Political Correctness and the Totalitarian
Mentality
Rousseau is responsible for a great deal
of the trouble. One can also blame the French utopianists, principally
Saint-Simon and Comte; the idea of universal human rights (of
which the most recent poisoned fruit is the European constitution);
and of course the Enlightenment as a whole, always chief among
the usual suspects when sources of totalitarianism are discussed.
It has often been argued that some of the roots of totalitarianism
lie here. But the new totalitarian mentality - the mentality of
political correctness - owes more to the Rousseauian vision, and
perhaps to the French utopianists, than it does to the spirit
of the Enlightenment. It is not characterized by a faith in Reason
and the power of knowledge; it is profoundly anti-rational, inimical
to science and to empirical investigation. The universalism, the
utopian spirit, the faith in man (up to a point, and only in certain
kinds of ideologically correct man), the belief that the world
can be changed and evil eradicated from it, and a new world created
- all these features, partly of the Enlightenment, partly of what
Eric Voegelin, and Alain Besançon in his Intellectual Origins
of Leninism, identified as gnosticism, are still there in
the new, politically correct version of the totalitarian mentality.
But the rationalism is absent. The new totalitarian mentality
also displays a number of features that were absent from the old,
or that seem, at first glance, to be different. But the core is
the same, and springs from many of the same roots.
Benjamin Constant put it well: after Rousseau
and his "absurd and eloquent theory", according to which
society may exercise unlimited power over the individual, it was
long believed, he wrote, that "for the people to be everything
it was necessary that individuals be nothing". Which implies,
he observed, that "freedom is nothing other than a new formula
for despotism." He also observes that those who are in power,
or who usurp power, "may, to legitimate their encroachments,
borrow the name of freedom, because, unfortunately, the word is
boundlessly obliging." Those who seized power during the
French Revolution did so "by veiling the interests which
controlled them, by laying claim to seemingly disinterested principles
and opinions which served them as a banner." The Rousseauian
idea (which sprang, according to Constant, from a confusion between
the principle of authority and that of freedom) is responsible
"for most of the difficulties the establishment of freedom
has encountered [...], for most of the abuses that worm their
way into all governments [...], and indeed for most of the crimes
which civil strife and political upheaval drag in their wake."
I succumb to the temptation to quote Constant
not only because he makes a change from Tocqueville, but also
because he warns not so much against the tyranny of the majority,
but against the tyranny which usurps the name of the majority
and exploits democratic rhetoric for its own ends; the kind of
tyranny that, in addition to oppressing people, proclaims that
they are free and wants to force them to say so, and claims that
what it does expresses their will. All of which sounds disturbingly
familiar to us. But the disturbing thing is that it sounds familiar
not just from the days of the Soviet empire, but also when we
look at what is happening in Europe now. I also quote him because
he, too, blames a great deal on Rousseau. I don't want to claim
that Rousseau's "eloquent and absurd theory" is the
source of all evil, and in particular of totalitarianism; that
had a number of sources. But he was certainly an indirect inspiration
for the utopian aspects of totalitarian thought, and for the politically
correct thought of the 60s generation, to which many aspects
of the modern totalitarian mentality can be traced back. The two
have common roots, and one of them is the Rousseauian vision.
Fifteen years have passed since the fall
of the Berlin Wall. If we take the chief distinguishing features
of totalitarianism - all of them necessary though perhaps none
of them by itself sufficient - to be the principle of maximum
state control over every aspect of life, both public and private,
the unchecked omnipotence of the state, and an all-subsuming ideology,
then North Korea seems to be the only truly totalitarian state
at present left in the world. (It is debatable whether Islamic
theocracies or middle-eastern doctatorships such as Saddam Hussein's
Iraq can properly be called totalitarian; I think it is at least
arguable that they can.) One would have thought that by now there
would be little left to say. And indeed about totalitarianism
itself and its historical sources there is perhaps little new
to say; I certainly have nothing original to offer. Unfortunately
there is quite a lot left to say about the continuing totalitarian
temptation: the astonishing growth of the totalitarian mentality
in the West. For in the West, the totalitarian mentality, instead
of receding, as we anticipated after the collapse of communism
in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, seems to be spreading
and gaining ground. At the time of the Soviet empire it was limited
to left-wing intellectuals and hippies. Paradoxically, now that
communist regimes in Europe have been dismantled, it has spread
its tentacles wider and deeper: not only among Western intellectuals,
who, notoriously, have always been prone to totalitarian tendencies;
and not only in the academy, where it has always, just as notoriously,
flourished (and where it is expressed both in political or social
views and in a variety of disciplines in the humanities); but
also to large numbers of educated people, and, crucially, to political
leaders, who seem to have absorbed it from the air by some kind
of osmosis.
