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| Fifth Column |
| A new scientific term for moonbattery |
| 2006-07-18 |
| by Roger Scruton I do not doubt that there is such a thing as xenophobia, though it is a very different thing from racism. Etymologically the term means fear of (and therefore aversion towards) the foreigner. Its very use implies a distinction between the one who belongs and the one who doesn't, and in inviting us to jettison our xenophobia politicians are inviting us to extend a welcome to people other than ourselves - a welcome predicated on a recognition of their otherness. Now it is easy for an educated member of the liberal ,lite to discard his xenophobia: for the most part his contacts with foreigners help him to amplify his power, extend his knowledge and polish his social expertise. . . . . . . Members of our liberal ,lite may be immune to xenophobia, but there is an equal fault which they exhibit in abundance, which is the repudiation of, and aversion to, home. Each country exhibits this vice in its own domestic version. Nobody brought up in post-war England can fail to be aware of the educated derision that has been directed at our national loyalty by those whose freedom to criticize would have been extinguished years ago, had the English not been prepared to die for their country. The loyalty that people need in their daily lives, and which they affirm in their unconsidered and spontaneous social actions, is now habitually ridiculed or even demonized by the dominant media and the education system. National history is taught as a tale of shame and degradation. The art, literature and religion of our nation have been more or less excised from the curriculum, and folkways, local traditions and national ceremonies are routinely rubbished. This repudiation of the national idea is the result of a peculiar frame of mind that has arisen throughout the Western world since the Second World War, and which is particularly prevalent among the intellectual and political elites. No adequate word exists for this attitude, though its symptoms are instantly recognized: namely, the disposition, in any conflict, to side with `them' against `us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably `ours'. I call the attitude oikophobia - the aversion to home - by way of emphasizing its deep relation to xenophobia, of which it is the mirror image. Oikophobia is a stage through which the adolescent mind normally passes. But it is a stage in which intellectuals tend to become arrested. As George Orwell pointed out, intellectuals on the Left are especially prone to it, and this has often made them willing agents of foreign powers. . . . Nor is oikophobia a specifically English, still less specifically British tendency. When Sartre and Foucault draw their picture of the `bourgeois' mentality, the mentality of the Other in his Otherness, they are describing the ordinary decent Frenchman, and expressing their contempt for his national culture. A chronic form of oikophobia has spread through the American universities, in the guise of political correctness, and loudly surfaced in the aftermath of September 11th, to pour scorn on the culture that allegedly provoked the attacks, and to side by implication with the terrorists. . . . Oikophobia. That's the word for the day. Be sure to use it on the next moonbat you encounter; it'll confuse the dickens out of 'em. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #7 Which is not to be confused with 'oinkophobia' - a degenerative disase afflicting many in the Islamic world. |
| Posted by: Duke of Plaza-Toro 2006-07-18 22:23 |
| #6 ROFLMAO Barbara! |
| Posted by: flyover 2006-07-18 20:47 |
| #5 "Oikophobia," eh? And all this time I thought the scientific term for moonbat was "f*cking idiot." |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-07-18 20:41 |
| #4 I do not doubt that there is such a thing as xenophobia, though it is a very different thing from racism. While we're at it, time to come up with a new 'ism' for those with a blind hatred of military people along the lines of racism, sexism, etc. Another fine condition of the left, or is that an implied subset of the Left[tm] cause I know the traditional left had no problems with using uniform people to kill those they perceived as a threat [i.e. Stalin, Mao, etc]. |
| Posted by: Thrainter Hupinenter1535 2006-07-18 16:42 |
| #3 An another word popular at least in some circles is "ethnomasochism"; it was coined by ultra-rightwing writer Guillaume Faye, and has a similar meaning, only with a racial connotation rather than cultural. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-07-18 12:42 |
| #2 ah heck, I should have posted my long rant about the liberal superiority/inferiorty complex under this article instead. Heh. I know of which I speak. |
| Posted by: 2b 2006-07-18 10:29 |
| #1 Oikophobia - from W. S. Gilbert's, The Mikado: "And the idiot who praises with enthusiastic tones, All centuries but this and every country but his own." |
| Posted by: Duke of Plaza-Toro 2006-07-18 08:42 |