Campaigning tricks

Last week, I mentioned briefly a little gem of a book: Enzo Pennetta’s L’Ultimo Uomo: Malthus, Darwin, Huxley e l’invenzione dell’antropologia capitalista (The Last Man: Malthus, Darwin, Huxley and the invention of capitalist anthropology) published in 20

with Mark Xuereb

In this little book – it has only 195 pages – Pennetta, whose tertiary education revolves around biology and pharmacy studies, summarises and explains some of the tenets of contemporary ideology.

If you think that this is all airy-fairy, consider what Pennetta has to say about the Australian philosopher Peter Singer. A reader of this paper could ask: Why should I care what an Australian philosopher has to say? Well, you should – because Singer’s ideas percolate down into the cracks of public discussion and are then taken up by campaigners and the journalists who support them. These people will subsequently regurgitate these ideas and present them to you as if they were the Truth, not as the premasticated ideology that they are in reality. And your life ends up being shaped by them.

Pennetta summaries Singer’s take on politically corrected ideas according to the Darwinian approach thus: • Reject the idea that parents have any authority over their own children • Contest the contents of the

Bible • Refute the idea that human beings are superior to animals

How are these principles being applied around us?

Recently, worried parents were told essentially to shut up when they expressed their concern at what their young children are being taught at school as “sexual education”. 1. Certain newspapers alternate pro-abortion articles with faith-based articles. The strategy is to build the case for abortion and discredit those who oppose it, as if the debate on abortion was simply religious and those who prefer a religious approach are cut off from reality, fanatical readers of holy books. Clearly this latter image is a caricature, as in reality we have a very moderate Church and a very fanatical (neo-)liberal lobby. 2. Not too long ago, a solitary animal-rights campaigner tried to whip up support for putting an end to slaughtering pigs. This was given a lot of publicity by one particular newspaper, which also supports pro-abortion arguments. Let’s not forget that, according to the philosopher Singer, a pig should enjoy more rights than the unborn human child. The pattern described by Pennetta is clearly applied and ad