Being on the nose – the perils of minority

Where people within a community behave differently as a group within that community, you can get friction. The Gypsies represent a paradigm case, but history offers many other examples. Race and religion are the main drivers – say, black and white, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Christian – but the friction can have many drivers.

Internal religious fights can be worse than those between faiths. Apostasy is one thing – heresy is something else again. The hereafter may be on the line. And the friction can manifest itself in different ways.

Acceptance or rejection?

If the members of the minority have to behave and be seen to behave differently to others in their community, are they not satisfied with what the rest do? Are they in substance rejecting the community at large?

Believing in your faith or tribal connection does not warrant your being seen to demean or despise that of others. But there is a real risk of deadly antagonism where a group in an otherwise tolerant society believes it has an exclusive answer.

This is how Rome saw the early Christians. The pagans were very tolerant when it came to religion – their own, and that of others. But the Christians were fanatics who believed that they had the exclusive answer in the way of the Cross. The Romans were insulted in their majesty, and in their civilised tolerance. The Christians were in truth zealots, even more so than the obscure and singularly distinct tribe that spurned them, and no government likes to deal with zealots.

This leads to a much deeper and slippery trap for a minority.

The fear of combination

Very few in government welcome people coming together to review, comment on, or act in response to government. Milton said that ‘fear of change perplexes monarchs’, but monarchs are in truth aware of the trade union motto that strength comes from unity. And this just gets worse when the true believers shun rather than court their home-grown neighbours. Gibbon was caustic.

By embracing the faith of the Gospel, the Christians incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable offence. They dissolved the sacred ties of custom and education, violated the religious institutions of their country, and presumptuously despised whatever their fathers had believed as true or reverenced as sacred.

These zealots were following the teaching of a holy man executed under Roman law – and their numbers and fanaticism were bound to be seen to be threatening. Here is Gibbon again.

Roman policy viewed with the utmost jealousy and distrust any association among its subjects; and the privileges of private corporations, though formed for the most harmless or beneficial purposes, were bestowed with a very sparing hand. The religious assemblies of the Christians, who had separated themselves from the public worship, appeared of a much less innocent nature: they were illegal in their principle, and in their consequences might become dangerous; nor were the emperors conscious that they violated the laws of justice, when, for the peace of society, they prohibited those secret and sometimes nocturnal meetings.

Some may be reminded of the Freemasons in Europe at the time of Die Zauberflote; people of colour in the American South may be reminded of a truly evil association given to ‘secret and sometimes nocturnal meetings’.

The embryonic English Labour movement was boosted by a decision of the House of Lords in 1901. In the Taff Vale Case, the English courts held that at common law, a trade union could be liable for loss of profits to employers caused by strike action by members of the union. Although that may now look to be a case of class bias, the action for damages for breach of contract had to be dealt with by parliament if unions were to retain a workable right to strike.

But a more stunning example of the fear of combination can be found in France after the fall of the Bastille. Some workers decided to press for better rewards. Workers used strike federations (coalitions) to get a share of improved trade. This led to the Loi Le Chapelier which in 1791 prohibited all such associations Well, whatever else may be said of 14 July 1789, nothing could have happened without associations. The historian J M Thompson mordantly remarked:

It forbids corporate action, in the name of liberty. It denies it to all alike, in the name of equality. It prohibits any appeal to force, in the name of fraternity.

That is the history of the world – after a huge fight, children win control of the tree house, and then slam the trap-door shut to stop the next hungry lot claiming their share. How could you square slavery with the Rights of Man? How could the Declaration of Independence say that all men were created equal?

And traditionally, the targets of such laws against combinations were directed at the workers rather than the employers. The first economist, Adam Smith, would have none of it.

We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters [employers]; though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals.

Those remarks caused me to ask if The Wealth of Nations was banned in some think tanks.

Divided loyalties

The Bible says that no man can serve two masters (Matthew 6 24). It is hard to think of any ruler who does not subscribe very firmly to that view.

Catholics in England after Henry VIII had to explain how they could be loyal to the king or queen of England as their monarch and the head of the Church England, and at the same time owe allegiance to the head of the Universal Church in Rome – who happened to regard the English monarchs as heretics.

The question that had been fraught became unanswerable after the Armada. There is little doubt that the Spaniards would have burnt Queen Elizabeth I at the stake; and then along came Guy Fawkes.

