A Great day in Belfast!

In most of the coverage of the Belfast uprising the word ‘racist’ crops up several times, but however the Romanians were treated they were not subjected to racism. The evictions were not racist because men can not be racist in their own country. Whatever a man thinks of foreigners is fine and dandy as long as he thinks it on his turf not the foreigners’. In fact the attempt to make a thought crime of a native group’s attitude to foreigners (which clearly is hostile and oppressive), because by definition it is ethnically focused, is itself racist.

When Alexander Solzhenitsyn was in exile in Switzerland, the editor of a Zurich newspaper took him to a local election meeting to observe ‘Western democracy’ in action. When some of the speakers argued against granting voting rights to guest-workers the editor was horrified and apologised to Solzhenitsyn for the ‘intolerance’ of the speakers. But Solzhenitsyn saw nothing wrong. If those people wanted to keep their country for themselves who could object? It was their country, wasn’t it? It was the editor who was intolerant; intolerant of a people’s wish to remain distinct from others. Now that’s racism, and no greater racism exists, surely?

The zero-tolerance policy of the rebels of Belfast toward that form of racism should be emulated by all peoples.