For the intellectuals, the disappearance
of the communist bloc has proved liberating; many of them have
conveniently forgotten that it was ever there, consigned it to
oblivion with a sigh of relief and returned happily to their Marxist
beliefs, once again self-satisfied in their feeling of moral superiority.
The Soviet empire has collapsed, communism in Eastern Europe dismantled,
the communist ideology seems bankrupt - and yet everywhere we
turn, we are surrounded by apologetics for communism and lectures
on the evils of capitalism and the "savagery" of "unbridled"
economic liberalism. More than this: everywhere we turn, in every
sphere of life, not just in prevailing attitudes but also, more
and more glaringly, in the government policies of European states,
and in particular of the European Union, we see the triumph of
a profoundly illiberal spirit, which calls itself liberal, and
some of the same tendencies which were characteristic of 20th
century totalitarian regimes: the implementation of ideologically
based policies which achieve precisely the opposite effects to
those allegedly intended, while increasing state intervention
and multiplying bureaucracy. With one important difference: the
new totalitarian mentality is profoundly anti-scientific; it does
not even proclaim a faith in science or human knowledge. It is
based on obscurantism and ignorance; it promotes ignorance and
wallows in it; it wants "progress" without the science.
"Imagine all the people," says
that dreadful song. That is what Rousseau did, and what all contractarian
political thinkers have done; that is what the flower children
of the 60s did; that is what intellectuals have always enjoyed
doing; and it seems to be precisely what European governments
are doing now. That utopian vision, infantilizing and immensely
destructive, is at the centre of the totalitarian mentality. It
has been responsible for the great crimes of the 20th
century; it will continue to be responsible, directly and indirectly,
for the erosion of democratic freedoms in the West, and will finally,
perhaps, be responsible for the loss of our freedom altogether.
This conjunction of two words, "the people", is one
of the more sinister phrases in the English language. Whenever
anyone talks of "the people", it is time to be wary;
and certain European political leaders have, in the past few years,
taken to talking about "the people" in a way that makes
one's blood run cold.
The very idea of "the people"
is a deeply and eloquently illiberal one. Imagining "all
the people" presupposes viewing them as a whole, and thus,
necessarily, as an abstraction, which in itself has strong ideological
consequences. And imagining them all in the utopian world envisaged
in the song is a nightmarish prospect. Yet this vision seems to
be a widely shared aspiration of the twenty-first century, particularly
in the "new Europe".
Some of the other distinguishing features
of totalitarian regimes, in addition to an all-encompassing ideology
and the attempt to bring all aspects of life under state control,
have been: the manipulation of language; the falsification of
history; the refusal to view people as rational and responsible
agents; and the implementation of policies in the name of ideological
principles, even if this has consequences directly counter to
the results one claims one wants to achieve. And these have always
been accompanied by at least the trappings of belief in human
knowledge, education, and science; indeed, these were important
Marxist-Leninist slogans.
All these features, with the important
exception of the last, are also features of the modern totalitarian/politically
correct mentality. The absence of the last of them, combined with
the familiar subordination of political programmes to ideology,
is particularly significant, and gives the new totalitarian mentality
its distinctive flavour. For one of its distinguishing features
is a disinclination for rational argument or analysis, the rejection
of facts which do not fit the politically correct theory, and
a refusal to inquire into the consequences of putting the approved
theory into practice. The proponents of universal panaceas and
utopian solutions to the world's problems have no need to confront
their beliefs with science or experience, for they believe that
they are right by definition: they believe themselves to be morally
superior simply because they have utopian ideals. That they are
right is, they believe, self-evident; and it seems to them just
as manifestly true that all those who question them must be evil.
Theirs is the moral superiority of the bolshevik.
