by Dr Tom Sunic

No verbal construct is so powerful and disarms so fully its critics as the expression “human rights.” Ever since the adoption of the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, not a single government on Earth and not a single freedom loving academic has ever shunned this expression when raving about world improvement, or when wishing to improve his own lot. And yet, since the adoption of this human rights clause there has been a blatant increase in the violation of human rights.

The answer to that is simple and does not represent a contradiction in terms. The lexical construct “human rights” is the most expedient tool for covering up abuses against specific rights of people. Today it has become a badge of honor for liberal plutocracy and its left-leaning scribes in search of a moral alibi for their military adventures or for their media mendacity. Upon closer grammatical scrutiny the lexical acrobatics of the “human rights” expression denote an abstract legal field that lends itself to a myriad of different definitions. Its generic nature precludes concrete rights of a given people, a nation, a race, a tribe, or a social group. The expression “human rights” is custom-designed for an uprooted and nameless individual or a dumbed-down consumer with no historical memory, and oblivious of his race and culture. It is a self-serving expression with different meanings in different social and historical contexts. For a Palestinian fellah living in a refugee camp on the West Bank, human rights have a different meaning from that of a neighboring Jewish-American settler whose long-distant cousins disappeared in Europe during World War II. For a Serb peasant human rights have one meaning; for a neighboring Albanian farmer yet another. For a DC pundit or a politician, human rights have a different resonance than for a poor white Oklahoma farmer who has been downsized, outsourced, or who has lost his job to illegal immigrants.

The ideology of human rights is particularly well embedded in American legal practice. Its French replica les droits de l’homme (the “rights of man”) would, if it were to be used now in the USA, render many feminists and bi-sexuals delirious. The American founding father Thomas Paine would likely be sued today for his work The Rights of Man, as his noun “man” smacks of a macho all-white society. Thus, this time around, Paine’s “man” would be castrated from his virile significance and replaced by the sexless if not transvestite adjective “human.” The Germans seem to be luckier as their compound noun “Menschenrechte” comes closer to the English human rights expression. Or, at least, so it was meant after the process of denazification, which was largely spurred by the Jewish-American Frankfurt School re-educators in post-war Germany.

Many authors have argued that human rights are basically of that Biblical origin whose secular offshoots make up the cornerstone of modern liberal democracy. When examined closer, the ideology of human rights appears to be the most racist and the most exclusive belief, causing countless disasters and immeasurable disappointments. By its very nature the ideology of human rights posits that all people are equal—and therefore expendable. Its message conveys the illusion that every human being on Earth can and must be rich and handsome, and that he can change his social roles at will. Alas, a furtive look shows that people are not born equal - neither in their physique, nor in their genetic make-up! Somebody carries criminal chromosomes, which makes him a prime case for a future serial killer. Somebody is born with dolichocephalic face and a round shaped occiput, as is the case with many Europeans; somebody has a sloped forehead on his quasi Neanderthal skull. Somebody’s IQ shoots up to 150; somebody is a half-wit, more of a liability to his society than an asset to it. When put to practice in a multicultural society the dogma of human rights inevitably leads to social polarization, tensions and consequently to civil wars.

Particularly barbaric is the dogma of human right during the state of war. Why? Let us pose a rhetorical question. What happens to individuals and people who are declared outside the category of “human beings”, as was the case with German civilians during World War II? No need for wild guesses. Labeled monsters and beasts by the Allies, Germans could do enter into the safe zone of human rights. Beasts and monsters must be obliterated, their cities phosphorized, their cultural heritage from Monte Cassino to Berlin museums must be targeted as an ultimate symbol of evil.

On the academic level the same exclusionary schema applies. An academic or a free thinker showing doubts about the paradigm of human rights is immediately declared a “right-winger,” and by analogy a crank, a kook, a weirdo - a pathological case not worthy of any human rights. He is an alien who needs a psychiatric asylum at worst, or be submitted to “ethnic sensitivity training” at best. How on earth can a “Nazi” and, by lexical extension, his cousin “anti-Semite,” be viewed as a human being? He must be shut up for good.

The flip-side of “human rights” is another lexical barbarism, notably the new expression “hate speech”, whose semantic elasticity makes a criminal of whosoever dares to challenge modern liberal mythology. The constant proliferation of such meaningless normative locutions serves as a shield for the liberal system, which similar to the ex-Soviet Union, carefully hides its totalitarian character. Eventually it will be destroyed by the very same masters of discourse who initiated this lexical and legal palaver.

Dr Tom Sunic is an author and translator. His latest book, prefaced by Kevin Mac Donald, is Homo americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age.