, pulled out chairs and took off their hats. These manners were nigh-on universal across classes; indeed, “the women, especially the older women, were the power centre, and inside the home what they said was law. When face-to-face with a matriarch, the rougher the job, the more deferential the man.”(106) And while the tsunami of misogyny that is allegedly swamping women is not easy to detect, there's plenty of misandry to go around. Barbie, the movie, serves as a useful proxy, as it “delights in writing off men as hapless romantic partners, leering jerks, violent buffoons, and dimwitted tyrants who ought to let women run the world.”(107)

When small gestures of politeness come to be seen as condescension and contempt, which has been the case for many years ago, they cease to be proffered. No good comes of that. Offending those who could have been protectors is a dumb idea and, additionally, robs men of their manly identity. Responsibility and meaning are positively correlated in men, so when responsibility is circumscribed – whether in a work environment or in their personal life – meaning is diminished. The every-man-or-woman-for-themselves dichotomy is not a natural fit for men and it is likely that those relationships that are founded in old-fashioned wisdom or religious faith are the most successful and fulfilling in the modern era. The following, incidentally, was written by a woman:

“The first principle is that a good marriage is a true partnership — but one in which each spouse participates unequally in nearly every aspect of the couple’s joint life. The man and woman each has, both by nature and by choice, his or her own sphere. Some of those spheres are obvious. Most broadly, the man defends the family, the woman nurtures it, whether that is a just-married couple or a family with ten children. Each sphere is first dictated by the nature of each sex, and within that frame, by the personality of the man and woman involved.”(108)

The progressives, unfortunately, are at war with the past and everything it represents (unless, of course, it's the 'Golden Age', the egalitarian utopia that they seem to believe existed prior to agriculture). It's their raison d'être because the past is chock full of oppression, victimhood and outdated values and belief systems. Nothing that has been inherited and which works well is to be retained if it contradicts the woke agenda. And woke is, ultimately, what you get when you aggressively feminise culture. Safetyism is the new religion and that which is deemed to be good is of more importance than that which is true. But 'good' is a flexible concept, subjectively assigned. Two hundred years ago, Samuel Coleridge made the following observation (which still seems relevant today):

“There is the love of the good for the good’s sake, and the love of the truth for the truth’s sake. I have known many, especially women, love the good for the good’s sake; but very few, indeed, and scarcely one woman, love the truth for the truth’s sake. Yet without the latter, the former may become, as it has a thousand times been, the source of persecution of the truth – the pretext and motive of inquisitorial cruelty and party zealotry.”(109)

As I hope to have demonstrated, the truth about the difficult subjects covered in this offering is frequently unsettling. To some, it will be profoundly offensive. But 'good intentions' are no substitute. Nor can it be claimed that, as long as the heart is pure, the outcome is of secondary importance. We are not all the same, we aren't all equally capable given the same opportunities and no amount of wishful thinking will make it so. There are profound differences between the physical and mental attributes of races and between the sexes:

“Men are less agreeable (more competitive, harsher, tough-minded, skeptical, unsympathetic, critically-minded, independent, stubborn)...Women are higher in negative emotion, or neuroticism. They experience more anxiety, emotional pain, frustration, grief, self-conscious doubt and disappointment.”(110)

In general terms (caveats still being operational), the male attributes are more suited to command – which is not to say that every man is more capable in this regard than every woman. I have had a plethora of males bosses, most of whom were inadequate. This is largely due to the fact that men who exhibit disagreeableness are not valued in our current culture, which instead promotes the Machiavellian type and 'male feminists'. When merit is no longer fashionable because identity trumps quality, the cream that rises to the top is sour. Culture stultifies as risk-taking and innovation are stamped out. And while the tone of the following is tongue-in-cheek, the proposition – in my view – is not without merit:

“What if — and I hope you are ready for this thought — the so-called ‘patriarchy’ only ever existed because men feared what would happen if they gave women power and allowed women to transform power structures?...is it possible that patriarchal institutions were designed to prevent female morality from becoming determinative of political morality because this would, everyone supposed, be very bad for men and women alike?”(111)

The feminised woke agenda may primarily train its fire on men, with white, heterosexual, middle-class men its primary target, but it is also extremely damaging to women. Fourth-wave feminism is the result of sixty years of unchecked neuroticism and warped morality. When the fruits of the ideology include men in women's sports and an embrace of Islam, something has gone badly wrong, as it is perfectly clear that neither of those positions are good for women's rights. In addition, the focus on victimhood – along with the rejection of any responsibility for whatever it is that ails them – has made young women both unhappy with their lot and resentful (and fearful) of men.