The liberal conscience prides itself on
being uniquely sensitive to human misfortune. And the liberal
belief in the uniqueness of this claim to sensitivity in turn
fosters in liberals of the politically correct variety a tendency
to ignore the unfortunate - and illiberal - practical consequences
of the programmes they advocate. Their proposed solutions to the
world's ills are to be regarded as valid in defiance of science
and experience - just as marxism-leninism was to be so regarded
by the faithful. With, again, this one important difference: that
they do not proclaim their theories to be "scientific."
Science can be ignored. (This - since political correctness, like
the totalitarian mentality in general, is an all-encompassing
ideology - is not unrelated to the wilder shores of political
correctness in academia, and some of the more extreme post-modernist
and feminist attacks on science.)
One of many examples of this anti-empirical,
anti-rational and anti-scientific attitude is the issue of "globalisation".
"Globalisation", like "capitalism", is a scare-word,
a slogan which unites the politically correct of the world against
it. Like "capitalism", globalisation is neither an ideology
nor a diabolical conspiracy of rich against poor, nor even a human
invention: it is a natural process. But it is condemned as an
ideology, a "system" which - one hears repeated time
and again - "widens inequalities" and oppresses the
poor; an evil scheme imposed by a satanic imperial power in order
to control and "exploit" the Third World and its working
people. This is regardless of a wealth of evidence which shows
that it furthers the declared aims of those who protest against
it, like the eradication of poverty, democratisation and the development
of the Third World. Which suggests that the declared aims of anti-globalist
campaigners are perhaps not their real aims. Certainly the reasons
for their beliefs seem to have little to do with empirical evidence.
Many of those who argue against globalisation also suffer from
a tendency to gloss over some crucial facts. For example, I have
never, in any arguments against globalisation as a cause of inequalities,
come across any mention of the fact that it is the pursuit of
wealth, and the freedom to pursue it, that leads to inequalities.
Inequality is indeed what happens when people are allowed to make
money; it happens, for instance, when poverty-stricken people
in Third World countries are given the opportunity to work for
evil multinationals which "exploit" them by paying them
a wage which, however pitiful by Western standards, is far above
anything they could otherwise earn. Those who condemn the free-market
"system" and globalization would apparently prefer to
deny citizens of the Third World these opportunities; better that
they remain poor but equal than that inequalities arise through
the enrichment of some but not others. It is assumed that inequality,
whatever its sources, is intrinsically evil - a greater evil than
poverty, apparently. Again, campaigners against "globalisation"
assume, in defiance of all evidence to the contrary, that they
must be right, by definition, because are morally superior - altruistic
and generous and "concerned" about the poor, and engaged
in a moral battle against multinational corporations (which of
course are evil by definition) - not because their proposals bear
any relation to reality. The witch-hunts they launch against those
who dare to question the approved line are reminiscent of Stalin's
campaigns against enemies of progress and right-wing deviationists
(though without the gulags and the executions).
Then there is the slogan of "sustainable
development," which means, in practice, the precise contrary
of what it claims. (No doubt understanding it is a matter of Marxist
dialectics.) "Sustainable development" in fact means
protectionism, maintaining trade barriers instead of eliminating
them, maintaining subsidies instead of reducing them, keeping
people dependent on hand-outs, denying them responsibility and
the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty - in what would
be precisely a "sustainable" way. It also means shoring
up corrupt and incompetent governments.
Underlying much of this is a visceral dislike
of markets - a sentiment shared by many liberals, all anti-globalists,
and proponents of old and new totalitarian utopias. The dislike
of markets in turn involves the refusal to accept (at least) three
things: that self-interest is a natural and ineradicable human
motivation; that action in one's self-interest is rational action;
and, finally, that the pursuit of self-interest on the whole furthers
rather than diminishes the general good and overall prosperity.
These truths are not just a matter of economic theory, but are
borne out by experience and observation (and by various exercises
in non-zero-sum games of the prisoner's dilemma type, which show
the benefits of pursuing policies based on rational self-interest).
Markets, far from being conducive to inequalities, inculcate responsibility,
teach people to keep promises and to honour contracts (because
this is in their interest - but the result is in everyone's interest),
and allow everyone, rich and poor, the same opportunities. For
poor countries a free market furthers prosperity and democracy.
But the liberal and politically correct thinking, like the old
totalitarian thinking, is that since markets are driven by self-interest
and greed, which are both evil, markets, too, must be evil; it
is said, in defiance of all experience, that they deepen inequalities,
deny opportunities, and oppress the poor while enriching the rich.
