My 2013 book about social hierarchy is now available as a free PDF download

My 2013 book about social hierarchy is now available as a free PDF download

>>>> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278411495_Hierarchy_and_Free_Expression_in_the_Fight_Against_Racism/stats  [ResearchGate shut down my account. Bad ResearchGate.]

The free PDF download of the entire book is available here:
https://archive.org/details/rancourt-2013-hierarchy-and-free-expression-red/

Reviews of the book, when it first came out, are here:
https://fightagainstracismbook.wordpress.com/reviews/

Paperback copies are available from the publisher here:
http://www.stairwaypress.com/bookstore/hierarchy-and-free-expression-in-the-fight-against-racism/

"Denis Rancourt has turned the entire notion of RACISM on its head and at the same time exposes racist acts committed by others to deflect that characterization from sticking at the highest levels of The Academy. North American civil rights defenders need this book at this time. Rancourt’s deeply incisive Fight Against Racism brings us back to the reality of the struggle, away from the manoeuvring for class advantage and away from the victim’s desire to create illusions of state-given justice."
—Cynthia McKinney, First African-American woman elected to represent Georgia in the US Congressional House of Representatives

La géoéconomie et la géopolitique entraînent des époques successives de globalisation prédatrice et d’ingénierie sociale

https://lesakerfrancophone.fr/la-geoeconomie-et-la-geopolitique-entrainent-des-epoques-successives-de-globalisation-predatrice-et-dingenierie-sociale

L’influence des conditions géopolitiques et économiques globales sur le tissu des sociétés nationales et sur la psychologie individuelle est le plus souvent sous-estimée par les commentateurs civils, notamment en ce qui concerne les sociétés occidentales dites « libres et démocratiques ». Les militaires, en revanche, ne sous-estiment pas l’importance des facteurs commerciaux et économiques généraux sur le tissu même d’une société et sur la psychologie de ses citoyens, du moins dans les pays en développement ciblés. ²

Cet article a deux objectifs principaux.

Le premier est de démontrer dans quelle mesure le système financier global détermine la réalité nationale et régionale dans la vie et la sécurité des populations, y compris aux États-Unis et dans le monde occidental en général, en mettant l’accent sur les deux principales transformations de l’après-guerre, qui ont débuté en 1971, après l’annulation des accords de Bretton Woods, et en 1991, après la dissolution de l’Union soviétique.

Le second est de décrire le changement tectonique en cours qui a suivi la dissolution de l’Union soviétique en 1991 en des termes plus larges qu’on ne l’envisage habituellement, et comment ce changement motivé et coordonné a été chronologiquement accompagné par : une accélération spectaculaire de la « globalisation » commerciale et financière, et une campagne sans précédent d’ingénierie sociale des classes moyennes supérieures occidentales, visant à faciliter une exploitation opportuniste des nouvelles circonstances globales, par les États-Unis et l’élite globale, qui a abouti par contrecoup aux Gilets jaunes, au Brexit et à Trump… (Dans un sens, « les Russes l’ont fait. »)


Pour un « résumé des points clés » avec description des données socio-économiques à l’appui, voir la section Conclusion.

Interview of Denis Rancourt by Jamarl Thomas

Democrats & Republicans Use Identity Politics As Cover For Economic Devastation...

Geo-Economics and Geo-Politics Drive Successive Eras of Predatory Globalization and Social Engineering: Historical emergence of climate change, gender equity, and anti-racism as State doctrines

“Geo-Economics and Geo-Politics Drive Successive Eras of Predatory Globalization and Social Engineering: Historical emergence of climate change, gender equity, and anti-racism as State doctrines”,

by Denis G. Rancourt,

Ontario Civil Liberties Association, OCLA Report 2019-1, April 2019.

LINK TO REPORT:
http://ocla.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/OCLA_Report_2019-1.pdf

The USA supreme court did NOT just uphold "Trump's Arab and Muslim ban"

By Denis Rancourt

Statements to the effect that the USA supreme court just upheld "Trump's Arab and Muslim ban" are FAKE NEWS for fabricated outrage and to obfuscate reality.

Read the court's decision: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-965_h315.pdf

The executive order that was before the court was not an "Arab and Muslim ban". It is a detailed policy instrument meant to ban, limit, punish, propagandize against and coerce USA geopolitical enemies (Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Yemen...) while not affecting the USA ability to co-opt those nationals or to collaborate with the opponents of the governments of those countries.

