From Lake Geneva to the Finland Station

My correspondent Anonymous has commented about Frank Ellis, following my recent post about the Maxim Institute. I was about to publish something on Ellis but I was distracted by talk of That Stadium. Now I must write, so there goes my evening.

For those who do not take quite as keen an interest in the work of the Maxim Institute as do Anonymous and I, here is an explanation. Frank Ellis was a lecturer in Russian and Slavonic Studies at Leeds University who was invited by Maxim to speak at its 2004 conference, "Political Correctness: End of an Error?" Maxim also published Ellis' book on the subject, with the snappy title Political Correctness and the Theoretical Struggle from Lenin and Mao to Marcuse and Foucault. This book was "a pioneering study" and you can see why. Some may think that the problem with Political Correctness is that it has gone mad; for Ellis, the trouble with PC is that it was always red. It was a "Russian Communist invention, going back to the times and plans of Lenin, and an intrinsic part of the unprecedented system of total censorship introduced by the Bolshevik leadership in the late autumn of 1917." Think of that the next time you refrain from sitting on a table.

Unfortunately for Dr Ellis, Political Correctness and the Theoretical Struggle from Bob and Carol to Ted and Alice has not brought him the accolades that Maxim undoubtedly thinks he deserves. More unfortunately still for Dr Ellis, some of his other opinions have brought him more spare time than he would have desired. Theoretical struggle or none, his employers at Leeds University decided that his views were a little too politically incorrect, particularly those on matters of race, gender and sexuality. He was sent into early retirement, after complaints by other staff .

As I mentioned in a previous incarnation of the Fundy Post, Dr Ellis has been associated with American Renaissance, which keeps company with the Ku Klux Klan and the British National Party. He is also on the advisory board of the Occidental Quarterly, which formerly called itself a "Journal of Nationalist Thought and Opinion" but has subsequently replaced the adjective 'Nationalist' (a shibboleth commonly used by fascist groups) with 'Western.' Dr Ellis has also contributed to the work of the Canadian Heritage Alliance, a murky and unpleasant group, with an essay on multiculturalism and, you guessed it, Marxism.

Dr Ellis was invited to speak at an American Renaissance conference about another of his books, The Macpherson Report: 'Anti-racist' Hysteria and the Sovietisation of the United Kingdom (as his titles show, Dr Ellis sees reds under the bed everywhere). The book is a criticism of the report by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny and Blairgowrie into the Stephen Lawrence case. Lawrence was a black teenager who was murdered by racists in 1993; despite a great deal of evidence, his murderers escaped conviction and Sir William blamed some of the Police's failings on institutional racism. I have not read Dr Ellis' work but by all accounts he seems to be arguing that political correctness is so endemic that even the 27th hereditary chief of the Clan MacPherson of Cluny has been infected.

The gruesome Australian League of Rights (an organisation of which our own dear Barbara Faithfull, guardian of morality and Secretary of the Credo Organisation, is a supporter) wrote approvingly of Dr Ellis in an article, snappily entitled Control and Nature of the Coming World Order, Part 2. The ALOR writer is appalled that Sir William, a former Scots Guards officer and CO of the Artists' Rifles (and thus "a man of impeccable background") should hold such views. Dr Ellis, himself formerly of 22 SAS, concludes that "the forces of Law and Order are a major focus of the Ideological Struggle of the Revolution."

Dr Ellis maybe a prof without honour in his own land but he still has a friend in Maxim; at least they will sell you his book. Regrettably, all other references to his work went down the memory hole before the new Maxim site was launched.

If you managed to work your way through the dense wordscape of the ALOR article, you may have noticed that the preface to Dr Ellis's work was written by Professor Antony Flew. This is the same Professor Flew who was formerly the World's Leading Atheist Philosopher until he decided that Aristotle was right and accepted the Prime Mover into his heart. Despite this lapse of faithlessness, Professor Flew remains an Honorary Associate of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists (Inc).

Although he is not known to hang out with the men in the pointy hoods, Professor Flew has conservative views; I once read one of his philosophical works which lurched mid-book from a discussion of the is/ought question to an attack on the concept of anti-racism. Professor Flew is also a contributor to Right Now magazine and a former Vice-President of the former Western Goals Institute, a now defunct organisation which which is worth reading about, if only to see a photograph of its Directorate.

Professor Flew also accepted the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth from Biola University, a "A Global Center for Christian Thought and Spiritual Renewal". Philip E Johnson is the Berkeley law professor whose own contribution to Liberty and Truth was to invent the concept of Intelligent Design, thus "advancing our understanding of design in the universe by opening up informed dissent to Darwinian and materialistic theories of evolution."

Makes you think, doesn't it?