And since markets are evil, it follows that they cannot lead to
anything good, and must be restrained and state-regulated - as
must human self-interest.
It is axiomatic for this mentality that
the world is divided into dominating and dominated, persecuting
and persecuted, and that no natural ways of eradicating these
divisions can be admitted to exist: they are intrinsic to how
the world is, and must be suppressed by force. Nor can it be admitted
that the poor, too, are rational agents, capable of acting in
their self-interest; they must be viewed as helpless, and the
obstacles to their progress as unsurmountable without aid. It
cannot, therefore, be admitted that it might be a good thing if
markets were opened to them and they were given opportunities
freely to pursue their interests (especially since this would
leave anti-globalists, campaigners for Third World Aid and many
NGOs with no jobs. Not to mention thwarting the interests of protectionists,
which, regardless of marxist-leninist views about markets and
human nature, is what much of this, and a great deal of political
correctness, is about: vested interests). In general, contempt,
and the related tendency to infantilize people and deny them responsibility,
is a feature prominent in both the old and the new totalitarian
mentality. As is the related conviction that the only true authority
is the state, and that the state should legislate in all spheres
of life, private and public.
There is one further absurd and pernicious
belief, related to the belief in the evil of markets and capitalism,
that is common to the old and the new totalitarian mentality,
namely the belief that prosperity is a zero-sum game: that
the rich are rich, and get richer, at the expense of the poor;
and that if only the rich could be persuaded (or forced) to give
up some of their riches, the poor would directly benefit. On the
basis of ideology and envy, in defiance of both common sense and
experience, the logic of redistribution has become a tacit, mindless
assumption underlying not only the thinking of the woolly-minded
Left but also the policies implemented by European political leaders,
of the Left as well as the centre-Right. And it has become taboo
to question this.
Some features of the new totalitarian mentality
which were not (on the face of it) present in the old nevertheless
spring from the same roots. One of them is the idea of group identity:
the belief that we are essentially defined by our belonging to
a certain sexual, social, religious or ethnic group. This has
led to the "ghettoisation" of certain ethnic groups
- in the name of their freedom and dignity. The idea that all
that we do and all that we are depends on our sex, race, sexual
orientation or membership of an ethnic group, apart from being
absurd and profoundly insulting, shatters the very vision of social
harmony and the common good which supposedly inspires the ideology
of political correctness. Instead of uniting people, it divides
and segregates them, creating a vast number of conflicting and
hostile individual interests and widening, rather than narrowing,
the gulf between them. Similar consequences flow from the assumption
- as axiomatic for the new totalitarian mentality as it was for
the old - that the world is split into two classes: the persecuted
(minorities) and the persecuting. As a result, there is no longer
any foundation for the "diverse" and "multicultural"
society which is the alleged aim, for there are no longer any
grounds for mutual understanding, and no possibility of attaining
the proclaimed ideals of openness and tolerance. There are only
individual interest groups and their endless "rights".
Not surprisingly, underlying a great deal
of this are vested interests - particularly in academia, where
the imposition of political correctness and postmodernist theory,
and the creation of new disciplines which subvert reason and academic
values in the name of multiculturalism, feminism and freedom,
brings academic positions, power and status. This is achieved,
as Constant remarked, "by veiling the interests which control
them, by laying claim to seemingly disinterested principles and
opinions which serve them as a banner".
But this feature of the new totalitarianism
is not that new. Certainly the division of the world into two
classes, the persecuted and the persecuting, is familiar; now
they are just slightly different kinds of classes. But the politics
of group identity, too, did not come out of nowhere: it is also
based on a vision of "all the people" as an abstraction,
which is then divided up into segments with different labels,
each with a well-defined role. Individuals are slotted into these
roles, reduced to them, and defined by them. Women, minorities,
homosexuals - each member of such a group is defined essentially
as such. There is a perfectly good parallel in the old totalitarianism:
the basis of identity has simply changed from class to race and
sex. Where once we had workers, peasants, kulaks, and the bourgeois,
we now have women, blacks and homosexuals. Moreover, the parallel
holds not only for the communist variety of totalitarianism, but
for the fascist one as well: such definitions are reminiscent
of Nazi views of race. One could also mention, in this context,
the fondness for conspiracy theories, and the new anti-semitism:
the conviction that Israel is to blame for all the world's ills;
that everything would be fine, and terrorism - bred of poverty
and injustice, American imperialism and Western greed - would
go away, if only the Jews were toppled from their stranglehold
on power.
