Racism and Sexism: Manufactured Buzzwords as enclosed tautology

Brendan Heard

“Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime is death.” – 1984, George Orwell

I would guess at this stage that Modernists cringe at the very word ‘European’ for its nasty overtones of distinctiveness.

Of course, we are all now deemed guilty of the crimes of racism and sexism, the ultimate liberal power words. This is despite that these words are actually meaningless, nonsensical and applied as an irrational accusation for purely political purpose. Racism and sexism have been the two most effectively used and all-encompassing attack words of modernity against Western confidence. They are used at every turn to shame and discredit any ideas that are not strictly equality-based. They are always aimed, and are only effective against, European males. Their strength lies in their accusational premise, on their reliance on warping our natural sense of fairness, and their appeal to the envious. Proud or confident traditional architecture can now be labelled racist, as it exhibits inequality, evidenced by its excellence. Yes, things are that stupid. It is excellent due to its suggested imperialism, colonialism, superiority, or whatever. It represents a time in which a homogeneous people unabashedly exerted unity and confidence in what used to be called, quite innocently, a nation. This casually applied label of ‘racism’ instantly moots a building or sculpture’s entire existence – and just about everything is de facto sexist, as men have built pretty much everything.

Firstly, apart from the lunacy of applying these manufactured outrage terms to art, sexism and racism are words for innate instincts that are not logically possible to extinguish in any context. If you belong to a race or a sex, you have no choice but to defend yourself from that corner or vantage, as a matter of basic survival. Therefore, we are all racist and sexist as needed, to varying degrees, and any considerate need to avoid offending other groups without cause has historically been covered by the basic rules of politeness. Arguments, wars, disagreements and competition can occur whenever there is difference, or individuals. But that is inescapable fact of life. There have been battles over racism because there are races. Battles over religion (culture) because there is religion. But it is the nature of difference, of being anything – that there is always an other. If there is more than one person in the room, there is a contest of power. That is simply life. Different races will always, at times, find themselves at odds or in competition, as do the sexes more commonly. It is a matter of basic realism which cannot be avoided, as we all have personal aspects of our existence we must protect as surely as we have a will to live. The racist/sexist accusation takes advantage of our desire to be kind, but the fact that only white people can effectively be accused of racism, and only men of sexism, tells you all you need to know about these words. Like Artspeak, it is all verbal trickery. Why does nobody ever question the fact that the great minds of history never cross-examined themselves by standards of racism/sexism? It is because, like artspeak, they are invented attack words with a sinister purpose.