If we let this state of affairs continue, it will clearly end in disaster. If the 'enforced monogamy'/civilisations dynamic is in our future, then we may end up in a tight spot anyway, but if we don't kick woke into touch, we're going to get there a damned sight faster. Tinkering around the edges just isn't going to get 'er done, either. 'Controversial' truths, which will inevitably offend sensibilities, will need to be stated.

Those that are about race and culture are perhaps the most sensitive of all but, in truth, we are simply the genetic slaves of whatever went before. We can claim no credit for IQ or fast twitch fibres; we are the product of evolution. Perhaps we can claim some credit if we exploit our genetic strengths, though it is highly likely that even those impulses are largely hardwired. Nor did we have a choice as to our sex. We were born into a culture created by others. We can, however, take some responsibility for what it is now and insist we change course. We can start that process by having these sorts of conversations between ourselves first.

Then we need disagreeable men to stop opting out – which is, in any event, an illusion unless one also changes hemispheres; it just delays the inevitable and there is shame involved in compromising with patently unreasonable people. What we emphatically don't need is more compassion and empathy, the 'good' instead of the true. It's not enough to mean well; every now and again, one needs to also check on the outcomes:

“Empathy cuts both ways. Just as too much compassion can alleviate people of the need to assume agency in their own lives, too much empathy can excuse them of a much-needed culpability for abhorrent decisions and actions—leading to a lack of negative reinforcement to dissuade undesirable and unsafe behaviors. All mercy and no justice make Trevor an entitled and unaccountable little asshole.”(111)

Too many carrots, not enough sticks. We learn the need for balance as we mature, yet balance is what is sorely lacking at present. The truth – reality – is unacknowledged because the pursuit of 'equality' is the only game in town. Agreeableness, taken to excess, has morphed into a pathology, subject to no checking mechanism, because the truth – a recognition of which is the checking mechanism – has been driven underground. Enforced consent is the order of the day and neurotic temper-tantrums and cancellations result when there is even a hint of non-compliance, or a suggestion that tolerance, rather than inclusion, is being encountered.

Disagreeable men are the counterpoint to modern feminism. At a bare minimum, they care not for the opinions of those they do not respect. They are competitive, aggressive and blunt and “it’s not hard to see why these traits would be unsettling to people who would transform the world into an existential daycare.”(112) But woke isn't going away on its own. There is absolutely no suggestion that there will any acceptance that immigration is a problem that needs to be reversed, the trans and LGBT obsessives will still be elevated and the feminists will continue to spout arrant hogwash.

The Right will, as usual, write article after article about how the tide is turning, yet they will try and 'reach across the aisle' as soon as they possible can. There will be no reckoning – it'll be all about 'unity'. The Trevors and the Karens will not be dealt with if 'the system' is allowed to correct itself and any such correction is not as imminent as the optimists believe:

“The Longhouse will have, for the foreseeable future, an impermeable seal on almost every elite institution...The key will be to progressively disengage from that society and found parallel institutions. The basis for those institutions is already forming, and a new literacy founded thereon is emerging as well. These institutions must start as informal networks of similar (not same) minded people, committed to acting “anti-social”-ly and who will double down on each spurious and predictable challenge to that behavior.”(113)

In the meantime, men need to man-up and accept the challenge that we have largely been ducking. And we have definitely been shirking on that score. The problem isn't finding people who can recognise the problems we face – it's persuading them that not accepting the BS and speaking up does make a difference and that, at some point, keeping their head down mutates into facilitation. The spell has to be broken and the limits of acceptable political discourse – in its widest sense – need to be recalibrated and there's only one way that is possible:

“We simply need disagreeable men to be disagreeable, rather than conforming to society’s maladaptive agreeable insistences. They need to compete, elevate truth and reason above emotion, demand that people be judged for their actions, reject the derogation of meritorious achievement and refuse to let the West fall on the sword of compassion in its guilt-fueled insanity.”(114)

My sense is that we have underestimated how catastrophically deluded the wokerati really are. When there is no ying to offset the yang and pathological agreeableness is the yang, things get out of hand quickly. When there is no need for coherence, no imperative to deal with what is – rather than what an ideologue thinks should be – no value in evidence because it's all been vested in feelings, gentle persuasion and a collaborative approach are not the solution. The tiller needs to be wrenched, not finessed and the only cohort possessing the requisite bloody-mindedness that's required for that job is the one comprised of disagreeable men.