Read it. It could not be more clear. It is a USA policy, not a Trump policy. It is not primarily racist. It is primarily colonial and anti-international-sovereignty.

Sarcastically, one could say that the USA has "the right to defend itself against the reactions of its victims".

RACISM AND ISRAEL AND YEMEN

By Denis Rancourt, PhD

RACISM. The Western middle-class ethos has been infected by a disproportionate taboo-like hyper-aversion to attitudinal and opinion racism.

This is a socially engineered and recent pathology that is not checked by humour and satire. People are now routinely prosecuted and jailed for victimless "hate speech" that is inferred to signal blasphemous beliefs and attitudes.

One consequence of the said pathology is that, as a result of the obsession with thought racism, it is difficult to discerned physical racism operationally enabled by states.

The more thought racism is an obscene crime, the less difference there is with racism actuated as state-run predation, genocide or war, which are the Western state’s main expenditures.

You can't get Canadians upset about the on-going mass genocidal war in Yemen. On the contrary, average liberal Canadians in-effect agree to sell the Saudis weapons to help advance the massacre and cheer on the sanctions and blockade. But if a baker refuses to make a cake for a gay wedding all hell breaks loose.

The public is content to accept state-run physical racism if it is masked by vigorous demonstrations of concern for attitudinal and opinion racism.

For example, Canadian aboriginals can continue to be poisoned on toxic holding reserves and continue to have their land rights violates if "we" give them "respect" and "value" their traditional knowledge and languages, and suitably freak out at social media examples of overt personal expression racism or related interpersonal incidents.

Similarly, as a result of the said pathology, a charge of anti-Semitism is a powerful censoring bludgeon to silence objections to Israel's violent and genocidal 70-year containment and eradication campaign.

The defenders of the “Words that Wound” industry of manufactured outrage and criminalization against attitudinal and opinion racism make a steep slippery slope argument [a]. They argue that individual expression is the tail that wags the state-sponsored racism dog. I argue the opposite, that free expression checks state violence and abuse, and produces meaningful and robust cultural development. Instead, we have silenced the comics, militarized the media, and jailed the “hate speakers” that are the most triggering catalysts for intellectual and moral development.

Instead of discerning thought and expression racism of individuals in our own society from physical-violence racism of our state, the pathology is so advanced that we are reduced to pointing out inconsistencies or bias in outrage.

For example, Ivan Kalmar, anthropology professor, University of Toronto, argues that both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are appalling and that “both are fed by the Israel/Palestine conflict” [1]. In this way, the powerful state of Israel’s violent and genocidal containment and eradication of the native population is not an egregious long-term mass violation of the Geneva Conventions regulating military occupation but rather is simply part of a “conflict” that produces “appalling” individual racist attitudes and demonstrations in both a priori legitimate sides; because after all, it is those racist demonstrations at home that concern us.

Steven Salaita, on the other hand, has brilliantly exposed the narrative (“hasbara” or spin) pushed by Israel to be fundamental state-sponsored racism, underpinned by true conviction of race superiority [2]. But he has not done it in a way that expressly challenges the “Words that Wound” pathology, as he did in the “legitimizing anti-Semitism” tweet that made him famous.


Endnotes

[a] “Critical Race Theory and Freedom of Speech” by Henry Louis Gates Jr. Chapter 5 in: The Future of Academic Freedom, edited by Louis Menard, University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780226520049; which is a critique of Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment, by legal scholars Mari Matsuda, Charles Lawrence III, Richard Delgado, and Kimberlè Crenshaw, Westview Press, 1993.

[1] https://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editors/2018/05/31/your-letters-muslim-anti-semitism-and-jewish-islamophobia-are-based-in-geopolitics.html

[2] http://mondoweiss.net/2018/06/defending-israel-actually/


Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is a researcher for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association. He has published more than 100 articles in leading scientific journals, on physics and environmental science. He is a social theorist and the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism.

"Anti-racism" is powerful propaganda to condone state violence

"Anti-racism" is the best cover up for the extreme direct and covert military violence of the Obama-Clinton administrations, and the best propaganda that Democrat and Trump provisions of war and domestic injustice are discernible.

