Irish telecoms billionaire Denis O’Brien – formerly of Cork, nowadays of Davos – has made headlines in recent weeks with his luxury-belief demand that Britain pay countless sums in reparations for slavery towards various Caribbean islands where he now pursues his business interests, calling the slave trade “a Holocaust that went on for 300 years”. It can’t have been a very efficient one, then. Why not dip into your own deep pockets and hand out the poverty-stricken locals some free cash of your own if you feel that strongly about it, Denis? The Irish once owned some slave colonies in the Caribbean too, you know, not just their evil imperial overlords from London.
O’Brien’s arguments may be poor, but at least he attempts to justify his petition within the superficially logical frameworks of morality, justice, economics and history, albeit all of a rather twisted kind. Other reparations champions today, however, prefer instead to invoke that all-time magic word ‘science’ to validate their pleas, ‘science’ being automatically taken by many who hear it to mean ‘objective truth’, even in areas, like reparations, where it has no rightful application or relevance.
Should we be surprised to hear of such a dismal development? In these days of extreme wokery, those remaining morally sane Westerners are often heard to complain that “it’s like we’re living in Soviet Russia”. This is now even so with our science, not just our politics.
As I found when writing my new book Hitler’s & Stalin’s Misuse of Science: When Science Fiction Was Turned Into Science Fact by the Nazis and the Soviets (just released now in e-book format – you can read an extract in the Daily Sceptic here) there is great potential for ideologically motivated zealots to abuse scientific theories and data for their own partisan political ends – ideologically motivated zealots like reparations-hungry modern black extremists, for example. Scarily, many such persons today are unknowingly following in the direct footsteps of the USSR’s most infamous pseudo-scientist, the Ukraine-born biologist and agronomist Trofim Lysenko (1898-1976).
Lysenko believed in an idea known as Lamarckism, after the French evolutionary theorist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), who felt the qualities acquired by an organism in life could automatically be inherited by their offspring – to simplify comically, imagine a female bodybuilder spending so long pumping iron that she gives birth to a fully-grown Arnold Schwarzenegger, or a Jewish baby being born without a foreskin (that this does not happen to Jewish infants has actually been seriously advanced as an argument against Lamarckism’s validity!)
Fields of Dreams
Lysenko applied Lamarckism to agriculture, devising methods of so-called “vernalisation” for crop-seeds, deliberately exposing them to low temperatures and moisture prior to sowing. Then, surviving seeds could potentially be made hardier and able to grow in harsher conditions, like in frozen Siberia. Although vernalisation is a somewhat genuine phenomenon, Lysenko’s specific overblown and misguided methods ultimately proved overblown and unworkable – but Stalin liked the sound of them, so they were used across the USSR anyway, leading to mass famine.
As I have recently shown elsewhere, other Leftists (and Vladimir Putin today) saw in vernalisation the potential to create their long-desired Homo Sovieticus – a brand-new, superior species of “New Soviet Man”, or Russian Master-Race. Improve human beings via Marxism in one generation and, by Lysenko’s logic, their children should be born bearing these same innate improvements too, like Muscle-Baby Arnie, until eventually we ended up with an entire race of socialist supermen.
Following Stalin’s death, Lysenko soon fell from favour, but today something curious has begun to occur: like Marxism itself, Lysenkoism is suddenly back in fashion in the West under a new name, only this time (mis-)applied along dubious racial grounds (as is ethnically-motivated fascism, in some ways – see my other extracts here and here).
Distressed Genes
In today’s increasingly Soviet America, the newly-coined field of epigenetics (the quasi-Lysenkoist idea a baby can inherit at least some of its parents’ or grandparents’ life-acquired characteristics, albeit not their body-building muscles or lack of foreskins) has recently been embraced by certain malcontented black people under the rubric of an entirely imaginary condition called ‘Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome’ (PTSS).