Citations

(1) https://www.amren.com/news/2024/01/why-we-need-to-talk-about-the-rights-stupidity-problem/

(2) Ditto

(3) https://www.amren.com/commentary/2021/06/thoughts-unoriginal-but-perhaps-of-value-on-brains/

(4) Ditto

(5) https://www.amren.com/news/2019/07/human-nature-environment-vs-heredity-carl-degler/

(6-9) Ditto

(10) https://www.amren.com/news/2019/10/twin-studies-arthur-jensen-iq-race-differences/

(11-12) Ditto

(13) https://www.amren.com/news/2023/02/iq-and-its-woes-a-reverent-analysis/

(14) Ditto

(15) https://www.amren.com/news/2022/08/why-are-jews-so-successful/

(16-18) Ditto

(19) https://www.amren.com/commentary/2022/05/are-all-men-created-equal/

(20) https://www.amren.com/news/2019/07/anti-social-personalities-heritability-crime-david-lykken/

(21) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2466/04.17.CP.4.15

(22) https://www.amren.com/news/2018/01/race-differences-in-intelligence-arthur-jensen-g-factor-iq/

(23) Ditto

(24) https://www.amren.com/news/2022/02/race-differences-in-athletic-ability-olympic-games/

(25) Ditto

(26) https://www.amren.com/news/2018/01/race-differences-in-intelligence-arthur-jensen-g-factor-iq/

(27) https://www.amren.com/news/2021/01/white-men-americas-greatest-asset/

(28) https://www.amren.com/news/2020/07/can-differenes-in-intelligence-explain-global-inequality/

(29) https://redstate.com/streiff/2023/07/06/outlawing-legacy-admissions-to-elite-universities-will-not-make-progressives-happy-important-n771876

(30) https://dailysceptic.org/2024/09/30/do-wars-in-the-middle-east-cause-mass-immigration-into-europe/

(31) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14160805/Muhammad-popular-baby-boys-England-Wales.html

(32) https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/06/us/muhammad-top-10-baby-names-trnd/index.html

(33) https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/homo-consumericus/201210/multiculturalism-failed-policy

(34)https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/09/what_america_can_learn_from_ancient_rome_s_death_by_mass_migration.html

(35) https://www.timesofisrael.com/islamic-state-throws-men-off-building-for-being-gay/

(36) https://www.rrstar.com/story/opinion/letters/2014/12/31/letter-quran-has-123-verses/35594848007/

(37) https://humanevents.com/2024/03/21/muslim-immigrants-convicted-of-violent-crimes-at-much-higher-rate-than-natives-in-denmark-report

(38)https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/01/in_the_uk_and_the_us_racial_subgroups_refuse_to_address_the_criminals_among_them.html

(39)https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/01/sex_and_islam_and_the_decline_of_the_west.html

(40) https://x.com/DaveAtherton20/status/1876925997078958318

(41)https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/01/in_the_uk_and_the_us_racial_subgroups_refuse_to_address_the_criminals_among_them.html

(42) https://x.com/KatKanada_TM/status/1876735541271462092?ref_src=twsrc

(43)https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/01/in_the_uk_and_the_us_racial_subgroups_refuse_to_address_the_criminals_among_them.html

(44-45) Ditto

(46) https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fertility-rate

(47) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Impact-of-AI-and-Machine-Learning-on-Job-and-Tiwari/d44b651ee25cd6f8717a9b049d2f2e0de8a965f5

(48) https://www.nexford.edu/insights/how-will-ai-affect-jobs

(49) https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Unemployment_statistics

(50) https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1787414823187177804

(51) https://undocumented.thehastingscenter.org/issuebrief/demographics-and-socioeconomic-status/

(52) https://cis.org/Report/ForeignBorn-Population-Grew-51-Million-Last-Two-Years

(53) https://modernity.news/2024/09/01/1-6-million-migrants-in-uk-are-unemployed-costing-taxpayers-8-5-billion-report/

(54) https://rmx.news/germany/welfare-costs-exploding-in-germany-47-3-of-recipients-are-foreigners/

(55) https://cis.org/Report/ForeignBorn-Population-Grew-51-Million-Last-Two-Years

(56) https://rmx.news/crime/germany-gang-rapes-hit-another-record-high-in-2022-half-of-offenses-committed-by-foreigners/

