If speaking with Honesty makes you Brave, you know you are living in a Totalitarian State
by Pat, M4 Monologue Blog
28 November 2010
Anneli Botes, winner of the 2010 K Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award in the Afrikaans classification (3 sections: Sepedi, Afrikaans and English), is the bravest writer I have heard of in a long long time. When “…asked by Rapport newspaper to name the people she doesn’t like, she paused for a few seconds and answered: “Black people.”" (Source)
Well that’s pretty blunt.
Not much symbolism, assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia or any other of the million other literary devices available to the budding author there at all.
For her efforts in honesty Die Burger Oos “…fired her as a columnist.” “Her publisher, Tafelberg, an imprint of NB Publishers, distanced itself from her remarks. “We believe that all our authors are entitled to their own views. In this case the publisher does not share the author’s view,” NBP’s Riana Barnard said.” It’s certainly clear that Die Burger and Tafelberg are not admirers of honesty, which is as expected one would have thought, from a modern newspaper and publishing house. After all, if you thought that the purpose of journalism was to seek out truth or that literature was the domain of honest insight into the human condition then you must have been living under a rock.
But Mrs Botes remains unrepentant:“I don’t want to back pedal over my comments. It’s the truth,” she told the Mail & Guardian.
“A friend of mine had a saying: sometimes you chop wood and you don’t consider where the splinters will land.” But she added hastily: “Maybe it was impulsive … and maybe it’s unfair to put all black people under one umbrella. Naturally, there are a lot of black people that I like very much. But I certainly meant what I said.”
Now that, is guts!
And the honest hits don’t stop there. Mrs Botes bludgeons the reader with her honesty, like a White victim of Black crime getting bludgeoned to death (warning: the link is graphic):Crime lies at the heart of Botes’s racial paranoia. “I’m scared,” she said. “In my daily life there’s no one else that I feel threatened by except black people. If a courier comes to my door and he’s white, coloured or Indian, I’d have no problem inviting him in for a glass of water. But I would feel threatened by a black man.” Botes said she would also never appoint a black gardener.
She said that two years ago her laptop containing a manuscript was stolen while she was asleep. She woke up when a torch flashed across her face. A neighbour was murdered.
“You tell me what the face of crime is in South Africa. If you hear the window shatter and confront the perpetrator, who do you expect that crook to be?” she asked. What about trying to conquer racial stereotypes?
“I don’t have the means to get my head around that of a black man,” she said. “I can’t understand that. As a writer, I write what I see, what I experience and put it into context. It isn’t my job to be politically correct.”
If ever a writer or a journalist needed a definition of what their historic and traditional role is then you won’t find better than Mrs Botes’ definition: “As a writer, I write what I see, what I experience and put it into context. It isn’t my job to be politically correct.”
But publisher’s are averse to honesty, even should it reap great profits, as Steve Sailer notes in the instance of “Thilo Sarrazin’s million selling work of statistical analysis, Germany Abolishes Itself. You might think that the New York publishing industry would be abuzz over rumors of plans for how to put out a similar product to obtain megasales. But all I hear is crickets chirping.”
The Sound of Silence is the modern response to all that ’60s turmoil. Dynamic Silence:Dynamic Silence was invented by Rabbi Feinberg of the American Jewish Committee in 1947 as a method of closing off all access to the public media – and thus the larger culture – for people or organizations deemed to have an unacceptable point of view. In spite of minor changes and adaptations, it can still be understood as being comprised of two parts. In the first part, unfavored individuals are denied unmediated exposure to the public. In the second part, only negative aspects of the unfavored individuals are reported. This starts a downward spiral of de-legitimization in the public eye in which the harder unfavored individuals try to get public exposure, the more negative and unflattering that exposure becomes until, finally, nobody wants to be associated with the ideas of beliefs of the unfavored individuals.
In a world where speaking with honesty is abolished or punished should it break through the institutional barriers, new media like Blogs and Web Forums are making their way. But even in this world fear is all pervasive. Your blog could be here today gone tomorrow all on the back of an anonymous complaint to the blogging Blue Shirts who’ll disappear you in a second. That fear is so pervasive that even a respected blogger when posting on the subject the Jew Tim Wise, who calls for the eradication of White people, refuses and denies any racial aspect to the story. As Mark Richardson says:Because I regard an anti-Semitic politics as leading people into a political cul-de-sac.
Bob, I’ll let your comment stand (despite not liking your “visceral hatred” remark), but I’m not going to enter into a debate on this issue or allow such a debate to develop on this thread.
Imagine posting on the subject of racial hate against Whites, and then refusing to discuss the racial aspect of the very person making that racial attack against the Whites. What’s the point? What drives that fear? Is it the possible loss of blogging links, the currency of the blogger in this new form of media? Who could really know for sure. One thing is certain, honesty comes at a premium.
And that premium is far too great for the modern Western artist, as Ferdinand Bardamu notes in his excellent review of modern novelists:The acquisition of publishing houses by larger media corporations has worked to kill innovation and make everything safe and marketable. Novelists themselves have to remain safe and marketable if they want to be published. There’s no room for the characters of yesteryear who made writing interesting. If the womanizing spendthrift Lord Byron was writing today, for instance, no editor would touch him. Truly talented writers who upset popular shibboleths such as Maddox and Tucker Max had to go the indie route in order to get their books published at all.