Charles I tested the boundaries, and paid for it with his life. He was not Catholic. James II was, and he went out of his way to provoke every part of the Anglican Establishment in a way that led to his losing the crown and to a change in the English Constitution after the Glorious Revolution. It was, and is, impossible for a Catholic to be the head of state of England – or, now, Australia.

That may all look old hat now, but any attempt to revoke that law – which is entirely repugnant to our general laws – may not be well advised.

The extreme peril of heresy

It is sufficient to set out lengthy citations from Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Reason Alone.

Now, when, as usually happens, a church proclaims itself to be the one church universal (even though it is based upon faith in a special revelation which, being historical can never be required of everyone), he who refuses to acknowledge its (peculiar) ecclesiastical faith is called by it ‘an unbeliever’ and is hated wholeheartedly; he who diverges therefrom only in path (in non-essentials) is called ‘heterodox’ and is at least shunned as a source of infection. But he who avows allegiance to this church and; diverges from it on essentials of its faith (namely, regarding the practices connected with it), is called, especially if he spreads abroad his false belief, a ‘heretic’ and, as a rebel, such a man is held more culpable than a foreign foe, is expelled from the church with anathema (like that which the Romans pronounced on him who crossed the Rubicon against the Senate’s will) and is given over to all the gods of hell. Exclusive correctness of belief in matters of ecclesiastical faith claimed by the church’s teachers or heads is called orthodoxy. This could be sub-divided into ‘despotic’ (brutal) or ‘liberal’ orthodoxy ….

We have noted that a church dispenses with the most important mark of truth, namely, a rightful claim to universality, when it bases itself upon a revealed faith. For such a faith, being historical (even though it be far more widely disseminated and more completely secured for remotest posterity through the agency of Scripture) can never be universally communicated so as to produce conviction.

For heresy, thousands upon thousands of human beings who were perceived to be deviant would be executed by the followers of a holy man who was executed for just that sin against God.

Imported strife

The conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Great Britain was made far worse by events in Ireland. The contempt felt for indigenous Irish people in England was originally a contempt for a race. It all began before the Reformation split the Universal Church – with, say, the Statutes of Kilkenny of 1366. But over time, the division came to be driven by religious differences. And it became even more vicious because the stakes were so much higher.

In a migrant nation like Australia, where still about thirty per cent of the population was born overseas, there is a risk that people coming from foreign regions of conflict may bring that conflict here with them and so infect the people at large. Something like that appeared in the fifties when people coming from the Balkans brought with them the products of centuries of conflict in their old homes.

But far worse for Australia, and so much more lasting, was the conflict between Ireland and England, and Catholic and Protestant. It flared in an ugly and damaging way during World War I, and after World War II it was fundamental to the split in one of two parties in a two-party system. The result marred our politics for a generation. The problem then dissipated, largely because of the decline of religion.

There does not appear to be much risk of imported strife now, but if a group owes or expresses some form of allegiance to a foreign power, its members will need to tread warily if representatives of that power turn publicly against an Australian government. That may well call for a test of allegiance.

Scapegoats

Migrants are usually in a minority, and so become prime candidates for the role of scapegoats.

In Ancient Greece there was a practice or rite of casting out someone like a beggar or cripple or criminal in the face of some natural threat or disaster. There are traces of a far older tradition in Syria when a goat would be invoked in the purification rites for the king’s wedding – a she-goat was driven out into the waste with a silver bell on her neck. More recently, but before the Greek custom developed, the Old Testament, Leviticus 16:8, said that ‘And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for Azazel.’ The goat of the Lord was sacrificed, and the high priest by confession transferred the sins of himself and the people to the goat that was permitted to escape in the wilderness – where its fate would depend on what sort of predators it may have to contend with. This was a form of atonement. The goat that escaped became the ‘scapegoat’. The traditions or rites might be said to prefigure the role of the Son of God being offered up to redeem mankind by atoning for its sins. A scapegoat is one who is punished for the sins of others. This ancient Middle Eastern rite has become a universal custom involving people rather than goats.

But the term has got much wider than that – a scapegoat now is not just one that has to answer for the sins of others; it has to answer for all the problems and failings of what might be called the host people.

The worst example occurred in Nazi Germany. The war had been lost only because of the failings of some generals and because Socialists and Communists had stabbed the nation in the back. Once the German people got released from the hold of these forces of evil, it could realize its potential for the first time, and nothing could stand in its way. The German character was not just innately good – it was superior; therefore, the reason for any failings had to be found elsewhere.