And we lap it up. The merchants of outrage are having a field day.

<< 'No Trump, no KKK, no fascist U.S.A.': Hundreds show for anti-racist rally in Ottawa >>

The X-PHOBIA CATASTROPHE must be reversed

Opinion  /  Denis Rancourt


Beyond a simple political-correctness meltdown, North American society is in the midst of an X-phobia catastrophe.


North America is following a RECIPE FOR SOCIETAL DISASTER: Let governments, institutions, and special-interest lobbies make the definitions of racism, antisemitism, misogyny, X-phobia... as broad as possible and then prosecute everyone for expressed-opinion and inferred-belief violations and sentence them to economic and social exclusion in as many areas of activity as possible.


SOLUTION: Actual freedom of expression with strong protections against the punishing governments, institutions, and special-interest lobbies.

Racism of personal opinion is not a crime. Inferred individual character inadequacies must not be punished by governments and their enabled institutions and corporations.

Instead, concentrate on the physical racism-etc of governments and their enabled institutions and corporations, such as war, genocide, economic apartheid, class-based persecution... Work for more actual democracy, not more societal exclusion and apartheids.

ISRAEL: The whole "criticism of Israel is antisemitism" circus is a textbook example of how a powerful, stratified, funded, organized special-interest lobby (Israel lobby, promoting Israel as the main Middle East foreign-policy enforcer of the USA-allied system) generates propriety crimes to be used against political organizers (BDS) and opinion leaders.

Here in Canada, Ryerson University... [1]


Endnote

[1] "Ryerson University Defines Anti-Semitism", By Ali Rosenblatt, The Louis D. Brandeis Centre, 2017-08-02, http://brandeiscenter.com/blog/ryerson-university-defines-anti-semitism/

"Intersectionality"?

"Intersectionality"?

I'm sorry, but that is bullshit. The first, dominant, and overpowering oppression is violent class dominance, class segregation and class discrimination. Race and gender are side shows that correlate: They are not the driver.

"Intersectionality" is a pseudo-academic service-intellectual cover for professional-class managers who benefit from race and gender-rights posturing, while supporting class-dominance violence.

Bullshit.

[Taking some heat on social media for this one. Like I glared at a sacred cow or something.]
 

Socio-Political Analysis of the Racism Charge against Outing of Racism

By Denis G. Rancourt, PhD

(This article was first published on Dissident Voice.)

When one is critical of the human-rights violations of the state of Israel, there follows a vehement charge of “antisemitism”. When one supports institutional measures to counter systemic racism, there follows a charge of “reverse racism”. And when a white person is critical of a black person’s apparent support for systemic racism, there again follows a charge of “racism”.

In all these examples, a charge of racism is levied in response to words used to criticize actual physical racism occurring on a spectrum from outright violations of personal safety to exclusion from status and resources.

The reason that such fallacious responses have sting is because there is a strong cultural taboo that racist language is as nefarious as violent physical racism itself. In present middle-class Western society, there is a pathological extreme intolerance against any expression that has cognitive similarity to racist expression.

The said taboo is not as present in the working-class because the economically stressed classes live a high degree of physical and status discrimination themselves. This discrimination is a higher priority to them than identity-tied system-ideology maintenance via personal investments in language policing.

The said taboo is poison because it precludes needed frank discussions and arguments about actual physical racism and hierarchical dominance. It also contributes to creating a class divide between those manipulated to adopt the identity politics of language purity and those who have less to gain from self-censorship and who “fucking need to speak”.

Thus, the taboo against racist and racist-sounding language is of great utility in enforcing an excessively totalitarian social hierarchy. Therefore, the said taboo is systemically promoted and enforced by major institutional instruments, including universities and the legal system.

In a healthy democratic society, free discussion between individuals and classes reigns and shapes a sustainable distribution of power and status. In a defective society, totalitarian encroachment is enabled by class divisions and by suppression of free expression. And there can be runaway encroachment when there are feedback pathologies such as when criticism of racism itself is reflexively tainted with the stigma of racism, or when social-media comments lead to terminations of employment, and so on. Excessive and widespread correctness policing is a recipe for disaster.