It is ironic that the proclaimed ideal
behind the Rousseauian vision was precisely the autonomy of the
individual: the rejection of determination by class or race. The
aim was precisely to abolish the (illiberal) concept of group
identity. And yet, paradoxically, it is central to the mentality
of many of those inspired by that vision. But perhaps this is
not so paradoxical: the fact that it was also, in a slightly different
way, very much a part of the old totalitarian mentality leads
one to suspect that this vision of utopia ineluctably distorts
itself also in this way.
At the same time, however, we also have
the slogan of "anti-racism" - in the name of which campaigners
for Palestinian rights like to chant "Death to the Jews"
while holding up placards that read "Justice" and "Peace".
It is also in the name of anti-racism that certain ethnic groups
are deprived of the education to which they are entitled: it is
considered wrong, for example, to make immigrants, and in particular
their children, learn the language (not to mention the values
and culture) of the country in which they live. (It is worth noting
that this form of "anti-racism" only "privileges"
certain types of immigrants; it would not apply, for example,
to Finns, or Latvians, or Greeks.) Then there is "anti-elitism",
which persecutes schools that achieve good results through discipline,
the maintenance of teachers' authority and traditional methods
of teaching, and holds back children who want to learn. Such examples,
now common and depressingly familiar, are characteristic of how
political correctness wants to restrict freedoms and opportunities
in the name of freedom, equality and "rights". This,
too, is very much a part of the old totalitarian mentality. It
is ironic that the proliferating "rights" have in fact
been eroding equality before the law - thus, once again, leading
to results contrary to those allegedly aimed at.
In all of this one of the most glaring
things is the manipulation of language. It is a feature common
to both the old and the new totalitarian mentality, and it is
a growing tendency among political leaders, many of whom seem,
when they speak, to be not so much lying as detached from reality
altogether. Their speech, increasingly a type of Orwellian newspeak,
is meant not to inform but to obfuscate and deceive. When we listen
to modern European leaders, we have stopped thinking of them as
actually saying anything relevant; it is pure rhetoric, which
addresses not problems but the speaker's image. And the words
are taken straight from the songs of 60s flower-children, supplemented
with scatterings of slogans like "access" or "exclusion",
or "inclusiveness" (used, particularly in the promotion
of certain groups, to mean whatever one likes); "tolerance"
(which means intolerance, and privileges for certain segments
of the population); and "multiculturalism" (which means
promoting only anti-western cultures and condemning our own).
"Rights" have supplanted justice, equality of opportunity
and democratic processes. And of course the ever-present slogan
of "democracy", which has become almost meaningless;
it is often confused, indiscriminately, with human rights, or
civil rights, or the rule of law. Usually it is used to mean no
more than individual "rights" - in particular the rights
of individuals belonging to certain "minority" groups.
My favourite is "raising standards", which, like "sustainable
development", means exactly the opposite of what it claims:
it always means lowering standards, notoriously in education.
And we are constantly being told that we are becoming freer and
freer, even as our freedoms become more and more restricted. The
fall of communism has not significantly reduced our opportunities
to observe how endlessly obliging is the word "freedom";
nor how the rhetoric of democracy is manipulated. Nor how surprisingly
elastic are the meanings of certain other words we used to think
we had a fairly good grasp of, such as "truth", for
instance, or "equality", or "justice", or
"evil". (I was present a few years ago at a conference
on evil where almost everyone seemed to think that the problem
of evil was tantamount to the problem of Third World poverty,
globalisation, multinationals, global warming and environmental
pollution - caused of course by imperialist oppression and the
ruthless greed of the capitalist West, in particular the United
States of America - and hence that it would simply go away if
we could only find the right cure for these ills.)
