Wogs

If you want to see an example of extreme wogginess and why the word “wog” is used in the derogatory context it often is, read my piece on Uzzy.

There are many left wing, Harriet Harman style, police state New Labourites who would have conniptions after reading the first paragraph. “Racial vilification! Incitement to racial hatred! We must launch a prosecution!”

Yes, we mustn’t even utter derogatory ethnic descriptors, even in the context of analyzing why people use them and what they really mean by them.

So, what does the word “wog” actually mean?

Different things to different people.

In some people’s minds, “wog” means anyone from the Mediterranean, south eastern Europe, the Middle East, right across to Bangladesh, so it is a general ethnic descriptor. From Italy to Uzbekistan: Moroccans, Algerians, Egyptians, Armenians, Turks, Greeks, Serbs, Croats, Hungarians, Albanians, Romanians, Iranians, Pakistanis, Afghanistanis, Tajikistanis … all wogs.

Generally, people who subscribe to this view hold that there are good wogs and bad wogs, just like there are good and bad white people.

If someone who holds this view says “all wogs are bad”, then this is wrong, because I know many “good wogs”, if we use the term in this sense.

On the other hand, there are those for whom “wog” is pejorative. It is a combination of ethnicity and stereotyped behaviour (such as Uzzy’s). Consequently, they can encounter two people of identical ethnic background and regard one as a wog and the other not, due to their different behaviour and outlook on life.

There are also people for whom usage of the word is more nuanced. They will often use it as a general ethnic descriptor, even in friendly conversation with wogs who use it to refer to both each other and what they know is viewed as stereotypical “woggy” behaviour.

The adjective woggy can range from slightly to very negative. A bloke from the Mediterranean or Middle East strutting about cockily and wearing a shirt that’s a little bit too tight, or a shiny suit would be described as woggy. A girl dressing and behaving like Snooki from Jersey Shore would be the female counterpart. Jersey Shore is actually built around the guido / guidette stereotype, which is a subgenre of wogs. Look at Pauly D. He may be a decent enough guy (I don’t watch the show), but he’s certainly pretty woggy … and who else but a wog would nickname themselves “The Situation”?

If all they are doing is making a bit of a goose of themselves by harmlessly acting like a stereotype, the word wog would be used by both wogs and non-wogs alike, knowing it had a slightly negative connotation, but without it being genuinely nasty.

In Australia, we see such usage in comedy shows like The Wog Boys or Fat Pizza. These are in fact more strongly negative stereotypes, made by wogs who freely refer to themselves as wogs.

Stereotypes exist because many of their elements apply to many people in the stereotyped group. Many stereotyped behaviours are culturally learned.

Most people are followers. They learn most of their behaviour by copying other members of the group to which they perceive they belong. People recognize ethnicity and this is a potent grouping mechanism. This is how stereotyped “ethnic” behaviour is transmitted.

So what do people mean when they use the word wog in a strongly pejorative sense?

Wogs teach each other Uzzy style posturing; putting on a front. Just watch a group of young wog guys at a train station or in a shopping centre. It’s like they will have a personality crisis if no one is paying attention to them for more than ten seconds.

In some way, such behaviour must derive rewards within their social groups, because otherwise it would not survive. The women in their groups must at the very least reinforce it with some kind of approval, even if it’s just tacit agreement with the male pecking order.

Talking yourself up, puffing out your chest, being aggressive when in large groups, being bickeringly argumentative, dishonesty in business dealings, no shame about cheating in general or making false accusations, rigid views of what constitutes appropriate female behaviour … all stereotypical wog, male behaviour, if you’re using the word as pejorative.

In Australia, we’re seeing a big problem with young, Middle Eastern, often Lebanese males. With massive chips on their shoulders, so many of them strut around in large groups, mouthing off, acting tough, encouraging each other. All very brave boys in packs of 10 or 20, they’ll yell insults or flick cigarette butts at people as they walk past. They’ll do it to white women as well. If someone says something to them, they will bash them “for respect”, if there are no police or security cameras around. Some even decided it was OK to gang rape white girls because they were Australian.

These people are wogs and it’s wogs like these that make people look down on wogs.

Having said that, most people understand that most wogs aren’t like that. Unfortunately, people who witness it on a regular basis are drawn to thinking: “Yeah, but too many of them are.”

Although there are white kids who mouth off and cause trouble when in groups, the above behaviour is generally at odds with that of people from Asian or North Western European backgrounds, with more stoic social behavioural norms. It’s also far more prevalent, which is evidence of cultural problems.

Woggy countries have rampant corruption compared to north western European derived societies. It is not uncommon for police or others in positions of power to falsely accuse people to extract bribes or to avenge some perceived slight. Of course, this is also common in Asia and Africa, probably even more so.

If you use the general ethnic descriptor definition of “wog”, then many wogs reject the above behaviour in the same way as most people of Anglo Saxon background reject “yobs”. To say that all wogs behave like the above is like saying all Australians are yobs.

If you think that “wogs” means people from a certain set of ethnic backgrounds who also behave like the above, then in the sense that people have free will, some people choose to be wogs.

In this usage, some Australians choose to be bogans. If you want an example, look at the lives and behaviour of the people in the Macquarie Fields riots.

I know quite a few people of Italian descent who used to be comfortable making light hearted wog jokes and engaging in a bit of banter, usually initiated by them. Now they’re not so sure they want to be associated with the word. They would rather be thought of as European (by descent).

Why the change?

Italian and Greek migrants were the first large groups of wogs in Australia. When they first started arriving en masse after the Second World War, they hated being called wogs. Eventually they claimed the word and ameliorated it.

Now, we have many North African and Middle Eastern wogs in Western countries. These are different kinds of wogs. Without the Christian, European background, most have very alien cultural behaviour and perspectives on life. Often Islamic, aggressive and separatist, they are genuinely disliked. The Italian and Greek wogs don’t want the guilt by association.

As Australia starts to have significantly increasing numbers of second (and more) generation Australians not just from woggy countries, but also from Asia, I’ve noticed the word wog becoming a bit passé, largely because it is so general that it lacks the descriptive nuance for genuine discrimination.

People of second or third generation Italian or Greek descent who still have a few “old country” cultural characteristics are technically wogs, but they aren’t nearly as woggy as first generation Lebanese immigrants, for example. “Traditional” Aussies ie. those of Anglo-Saxon or Aboriginal background tend to see the former as Aussies these days, probably from a subconscious reasoning that the cultural distance from “us” to Italian Aussies is small compared to the gulf between “us” and Middle Eastern Muslims.

In large part, that’s the purpose racial slang really serves: it’s subconscious, categorical reasoning about which people are like each other and different from me and how different they are.

There’s no point trying to stamp it out per the left’s goal of controlling behaviour by controlling language and the structures available to parse thought. I’m sure they think they have had a lot of success with this strategy in places like the UK, but they will only ever police the public utterances of people who speak the dominant language. Immigrants will continue to use their own racist epithets, then manufacture hypocritical offence at the ones we use to describe them.