In that limited sense, the Trump and Brexit phenomena may well be expressions of natural societal repair mechanisms against runaway totalitarianism, rather than causal factors towards “fascism”. The said phenomena may be “indicators” of totalitarian encroachment by being indicators of responses against totalitarian encroachment (loss of democracy, globalization).

If so, the more the establishment bosses attempt to impose and leverage class-based containment against free expression and free political participation, the greater the danger of large future negative consequences for society as a whole.


Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is a researcher for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association. He has published more than 100 articles in leading scientific journals, on physics and environmental science. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. Read other articles by Denis at Dissident Voice.

Harmful Idiocy Syndrome (definition)

Harmful idiocy syndrome is a widespread disease that affects many political commentators. There are several pathogenic and environmental causes. "Zero-tolerance" dogma is a main pathogen, whether applied to speech, social behaviour, political organizing, risk abatement, violence used in actual self-defence, or state violence in defending state sovereignty against a murderous attacker or invader. The pathogen is often spread by manipulative politicians and lobbies, and often incubates in institutional habitats, such as universities. The disease is part of the social engineering geography of Western states, and its many features have a variety of common names.

How politically correct culture promotes racism, and on the crucial role of collaborators in hierarchical oppression

The continuing interview about my book... highlighting another theme in the book.

Beyond Critical Thinking -- a book review by author Jeff Schmidt

Beyond Critical Thinking

Review of Denis Rancourt's Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism

By Jeff Schmidt
Author of Disciplined Minds
jeffschmidt@alumni.uci.edu


To understand Denis Rancourt and his book, Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism, you have to know the difference between critical thinking and independent thinking.

Critical thinking is nothing special.  Every college student is taught to do it, to prepare for employment fielding matters for employers.  On the job, critical thinking amounts to little more than the ability to say, "The boss isn't going to like this."  You don't need your own ideology to say that.  You need only understand the boss's ideology and use it to guide your work.

The safest way to avoid making a fatal mistake in such work, and to advance through the ranks, is to adopt the assigned way of thinking as your own.  Your life becomes routine and you vanish from history, but you get a roof over your head and more than enough food for your pie hole.  It's the Devil's bargain for survival in hierarchical organizations.

Rancourt is having none of it.  Having become an activist and thereby having experienced the excitement, exhilaration and fulfillment of helping to shape the society he lives in, Rancourt sees cog-in-the-wheel life as a living death.

As a tenured professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Rancourt noticed that students were emerging from physics courses without truly grasping the concepts behind the techniques that they were learning.  The instruction was more indoctrination than education.  Grades reflected obedience and memorization more than real understanding.  The system prepared students to be obedient critical thinkers but did not arm them with the understanding required to be independent thinkers.  That served employers, who want technically trained employees who don't have their own agendas.

Rancourt became an outspoken critic of the university.  (And I was fortunate enough to get to know him at that time.)  He blogged about how the institution's undemocratic structure and corporate orientation led to malfeasance at all levels, from the president's office to the classroom.  And he worked to promote student activism.  In response, the university repeatedly tried to discipline him for various contrived infractions, but the repressive measures didn't hold up upon review.  Finally, the university fired Rancourt under the pretext that an unconventional grading system that he used in one class wasn't permitted by the rules, despite its success in getting students to grasp concepts.  His dismissal led to one of the biggest academic freedom cases in Canada.

The university continued to try to silence Rancourt even after it fired him.  As I describe below, the university used public money to finance a private lawsuit against Rancourt for refusing to withdraw his stinging criticism of one of the university's "service intellectuals" (a term that Rancourt uses incisively).

Rancourt's book is more wide-ranging than its title implies, as it covers much more than the fight against racism.  Rancourt argues for student liberation, tries to use biology to explain social hierarchy, discusses how workplace hierarchy is a source of stress and a health hazard, criticizes establishment medicine, describes how the social system works to keep individuals powerless, and discusses the role of collaborators in maintaining the status quo.  He brings independent thinking to each topic, often opening up new lines of thinking about long-standing social problems.  In this way his book is seminal, and one hopes that he and others will follow through on his ideas and see where they lead.

In a theme that pervades the book, Rancourt argues that the structure of society reflects the state of an ongoing battle between oppressive hierarchy and the individual's impulse for freedom and influence.  He says that the hierarchical system needs to disorient and incapacitate us.  It uses brutal methods that exploit the dependence of our self-identities on our social status, over which the bosses exercise much control.

