Neither Sane nor Reasonable

Haven’t been able to concentrate this week. Too worried about whether Tintin in the Congo is racist or not.

For those of you who have missed it, the Campaign for Racial Equality has called for the book ‘Tintin in the Congo’ to be removed from sale, due to its depiction of Africans. Borders has agreed to pull the book; WH Smiths continues to sell it, and sales have increased by something like 400% on Amazon.

As is traditional in these circumstances, a war of words has broken out between pro- and anti-PC types on the internets. Examples can be found here. To these people, I say: ‘It is neither sane nor reasonable to equate a 70 year old comic book with the war in Iraq or the Danish ‘Mohammed’ cartoons.’

The book itself does appear pretty unpleasant, but I think it might be worth suggesting to the CRE that they get their priorities in order. There are greater threats to our society than old cartoons. Kicking up a storm has simply increased the numbers of people buying the book, and made you look childish and petty. It is not possible to strip the whole of pre-1950 literature of racism, and some would argue that it is not desirable either. You can’t learn about past attitudes by banning cultural artefacts.

On the other hand, I find the motives of the people who have rushed out to buy the book to be somewhat more than dubious, and it is worth pointing out to some of the angrier libertarians on the Telegraph site that asking a chainstore not to stock a Tintin book isn’t actually an assault on your civil liberties: the right to read books depicting Africans as monkeys is not an inalienable one.

I blame the internet; years ago, this would have been a minor squabble. Nowadays, hoards of angry men (almost always men) stalk the internet, searching desperately for something to shout about. To quote Harry Hutton, ‘They started angry, and then worked backwards from that looking for something to be angry about’.

Mark Steel identified the beginnings of what the right would call ‘political correctness’ (or ‘fairness’) in the 80s, as leftist councils were neutered by Thatcher’s government. Since they no longer had any power to change things that actually affect people’s lives, they began spending their money on adverts that said ‘Are you a racist? You’d be a nicer person if you weren’t’. I suspect similar reasoning lies behind the CRE’s decision to protest against Tintin.

To sum up, this is a fucking non-issue if ever I saw one. No, I wouldn’t trust someone who rushed out to buy Tintin in Congo, and I don’t think it should be prominently displayed; at the same time, I’m not going to be picketing Smiths. I’m not sitting on the fence – I just don’t have time in my life to get worked up about this.