For a black person in America actually to have been a slave, they would now have to be very old indeed, even older than Bill Cosby, as the practice officially ended in 1865 – I think there was some kind of Civil War fought over the issue or something. So, for them to be able to claim compensation for something that never actually happened to them, a new line of logic has to be brought in instead: re-enter Lysenkoism disguised as epigenetics.
Rather than what did not kill them only making them stronger, as with Lysenko’s frost-exposed seeds, say some reparations-hungry black persons today, what did not kill them has in fact only made them weaker – Nietzsche in reverse. The end result of this claim? “Science now says we deserve compensation!”
The key book in popularising this entitled howl was 2005’s Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing by clinical psychologist and (inevitably) qualified social worker Dr. Joy DeGruy, whose very title sounds like the Platonic Ideal of any given week’s featured title on Oprah’s Book Club. But what do this text and others like it actually say?
Vernalised Victimhood
Recent studies have purported to demonstrate pre-natal stress can be transmitted from black American mothers to their babies in the womb, thereby altering their genes, stress levels which activists attribute to lower incomes and living standards than those enjoyed by the average white American.
As liberated black slaves were released into a prejudiced world post-1865, and their descendants endured discrimination and poverty for several generations afterwards, this allegedly led to a cumulative build-up of what might be termed “anti-vernalisation”, with the 150-plus years of accumulated stress having a deleterious effect upon the current generation’s inherently traumatised genes.
As slaves also endured poor diets, their babies and their babies’ babies were born not with super-genes, like Lysenko’s much-vaunted crop-based super-seeds, but with weak genes, like those of that archetypal black pseudo-victim, the lifelong petty-criminal drug-addict George Floyd. Black U.S. babies are, even now, more likely to have lower birth-weights, causing enhanced risk of cardiovascular problems later in life. But why?
Because, we are told, during their original passage to America, chained Africans in the holds of slave-ships typically suffered conditions like diarrhoea and fever, which deplete the body of salt. Thus, the slaves who survived tended to be those with genes favouring salt-retention. The trouble is that having lots of salt in the body increases hypotension, so today’s African-Americans are more likely to suffer high blood-pressure than others, meaning they are still suffering the long-term epigenetic effects of slavery.
Babes in the ’Hood
While disputed, some such findings are not wholly implausible. Yet they are then wildly overextended to claim such poor epigenetic inheritance also ‘explains’ phenomena like the proven higher violent crime-rates of black neighbourhoods, or the lower educational achievements of African-Americans as a whole compared to most other races; an alternative colloquial name for PTSS is “Hood Disease”.
To critics (e.g. me), this line of thought has several severe problems:
- Firstly, it patronisingly robs black people of any sense of moral agency or responsibility for their actions, treating them like perpetual children and allowing the feckless and criminal amongst their number to forever pose as helpless victims of genetics.
- Secondly, and obviously, not all black people are weak, violent, criminal, dim, sickly or poor and to claim they are ironically seems somewhat racist.
- Finally, the PTSS hypothesis presumes black people have never interbred with whites, Hispanics or any other races in America, thus mixing their ‘traumatised’ genes with the ‘healthy’ ones of others. It also presumes that all black Americans are the descendants of slaves. Neither of which proposition is even remotely true.
But never mind all that. The good news for eager black financial chancers is that, by abusing Lynsenko-style epigenetics in this way, their spurious demand to receive billions of dollars’ worth of collective compensation for something that didn’t even happen to them is magically raised to the level of objective science, not mere partisan desire, and thus rendered entirely above debate – you know, just like climate-change catastrophism and transgenderism.
Slaves to Their Own Worst Natures
Plus, malign black Marxist groups can further argue a non-existent ‘white supremacy gene’ is also passed down epigenetically from generation of white Hitlers to generation of white Hitlers. If whites inherit white supremacy, and blacks inherit fear of white people, it follows black citizens will be epigenetically terrified of white cops, who will in turn be naturally pre-programmed to shoot them dead or kneel on their necks at the drop of a hat. Therefore, you must defund the police, science proves it.
