Cultural Marxism Demands a Sacrifice
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It is more or less a hundred years since Sir James Frazer completed his tremendous work of anthropology The Golden Bough. The book scandalized many Christians, suggesting as it did that the theme of a divine person sacrificed and then re-born has been rather common since deep Antiquity and across all agricultural societies. That theme, argued Frazer, often found expression in the annual killing of a king at harvest time, his spirit then resurrected in the Spring.
Cultural Marxism, the current state religion of the West, seems to be reverting to that notion of an annual sacrifice; though with only two percent of us employed in agriculture nowadays, we're not adhering very strictly to the proper seasonal schedule. Nor, alas, have we yet figured out the resurrection feature.
All that came to mind while I was watching Jared Taylor's interview with Frank Borzellieri.
Borzellieri ("borza-lerry") was principal of a Catholic elementary school in New York City for the school years 2009-2011. Before that he was Dean of Discipline at a Catholic high school in the city. His record in both jobs was spotless; and that is an astonishing thing when you consider that both schools were heavily NAM and Frank is white, so that the faintest scintilla of a hint of prejudice on his part, or even a careless word, would have cost him his job for "racism."
On July 31, 2011 the New York Daily News published a story about Frank under the headline "White supremacist principal running Bronx school with majority black and Latino students."
The story was a routine piece of Cultural Marxist character assassination by a reporter named Corrine Lestch, who, like the rest of her foul hypocrite breed, lives in a tony Whitopia (average list price for homes in her ZIP code: $786,832). Breathlessly Ms. Lestch informed her readers that Frank Borzellieri had written for American Renaissance, which she tendentiously described as "white supremacist." (According to its mission statement, AR advocates "the study of all aspects of race, whether historical, cultural, or biological.") Frank had, she further swooned, "a history of controversial writings and campaigns." That was true enough, if you take "controversial" to mean "hostile to Cultural Marxist goals." Frank had, for example, tried to get a homosexual activist removed from classroom teaching.
Ms. Lestch supplied disapproving comments about Frank from teachers she did not name, parents she did not name, a principal she did name but whose school she mis-identified, and the thuggish money racket Southern Poverty Law Center. Frank was fired by the New York Archdiocese the day after the article appeared, and his ecclesiastical employers shunned him thereafter. He told me that a six-page letter to then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan went unanswered.
Eight months later, in 2012, I myself was the goat for having pushed back against black journalists preening their cherished victimhood at the time of the Trayvon Martin affair. Then, one year on from that, Jason Richwine was hauled up to the sacrificial slab on account of a Ph.D. dissertation that mentioned (gasp!) different race profiles in IQ scores.
You have to admit, it's getting to look uncannily like a pattern, isn't it? Who will be the 2014 goat, I wonder?
In all three cases the goat had some association with an organization keen to maintain its credibility with what we Dark Enlightenment types call The Cathedral. In Borzellieri's case the supplicant organization was the Roman Catholic Church (proprietor of many actual cathedrals); in mine it was National Review; in Jason Richwine's, the Heritage Foundation. All three of these organizations, hearing the rising ululations of the mob, fell to the ground, curled into a fetal position, and squealed: "Take the goat! But for pity's sake don't call us 'racist'!"
The similarities thus stated, there are important differences to be noted. My own underbusing was all too foreseeable; in fact I foresaw it. Jason Richwine was a casualty in one particular skirmish of the Cold Civil War: the Cultural Marxist effort to Brazilify the U.S.A. via mass immigration.
Frank Borzellieri's case stands out in a number of interesting ways. He had spoken and written frankly, though temperately, on race and immigration during his pre-teaching career, 1993-2005. He had last spoken at an American Renaissance conference in 2002, last written for the magazine in 2006. The quotes that sent Ms. Lestch reaching for her smelling salts — "diversity's a weakness," etc. — were from a 2004 book.
The main reason Frank gave up writing was that from 2006 on he was, at his own expense, and while working full-time in school administration, pursuing first one then two (simultaneous) Master's degrees in his new career field. He was awarded both degrees with high distinction. This guy does nothing by halves.
Thus Frank embarked on his serious career as a Catholic educator with a long paper trail behind him. A colleague brought that paper trail to the attention of Frank's superiors at the school where he was teaching in 2007. Those superiors-the school's Principal and Pastor-asked the Censor Librorum of the Archdiocese (this guy) to review Frank's writings for doctrinal error. None was found, so Frank's contract was renewed.
At this point you might be thinking that it would be a good idea if Conservatism, Inc. were to appoint a Censor Librorum of their own to certify contributors' freelance writings or Ph.D. dissertations as doctrinally pure. They'd save themselves a lot of trouble, right?
Not necessarily. In Frank Borzellieri's case the nihil obstat was transubstantiated into Scotch mist as soon as Ms. Lestch at the Daily News murmured the holy incantation "white supremacist."
Frank Borzellieri is now unemployable in the field he studied for years to enter, and he has backed-up student loans. Sympathetic lawyers are helping him sue the Daily News for defamation. Frank remains a devout Catholic; which, given the cowering pusillanimity of his superiors in the New York Archdiocese, is a remarkable testimony to faith in the song, not the singer.
Watch that video, and help Frank Borzellieri if you can.