In another theme, Rancourt is highly critical of critical race theory.  He argues that suppressing the expression of racist opinions prevents real, enlightening debate and thereby undermines the individual's political development and the struggle against racism.

The racism issue that Rancourt addresses arose after the student union on his campus publicly reported a pattern of discrimination by the university.  To the embarrassment of the university, the report received much media attention.  In response, the president of the university asked a black assistant professor to publicly "evaluate" the student report.  In just a few days' time, and with university guidance behind the scenes, the professor produced an "independent" public report, which the university posted on its website, questioning the validity of the student findings.

To present as "independent" an evaluation produced in this way would be considered unethical in science, journalism, government, and even advertising.  It would be seen as a gussied-up version of:  "I'm not a racist, am I?"  "Of course not, boss."[1,2]  However, when Rancourt criticized the relationship between the professor and her employer in terms that Malcolm X used to describe similar situations, the university moved to silence him.  It hired a top corporate lawyer to pursue a million dollar lawsuit against Rancourt, in the name of the black professor.

But that effort to silence Rancourt backfired.  Lawyers usually advise litigants to shut up, but Rancourt repeatedly spoke out about the lawsuit and made its details public; the media reported on it.  In the book, Rancourt discusses the suit and critiques the philosophy behind it.

I don't agree with Rancourt on every issue.  For example, he says that it is "self-evident" that social hierarchy is natural, a product of human biology.  If such biological determinism hadn't been discredited by 20th century history, then I would respond by asserting that the ongoing fight for democracy is natural.  And in this I would quote Rancourt himself, for the main thrust of his book is that social hierarchy has to be forced upon people.

But Rancourt's main goal isn't to get you to agree with him on the issues.  Rather, his goal is to provoke you to reject the boring, worn-out framework within which the issues are debated in the mass media and academe, and think independently.  His book worked for me, as I ended up thinking about important issues in new ways.


1.  http://studentseyeview.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/author-jeff-schmidt-campaigns-for-just-treatment-of-professor-joanne-st-lewis/

2.  http://studentseyeview.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/author-jeff-schmidt-apologizes-to-professor-joanne-st-lewis/

Review of Rancourt's book "Fight Against Racism"

"Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism" by Denis G. Rancourt, Stairway Press, 2013, pp. 180.

Book review by Prof. Anatole French [1]


As a legal academic, I have been asked by the author to review his book "Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism". Specifically, I was asked to succinctly describe what is the animal in question. What is this book mainly about?

I struggled with this book because it is densely packed with radical ideas that often sound crazy on first reading. And these ideas often conflicted with my own positions on things. But, in the end, the ideas are explained well enough that I managed to convince myself that I mostly understand what this book is about.

In a nutshell, Rancourt has taken on the dominant paradigm of how a multicultural society can best fight racism. Rancourt's book is a challenge against the policy and legal analysis framework generally known as "critical race theory". Rancourt goes so far as to propose that the legal, policy, and proscriptive instruments which stem from "critical race theory" do more harm than good in fighting racism.

To achieve this, Rancourt places his entire societal analysis within a meta-framework wherein all social interactions, institutions, and struggles are understood to be intercalated within dominance hierarchies. Rancourt explains the biochemical and physiological driving forces which spontaneous create and stabilize societal dominance hierarchies, which in turn determine and are challenged by the individual.

Rancourt shows us that the dominant struggle in society, regarding oppression, is the perpetual struggle between the dominance hierarchy, naturally driven towards fascism, and the individual seeking freedom and meaning. In this struggle, the dominance hierarchy must atomize and destroy the individual, and organizes to do precisely that. Meanwhile some individuals are constantly fighting back. The result is history itself.

Rancourt explains that racism is a most powerful tool in the hierarchy's arsenal, and that to maintain its racist exploitation and domination, the hierarchy needs to select and nurture a class of service intellectuals who play an essential role -- to convince us that things are as good as they can be, or are moving forward, that justice is increasing.

Rancourt dares to advance the blasphemous position that critical race theorists are, for the most part, a facet of the service intellectual class. His argument rests in the nature of the human spirit which must express itself freely or be stifled and die. Rancourt steadfastly argues that absolute freedom of expression always works in favour of more freedom and against dominance; and illustrates the dumbing effect of hierarchy with stunning examples from science and medicine.