You can see that now in what are called ‘populist’ politicians in the U K, Europe, and the U S. Migrants become the source of all evil. The scapegoat is the natural first base for a weak and insecure person who is a moral coward.

It is also the kind of sloppy thinking that attracts insecure people, edgy commentators and journalists, and weak governments.

The threat to the status quo

The Gypsies may have been seen as a threat to civil order, but they were hardly a threat to the status quo. A minority needs a lot more clout to achieve that status.

The Huguenots in France and the Puritans in England had that clout, in large part because so many came from so high in the society that they were part of. If you are going to be a strident minority, it does not help if you were already far better off than most before you stated your own particular claim to standing in the social fabric. That could lead to the St Bartholomew Day Massacre, what would otherwise be called a pogrom. Historians assess the standing of the Huguenots by looking at what they call the brain drain in France after their brutal suppression and expulsion.

The Puritans would come to be seen as a pest in England. Under Cromwell, this fevered minority wanted to shut the pubs. (They had previously shut the theatres – we could have been denied Shakespeare.)

In America, the Puritans had the numbers – and it shows. Among other things, they could make life difficult for Quakers. The Quakers had been fined, whipped, jailed and banished during Puritan rule in Maryland before it passed its Toleration Act in 1649. Women had been stripped to find signs of witchcraft, but this act made it unlawful to use hostile language about the religion of others, such as ‘Heretick, Schismatic, Idolater, Puritan, Jesuit…’ Then Penn started his Holy Experiment with Quakers in Pennsylvania. At this stage of their development in the New World, the colonists prefigured the Enlightenment. That did not last. Slavery is not compatible with civilisation.

Religion does sadly seem to be at ease with hierarchy – rather like the judiciary. And whatever else may be said about the Friends, they made the existing hierarchy feel uneasy – you could see traces of anarchy – and they were very effective leaders of the movement against slavery together with members of the Church of England. If you take the view that slavery is contrary to any decent notion of civilisation, then the world had to wait until at least this level of abolition before it could consider itself civilised. That is no small proposition. And no small vindication of the Quakers.

The position of the Puritans in England was discussed by Paul Johnson in The Offshore Islanders.

English Puritanism was born among the Marian exiles of the 1550s [when the Catholic Queen Mary was burning Protestants]; it was thus an alien import. It had a consistency wholly foreign to the English….The doctrine of predestination was ludicrous…. The Puritans, like the Roman Catholic extremists, believed that religion was the only important thing in life, whereas most Englishmen thought it was something you did on Sundays. They were influential out of all proportion to their numbers because, like the Communists in our own age, they were highly organised, disciplined, and adept at getting each other in positions of power…. They oozed hypocrisy …But they did not believe in free speech. They believed in doctrinaire religion, imposed by force and maintained by persecution…. The privileges the Puritans claimed for themselves they would certainly have denied to others…Above all, Puritanism was the dynamic behind the increase in witch-hunting.

No wonder they got up the noses of the English, and then took their love of witch-hunting to the New World. It still loves the hunt. Just ask the President.

Caste from within

It is odd to many of us that some minorities have elaborate rules for confining contact with people outside their group. It is as if they were creating their own kind of caste from within – and most Australians regard caste as a dreadful form of discrimination. They are utterly and implacably opposed to any form of hierarchy imposed at birth. We believe, with Sir Henry Maine, that the progress in human society has been from status to contract – we get where we can, not from what we are born with, but what we can achieve in life. The caste system of the Hindus is anathema to us. Among other things, it is an invitation to see people as type-cast, and that offends what Kant called the ‘principle of humanity’.

For example, the Gypsies had elaborate rules relating to dealings with gadze – non-gypsies – with life-changing consequences for those who infringed. Here is what Sir Angus Fraser says in The Gypsies:

Even more pervasive is the dread of contamination….their purity beliefs can now be seen as a core element of their cultures, serving to express and reinforce an ethnic boundary and to delineate a fundamental division between Gypsy and gadzo….Wherever it is strictly adhered to, the taboo system informs all interaction between male and female and Gypsy and Gadzo, and for a Gypsy to be declared polluted is the greatest shame a man can suffer, along with his household. It is social death…. but their overwhelming concern is with the uncleanness of the female and her potential threat to ritual purity…. The code thus serves to isolate those Gypsies who practise it from any intensive, intimate connection with the gadze; and its existence makes all the more understandable the concern, so apparent in their history, to avoid any form of employment that would require such contact.