Inevitably, these neo-Lysenkoists have their useful idiot allies amongst the U.S. political class. In California, two recent State resolutions have passed pandering to such radical sentiments, partly on the fake grounds that epigenetics proves slavery and white racism have left blacks with “transgenerational trauma” and “molecular scars adhering to our DNA”, a line sceptics have aptly dubbed “a new form of militant bio-power”.
And if you disagree and happen by some sad misfortune of birth to be Caucasian, perhaps you too have inherited the white supremacy gene from your slave-owning ancestors (even if, like most white people, they didn’t actually have any). Remember: to disagree will only be to deny the science, in Al Sharpton’s America equally as much as in Josef Stalin’s Russia. I’m denying it anyway. So should you.
Edited and extracted from the author’s new book Hitler’s & Stalin’s Misuse of Science: When Science Fiction Was Turned Into Science Fact by the Nazis and the Soviets out now in hardback (Pen & Sword/Frontline Books, ISBN: 9781399073158) and e-book.
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More cognitive dissonance to distract from the present slave trading. Amazing how these people do not notice the camps of illegals in their own towns and the vans that pick them up for a days work.
I must be suffering from Post Traumatic Serf Syndrome. My family roots go back to centuries of serfdom in rural Essex. Give me money.
My paternal grandfather was descended from a line of woodcutters and charcoal producers in Gloucestershire who worked in the Forest of Dean. I claim reparations from the Forestry Commission for appropriating my ancestors’ estovers, for forcing them into slave labour and for carbon pollution. Finally, my bodily shape is far from that of Schwarzenegerian lumberjack.
Yes, some in most average families, miners etc. here, one died in a post-pub fight, can I sue the brewers too?
On a more serious note the current Climate Catastrophe luxury beliefs are leading to a real catastrophe in Africa (and elsewhere) with women cooking over dung, wood and charcoal fires and dying early, while their husbands and sons cut down the forests for charcoal. They are denied piped fresh water, sanitation, light to study, safe food and medicine storage and all the thing we consider normal. IMF and World Bank will not finance hydrocarbon power stations but Germany can buy coal from Botswana. Some rumblings fortunately against this post-colonial eugenicist horror with nuclear power stations being built, although the power stations are provided by China and Russia unfortunately.
Just think about how all that carbon impacted on your genetic makeup.
Don’t forget the Roman slave traders, or the Vikings and Irish.
Reparations are just another hopeful scam by certain people to get money for nothing. They seem to demonstrate that some types ofmpeople are genetically lazy and just want free stuff.
They actually owe us for the serious amount of money the UK spent on anti slavery operations, which lasted until the 1960s, believe it nor not.
Developing world only has itself to blame for its troubles.
The irish raided the west coast of Wales ,Cornwall and the North East of England for a century or more taking 1000s of white, mainly teenage slaves, usually male, back to ireland! St Partick was one of them!!!
So ireland can damn well pay reparations back to Britain too!!
Mr O, fecking Brien is a fecking hypocrite!
The Irish raiders – sea pirates – were called the Scoti by the Romans.
The Scoti were deterred from.Britannia once garrisoned by the Romans during their occupation, but not from Hibernia as the Roman province did not extend that far North.
The Scoti raided North Britain and eventually colonised it, giving that place its name ‘Scotland’ and exterminating quite a few of the indigenous to make room.
The Irish too have very selective memories.
Selective memories indeed!
Thanks for the full info JXB
I wonder what the cut off date for reparations is? Somewhere around the beginning of the colonialists era I’ll wager!…Romans,Greeks,Huns, even Ottamans seem not to be included in the cut off date for paying the reparations! And lets not forget Mansa Masu, a black African slave trader who became know as the richest man that ever lived, by selling his own people as slaves to the Arabic rich!