We can make excuses for artists, for they are not artists at all. The modern artist chooses the safety and media adulation for preserving tigers instead of men. As Johnny Dissidence says “For the SPWL crowd, the much coveted display of extreme outgroup loyalty doesn’t have to even extend to culturally/ethnically alien people.” But we cannot make excuses for bloggers, honesty must be the preserve of our domain. Yet in Mrs Botes we have the archetypal artist going where many a blogger fears to tread. Yet even so, she must for practical reasons, emmigrate to culturally dying lands to live out her retirement years with some modicum of safety. Mrs Botes:“…and her husband are planning to move to England as soon as he goes on pension. Her children already live there.
“Here in Port Elizabeth, I wouldn’t go to a deserted beach alone. It’s simply too dangerous. The English villages where my kids live don’t even have streetlights and I would walk there in the middle of the night without fear,” she said.
“Just last week I read a piece about an 84-year-old woman attacked in her house in Durbanville. I don’t want to be 84 years old and attacked in South Africa in my walker. I want emotional freedom, freedom from fear. That’s very important to me.”
Freedom from fear, freedom from racial fear, will not be bought by silence and silencing. It can only be purchased through honesty.
As the Christ Himself said:If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me? (John 18:23)
» » » » [M 4 Monologue]
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I don't like black people, says South African novelist
White Afrikaner novelist's comments about black people spark furious debate in South Africa
David Smith in Johannesburg
guardian.co.uk,
Monday 29 November 2010 20.35 GMT
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An award-winning writer has provoked fierce debate in South Africa after candidly saying that she does not like black people.
Annelie Botes, a leading Afrikaner novelist, said she would invite a white, coloured (mixed race) or an Indian man in for a drink, but would "feel threatened by a black man".
The comments, quoted in South African newspapers, have caused a storm in a country still sensitive about race relations 16 years after the end of apartheid. Botes claims she has received 1,000 supportive emails but there was also widespread condemnation of her views.
The row began when Rapport, an Afrikaans paper, asked her to name people she does not like. Her reply: "Black people." Soon after, she was sacked as a columnist for another newspaper.
Then South Africa's Mail & Guardian contacted the author, whom it says is probably the most popular contemporary female writer in Afrikaans, the language of the descendents of Dutch and other European settler farmers. Botes recently won the Afrikaans category of the K Sello Duiker Memorial Literary award for her novel, Thula-thula, which tackles child abuse and incest.
The 53-year-old stood by her original comments. "I'm scared," she told the paper. "In my daily life there's no one else that I feel threatened by except black people. If a courier comes to my door and he's white, coloured or Indian, I'd have no problem inviting him in for a glass of water. But I would feel threatened by a black man."
She added that two years ago her laptop, containing a manuscript, was stolen while she was asleep and a neighbour was murdered. "You tell me what the face of crime is in South Africa. If you hear the window shatter and confront the perpetrator, who do you expect that crook to be?"
Asked about challenging racial stereotypes, she replied: "I don't have the means to get my head around that of a black man. I can't understand that.
"As a writer, I write what I see, what I experience and put it into context. It isn't my job to be politically correct."
Botes also said she would never appoint a black gardener. She is planning to emigrate to Britain, where her children already live, as soon her husband goes on a pension.
She added: "Here in Port Elizabeth, I wouldn't go to a deserted beach alone. It's simply too dangerous. The English villages where my kids live don't even have streetlights and I would walk there in the middle of the night without fear."Her interview triggered dozens of comments on the Mail & Guardian's website, including one claiming to be one from Botes herself.
The article had chosen to "emphasise the negative", she wrote, and contained "nothing about my anger regarding the government closing down thousands of farm schools in remote areas and thus depriving black children from an education.
"Nothing about how I as scribe of a village church stood up against the white elders because they treated the church cleaner like scum, and how I lost my job because of my persistent view. Nothing about how I admitted that whites committed unthinkable monstrosities against blacks under the old regime. Or about my acknowledgement that the old government were thieves too. Or how we as whites tend to humiliate "incompetent" blacks at cash points. Or about me having no problem sharing my table and toilet with a black person."
But there was criticism from other readers. Fungayi Dzvinyangoma posted: "Someone needs to tell this bigoted woman that there are a lot of black people in England. However, if you get burgled in Britain the face is most likely to be white. She seems to forget the history of South Africa so quickly which could explain why the blacks have to resort to criminality. She benefited from state criminality for decades."
There was support for Botes, however, from a user called George S. "I think the lady should be applauded for her courage in speaking out instead of being vilified. Perhaps she only expresses fears that many whites harbour. Perhaps she generalised this issue but then I say these things work both ways."
Despite Nelson Mandela's efforts at reconciliation, racial tensions in South Africa surfaced earlier this year when white supremacist Eugene Terre'Blanche was hacked to death in his bed, allegedly by black workers on his farm. But the majority of crime victims are poor and black. Last week Brandon Huntley, a South African who argued that whites are targeted by black criminals, lost his refugee status in Canada and now faces a new hearing.
Marga Collings, a manager at Botes's publisher NB, said today: "We believe that all our authors are entitled to their own views.
"In this case, the publisher does not share the author's view."
Botes herself declined to give further interviews. "I regret to say: No further comments," she wrote in an email to the Guardian.
» » » » [Guardian.UK]
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