The book draws on the ideas of a few key figures, including Malcolm X, Mary Mother Jones, and Paulo Freire. [2]

Enjoy the read!


Endnotes

[1] Guest blogger Professor Anatole French is Professor of Laws, Law Society of Up Canada University, Capital City, Ontario

[2] Although Rancourt never mentions the work of "antiracist essayist" Tim Wise, I felt throughout that if Rancourt met the man in person, they would probably come to blows, or that Rancourt would simply melt into a puddle of depression?

Activist Teacher's radical book about racism

Activist Teacher Denis Rancourt has written a radical ("to the root") book about racism, now available in both paperback and Kindle:

"Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism"

Paperback: 180 pages
Publisher: Stairway Press (January 15, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0985994282
ISBN-13: 978-0985994280
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches

Recent endorsements include:

Denis Rancourt has turned the entire notion of RACISM on its head and at the same time exposes racist acts committed by others to deflect that characterization from sticking at the highest levels of The Academy.  North American civil rights defenders need this book at this time. Rancourt’s deeply incisive Fight Against Racism brings us back to the reality of the struggle, away from the manoeuvring for class advantage and away from the victim’s desire to create illusions of state-given justice. 

—Cynthia McKinney, First African-American woman elected to represent Georgia in the US Congressional House of Representatives and former US presidential candidate (Green Party)

I disagree with several of the positions that this book makes, but I agree that censorship does nothing to combat racism, and that is a very important point that almost nobody except Rancourt dares to say. 

—Jean Bricmont, Professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven and author of Humanitarian Imperialism.

Denis Rancourt is on a journey. In 1810, there was one billion people in the world, today seven billion people, technologically superior but biologically the same, we continue to dehumanize and demonize other people on the road to new wars. Denis Rancourt is asking questions that our youth need to hear.

—Terrance Nelson, Co-Chair, American Indian Movement, Spokesman Okiijida Warrior Society, former five-term Chief of Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation

Recent reader reviews include:

My Review of “Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism” by Denis G. Rancourt:  As a Black woman who is trained to read text through a critical race perspective, I had difficulties reading this book. It wasn’t the book that was the problem rather it was my theoretical framework. Although I agreed with the tenets in this book, I found the read to be a constant battle as I fought my desire to be part of the status quo. It is an incredible book and I highly recommend it.
Hazel Gashoka
BA (Psychology), graduate student in race studies


You don’t have to agree with Denis Rancourt’s detailed and thorough arguments in order to learn from this book. Rancourt presents us with a challenge that human rights activists should seriously consider.
Anat Matar
Senior Lecturer, Tel Aviv University

Media interview with Denis Rancourt::: Academic freedom battle at U of O, pedagogy, activism...

On June 1, 2011, James Corbett of The Corbett Report interviewed Activist Teacher and former tenured physics professor Denis Rancourt in this wide ranging 60-minute radio discussion:

LINK TO RADIO INTERVIEW

The Rancourt case as a major Canadian academic freedom battle, Paulo Freire's pedagogy, the societal, health, and psychological impacts of the dominance hierarchy, story of academic squatting and the activism course, anti-racism used to protect the dominance hierarchy and maintain class advantages...

This interview follows the first (May 2011) Corbett Report interview with Rancourt about global warming science: LINK.

Some essays by Denis Rancourt

How anti-racism protects class structure and dominance hierarchy

By Denis G. Rancourt


I consider that there is a fundamental distinction to be made between (1) racism of belief or opinion of the individual and (2) racism of action (or inaction) in the systemic oppression of others.

There is an extensive and baseless sociological literature advancing that belief or opinion racism of the individual (on its own and largely independent of the hierarchical context) generates racist oppressions of peoples, all the way to genocide.

The latter proposal is used to advance the "obvious solution" that belief or opinion racism of the individual must be continuously eradicated using coercive methods including: propaganda, "education", the legal apparatus, and the state-NGO-civil-society anti-oppression complex.

In other words, the physical reality of dominance hierarchy oppression racism is supposedly "attacked at its root" by social engineering premised on attitude manipulation and a causal original sin within.