Maybe they treated their slaves far better than the colonialists bast#£ds
The Ottomans cut the nuts off their African slaves. So no-one survives in today’s Turkey or the Middle East or Balkans who can put in a claim.
I think you mean deterred from Scotland (or Dalriada?) Hibernia was / is Ireland.
Is Brazil going to pay reparations for slavery? And to whom? Slavery was only finally abolished in that country in 1888. It was the Princess Imperial, Donna Isabel, who actively promoted and signed two abolition laws when she was regent.
Reparations are paid by the defeated. Germany had to pay reparations for losing the Great War. The financial supervision involved by greater powers reduced Germany to the sort of humiliating semi-colonial status of Persia and Egypt in the 19th century. China had to pay reparations for losing the Boxer Rebellion.
Still, if paying money to assuage resentment turns out to be like trying to satisfy thirst by drinking seawater, we’ll all go mad together. If dollars are to be paid, it would be appropriate that they be East Caribbean, Barbadian, Bahamian, and Trinidadian. After all, it would be insulting to pay in US dollars or sterling, the ‘white’ currencies that were used to buy slaves.
Could melt down the Benin Bronzes and pay reparations in bronze/copper manillas perhaps?
Reparations are paid by the defeated. Germany had to pay reparations for losing the Great War.
One of my pet theories is that these people keep calling for reparations without even knowing what that is because Germany actually paid reparations for the first world war until about 2010. To them, it’s just money which fallls from the sky because of some distant and more than half-forgotten entitlement. German money, at least some of it, stopped falling sky at about the time the rise of woke commenced and without another war with Germany, exceedingly unlikely to happen anytime soon, it won’t start falling from the sky again. Hence, other sources of entitlement money – reparations – must be found and tapped into.
“… calling the slave trade “a Holocaust that went on for 300 years”.
African slave trade predated the arrival of Europeans by over one thousand years. It is estimated Arab traders bought 17 million Africans from African kings and chiefs, to sell in the Sultanates of the Middle East. Male slaves were castrated to prevent a Black population developing and outnumbering the Arabs, and to prevent inter-racial propagation.
European traders bought their slaves from Arab traders and African chiefs and kings. A ‘small’ detail overlooked by the gobby people who exclusively blame Europeans who bought them, rather than the Black people who sold them. And don’t recognise slavery was and is endemic in Africa.
As for the hogwash about genetics, it is so absurd it does not deserve informed comment in response.
A holocaust is the elimination of an entire race or nation. Killing slaves would be counter-productive for the slave owners. It is the slave traders who were responsible for most of the deaths.
You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to get a good view of the varying intellignces of certain races. It isn’t just racial of course it can be cultural, admittedly difficult to separate from the racial. Indians have a remarkable facility with language and you can easily understand why when you look at the majesty and complexity of Sanskrit. For me it is irrelevant I don’t really care if the person I meet is more or less intelligent than me and whether that might be a racial issue. If he is more intelligent then good he can sort me out. If he isn’t then that’s fine as well you can still communicate on a human level regardless of ability or preoccupation. These things are actually very superficial.
Epigenetics is simply the study of gene regulation, or to put it another way which proteins will be produced in which cells where and when. It is an important science, but like all science in today’s world it can be politicised.
Pre-natal stress cannot alter a baby’s genes, but for the occasional mutation they are pretty much fixed at conception. Even if stress were to alter a baby’s gene expression, that would usually normalise when the situation improves, and it would not affect that child’s sex cells. It is not possible for epigenetic changes to be passed down the generations.
As usual cultural problems are being passed off as somebody else’s fault.
Great piece, but… “ The trouble is that having lots of salt in the body increases hypotension, so today’s African-Americans are more likely to suffer high blood-pressure than others, meaning they are still suffering the long-term epigenetic effects of slavery.” Should be hypertension.
O’Brien sounds like a right nasty piece of work.