Virtual Insanity

Sadly it would appear that some of Australia’s better opinion writers have taken their eyes off the ball and become lost in the heady churn of the news cycle. Madame Albrechtsen’s article in the Australian has mistakenly been read as a serious argument rather than ironic subversion. I thought it a witty - at times hilarious - satire of the PC “debate”, alas it seems I am mistaken.

Mme Albrechtsen correctly identifies that public transgression of PC boundaries now constitutes the fundamental basis for discourse in our contemporary society. The tired tub-thumpers of every political persuasion now employ this practice to gain exposure. After all it is rather easy compared to the time consuming, oft-painful, and always difficult technique of thinking and constructing a coherent and considered argument.

Masterfully, Albrechtsen inserts the PC exploiters’ tricks - misdirection and sleight of hand - into her argument. She provides some headline examples of PC infringing: good old Geert Wilders sometime filmmaker and aspiring wedge politician, our own Pauline, some academics no one cares about anyway, and of course climate sceptics.

Having got some hackles up with these cases, she deploys the sleight of hand. Bang: it is explained that this situation is mysteriously correlated with the West’s capitulation before Islam. This is an elegant, ironic demonstration of the PC warrior in action.

Having banged on about the sneaky deployment of bipartisanship to stifle debate, the horrendous Germanic cancer on open inquiry die Totschweigtaktik, Albrechtsen proceeds to demonstrate just how it is done: invoking the clash of civilisations whilst tiptoeing around the longstanding bipartisan support for the war on terror.

Following Albrechtsen’s argument nothing makes sense, logic can be torn free from any bearings and be utilised to any end. Thus as a society we are not at war, because we engage in free and open discourse to do with politics. Yet apparently we are struggling with Islam and capitulating because we cannot cause offence. However, that we are also at war with militant Islamic sentiment is apparently not worth mention.

In the world of PC arguments a spatial separation is erected allowing arguments about virtual struggles with Islam within western discourse to obscure the actual struggle, which takes place across the western defined “Islamic World”. Despite the mainstream insistence that there is no connection between the virtual and the real, it is evident that there is.

The violence that may kill but not offend is predominantly restricted to cities and towns mainly occupied by Muslims. However, in periodic events such as September 11, the bombings in Madrid, London, Oslo and elsewhere the real disrupts the virtual. As Albrechtsen demonstrates when this does occur rather than discuss the implications of this situation, the deathly silence surrounding the merits of aimless violence remains. Instead we babble about the state of our discourse.

the Colonial