We come, finally, to the falsification
and manipulation of history. This, too, is not limited to totalitarianisms
of the communist or Nazi variety. It is still - unbelievably -
evident in the reluctance of the politically correct Left to mention
certain inconvenient aspects of Soviet communism, and in the taboo
on mentioning them in the same breath as Nazi atrocities, let
alone comparing the two. The only thing Nazi atrocities may be
compared to are Israeli atrocities and American atrocities, and
indeed this is increasingly done. But this has always been the
case on the Left. What is new is that political correctness now
decrees not only that Western civilization must be rejected, in
the name of "multiculturalism", "anti-racism",
etc - we have seen anti-Western propaganda at work for many years,
in schools and universities in various European countries, and
of course in America - but also that Europe's Judaeo-Christian
past - and thus its entire culture and history - must be denied.
What is also new is that, admittedly owing largely to pressure
from a growing Muslim population, especially in England and in
France, this has now made its appearance in government policy.
President Chirac recently declared that Europe and European values
are just as much - if not more - rooted in Muslim as in Judaeo-Christian
culture. In his case, if we assume, charitably, that he has not
yet entirely lost his mind, the motivation for this statement
was probably largely cravenness and fear. A similar fear
may explain the absence, in the preamble to the latest draft of
the European constitution, of any mention of Europe's Judaeo-Christian
heritage. Nevertheless, the trend is there, and it is a deliberate
manipulation of history. And everything suggests that the builders
of the new Europe and its constitution are motivated not only
by fear, but also by an ideology which involves the rejection
of history and tradition: they want a truly "new" Europe,
the creation of a new world, built on modern, progressive foundations,
unconstrained by historical ties. This, too, is an idea familiar
from the communist utopia.
All these things - the manipulation of
language, the falsification, manipulation or outright denial of
history, the pandering to minority interest-groups, the subordination
of policy to woolly-minded ideological principles - come
together in the constitution of the European Union, a text of
mind-boggling meaninglessness and spectacular incoherence. Its
language is deliberately vague; its stated goals are, to the extent
that they are comprehensible at all, mutually contradictory. Article
3 about Union Objectives, for instance, states, in all seriousness,
that the union will work towards "sustainable development",
based on a "social market economy" that will be "highly
competitive" and aiming at "social progress" and
"full employment". This is, quite literally, nonsense.
"Sustainable development" is already a phrase fraught
with ambiguity. No one knows what a "social market"
is - not even the people who advocate one, perhaps not even those
who invented the phrase. Even if this fuzzy and, I suspect, internally
contradictory concept turned out to have some possible application
to reality, it is certainly irreconcileable with being "highly
competitive", which in turn is at odds with the guarantee
of "full employment". Furthermore, the market by definition
does not "aim" for anything. Perhaps the social market
does, but since its meaning is difficult to discern, it is hard
to tell. "Social progress" is presumably supposed to
mean something like "social justice"; and, like "social
justice" and "social market", it can be interpreted
in any way one likes. The proposed draft of the European constitution
also wants a "high level of protection" for the environment,
but at the same time (as an afterthought) it wants to "promote
scientific and technological advance". What it does, in other
words, is to "imagine all the people", think of what
it would like them to be, and of all the things that it believes
would constitute an ideal world, and write them all down. Since
the constitution also enshrines a huge expansion of the European
Union's powers, allowing it to legislate in almost all spheres
of life, from foreign policy to social and economic policy, and
its legislation is binding for all members of the Union, superseding
the decisions of national parliaments, this vagueness and incoherence
are truly dangerous, for they mean that the European Union will
be able to impose on member states whatever it feels like imposing
at any given moment. And we know the Olympic scale of its whims.
One difference between the old totalitarianism
and the new is that an astonishing number of people have let themselves
be brainwashed by the ideology and cant. The new totalitarianism,
in the form of political correctness, provides convenient, pre-packaged,
oven-ready opinions, like the old variety. Just pop them into
your brain and watch it turn to mush. And, like the old, they
are convenient precisely because they are almost all-encompassing.
A pre-cooked utopia to be reheated and served up on a plate, with
facile, attractive slogans: democracy, justice, tolerance, diversity,
peace. Diversity is fairly new; the rest is familiar. But it seems
to have succeeded in addling people's brains much better than
the old, communist variety. We also have governments which, while
talking about "the people", pander to interest-groups
and legislate accordingly; and now the European Union, which will
legislate for them. Will we also forget how to govern, and what
sovereignty - of the person or of the state - means, and what
it is for? Are we coming closer to a variant of Saint Simon's
utopia where government is be replaced by the "administration
of things" - and of people?