Agency and responsibility are turned away from attacking the racist dominance structure directly; by focusing on a false and ancillary "cause", by blaming the internal beliefs of some individuals instead of emphasizing the needed praxis of liberation of all individuals subjected to the dominance hierarchy.

What results is a classic divide and conquer where oppressed victims are divided by race, gender, etc., and where a hierarchy of the oppressions becomes the focus within each stratum of the dominance hierarchy instead of actual fighting back.

What results is that the slaves fight among themselves to ensure that they are oppressed fairly. There is a focus on defining and enforcing inter-slave rules instead of supporting rebellion.

What results is that each group in the hierarchy of the oppressions is further cantonized and embedded into its victimhood while insisting that the solution is for the "less" (or not) oppressed individuals to "recognize their privilege" and to change their ingrained oppressive behaviours.

Following Freire, I believe that the latter approach is a senseless tactic and a harmful diversion:

"[T]he oppressor, who is himself dehumanized because he dehumanizes others, is unable to lead this struggle. However, the oppressed ... are inhibited from waging the struggle for freedom so long as they feel incapable of running the risks it requires. ...

It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. The latter, as an oppressive class, can free neither others nor themselves..."

The problem with disallowing all violence is that it removes violence as a means for self-defense against a violent attacker. To disallow the use of force is to support the oppressor who uses force by unjustly depriving the oppressed of an important instrument of self-defense.

Similarly, much oppression is race-based, where the oppressor class is racially defined. In such circumstances it is a natural defense mechanism for the oppressed to recognize the oppressor on a race basis. Here the oppressed need to be racist as a question of survival and efficient self-defense.

Indeed, it is a natural instinct to learn to recognize dangerous animal species or predatory groups of the same species. Such "racism" is an essential survival reflex. Such an ingrained reflex is practiced and modified by culture. It is part of our humanity. Like violence, it is not in itself and out of context positive or negative. Only the objective circumstances that make racism or violence necessary or advantageous as part of self-defense are objectively negative.

Therefore, to attack belief or opinion racism rather than the oppressors who have created the circumstances for the development of racism is to substitute one effect of the dominance hierarchy for the cause. As a consequence one mostly avoids the necessary (and feared) confrontation against the oppressor.

At a given time and place, whites are either in solidarity or are oppressors. If they are in solidarity then they also must fight the common oppressors. If they are oppressors then they must be fought. It is not an attitudes workshop. It is a praxis of liberation driven by authentic rebellion.

The anti-racism of thought crime racism is a barrier to free expression and to the dialectic interactions that must occur within one's stratum of the dominance hierarchy, within each community. As long as there is the possibility between individuals to challenge, insult, verbally intimidate, attempt to convince, reason, seduce, influence, shame, expose, and so on, without significant objective consequences to physical safety and well-being and without resorting to mobbing then the conditions exist to build community. As soon as one appeals to organized coercion, irrespective of the grand principle being espoused, then one is representing and supporting the hierarchical oppressor and generating a new intra-stratum control structure.

All structures that stabilize and reinforce slave relations while masking or impeding the possibility of rebellion support slavery.

An activism centered on creating a "safe space" by the method of internal organization rather than by pushing out the invader is an activism that supports that all other spaces are not safe. And its "safe spaces" will never be safe or even feel safe.

Community building must be an integral part of liberation. It cannot be an escape from the oppression of the dominance hierarchy. It cannot be an avoidance of liberation, no matter how sophisticated. An internalized and invisible oppression is the most devastating.


Relevant References

"Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Freire, 1970.

"Pacifism as Pathology" by Ward Churchill, 1998.

"How Nonviolence Protects The State" by Peter Gelderloos, 2007.

"Denis Rancourt on anti-hierarchy activism - Nine-part video mini-series"

"On the racism and pathology of left progressive First-World activism" by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.

"On the question of Israel’s “right to exist” and on Israel’s racism" by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.

"Self-Image as Primary Concern and the Road to Good" by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010. (See endnote "NOTE on limits to free expression".)

"On the Need to Embrace Hatred" by Denis G. Rancourt, 2009.


Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He practiced several areas of science (including physics and environmental science) which were funded by a national agency and ran an internationally recognized laboratory. He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals and several social commentary essays. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009. His dismissal case is scheduled to start court hearings in 2011.