This book of Sir Angus strikes me as reliable. First, when the author refers to an ‘ethnic’ division, he is referring to what we call ‘race’. Secondly, the strictures relating to cleanliness, women, and contact with others have a lot is common with the beliefs of other ethnic or religious groups. Thirdly, it confirms the truth of the saying that we all need someone to look down on, and that those who see themselves as different very rarely see themselves as inferior – the contrary is the case. Fourthly, these codes militate against assimilation with or acceptance by the majority, with the result that the minority ends up worse off. The various defence mechanisms come back to bite their adherents. Fifthly, to the extent that any such code may require or authorise discrimination against those found to have breached it, it may well be against the law of the land.

Nor should we forget that some among us just get unsettled to run into someone who just wants to be different. Some get unsettled by doubt – they crave certainty where that is illusory.

Others fear a failure to conform – it threatens their attachment and subscription to the body politic which gives them such security and standing as they have. That is why some go clean out of their minds during revolutions – their whole world is exploding under them, and just what will they be left to stand on? It is like driving on dry ice.

Jealousy

Green-eyed jealousy is destructive. When felt at a social level, it arouses the hurt felt at apparent unfairness. It is then potentially lethal. It is a real risk for minorities that are seen to beat the system. Examples are the Huguenots, who came from the upper layers of their world, and the Armenians, who showed a business acumen apparently beyond many of their Turkish neighbours.

I say that as someone who bought this flat in Yarraville from an Armenian chicken farmer in Sydney who just happened to pick up a few blocks of local real estate on a trip to Victoria. The Armenians were certainly very active in redeveloping Toorak – in a manner that held no appeal to the remaining elders. ‘Upstarts’ or ‘nouveaux’ were polite epithets. It is one thing to see people do well; it is altogether another to be overtaken by someone you once saw as beneath you. If you really insult someone, you hit them just where it hurts.

The last tax case I heard involved a scarcely literate Sicilian who migrated here. He was at first a butcher and then a baker who bought land around Werribee so that by the time he got to me, he was worth north of $40 million. Some locals could handle that success story better than others. This will always be a potential problem for what are called ‘aspirational’ migrants who happen to do so much better than the old timers because that is their chosen destiny.

Unity in revolt or persecution

When Benjamin Franklin signed the Declaration of Independence, he remarked: ‘Well, Gentlemen, we must now hang together, or we shall most assuredly hang separately.’ He was surely correct. They would either be the heroes of a new nation or very dead martyrs of the ancien regime. You see the same theme in the Tennis Court oath at Versailles and all the propaganda of the artist David – Lenin and his ilk were rather more prosaic; so was their murder rate.

And persecution is a great bonding force. For ‘persecute’, the OED has ‘treat someone in a cruel or unfair way, especially because of their race or beliefs.’ That was the fate, and the conditioning, of the early Christians, Gypsies and Quakers, and the response to the persecution so often just fuelled the fire by binding the victims together and making them identifiable.

The study of victimhood, which can descend to self-righteousness, is a favourite of those parts of the press that decry ‘identity politics’ – while positively revelling in themselves; and at the same time rubbishing ‘virtue signalling’. It is remarkable how so many who are so well off can feel so oppressed. That is just another record claimed by Donald Trump – and a good slice of the United States.

A triumphant minority

Finally, there is the tragedy than can occur when the minority becomes the majority.

Take the United States and Australia as examples. When the white people first appeared in each, they were in the minority. Because of their overwhelming strength in fighting capacity, they became the majority, and shattered the lives of the indigenous people forever, and in ways that should continue to evoke shame.

In America, the degradation was made much worse by the importation of black African slaves, with the mordant consequence now that fear levels among many white people are made worse by the day by the threat that the white people may find themselves in the minority.

Conclusions

It would be tart to say that when peoples live together, numbers matter – but they do. And scripture may be correct when it says that there is nothing new under the sun.

For many, there is some comfort about the slippery impact of the supernatural in the droll remarks of Edward Gibbon:

The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful. And thus, toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.

Finally, some people may get up noses of others just because they seem to be different. At least, that is why I think my dog looked askance at cats. And I don’t blame him.

Being on the nose – the perils of minority