(57) https://rmx.news/article/swedish-scientists-prosecuted-for-finding-that-most-rapes-are-committed-by-immigrants/

(58) https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5128/france-no-go-zones

(59) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289608001608

(60) https://www.amren.com/features/2024/12/india-its-worse-than-you-think/

(61) Ditto

(62) https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/ecb-reject-calls-england-boycott-afghanistan-champions-trophy-1468113

(63) https://markmanson.net/male-female-relations

(64-66) Ditto

(67)

Leftism has happened before

(68-70) Ditto

(71) https://expose-news.com/2025/01/08/47-quotes-from-self-styled-elites/

(72) https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1875687010175951006.html

(73) https://navacenter.com/male-and-female-testosterone-the-facts/

(74) Ditto

(75)https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/02/testosterone_its_effects_matter_earlier_than_you_think.html

(76) Ditto

(77) https://karger.com/hrp/article-abstract/93/2/76/167199/Minipuberty-Why-Does-it-Happen?redirectedFrom=fulltext

(78) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0730725X12002172

(79)https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/02/testosterone_its_effects_matter_earlier_than_you_think.html

(80) https://x.com/ThePublicaNow/status/1738269189243125970?ref_src=twsrc^tfw

(81)

(82) https://gatewayhispanic.com/2024/10/the-first-all-trans-mens-team-defeated-19-0-by-cisgender-men/

(83) https://nypost.com/2024/10/18/sports/wnba-will-lose-40-million-this-season-with-nba-investors-growing-impatient/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=nypost

(84) https://www.statista.com/statistics/1395936/fa-wsl-attendances/

(85) https://www.footballwebpages.co.uk/premier-league/attendances/2023-2024

(86) https://sport.optus.com.au/news/womens/os57327/why-have-more-than-25-top-womens-footballers-torn-their-acls-in-the-last-12-months

(87) https://gatewayhispanic.com/2024/10/the-first-all-trans-mens-team-defeated-19-0-by-cisgender-men/

(88) https://amgreatness.com/2024/08/29/ingratitude-incorporated/

(89) https://mansworldmag.online/on-marriage/

(90) https://x.com/Aristos_Revenge/status/1732826621009133913

(91) https://dailysceptic.org/2024/05/09/is-the-world-better-with-women-in-charge/

(92) Ditto

(93) https://dailycaller.com/2023/09/05/exclusive-marco-rubio-releases-40-page-report-on-the-crisis-of-working-non-working-men/

(94) https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/10/the-war-on-men-is-a-war-on-civilization/

(95) https://dailycaller.com/2023/11/29/rooke-so-many-american-men-killing-themselves-answers-obvious/

(96) https://revolver.news/2023/12/are-women-to-blame-for-military-suicide-deaths-one-theory-says-yes/

(97) https://dailycaller.com/2023/11/29/rooke-so-many-american-men-killing-themselves-answers-obvious/

(98) https://x.com/CLLcllcll5/status/1729145530968846610

(99) https://x.com/taradublinrocks/status/1729166274700423256

(100)

Why the Mental Health of Liberal Girls Sank First and Fastest

(101) https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm

(102) https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/02/what-is-the-longhouse

(103) https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-the-gender-scandal-in-scandinavia-and-canada

(104)

(105) https://www.americansurveycenter.org/newsletter/fear-has-come-to-define-the-politics-and-personal-choices-of-single-young-women/

(106) https://mansworldmag.online/art-boys/

(107) https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-misogyny-myth

(108) https://dailysceptic.org/2024/05/05/impersonal-male-activity/

(109) Ditto

(110) https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-the-gender-scandal-in-scandinavia-and-canada

(111) https://mansworldmag.online/the-derogation-of-disagreeable-men/

(112) Ditto

(113) https://mansworldmag.online/in-defence-of-anti-social-behaviour/

(114) https://mansworldmag.online/the-derogation-of-disagreeable-men/

Figure 1 https://www.amren.com/blog/2019/11/race-differences-in-intelligence-in-20-charts/

Figure 2 https://revolver.news/2024/06/bidens-border-sham-executive-order-shuts-down-nothing-and-makes-invasion-level-illegal-immigration-permanent/

Figure 3 https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/01/jordan-peterson-drops-shock-statistic-one-seven-pakistani/

Figure 4 https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1787414823187177804

Figure 5 By Enyavar - detailed table on talk page, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=148723146